Chapter Twenty #2
Because his touch…his touch. Lighting up my magic, grounding me in the security of his strength.
It acted on me like a drug, and late at night, after he’d finished with me and I’d lain down alone in my bed, I drifted in the dark like one intoxicated, imagining what would happen if he kissed me again.
Right now he was close enough to kiss me if he wanted to, or for me to lean over and press my lips to his. But he wouldn’t, and I didn’t dare.
I swallowed hard, the motion painful.
“You startled me, that’s all,” I said at last. “I was in the middle of concentrating on my magic when you joined us.”
“So anyone else walking up would’ve caused the same distraction?” His frown deepened. “You shouldn’t have been doing that. Using your magic like that. It’s reckless.”
“Reckless.” Now that I’d thawed, I had the strength to take umbrage, and the fact that he was right—my tutor would’ve used that word and many others that were harsher—only fed my anger.
“You’re a fine one to talk. If it embarrasses you to have me using magic in front of people when it’s not in fashion for the nobility to be practitioners, then you can—”
“Embarrasses—I don’t give a fuck what’s in fashion!
” His voice had risen, his face flushed, and he stopped suddenly and glanced around, as if afraid someone might hear the eminently fashionable Lord Stefan blaspheming against Nevaian society like that.
“I don’t fucking care,” he hissed, much more quietly.
“Then why do you care if anyone hears you say so? And why do you dress like that if you don’t give a damn? Of course you care!”
“I care,” he said slowly, teeth gritting, “because you could’ve dropped dead right there in front of me, or before I could get you to someone who could help you.
Or worse, you could do something this monumentally stupid in the middle of the night when there’s absolutely no one about to see or hear you and have Aldrich find your corpse on the floor when he comes in with your tea in the morning.
I’d rather the whole bloody court saw you vanishing every stitch of my fashionable clothes with magic than that, so yes, it’s fucking reckless. ”
If I let myself believe he cared as much as he seemed to about whether I killed myself with magic, that way lay madness.
I lifted my chin and glared at him, because it was that or melt into his arms. “I have to learn. If I don’t practice, then I can’t—”
“You have to walk before you can run! You’ve been practicing for all of a few weeks—”
“—ever become proficient, and you told me once it’d make your life easier if I died from my curse, so I don’t know what’s changed!”
Stefan stared at me, gone absolutely still. My words rang and rang in the absolute silence between us, made all the more profound by the light laughter and faint strains of a lute filtering down the hill.
“I did say that, didn’t I,” he replied at last. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you I didn’t mean it. Even then.”
He released my hands and stood, and despite the heat of the sun and my recovery from the chill I’d taken, my wrists felt cold again. Another silence fell. I closed my eyes and let the too-warm breeze brush my burning cheeks.
Stefan sighed. “We ought to go home. You should rest, whether you like it or not.” He hesitated, and then he held out his hand.
I reached out and laid mine in it, curling my fingers into his palm.
My magic leapt up in my chest, making me breathless, and now that tingling flush had spread from my face and over my neck and chest. His eyes flicked down, lingering on the skin exposed by the top of my corset and the lace shirt spilling out of it.
I’d grown used to tight-fitting clothes and showing so much of my body—or I thought I had.
Stefan’s intense gaze resting on that tender skin felt like a physical touch, a caress that raised fresh goosebumps and made my corset seem even tighter.
My curse would’ve necessitated a visit from Stefan by late that night, but the restless ache between my legs didn’t seem like it would wait.
“I’ll rest,” I said. “But first I need—” Stefan looked up and into my eyes, his endlessly dark and gleaming, and I bit my lip to keep in a small moan.
“You used your magic too much, I think.” Stefan moved closer, crowding me, making me tip my head back. His grip tightened around my fingers until I could feel my own heartbeat against his skin. “You need—your magic needs me. Needs what I can give you. Give it. Remi?”
Oh, gods, if I answered that question honestly…
He’d lost that perfect composure of his, with a flush of his own staining his cheekbones and his breath coming faster.
If I moved a few inches nearer, I’d probably feel his cock, hard and straining.
I could find the courage to answer him, couldn’t I?
I would answer him, and then I could stretch up on my toes and kiss him, and he’d kiss me back.
“Lord Remi! Lord Stefan! There you are!”
We both jumped, and it took a dizzy few seconds for reality to return—Stefan had become my reality, and everything else merely an intrusion.
We turned in unison to face the lady who’d been holding forth about the duke, picking her way down the steps with her skirt held up on one side and her plumes quivering.
“Lord Remi, you looked so ill. Are you well? I’ve sent for help, but—”
“No help is necessary, I thank you,” Stefan said in a tone of no gratitude at all.
She stared at him open-mouthed. I almost sympathized with her until I remembered that what she’d really done was spread the story of my near-collapse as widely as possible, and then come down here in search of us in order to collect more fuel for her next whispered conversation.
“If you wish to be of assistance, please tell our hostess that we regret our early departure. My consort’s been overcome with this heat. Not used to the Nevaian climate.”
Without waiting for a reply, Stefan shifted his grasp on my hand and led me away, further down the path from the sputtering lady.
I stumbled after him, off-balance more because of Stefan holding my hand than my brush with magical death, not bothering to ask where we were going. He’d take care of everything.
And he did, skirting the edge of the formal garden and bringing us out behind the stables, where the grooms idling in the shade couldn’t leap fast enough to ready our carriage at his rapped-out command.
I shivered anew despite the heat.
Since the morning after the ill-fated ball, he’d never commanded me that way. Not that he’d used that brusque tone when he’d told me to hold on to the bed and allow him to have every possible wicked way with me. But I remembered it often, and at moments like this…
Stefan bundled me into the carriage, immediately rapping on the roof, the coachman whipping up the horses. We didn’t have far to go, but the ten minutes’ journey seemed endless, wrapped in breathless silence, knowing what we’d do the moment we were in my bedroom.
At least I wasn’t cold anymore, burning up from the inside, my cock painfully hard. I didn’t have the courage to try to see if his was, too, staring straight ahead at the family crest above the opposite seat and counting the seconds until we were home.