Page 47 of The Royal Curse

Damn it, I wanted to smack him. Shake him. Shout at him. Strip off his trousers and climb on his cock and ride him until he lost his mind. No, no, fuck, I didn’t want to do that! Not at all. My watch sat on the table, and I did another calculation as I spooned up a bit more stew. Thirty and a half hours now, give or take a few minutes, because my head spun when I tried to be more precise than that. I was too annoyed for mathematics.

But that meant I only had to make it until the wee hours of the morning after tomorrow. No problem. Spending the entire night and the next day and most of the next night alone would be fine.

I gritted my teeth and forced down another lump of turnip.

By the time the maid had cleared my tray and built up the fire for me, I’d worked myself into a state. I slumped into my chair and stared into the fire, hating myself and Andreas and Ennolu and everyone involved in constructing that stupid bridge so low down to the river—I mean, why shouldn’t they have bloody well built the pilings up another ten feet? Didn’t they have competent stonemasons on this side of the mountains? Queen Lessandra, who ruled this part of the isthmus and whom I’d met twice on state visits, had seemed clever enough. Apparently she had no interest in her kingdom’s infrastructure.

My watch ticked on, the fire burned down, and finally I heard footsteps in the corridor and the low-voiced rumble of a couple of my guards passing by on their way to bed. A moment after they’d gone, a distinctive tread followed: Andreas. I strained my ears, keeping perfectly still and holding my breath, cursing the faint crackle of the fire.

A door opened and then closed. And I was pretty sure it was the door directly across from me. Right there, only…about twenty feet from me, if I assumed that room was a similar size to mine.

Oh, gods, if I’d started counting the floorboards between me and Andreas, I really had a problem.

Fuck. I had to see if the new potion worked. Because this was exactly what I’d been afraid of, wasn’t it? Andreas had made me angry and then walked away. And yes, my irritation had already waned, and if he’d come to my door and apologized for laughing in the face of my embarrassment I’d have accepted it and forgotten about it by tomorrow.

But that was this time.

What if he’d given me a much stronger and more lasting reason for staying away from him? And I didn’t have a potion to use instead. And then I’d have two choices: wait until the pain forced me to crawl at his feet and beg him to fuck me, or go and crawl to him sooner, albeit more figuratively, swallowing my pride and pretending it wasn’t eating me up inside. I’d always be at a disadvantage without a potion. Always vulnerable.

So I had to wait the…twenty-six hours or so.

Andreas would be undressing right now. First his boots, lined up neatly near the fire to be toasty by morning—but not too near, as he’d explained to me one of the nights we’d stopped on the road. You didn’t want the leather to dry out and crack. And then he’d yank his tunic over his head, leaving him in the chain mail shirt he always wore—which clung lovingly to his muscles in a way I’d never imagined metal could cling. Once he’d gotten that off, he’d only have his thin linen singlet on top. That garment left his shoulders bare and highlighted his rangy strength.

Then his trousers. The singlet and his drawers would both be rumpled after a day’s wear. The outline of his cock would stand out very clearly through the cotton drawers.

Gods, that cock. I didn’t even need it inside me so much as I simply wanted to touch it, make Andreas moan…taste it.

I sat bolt upright in my chair.

If he didn’t spend inside me, it wouldn’t affect my magic at all one way or the other. He could fuck me and then pull out before he finished, of course, but he might mistime it. It’d be much safer if I licked and sucked and pleasured him while he ran his long fingers through my hair…

The sounds of my ragged, rasping breaths pulled me back to my own bedroom, where I was alone and not sucking anyone’s cock.

Clearly the potion hadn’t worked so well in any case, since I’d magicked away our pants yesterday. Right? And I could feel my magic now, trickling through my veins—not the unchecked flood I’d have expected without the potion, and possibly not enough to be usable, but present and accounted for. As if it worked to some extent, but possibly wore off faster than the other formulation.

Did I really need to test the potion further?

Yes, of course I needed a real test to confirm it either way, and I was just making excuses.

Damn it.

I stood up, sat down again, stood up and paced, and cursed myself for the way I couldn’t stop trying to talk myself into Andreas’s bed.

No, I didn’t need him. Not in the slightest. And I’d tell him so. Right now, because why wait?

A moment later I burst out of my door and then through the one directly across the corridor, mouth open to tell him exactly what I thought of him and his stupid cock—and skidded to a sudden halt as a shining and extremely sharp sword appeared, pointed right at my chest.

“Oh,” I gasped, looking up from the blade, already being withdrawn, to Andreas’s bare chest and grim face. “That’s actual treason, I think.”

He’d already slid the sword back into its scabbard before I finished speaking. “I was about to open my door for the night so that I could keep an eye on yours,” he said. “I needed to change clothes first. And then there was a commotion, and then I thought—I was afraid you were in danger. Apparently you were the commotion.” He leaned the sword up against his dressing table and shrugged. “Forgive me.”

Oh, thank the gods, he’d given me an opening.

Speaking of openings. I spun around and slammed the door behind me, and then whirled on Andreas again.

“That’s not what you need forgiveness for!” I said, mustering all the indignation that’d temporarily fled with its tail between its legs at the sight of a half-naked Andreas with a sword in his hand. My powers of rational thought had gone with it, which probably accounted for the next words out of my mouth. “Take your pants off before I send them out into the yard again.”

Andreas crossed his powerful arms over his equally muscular chest and stared me down, and well, there went the last of my ability to think. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

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