Page 44 of The Royal Curse

I wanted to reply with something witty, or failing that with something casual in the same lightly amused tone he’d used. Instead, all that came out was, “You should call me Nikola. Or just Niko.”

He almost had, hadn’t he? Only once, when we were in bed together the other night. But he’d corrected himself. Even in the throes of passion.

Andreas kissed me softly right below my ear, and then he hesitated, his breath held for a long moment before he let it out in a tickling rush. I squirmed under him, and he bit my earlobe, which for some reason sent a bolt of heat straight down into the pit of my stomach.

“When I’m committing treason,” he said at last, and then stopped again. I’d gone so tense I was afraid my voice would shake if I tried to demand that he finish his fucking sentence already, so I simply vibrated with frustration in silence. When he spoke again, it was so low I almost had to strain to hear him, even though his mouth was an inch from my ear. “When I’m inside you, it seems like it makes it even more forbidden to call you Your Highness. I like it.” He rocked his hips, stirring my insides with his still half-hard cock. “Do you want me to fuck you again, Your Highness?”

“Forty-two, fuck, hours,” I gasped, as my spine went liquid and my eyes fluttered shut. “To test the potion.”

“I came inside you five minutes ago,” he said, already starting to thrust, lighting me up from the inside, hand wrapping around my limp cock and tugging on it, playing with me, massaging me. “What’s another twenty?”

“Oh, gods. Andreas!”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, and bit my ear again.

The sun had fully risen now, the window lit up golden and the clattering and thumping from the kitchen below us growing in volume. Hopefully it’d drown out the way the bed began to creak as Andreas knelt up and pulled me into his lap, legs splayed and ass spread to take him.

By the time he came inside me again, I’d forgotten about the potion all over again. I’d forgotten everything but his name.

“So with the bridge impassable, we need alternatives,” Andreas said, addressing the small group we’d gathered around a table by the fire in the inn’s small private parlor.

Sergeant Salvius hummed agreement, and Carlo and Dario nodded attentively. The sergeant and Carlo had both been part of the royal guard for decades, long enough that I couldn’t remember when their faces hadn’t been familiar—although they’d both gotten grayer and more lined over the years. Dario was young, and he’d only appeared at the palace a few months ago, as far as I could recall. He’d been chosen for this journey for the same reason Andreas had sent him out to ask questions the other day, and the same reason he’d been summoned to our meeting this morning: he’d been born and raised on this side of the mountains. So far he’d been quiet and unobtrusive, and he’d apologized in a way that seemed sincere for his informant’s error about the bridge.

Everyone made mistakes, after all. Myself very much included.

Case in point, I’d spent the first part of the discussion trying to calculate, to the minute, how long it’d been since Andreas spent in me for the second time this morning. One hour and thirty-one minutes, based on a surreptitious glance at my pocket watch—which meant I had only forty hours and twenty-nine minutes to go before I could…

Gods, drink my potion again. That was what would happen at the end of…forty hours and twenty-eightminutes, now. Not Andreas tossing me onto my bed and committing multiple acts of “treason” while calling meYour Highnessin that low, intent tone of his.

“Your Highness?” I jumped, gasped, and blinked back to the reality in front of me to find four pairs of eyes fixed on me. The words sent a flush of heat from my hairline all the way down to…all the way down. If anyone noticed, I had no idea how I’d explain it. Illness or magic gone awry, probably, and then they’d all think me even more of a strange weakling than they already did.

“Forgive my inattention,” I managed. “I was preoccupied.”

Again. I’d be lucky if I remembered ten words of this conversation, damn it all.

Andreas smiled, and if he kept doing that I might end up bending over the table and begging.

Forty hours and maybe…twenty minutes, if they’d been talking for a bit without my noticing. Until I took my potion, obviously. Then again, it might not work. I’d have to have an alternative cure available just in case.

“Understandable,” Andreas said. “I asked if you were happy with the plan. I know the delay here isn’t ideal, but it makes more sense to me than all of us forging on when we may need to backtrack, in the end.”

If I’d had the slightest notion what the plan might be, possibly I could’ve given him a coherent answer.

Instead, I fell back on the last resort of absent-minded royalty since the beginning of time, and nodded regally, waving a languid hand in a gesture of approval and saying, “You have my complete confidence.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Andreas said, and then added, “Dismissed. Depart at once, and best of luck. Ride safely.”

All three of the men rose, bowed, murmured the usual polite things, and clomped their heavy boots out of the room in a group, shutting the door behind them.

Andreas waited until their footsteps had faded before turning to me, one eyebrow raised and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “You have no idea what the plan is, do you, Your Highness.”

He didn’t make it a question. He didn’t need to.

The flush on my face turned into full-on burning, but I lifted my chin and stared him down. This was his fault. If he hadn’t spent all night and all morning with his hands and mouth all over me and his cock inside me, I wouldn’t have been so distracted.

“No, but since apparently you’re in charge of the expedition, any commentary of mine would’ve been moot in any case. You only asked me to be polite in front of the men, I saw no reason to ask any questions.”

I only realized how sharp my tone had been when Andreas’s expression changed, going from amused to serious to annoyed as I spoke. And worst of all, I could’ve sworn he passed through genuine hurt on his way to being irritated with me.

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