TRUST IN LOVE (Lovemark #2)

20. Nicolette-1

20

Nicolette

Farrow had grown silent and he’d drawn tightly within himself. Over an hour had passed since we’d left the mage’s camp, and the pleasantly loopy man he’d been when I’d shoved him onto his horse was no more.

Now, he had his hands buried in Mint’s mane, and his fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles turned white.

He gave me a sharp “no” every time I questioned him, asking if he was in pain, but how could I believe he wasn’t? Sweat coursed down his face and bare chest in rivulets, and he panted as if he couldn’t catch any air. His skin was flushed and eyes dazed as he glanced around himself with a drugged kind of agony.

The man was most certainly tormented.

I don’t know why he was being so stubborn and denying it.

My first instinct was to just kiss him and end his ailments, but since Mydera knew he was my true love, I had a bad feeling she’d instilled some kind of counteractive magic to prevent me from healing whatever this was.

What if kissing him made things worse? I didn’t want to antagonize the situation, so I kept my mouth away.

“What can I get you?” I finally asked.

“Nothing,” he gritted out, barely glancing at me before closing his eyes and turning his face away. “I’m fine.”

Oh, for the love of God.

“You are most definitely not fine,” I snapped, having had enough of this nonsense. “It’s obvious you’re the furthest thing from fine that I’ve ever seen anyone from being. So just tell me—”

“Stop,” he barked, lifting a hand to halt me. “Please stop talking. Your voice...”

I stopped. Stopped talking. Stopped riding. Stopped breathing.

Only allowing myself to blink, I barely managed to keep from asking what was wrong with my voice.

He whimpered again, his knee bobbing through whatever anguish was gripping him.

“s**t,” he rumbled, his hands groping blindly as he fumbled his way off Mint.

“Farrow?” I hurried off Caramel as well and rushed toward him. “What’s wrong? What can I—”

He held up his hand, staving me off. “No! Stay back. If you ever do anything for me, just—please—keep your distance right now. I’ve got this. I swear. I just…” He shook his head in a desperate manner. Sweat dripped from the ends of his soaked hair. The man looked a mess. “Give me a minute here. I’ll be fine. I just need to—I need to relieve myself.”

“Oh.” Flushing, I swallowed and held back as he spun away and lumbered off into the trees.

If he merely needed to use the chamber pot, he could’ve just said so. All his if you ever do anything for me dramatics had been a bit over the top, if you wanted my opinion.

Sighing to myself as I waited for him to finish his business, I saw to the horses, watering and finding a snack for them to munch on, then getting one for myself.

By the time I was finished, however, Farrow still hadn’t returned. I cringed. Poor guy. Just how much had the potion loosened his bowels?

Hopefully he wasn’t so sick that—

I bit my lip uneasily and glanced in the direction he’d gone. Next to me, the horses nickered and shifted restlessly, but I heard nothing from Farrow.

Mydera wouldn’t give him something that would endanger his life, would she? What would be the point? I could see why she’d drug him with something that would make him as happy and compliant as he’d been before. She’d outright told me she’d assisted in helping me win him over. So a loopy potion made sense. But to actually poison him?

I couldn’t believe it.

Except this was Farrow’s life I was betting on. I wasn’t willing to take chances.

Unable to keep my patience a moment longer, I hurried off to find him, deciding privacy be damned. I had to make sure he was okay.

“Farrow?” I called.

When he didn’t respond, my worry spiked.

“Farrow!”

He had better speak soon, or I’d—

When I spotted him up ahead, sitting upright with his back against a tree and his legs splayed in front of him, eyes closed, and head tipped drunkenly to the side, I cried, “No!” and raced forward.

“No, no, no, no, no!” I skidded to my knees at his side, clutching his face in my hands. “Farrow. Please answer me. Oh God.” He was so pale—deathly pale. He’d stopped sweating, yet his hair and bare chest were still drenched with it. Plus, the ties at his waist to hold his britches up were undone and opened.

When I sobbed and began to pet his wet hair, hoping he hadn’t suffered too greatly, his lashes flickered apart. Bleary eyes focused on me.

“I told you…” he rasped from dry, cracked lips. It seemed to take all the energy he had to barely speak the words. “To stay back.”

I released a relieved lungful. “Heaven help me,” I growled, jostling his shoulder. “Don’t ever do that to me again. I thought you were dead.”

“I wanted to die for a minute there,” he uttered, letting his eyes fall closed once more as if keeping them open took too much effort. His throat worked as he gave a rough swallow.

“Is it over, then?” I asked. “Whatever was in the potion? Has it passed through your system now?”

His head lolled back and forth against the tree as he winced. “Lord, I hope so.”

My sympathies rose. “You poor man, you. I can’t believe that wretched woman put you through all this.” I stroked his hair some more, patting down the unruly parts that were sticking up in all directions. “And to think, I actually felt indebted to her for taking us in for a day. No wonder why she never passed a purity test.”

Farrow let out a grateful sigh and nuzzled his face toward my hand. “Damn, your touch feels good.”

“Does it?” That was nice to hear. I’d touch him all day, every day, if he allowed it.

