Chapter 21

21

Malone

Every time I think I understand Aurora, that I can anticipate her moves, she throws me a curveball. Another time, I might luxuriate in the surprise to have her kneeling between my legs, running her soft hands over my body. Another time, I might play this out beat by beat, twining the pleasure around us until we’re both shaking with need.

Another time.

Now, I simply sit and let her touch me. Let her trace patterns over my skin and follow them with her heated gaze. For once, there’s no conflict in her dark eyes when she looks at me. Simply desire. This woman looks at me like she’s not sure if she wants to start at the top or the bottom, but she’s most certainly going to get to every inch, given enough time.

She leans down and presses a line of kisses from my sternum to my lower stomach. Soft. Sweet, and yet not sweet at all. “Do your shipments often come up short?”

I exhale. “Mining for information?”

“Not really.” She drags her tongue over my hipbone. “Just seems like something you’d want to handle yourself.”

As tempting as it is to shut down this line of conversation, I have the strangest desire to make her understand. “When you run a territory, you can’t drop a nuclear bomb for every little transgression.”

She pauses and looks up at me. “You’re the nuclear bomb?”

“Yes.” I give in to the urge to stroke my fingers over her temple. “Sara and their team are more than capable of handling things like this, and it allows the threat of me to be maintained.” I should leave it there, but I find myself continuing. “They don’t deserve my personal attention; it wouldn’t do for them to get ideas.”

“Bringing a shotgun to a knife fight.”

I give a tight smile. “Yes, something like that.”

She’s still watching me closely. “But why not do that? It’d stop any dissent in its tracks. People would fall all over themselves to prove their loyalty.”

While she’s not wrong, it exhausts me just thinking about it. “I am feared, Aurora. With good reason, and by design, but it doesn’t change the fact that it wears on a person to see terror in the eyes of every person they come across.”

“But your people love you.” She sits back, trailing her fingers down my thighs. “Your employees for both businesses worship the ground you walk on.”

“They still fear me.”

She opens her mouth, stops to reconsider, and finally shrugs. “Power has a price.”

“Yes.” Suddenly, I’m tired of talking. What does it matter if I’m feared by nearly everyone I encounter? What does it matter if my mother didn’t rule the same way? Oh, our people respected the threat she could bring to them if they crossed her, but they loved her in way that couldn’t be feigned. The times I’ve been home since leaving Sabine Valley, I’ve found my sister inspires that same kind of feeling. An intrinsic difference between us, yet another reason I would have been ill-suited to be heir. I don’t have the gift of setting people at ease while still commanding their loyalty.

I am only the way I am.

I lean back and give Aurora a long look. “Put your mouth to good use, Aurora.”

She doesn’t hesitate. She simply lowers her mouth and presses delicate, soft kisses to my hips, my thighs, before finally working her way to my pussy. I like the look of her mouth on me. I like the look on her face even more. She’s as blissed out by giving this as I am at receiving it. For fuck’s sake, she moans at the first taste of me.

How am I supposed to remain unaffected after witnessing that?

I fist her hair in my hands and spread my thighs wider. It’s tempting to ride her face, to hold her in place as I chase my own pleasure, but I want to see what she’ll do given a little freedom.

She doesn’t disappoint. Aurora parts my pussy with her thumbs and traces her tongue over every inch of me. Like she’ll never get another chance and she wants to memorize every second of this. She spears me with her tongue and then moves up to focus on my clit. Again with those teasing little licks, pushing my desire until I’m shaking in an effort to hold still. That’s when she pushes two fingers into me and twists her wrist to find my G-spot. She strokes it lightly as she picks up her pace on my clit, quickly finding the rhythm that has my thighs shaking.

She winds me higher and higher, until my control snaps. “I need—” I tighten my grip on her hair and roll my hips, fucking her mouth. She makes a happy sound, and I belatedly realize this was her goal all along. To push me until I took what I wanted.

Gods, this woman is a gift.

I drag Aurora up my body and kiss her. It’s tempting to keep going, to lose myself in her until we’re both wrung out, but we have to get out of the sauna. I carefully nudge her back. “Let’s go.”

We grab robes from the locker room and head back up to my penthouse. We take our time in the shower and appreciate this moment of peace after everything that’s happened. It’s not enough to truly put my concerns out of my head, not with my ever-present worry about Sabine Valley, not when I’m all too aware of the clock ticking down on the assignation with Aurora.

I take the time to call Sara and check in, but as expected, they’ve handled the situation. The supplier magically found the missing ten percent within five minutes of Sara showing up. I don’t ask what kind of example they made. They’ve been my right hand for long enough that I trust they did what was necessary without crossing over into being too much. A delicate balance, but one at which Sara exceeds.

And there’s nothing else on my plate.

Aurora’s watching me, her expression contemplative. I raise my brows. “Yes?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Do you need to?” I find myself holding my breath while I wait for her answer. I don’t know what the right one is; I don’t know which one I crave.

Finally, she looks away. “I’d like to.”

“Why do you sound so put out by that?”

