Chapter Twenty-One
The doorknob rattled in Benedict’s hand, and his whole body went rigid with sudden tension.
I stared at him, holding my breath, trying to read his expression. But his tight jaw and hard eyes didn’t give much away.
“He would’ve killed you eventually,” he said. “I had no choice.”
My heart had been thudding before, and now it raced, making me breathless.
“There’s always a choice when it comes to murdering someone in cold blood, Benedict.” But I didn’t sound convincing, not even to myself.
My own father. I ought to hate Benedict. But my father had been a monster—and I couldn’t deny it, because I’d spent my whole life coming to terms with it. He’d had his good qualities: a sharp intellect, courage in battle, the bluff, blustering charm Tavius had inherited from him. But he’d never had the capacity for real love. And he’d cared more for his power and his throne than for anyone around him.
Another quality Tavius had inherited, as it turned out.
Did it make me a monster too if I allowed myself to care more for Benedict than I cared about justice for his crime? I didn’t want to hate him. I didn’t want to push him away. I wanted to take him in my arms and never let him go.
Benedict took a step toward me, and then another, slowly enough that I could’ve dodged away from him or told him to stop. All the while, those gray eyes never left my face, as if he wanted to memorize me.
“There was no choice,” he said, voice husky. “Not for me. I was trying to tell you before we bonded. To give you a choice, because you shouldn’t be tied to me under false pretenses. I’ve lied to you enough.”
“Trying to tell me,” I repeated. He was right, I’d stopped him from saying anything more when we were about to bond. No more confessions . But I’d expected it to be something else I wouldn’t want to hear, and not… “Trying to tell me—Benedict, were you trying to tell me that you, you,” oh, gods, the word would sound so stupid aloud, I simply couldn’t. “Care for me?” I finished instead, like a coward.
His laugh had a sharp, bitter edge to it, and his eyes blazed. “Care for you? You can’t even say it, can you? It disgusts you too much, doesn’t it? To even think it. That I love you. That I love you enough that I—gods, Lucian! I knew I’d never be able to win you if I murdered your father, I knew I’d lost you, but I couldn’t let him kill you. And I’d never had you in the first place, anyway,” he said, the break in his voice echoed by a sympathetic resonance in my chest, a snap I could almost hear.
Benedict loved me.
He’d loved me three years ago.
And the way he gazed down at me, I found it difficult to doubt him—not with years’ worth of longing shining out of his eyes, nothing hidden from me.
He loved me.
The tightness in my chest spread down, lower, my breath catching and the pit of my stomach in a knot.
Benedict was so close. I could tilt my head up and he’d kiss me, because the way his eyes had dropped to my lips told me how much he wanted to.
But I simply couldn’t let his self-pity pass without comment. Not when I’d suffered all those years at least as much as he had, lonely and jealous—not to mention always wondering if he’d decide to kill me and take my throne.
“You never tried to have me in the first place,” I said. “You act like it’s some—some fault of mine that we were never—but you flirted with everyone but me! You never had anything pleasant to say to me, let alone seductive, and that morning after you, after he, you were dreadful, Benedict!”
“Because I knew I’d given up any chance of happiness, and I’d never had a chance in the first place. I was dreadful, you’re right. I’m sorry. I should’ve gone without seeing you at all, but I hoped—I don’t know what I hoped. That you’d fall into my arms and ask me to take care of you, I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t have gone,” I whispered.
Buggering Ennolu help me, I was so close to simply getting on my knees. He could’ve had me on my knees anytime the last eight years. When he’d made his very first bow upon meeting me, he could’ve led me out of the throne room and straight to his bed and done anything he wanted with me for as long as he chose to keep me there.
The day he returned from his two-year absence, I’d been furious with him, bitter and resentful, terrified of what he might do.
But if he’d swept me into his arms right there on the palace steps, kissed me until I couldn’t breathe, thrown me over his shoulder and claimed me in front of everyone…
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop,” Benedict gritted out. “I’ll be inside you within ten seconds if you don’t. That’s why I had to go. You’ll never know how close I came to stripping you then and there and fucking you through the breakfast table, and you couldn’t have stopped me. Not even if you fought me with all your strength.”
Oh, gods, if more blood left my brain and went to my cock, I’d faint. The air between us felt sticky, as if it were drawing me to him, and he loomed over me, leaning down, a heartbeat away—
The words came out without any volition of mine, horrifyingly honest. “I wouldn’t have wanted to.”
