Page 26 of The Royal Curse

Trying to squirm away from Andreas and tug my shirt down to cover my cock and my ass went against what my body and my magic wanted and needed, butIneeded to be covered,Ineeded to hide, and the push and pull of two conflicting urges had my head spinning.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” I stammered, my face and neck going painfully hot. I couldn’t quite get my legs closed, because he still knelt between them, and shoving myself up the bed with my elbows didn’t work. It only bounced and rustled the horrid mattress. “The—it doesn’t hurt much. Only an ache, nothing terrible. You have no obligation, Andreas. Never mind.”

I’d almost managed to turn onto my side, away from him, and gods, that’d put my bare ass right in front of him again, fuck, I had nowhere to go—

And then warmth enveloped me as Andreas leaned down, covering me with his body, his knees pressing into my inner thighs and his elbows braced on either side of my shoulders.

“Your Highness,” he whispered against my ear. “Look at me, please.”

No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t possibly.

But of course I would, because he’d told me to, and thatpleasehad been a meaningless formality. I turned my head and opened my eyes, and I found his face an inch from mine, lips a breath away.

“Obligation. Are you suggesting that’s what you pay me for? Because I’m not that kind of man, Your Highness,” he said, with a glint in his eyes that meant trouble. “Of course there’s no gods-damned obligation. Although I suppose you could increase my wage on general principle. But that’s not why I’m here. You should already know that.”

“My mother pays you, not me,” I said without thinking—and then I thought about it. Fucking gods. “Andreas, I didn’t mean she pays you for—”

“Enough,” he said firmly, and leaned in that final inch between us and caught my lower lip between his teeth.

The shock of it went all the way down to my toes, my legs stiffening and the hair rising on my arms and the back of my neck. “Mmph,” I said, and Andreas bit down, making me squeak and squirm, my hands flying up to land against his chest. He sucked on my lip, hard, and then let it go with a pop.

“What was that?” I gasped, my mouth throbbing and tingling far out of proportion to the cause. I couldn’t see anything but his face, couldn’t feel anything but the heat of his body surrounding me, couldn’t hear anything but my panting breaths—and his, a rough counterpoint.

“No one needs to pay me to touch you, that’s the point,” he said, very low, eyes so dark and intent he could’ve pinned me in place with just his gaze, no manhandling needed. “If anything, I think I’m paid partly not to do that. And I don’t know how you got the idea that no one would want you. But I’m very close to stripping every remaining thread of clothing off of you and showing you how completely fucking wrong you are. If you ask me again to fuck you, you’ll find out how fucking close, even though I’m pretty sure you don’t mean it. Are we clear? Your Highness.”

Oh, gods. That swooping sensation in the pit of my stomach owed nothing at all to magic gone awry and everything to the way his deep voice made every cell in my body tremble, the way each one of his words hit me harder than the last. How had my cock gone stiff again so quickly, tenting the hem of my shirt and pulling all the blood away from my brain—and clearly it had, or I wouldn’t have gone so lightheaded and fuzzy, would I?

My eyelids drooped, my breath coming faster.Your Highness. When had those words started to sound like the punctuation to a command rather than a sign of respect? They made me want to spread my legs again. But I didn’t have any leverage, squished down into the bed beneath him the way I was.

Instead, I slid my hands up his arms, squeezing the powerful muscles, tracing the bulges of his shoulders, savoring the way he tensed under my touch as if I affected him as much as he did me.

His mouth was so close to mine. When I spoke, he’d feel my breath, caught in the tiny space between us that somehow managed to eclipse the rest of the world.

“We’re clear,” I whispered.If you ask me again to fuck you, you’ll find out how fucking close. I could only hope. “I’m asking again. Kiss me, and then fuck me. You already fucked me once. What difference does it make?”

Andreas bit his lip and made a sound like I’d punched him in the sternum. “What difference does it—you have no idea what you’re asking for,” he said after a moment. The bed jostled as he lifted one hand and set it across my throat—carefully, gently, but without any hesitation, broad palm and long fingers wrapping all the way from side to side. He didn’t hold me too tightly, didn’t hamper my breath. But he pushed on me, tilting my chin up, forcing me to put my lips even closer to his. His voice dipped to a rasp. “I’m going to give it to you anyway.”

Andreas’s mouth met mine with the same unwavering surety he always had in everything he did, warm and firm and in complete control. I opened for him, because his tongue pushed in, tasting me, showing me how to move my own to twine with his and kiss him back, how to please and obey him.

The spark of that kiss ignited a fire deep down, where I was empty and wanting.

His hand moved from my throat to my chest, stroking and petting, goosebumps rising on my skin wherever he touched me. I arched up into him, my own fingers clawing into his shoulders.

Gods, too much and not enough, the soft friction of my shirt on my cock maddening, Andreas’s mouth and hands an unbearable tease. It’d been years since I’d kissed anyone at all, and I’d never been kissed like this, with focused intent, as if owning my mouth was a goal in and of itself and not a steppingstone to more.

When he broke the kiss I fell back, dizzy and short of breath. His hand reached the hem of my shirt and slid beneath to spread across my stomach, and his hot mouth closed on the side of my throat and sucked hard, making me cry out and try again to arch up. But he had me pinned. And then it became a blur of sensation I couldn’t begin to parse: the sudden rending rip of my shirt as he bared my chest, letting out another startled cry and twitch as he bit my nipple and then soothed it with a swipe of his tongue, the weight of him above me and the way I was pressed into the mattress beneath, my mind echoing, too hot and sweaty and overwhelmed and with my balls drawn up painfully tight, my head thrashing on the pillow.

Andreas kissed me everywhere, my nipples and down my chest, back up and along my collarbones, stinging nips to my ribs and my waist, a tongue flicking ticklishly in my navel and making me jump.

Somehow he’d moved down the bed without my noticing, and when my hands slipped off his shoulders and flailed in the empty air, I propped myself up on my elbows and blinked down at him.

On a solitary ride through the hills years ago, I’d encountered a mountain panther, gazing down at me with gleaming eyes and bared fangs from his perch on a rock above the path. That had been the one occasion on which I’d wished to the gods I’d brought someone else with me. Fluffy and I had gotten the hell out of there on the double, and I’d been looking over my shoulder for two miles.

Andreas looked just like that huge cat, all coiled strength and bunched muscles, crouched between my legs with his eyes glittering and his cock a heavy bulge in the straining front of his trousers. He slid his hands down to the backs of my knees and wrenched me open, spreading my legs obscenely wide to display everything I had.

The force of it tipped me back again and I collapsed with a gasp, digging my fingers into the bedding to try to catch my balance.

My hips ached, forced into such an unnatural angle, and I couldn’t do a gods-damned thing but wait for Andreas to…I couldn’t begin to guess, because I’d have thought he’d have been inside me by now.

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