Page 34 of The Consort's Curse
I’d never felt quite as awkward as I did at that moment.
And then Stefan leaned over, grasped the waist of my drawers, and gave them one quick tug, all the way down to my calves.
I gasped and squirmed, but that didn’t stop him from working them the rest of the way off, getting my feet untangled and flinging the drawers after the blankets with a flourish. My fingers would snap in half if I held on any more tightly.
Only the hem of my shirt precariously preserved what modesty I had left. He’d seen everything from the back last night, but that had been in an emergency situation and in dimmer light and in a hurry.
But now…sunshine poured into my bedroom, and as he lifted the hem of my shirt, I had nowhere to hide.
But I couldn’t do anything about it, because I didn’t have my hands free. Which meant that if he didn’t like what he saw, that could only be considered his own fault for looking—I couldn’t take any responsibility, could I?
No.Stefanhad decided to smooth his hands over my hips, staring down with flushed cheekbones at my rapidly hardening cock in its nest of unfashionably coppery curls.Stefanwas the one pushing my shirt up even more, exposing the flat, pale plane of my stomach, trailing his fingers over my skin and making me bite my lip and arch and whimper. My knuckles ached, the headboard creaked, and the muscles in my arms would be sore later. A fresh wave of dizziness had my head tipping back, everything going sparkly in my vision.
Through a throbbing echo of my own pumping blood, I heard Stefan say, “Yes, just like that,” and oh gods, but I’d gotten stiff as a post, every slight current of air in the room an unbearable tease brushing over my heated flesh.
The mattress dipped as Stefan shifted his weight. Another breath of air over my cock—and that was all the warning I had before something hot and wet closed around me, a sensation so overwhelming that it whited out everything I’d ever experienced in my life.
That was Stefan’smouth. His lips wrapped around me, his tongue flicked at the tip, and now his hands were on me: one sliding under my ass, the other fondling my balls, tugging them down in counterpoint to the suction on my cock. I managed to lift my head enough to catch one momentary, dizzy glimpse of his dark blond head bent down and buried between my legs, broad shoulders framed by my knees—and that finished me, everything tightening and twisting all over again as I spent down Stefan’s throat.
My come, in his mouth, with himswallowing it—another spasm wrenched through me, and I fell back, limp and numb and quivering all at once.
Distantly, I felt Stefan’s hands on mine, unwrapping my aching fingers from the headboard and gently setting my arms by my sides. My eyelids were too heavy to open. Stefan climbed off the bed, the floorboards creaked faintly as he walked away, and I let myself drift.
Chapter Fourteen
The faint sounds of water running and cabinets being opened in the bathroom told me that Stefan had gone out of sight for the moment, and it allowed me time and space to recover my breath, if not my equanimity.
And to tug my shirt down to cover myself, shivering as I remembered how I’d gotten so damp and well-used.
My stunningly handsome, arrogant husband had taken me into his mouth and…my cheeks burned and my fingers curled into balls. Did he do that with his lovers? Did hepayother men to do that to them? I’d have expected him to receive that act exclusively, especially given that Abbot Junius, in the conversation I wished I could forget, had strongly hinted that men like him never bothered to give anyone pleasure.
Stefan couldn’t possibly have done that because he wanted to do it for me, in particular. What an absurd idea.
Would he expect me to do it for him next? I still couldn’t decide if I’d want to for anyone, let alone Stefan, and I hadn’t even seen his cock yet, and what if it revolted me?
He’d be back in a moment. After bringing me off twice in a row, he’d want either my mouth or to take me.
In the daylight. With Aldrich probably lurking out in the corridor.
Oh, Ennolu help me—not that he’d done much of that lately, the old bastard.
A shift in the room’s air currents and the prickling of my magic warned me that Stefan had come back a moment before he spoke.
“How’s your curse?” His tone had that careful neutrality that always concealed something else, but this time I had no idea what answer he wanted from me.
Oh, how I wished lying came more easily to me than simple honesty. My curse…seemed to be in abeyance, oddly, given how my magic had surged with need when Stefan came to my door. Or had that beennotmy curse, but…oh, bloody bloody hell.
Desire.
It had been desire. And my magic and my body seemed to be entirely complicit in their betrayal of my common sense.
Well, even my stringent honesty had its limits. Telling my unwilling husband I’d simply wanted him to touch me exceeded them by a mile.
“My curse seems to be satisfied for the present,” I said, my voice coming out thready from the dryness of my mouth. Perhaps he wouldn’t ask how in the world that could be possible when he hadn’t spent in me.
“How’s that possible?” he demanded. Damn it. “I don’t know everything about dawn mages, certainly, but I do know one specific act is necessary. And I didn’t come anywhere near fucking you.”
Reluctantly, I forced my eyelids to lift. As I’d feared, Stefan had come to stand directly beside the bed, frowning down at me, hair damp and finger-combed and mouth distractingly red.