“Lucian,” he breathed, and then he was kissing me, sweet and demanding and desperate, arms around me, and mine clinging to him so fiercely I didn’t think I could let him go if my life depended on it. He broke the kiss long enough to say, “I wish I knew what you were thinking just now, though,” and then his mouth descended on mine again, his tongue sliding into me, laying claim to me, tasting and teasing me.
When he moved down to my throat, nipping at the side of my neck, I was able to gasp out, “I was thinking about you kissing me on the palace steps when you came home last year, and—Benedict, Benedict!”
He hoisted me into his arms, muttering something into my throat that sounded filthy and felt delicious, with the brush of his lips on my overheated skin, carrying me through the sitting room door into my bedroom while I clutched at him and tried to wrap my legs around his waist, needing him, needing more of him, needing everything .
Half my clothes were already gone by the time we landed on my bed, Benedict simply grasping the back of my trousers and ripping them in half, flinging the shreds to the floor.
Before I could protest, he’d splayed his hand over my bare ass, massaging me, pushing me up into him as he bore me down with his weight, rubbing circles that sent tremors of sensation all the way into the center of me. Two fingers dipped into my crease. I spread my legs as wide as they’d go, tearing at his clothing, everything a blur of his mouth and our hands and my panting breaths, and the mounting, molten heat inside me.
He rutted against me, the friction of his cock on mine driving me wild even through his trousers and what he’d left of mine, seams ripping as he drove into me, kissing me, tugging my head back with a hand wrapped in my hair so that he could lick his way down and bite at my nipples through my tunic.
“Fuck this,” he gasped. “Too much in the way.”
He stood up abruptly and laid his hands on my chest, and his magic flowed over my skin, tangible this time, the bond amplifying every sensation as every remaining stitch of my clothing simply—vanished.
I shoved up on my elbows, staring down at my naked body in mingled horror, delight, and awe at his magic.
“Where the hell did it all go? That was—silver chains with heraldry on them don’t grow on trees, Benedict!”
“It didn’t go far,” he said, but his self-satisfied wolf’s grin didn’t reassure me much. He looked me up and down, eyes narrowed. Hungry. He nodded, as if he’d made a decision—and bent down, grabbing me by the hips and flipping me over. I flailed and landed on my face with a mouthful of bedding. Benedict’s big hands wrapped around the backs of my thighs, he shoved me up and splayed me open, more of his magic coursing through my body in a cool, sparkling wash, leaving me clean and tingling.
The thud of his knees hitting the floor gave me one second’s warning before his mouth closed over my hole, his tongue thrusting inside, hot and slick and demanding.
“Benedict,” I said, and then, “Benedict, please!” My voice rose to a wordless wail as he kissed and sucked my tender flesh, softening and opening me and driving every thought out of my mind except how much I needed him in me, filling me, using me to completion.
I moaned as he pulled his mouth away and licked a stripe from my balls all the way to the top of my crease, pressing a kiss to the small of my back. The cool air on my wet hole made me shiver.
Benedict’s harsh breaths and the rattle of his belt buckle seemed terribly loud as I lay there, clutching at the blankets with my knees hiked up, ass spread, completely exposed. My dangling balls and the head of my cock brushed against the embroidered silk of the coverlet as Benedict tugged me back and up onto my knees. I pressed my forehead into the bed and waited, biting my lip, forcing myself not to shove my ass higher in the air and beg.
His hands tightened around my hips and the head of his cock touched my hole. Another whisper of his magic, and slickness spread over my inner walls, around the rim of my hole, dripping down my balls, making me obscenely ready for him with no more than his will.
My rim stretched around him as he sank into me, slowly, letting me feel every inch of him. The fat cockhead, the ridge of the glans and then the slight relief from pressure as he narrowed below it, and then the increasing fullness of his thick shaft impaling me until I could hardly breathe.
Benedict bottomed out, his balls resting against mine, and stilled.
And then drew back just as slowly as he’d entered me.
And then in again, with only the way his fingers dug into me betraying his tension as he opened me, slid out, opened me, slid out again, until he had me on a knife’s edge of pleasure and desperation, my cock and balls achingly hard and tight. One touch would be enough to finish me, but I didn’t have the leverage to get a hand under my body.
So I writhed, and moaned, and the coverlet grew damp under my cheek from saliva and the tears leaking out of my eyes—and then he pulled out completely, abruptly enough that I cried out as his exit tugged on my flesh.