Glad he wanted my attention now, I grew bolder, scraping my fingers lightly against his scalp and then caressing my hand down until my palm coasted over the corded tendons on the side of his neck.

“Yes,” the word hissed from him like a benediction. His head fell back, exposing his throat to me fully. It made his Adam's apple appear pronounced and delectable. I swallowed, feeling the sudden impulse to lean forward and press my mouth to the spot.

I licked my lips, ignoring the rise in heat under my skin, even as my fingers trailed across Farrow, over his shoulders and down the outside of his arm. Gooseflesh pebbled his skin and his fingers twitched before they caught the edge of my skirts and latched on, bunching the cloth within his grip.

His breathing increased speed. He flashed clenched teeth. The muscles in the sides of his neck and a vein in his temple bulged. When his n*****s hardened against the slopes of his muscled pecs, I cringed, because it set off a certain stirring deep in my belly, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how he looked when he was aroused and about to—

Oh, this was bad. I was supposed to be soothing him here, making him feel better after a nasty potion had turned his stomach sour, and I was getting too turned on by his incredibly masculine and delectable visage to behave properly.

I totally didn’t mean to, but I watched, mesmerized, as my fingers stroked back up his arm to his shoulder and then down over his pecs to that hard, little pebbled tip. The moment my betraying thumbnail swiped over his n****e, his eyes flashed open.

I gasped, jerking back, guiltily caught. Except—

Whoa. His irises were all wrong, milked over and so pale that his pupils were basically all I saw.

Whatever trance the potion had put him in, it hadn’t passed through his system at all. He was still very much trapped in the thick of it.

“Farrow?” I asked uneasily, not sure how to help.

His nostrils flared. “I can smell how wet you are for me. Mmm, moist cunt is the best.”

My mouth fell open. But what? He’d never talked to me like that before.

He took advantage of my frozen shock to snag my hand and bring it back to him, drawing me straight to his lap and inside his opened trousers.

“Oh!”

My fingers stiffened instinctively, thinking he’d accidently pulled me there. But then he moaned with need and arched up into my touch, very obviously pressing me against male genitalia.

I gulped, hesitant.

I’d never touched a c**k before. It was so full and thick, stiff but velvety soft. Growing fascinated and unable to help my curiosity, I let him pull my hand around his girth and pump, shifting the skin up and down as he guided me into stroking him from base to tip. My eyes widened as I watched in awe. The shaft looked so ruddy and angry in color, proudly jutting up from my fist, except a solemn teardrop beaded from a slit at the end of the bulbous head, which gave it an almost lonely, needful quality.

His rasp definitely sounded needy, too, as his hips arched from my ministrations, begging for more. Hissing air from between his teeth, he watched me from those eerie eyes as his face filled with a rosy vigor.

“More,” he told me, gripping my leg through my skirt and moving his palm up my thigh, his fingers branding me with heat despite the layers of cloth between us. When he reached the junction between, I jumped.

“Oh hell,” I muttered, finally realizing. “Mydera gave you an aphrodisiac.”

Why had I not considered that before?

It was so obvious now; I felt stupid.

In front of me, Farrow blinked, his eyes clearing from their milky hue. The mention of Mydera seemed to momentarily jostle him from the spell, and he simultaneously pulled his hand free of me and shoved mine away from his p***s as he jerked upright.

“s**t, sorry,” he rasped, drawing the falls of his trousers closed briskly, attempting to hide his erection. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Don’t stop,” I encouraged, reaching out. “I know what you need now. Just let me—”

“No,” he thundered, pulling back. “I’m okay. I took care of myself. I just need to…” He shook his head insistently as his eyes flickered back and forth between fine and normal to clouded and held captive under the potion’s t****l. “I just—I took care of myself. The spell will—it’ll wear off, now. Soon.”

“No, it won’t.” Shaking my head savagely, I scolded, “Farrow, you i***t. Don’t you know you can’t take yourself in hand when under the influence of an aphrodisiac? That’ll only make it worse.”

His eyes widened with fear. “It will?”

Damn, or maybe he didn’t know better.

Maybe I was the only one here who’d snuck a scroll filled with stories of erotic play from my castle’s library to my bedchambers when I was young and read all about the different love potions and positions there were. And the main detail I’d learned about aphrodisiacs was that pleasuring yourself while under the influence of one was only a temporary fix. The urge would always come back, twice as pressing the next time, and it’d remain until you either tupped another person you actually wanted, or you went utterly mad and rutted whatever human or beast came near you next, against your own inclination.

Farrow seemed to be on the brink of the mad state. It made me wonder how many times he’d taken himself into hand already and tried to will his problem away.

“Jesus, God, Nicolette,” he pleaded desperately. “What do I do?”

He was panting hard now, his head thrown back with one hand fumbling its way back into the cloth of my skirts, working progressively higher as it went, while the other grasped mine, encouraging me to take his c**k again.

“It’s alright, darling,” I promised him softly, wrapping my fingers around him once more and stroking his manhood as roughly as he seemed to need it, while I gently feathered my other hand over his hair. “I’m here to help you. You’ll be okay.”

He shook his head frantically, fighting his primary impulses, only to moan, “Holy damn, you smell so f*****g good. I want to taste your honey. Straight from the source.”