Page 66 of The Royal Curse

No, I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily.

“Tell me,” I said, and gave the words all the royal authority I could muster. He raised one eyebrow, unimpressed. Fuck. All right. I licked my lips, shifted my weight down the bed and squeezed his hips with my knees, and said, “Please tell me?”

“Niko,” he breathed. “Fuck. I shouldn’t—gods damn it. I thought I heard you say you loved me,” he said in a rush. “And if that’s—if you—you didn’t. I probably heard you wrong. But that’s what I want you to say.” The expression in his eyes could’ve melted granite, and he looked steadily into mine. Unflinching and unwavering, braver than I could ever be. “Maybe it’ll take the rest of my life, but I’m going to spend it trying to make you say it. That you’ll do what I ask you to do and keep yourself safe, even if it’s at my expense. Because I want you to. Because you love me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Because you love me.

When I’d said it, I’d been desperate with grief over the thought that he’d never hear me.

He’d heard me.

And now half of me wished I could pull the blankets over my head, sink through the floor, run away and hide. All my fears came rushing back in: dependence, humiliation, shame. The risk to my own self-respect would be only the half of it. Bearing the mockery and jeers of everyone at court and in the city of Surbino would be newly dreadful, too. A dawn mage who took a potion wasn’t nearly as attractive a target for prurient humor as one who used his powers and maintained them the old-fashioned way.

But Andreas was gazing down at me, lips pressed into a tight, anxious line, eyes shining with hope and longing.

I’m going to spend it trying to make you say it.

His whole life. Would I care if people pointed and laughed if I had Andreas by my side? Not nearly as much. Would they even dare?

Would my mother allow it, or would she try to drive him away?

I found that I didn’t care a whit for that. If my mother threatened Andreas or forbade him from being my lover, or tried to forbid me from having him in my bed and in my life, I’d leave Surbino with him. Phil and Amara would talk her round eventually, anyway, because we’d miss each other terribly. But I’d go without hesitation, and there was nothing she could say that would intimidate me into doing otherwise. She could hardly hang Andreas in the public square with me screaming and carrying on in the background.

“All right,” Andreas said, and I started. I’d hesitated too long, and now—his jaw had that stubborn jut again. Oh, no. “You already said you’re sorry, so I guess I don’t need to fuck an apology out of you. But I can get started on fucking you until you admit you love me. Or until you fall in love with me. Either way.”

“Andreas, I—oh, gods, what are you—fuck,” I groaned, and threw my head back, any other words fleeing into the ether as he bit my right nipple hard enough to send a lancing, unbearably perfect sting through my chest and down, lodging behind my balls.

His tongue traced down over my ribs, and then he bit my hipbone and my hands flailed, landing in his thick hair and tangling there.

A kiss to my inner thigh had me shivering, and then—

“No, no wait, I haven’t bathed in so long—”

“Not when you were awake for it,” he murmured against my skin. “There’s a healer here. A grandmotherly type. She cleaned you up. I think she has a bit of magic of her own and used that too. Any more questions?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t remove the very unappealing image of someone’s grandmother washing me.

Andreas lifted my balls and nuzzled behind them, breath hot against my hole.

And suddenly I no longer cared about anything else, including elderly witches.

“Tell me you love me,” Andreas said, and spread my cheeks with both hands.

I opened my eyes and whimpered helplessly as I almost spent then and there, my cock jerking. Andreas, bent down between my legs, eyes devouring me and hot mouth about to do the same, was enough to have me on the edge of madness.

He kissed my hole, tongue flicking into the center of me, hot and wet and coaxing. “Tell me you love me,” he said again, the words burrowing into my body, a low vibration.

“Please,” I gasped, and he thrust his tongue into me, spearing me open, my rim stretching and giving way for him, desperate for him to fill me. “Please, Andreas, please,” and then, on a wail, “I love you!”

“Fuck, gods, fuck,” he said, and sat up, leaving me blinking up at him, bereft, the air of the room too cold on my wet flesh.

If I hadn’t loved him so much, trusted him more than anyone else on earth, I’d have been terrified of the expression on his face. He looked like he wanted to eat me alive, focused on me with an intensity that had me desperate to—spread my legs, it turned out, because I’d wrapped my hands around the backs of my knees before I even knew what I was doing, pulling myself open for him.

His hands moved too quickly for me to follow, tearing at the buttons of his trousers, while his gaze dropped between my legs.

“You can’t say things like that and expect me not to fuck you until you scream the roof down,” he said. “I hope whoever Enzo put in the hallway isn’t a prude.”

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