A thunk of something falling to the floor had me glancing over my shoulder to find him undressing at a speed that almost equaled his magic trick. A soldier’s skill, perhaps—or one cultivated over decades of fucking everything that moved and then leaving in a hurry.
“Turn over,” he said, voice a little muffled as his tunic whipped over his head.
The sword belt and sword had been the sound I’d heard, and he had one of his boots off and flying across the room before his upper garments had hit the floor. The other boot went next, Benedict’s trousers falling down unimpeded.
He stepped out of them and stood before me completely, gloriously nude, from his impossibly broad shoulders to the sparse black hair on his muscular chest to…my eyes caught, unable to go lower than his cock, all shiny with the oil he’d summoned from the gods knew where, framed by the vee of muscle above his hipbones.
“Do I need to do everything myself?” he said, and I startled, eyes snapping up to his face.
He stalked forward, intent on me, transformed into a looming shadow by the dim candlelight.
Benedict climbed onto the bed, rolling me to my back as he did, crouching over me. A burst of rain gusted against the window, and the candles dipped in the draft, sending warm flickers over Benedict’s bold nose and firm jaw. His silvery eyes and the ruby hanging from his ear caught sparks of gold.
He reached up and stroked my hair back from my forehead, sliding his hand down to cradle my jaw, and then lower, to wrap around my throat and cup my chin, gently forcing it up. My pulse hammered against his fingers.
“What would you have done if I had kissed you when I came home?” he asked. “Kissed you until you stopped trying to argue with me. Or maybe gotten down on my knees and kissed your hands, like a lover. So no one watching would’ve had any doubt what it meant.”
“What I,” I stammered. “What I would’ve done?”
Spent in my trousers, possibly. Or run away screaming. Or tried to shove him down the stairs.
His slow smile had a wicked little quirk to it. “I think you would’ve turned red and threatened to put my head on a spike over the gate. You seem to like that as a deterrent for your nobles. Not that you ever follow through. I could’ve sucked on your fingers right there in front of everyone.”
Sucked on my…I choked on any words that might have come out, and Benedict’s smile widened as he leaned down, pressing his lips to mine, keeping me in place as he explored my mouth, as if he had all the time in the world. As if our still-hard cocks weren’t kissing too, brushing against each other in a way that had me arching up and whimpering.
Perhaps we did have all the time in the world.
It struck me with startling, eye-opening force: Benedict and I would have this for the rest of our lives. Every night, month after month, year after year, so long as we managed not to be assassinated—but we’d take precautions against that in any case.
Of course, we could both survive long enough for him to change his mind. If he found a way out of this magical bond Tavius had forced on us, I’d help him in any way within my power. Anything else would simply be wrong.
Even if it broke my heart if he decided to leave me once he had a choice.
Benedict nibbled at my lower lip, the sensation spiraling all the way down between my legs, and I squirmed in his grip, spreading for him, clutching at his upper arms and feeling his muscles flex as he held me down.
At last he let go of my throat and broke the kiss to settle between my thighs, cock nudging behind my balls and then sliding smoothly in to fill me, as if he’d created a space inside that fit him perfectly. I pulled one knee up, allowing him room to go deeper, to rock into me, to give me that sweet, singing ache deep within. He lowered himself down and let me take his weight, pressing kisses to my hair and my ear and my neck, my cock trapped between our bodies.
My fingers dug into the sweat-slicked muscles of his back, surging under my hands. Candlelight danced on the silk canopy of my bed, barely visible past his bulging shoulder when I threw my head back on a moan. He moved in me like the tide, irresistibly powerful, and I turned my face into his arm, mouth open on his skin, squeezing my eyes shut as my back bowed and I shook with one wave, and then another, and then a last convulsion as I turned inside out and spilled everything between us.
The low, bitten-off groan that Benedict made as he filled me almost could’ve been pain, and it drew a fourth shivering spasm out of me.
My head dropped back onto the bed. I sucked in breath after breath, my body going limp. I mustered the energy to gently scrape my fingernails up his spine and stroke my hand through his hair, making his big body shudder, glad he’d rested his forehead next to my head and couldn’t see the stupid, sappy little smile that had taken over my face.
Benedict stirred at last, pushing up onto his elbows. His hair had tangled into a wild mane, sticking up at odd angles, and it had no right to be quite so endearing. My heart gave a pathetic flutter.
