Page 49 of The Royal Curse

Andreas would never use me that way.

And he’d demonstrated, over and over again, that even if he hadn’t wanted me at first, his desire had grown. Of course, that didn’t mean part of his offer wasn’t motivated by kindness. Perhaps he just wasn’t certain that he was making the right decision. I knew he couldn’t be afraidIwouldn’t wanthim; I’d come to his bedroom and told him to take his pants off.

The fear, in fact, was all mine. No matter how much I trusted him, and no matter how much I wanted him, I simply couldn’t rid myself of the cold, nervous lump in my chest that formed every time I imagined turning my life over to another man. Even Andreas, whose presence and voice and touch had become so necessary to me that everything felt wrong and off-kilter when he wasn’t there.

“That sounds very pleasant,” I said, through a throat so dry that every word scraped painfully. Pleasant, gods.Pleasantwas strolling through the palace gardens on a sunny day.Pleasantwas a midmorning cup of tea. What Andreas had so quicky sketched for me sounded like a paradise even Ennolu couldn’t provide. “But I need the potion, Andreas. Maybe—not all of the time. But I need it. Right now, I need to know that I have it and that it works when necessary. Do you understand?”

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, slowly enough that the silence made me want to scream. “You don’t trust me.”

Pain spiked through my chest. After all he’d done for me, I couldn’t possibly let him believe that. “I do! Gods, Andreas, I do trust you, I trust you more than anyone—”

“Don’t,” he said, and leaned down to press his lips to mine. One brush of skin on skin that left me silenced and tingling, and he pulled back and said, “You don’t have to make me feel better. You don’t trust me enough, and why should you? Even if I had a right to be upset about it, I wouldn’t be.”

I wanted so badly to tell him that he did have a right, and that I trusted him completely, and that the flaw of my birth, my tainted magic, had given me another: a lack of faith that had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

“I came in here with a plan,” I said miserably. “Aside from yelling at you.”

This time Andreas’s smile did light up those beautiful eyes. “If that was the plan that involved my pants coming off, it sounds like it might be a winning strategy to me.”

Thank the gods, we could change the subject. But that meant I had to—fuck, I still had no idea what to do. I’d gotten too distracted. And the idea of my mouth on his cock left my mind spinning in circles. Kneeling on the floor would work, but what if…

“Lie down on the bed,” I said, hoping I sounded even slightly authoritative. “Just lie down. And let me—let me,” I stammered, sounding not authoritative at all.

Andreas nodded, let me go, and backed up the few steps to the bed. “I serve at the pleasure of the prince,” he said, winked, and lay back on the pillows, folding his arms behind him and spreading his legs enough to showcase the thick ridge of his cock.

My mouth went dry and my own cock valiantly tried to become fully erect, pulling all the blood from my brain in the process.

And now I had to figure out what to do next.

Luckily I’d always been a quick learner. I swallowed hard and stepped forward.

Chapter Eighteen

Andreas’s body was so much more intimidating approached this way. Something about the angle. When he’d been on top of me, and even when I’d been riding him, looking down at the length of his muscled torso and at his cock pointing at me had been…well, yes, also intimidating.

But like this, as I tentatively placed a knee on the bed between his legs and leaned down? He seemed twice as big.

All of him, from his bulging biceps and his sculpted chest down to…all the way down to all of him.

Could his cock actually be that thick? I’d had it thrusting roughly inside me again and again, so I really ought to be an authority on the matter.

“If you don’t know how to take someone’s pants off the mundane way, I can always provide some helpful—”

My gaze flicked up from his daunting equipment to his gleaming eyes and sly smile. “Shut the hell up,” I growled. “Or the pants stay on.”

Not that I’d follow through with that threat, of course. I was about a heartbeat away from throwing caution to the wind and trying to magic them off to parts unknown.

And he seemed to know it was a bluff, because he pressed his lips together, somehow laughing at the same time, and shrugged. With his arms still behind his head.

No one ought to have that kind of coordination.

I certainly didn’t, and it’d be likely to show as soon as I touched him.

But no quailing now.

I reached out and stroked him with a finger through the fabric of his drawers, base to tip. The cloth was body-hot and slightly damp where it stretched over his cockhead. Andreas sucked in an audible breath as I circled my finger around it, fascinated.

But I couldn’t stand the tease of it any more than he could, and I took hold of the waist of his trousers and drawers and tugged them, Andreas obligingly lifting his hips until I had the clothes bunched down around his thighs. His cock stood up almost straight, with the weight of it pulling it down toward his stomach.

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