“Remi,” he choked out, “you’re going to drive me—enough!”
Everything spun around me as he flipped us, pinning me to the rug with his full weight, cock straining against my thigh. I rutted up like a cat in heat, clutching at him, trying to tug him down into another kiss.
He wrenched away. “Remi, stop!” It finally dawned on me that he meant it, and I subsided, panting, his frowningface coming into focus above me. “You haven’t answered my question. Did he hurt you? Did either of them touch you? Coerce you in any way?”
Coerce me in any way? He had to be joking, didn’t he? “Do you mean aside from kidnapping me from my abbey, threatening my sister, forcing me into marriage, and then poisoning me?”
“Yes,” Stefan said heavily, with something dark flickering in his gaze. “Aside from all of that. Did they hurt you?”
“No one touched me, and it didn’t hurt. The mage talked me through creating a light in my palm. And it was actually—if he hadn’t been your father’s choice, I might’ve liked him. He had a pleasant manner.”
“Did he.” Stefan’s frown deepened. “Handsome, was he?”
The faint flutter in my abdomen had to be unrelated to that hint of jealousy.
“Is that really the crucial point here, Stefan? You spent our wedding night in a brothel.” His eyes widened. Damn it. “Not that I wanted you to be here instead! Obviously! But you’re a fine one to talk about my finding another man handsome, which he was, by the way. Very. Tall and dark and—”
Stefan’s bruising kiss cut me off before I could invent broad shoulders and beautiful eyes for the mage—luckily for my dedication to honesty. He’d been handsome enough but hardly overwhelming. Not like Stefan, who had me melting into the floor, whimpering into his kiss, that morning’s possession of my body echoing inside me as he ground his hard cock against mine through too many layers of clothing.
Far too many, and if I concentrated, perhaps they’d vanish—
“What the fuck?” Stefan demanded, pushing up to his knees and rubbing at the front of his breeches. “That was very strange.”
Oh, no. “What was?”
He glanced back up at me. “My breeches were blazing hot suddenly. As if they almost burst into flame.”
“Surely that’s impossible,” I stammered. “You must be imagining things.”
“Or you are,” he said slowly. “Imagining things. With a mage’s imagination that can become real if there’s some force behind it. I’ve spent enough time with Benedict to know that can happen. Remi?”
I squirmed under that knowing gaze. “Yes?”
“Remi, do you want to set me on fire? Or do you want my pants out of the way? If it’s the first, then I’ll help you up off the floor and keep a wary distance. If it’s the second, then I’ll simply take them off. All you have to do is ask.”
Keep a wary distance from me.
Because now I had power, didn’t I? I did. Power of my own, that I could control and use. In all my years of thinking about what being a dawn mage could mean, I’d always framed it as a choice between using my potions to prevent another man from controlling me, or submitting to someone else’s control and having no power at all. The possibility of there being a third way had seemed infinitely hazy and out of reach. A husband I loved and trusted would be the third way. And that had been impossible while I’d been confined to an abbey and forbidden to return to the mainland where I could conceivably build a normal life—or as normal as someone like me could have, anyway.
Even without love, it seemed there could be some degree of trust. Something like…Stefan. The man I’d been forced to marry.
The man who’d been at best manipulated into marrying me.
I couldn’t, I simply couldn’t, and the throbbing in my skull had ratcheted up to a dull roar in my ears, Stefan blurring in my vision. I pressed my hands over my eyes. It didn’t help.
“Remi? What’s happening?” His hands were on my shoulders, not restraining me but tugging, as if he wanted to move my hands from my face. “Remi!”
“Let me go,” I choked out, barely able to hear myself over the pounding of my heart.
His hands went away, and then the warmth of his body as he got up and off of me. I rolled to the side, scrambled to all fours, and staggered to my feet, chilled to the bone.
Out. I needed to get out of here, somewhere Stefan wouldn’t be watching me in horror as I lost my mind. I lurched my way to the door.
“Are you—obviously you’re not all right. Fuck. What can I do?” His voice had drawn closer.
I couldn’t look at him. I simply couldn’t. I stared down at my hand on the door.
“I’m fine. I need—I’m fine. You can’t do anything. Please don’t follow me.”