“I love you,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if he’d said it a thousand times before and meant to say it again a million more. His lips quirked in a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s a relief to say it, anyway. Even if you don’t love hearing it.”
We gazed at each other in silence for a long, long moment. The warmth of his body surrounded me, and there was something else, too. His magic, its touch so soft, tickling senses I hadn’t even known I possessed and winding around me like a friendly cat—or perhaps that tiger from the storybook, the one that remained friendly only so long as it suited him to be kept in luxury and fed from a golden bowl.
I could take control of it if I wanted. It beckoned to me, showing me the way if I only had the will to do it. Benedict would fight me, though. The potion’s bond might not even be strong enough to overcome his resistance. Cornering a tiger would only make it infinitely more dangerous.
“Do you really trust me not to take over your magic?” I asked him at last, softly, into the hush of the night.
He shifted his weight, reaching up to lay his hand against the side of my face, stroking my temple with his thumb, smoothing it over my eyebrow. Perhaps my mother had touched me that gently, twenty years ago or more. But no one had since. It’d been so long that I’d forgotten how it felt to be loved—not only in the killing-people-to-protect-me way, though I appreciated that too, but tenderly. As if I were cherished and precious.
“It doesn’t matter if I trust you,” he said. “I belong to you. And no, don’t look like that, not because of that fucking potion. It’s nothing to do with what happened tonight. I belonged to you from the minute you curled your lip at me when I bowed to you, when we met. You were so beautiful and so contemptuous, and I’d never wanted to bend anyone over and fuck him so much in my life.”
Oh. Well, then. Hopefully the flush left over from being thoroughly fucked after all would hide my fresh blush of pleasure.
“But Benedict—”
“Don’t ‘but Benedict’ me, Lucian. I also trust you. You’re too honorable by half. That’s why I came back, and I know you’ve wondered.” I had, losing sleep over it nearly every night since. “You probably thought I was plotting against you. But it was making me sick thinking about you muddling along with no one there who’d be willing to kill for you, and it wasn’t like you’d actually mount any heads on spikes, even if they bloody well deserved it.”
“You really came home to protect me?” I couldn’t quite believe it. Everything I thought I’d known about him had been turned on its head, and not always for the best, but this particular claim strained my credulity to the breaking point. “You didn’t act like it.”
“I retook control of the army and kept an eye on your council and your enemies, and I’ve always been loyal to you, no matter what you thought. So yes, I did act like it. You simply didn’t believe it. You can’t blame me for your own misconceptions.”
“I can’t blame—you,” I sputtered, laughing in sheer disbelief at his extraordinary nerve. “You’ve always acted like you didn’t like me a whit more than I liked you. You’ve mocked and threatened me, Benedict! And for the gods’ sakes, when I did come to you for help, you fucking blackmailed me! You forced me to—to—”
“Take my cock any way I wanted to put it in you?” he suggested, blinking at me innocently, as if he meant to be helpful .
“I’ll show you taking your cock,” I hissed, and I bore down, squeezing my inner muscles in a way that would have made him slide out of me…if he hadn’t still been half hard. “Oh, gods, are you even human?”
And getting harder, as he grinned at me, rocking his hips, stirring my insides in a way that had me biting my lip and quivering under him, trying not to moan like a slut.
“Well, you can’t blame me for that, either,” he said, shrugging. “Look at you, you’re—I love you. I couldn’t resist the temptation to have you any way I could get you. Besides, I knew you were protesting too much, and if you’d really put up a convincing fight I’d have done whatever you wanted anyway.”
I stared up at him, frozen with outrage, as he started to fuck me again, nudging me up the bed, eyes fixed on my face with a look in them that—gods, he really did love me, didn’t he? And every thrust made an obscene squelching sound as he fucked his spend right back into me, and I’d gripped onto his arms and braced my feet to take him again, and—I’d been protesting far too much.
“I trust you too,” I said, because anything else would have to wait until I’d slept, and eaten, and slept again, and buried Tavius, and accepted that I loved the man who’d murdered the father who’d never loved me.
Benedict’s rhythm faltered, and for a moment he gazed down at me in shock, expression as open and vulnerable as I’d ever seen it.
“That’s all I can ask for,” he said.
I tugged him down into my arms and kissed him, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him closer, deeper, until I couldn’t feel where he ended and I began.
For tonight, there was nothing else I could ask for, either.