“Because it’s irritating as hell.” She makes a face. “It was easier to hate you.”

“Hate takes as much effort as any other emotion; more than some.” It’s much preferable to apathy, honestly, but I’m not about to say as much. If Aurora no longer hates me—No, no use following that rabbit hole into a spiraling game of what-if. “If it makes you feel better, there are large swathes of you that I don’t understand, either.”

“Me?”

I give her the look that faux innocence deserves. “The bratty submissive. The fierce friend. The princess of the Underworld. You’re all that, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. You must have a life outside of Hades.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Is there a question in there?”

“Surely you’re not content to be the pampered princess forever? There’s a fire in you that needs to be fed. You can only rise so far in Hades’s territory.” Hades will be ruling for some time yet, and he’s got both Megaera and Hercules beneath him. Should he decide to retire, surely those two will take over running operations. And Hercules is several years younger than Aurora. She’ll never run the Underworld, no matter how many years she works there.

Aurora finally shrugs. “I don’t really know what I want. I had this guiding light for a really long time, but now that the bargain with Hades is coming to an end, that light’s faded. I have a master’s in business administration, but I mostly got that because it seemed like the logical next step and I had money to pay for it.”

“Have you done anything beyond the Underworld and school in the last nine years?”

“Stop it.” She looks away. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, but what else could I possibly want? I’ve dated outside the Underworld, and you already know how well that’s worked out. Carver City might be run by territory leaders, but most of the people who live here are normal. I don’t fit in. I don’t want to fit in. That’s a choice I made for myself, so stop looking at me like you pity me.”

“I don’t pity you.” It’s the truth. But I can’t help feeling that Aurora could do so much more if she ever had the fire of ambition lit inside her. One only has to look at how she blossomed as Megaera’s second-in-command to see that she only needs the space and she’ll continue to expand. But she won’t thank me for saying as much. I turn away. “Come along.”

“Where are we going?”

“Tonight? Nowhere. I have plans for you.” I walk into my closet and pull on a pair of lounge pants and a fitted shirt. Then I lead the way into the spare bedroom. It smells of lemon and pine, and the mattress has been removed—Rogue was too effective in marking his territory, and it’s well beyond ruined. “You’re lucky the closet was shut or Rogue would have done a number on your shoes.”

“Your shoes.” She pauses in the doorway as I peruse the selection. “You’re the one who bought all of this.”

“And you’ll take it with you when this is over. Consider it a tip.” I finally land on a black, oversized knit sweater that’s long enough to be considered a dress—barely. I pull it off the shelf and toss it to Aurora.

“A tip, huh?” Her lips curve the tiniest bit. “It wouldn’t be a way for you to mark your territory the same way your demon cat does?”

Truth be told, I do like the idea of Aurora wearing clothing that I personally picked out. It satisfies something deep and dark inside me that I mostly refuse to acknowledge. “Stop calling Rogue a demon. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“That creature doesn’t have feelings. All he has is spite.”

I arch an eyebrow. “He simply sees you as an intruder and took the steps to rectify the situation.”

“Uh-huh.” Aurora makes a face. “How many pieces of furniture have you replaced because that animal destroyed them?”

“In the last year or since I’ve had him?”

She blinks. “How old is that cat?”

“Ten. He was among a litter left in a box by my building. The kittens were so young, not all of them made it, but Luna has his sister.” I frown. “That cat is a demon.”

“I’m going to ignore that statement, since you are obviously biased.” She shakes her head. “How many pieces of furniture has he destroyed in the last year? I’m afraid of the lifetime answer.”

I do a quick count, realizing halfway through that I’m going to lose this particular argument. “Eight, not including the mattress.” When she stares, I cross my arms over my chest. “As I said, the mattress was a territory dispute and so is completely justified.”

Aurora looks at me like she’s never seen me before. “You love that cat.”

My face heats under her intense gaze, and even as I try to muscle down the reaction, I have a feeling that a tinge of pink colors my cheeks. “We have a mutual understanding.”

“Right. Sure. A pair made in heaven.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment, rather than the insult you intended. Rogue is particular with people.” I turn away before she can keep pressing. The truth is that the cat barely tolerates me, let alone anyone else, but I like that about him. Some days he feels like my own personal dragon, guarding our castle of a penthouse. A fanciful thought, but Rogue has the tendency to attack unwanted guests at his whim. The fact that he hasn’t touched Aurora, marking his territory aside, is moderately shocking.

“As I said, a pair made in heaven.”

I lead the way into the kitchen and head to the fridge. As promised, there’s an entire meal waiting with a note about reheating instructions on the top. I double-check them and then preheat the oven. When I turn around, Aurora has an expression on her face like she’s trying not to laugh. “What?”

“When I saw how stocked your fridge is, I thought you cooked. But you don’t, do you?”

“No.” I’m capable of putting together a simple meal in a pinch, but when a person is as busy as I am, they learn to delegate. I can’t do that with many of my business responsibilities, so I farm out as much personally as possible. “I have a chef who usually preps a week’s worth of meals on Sundays.”

Aurora moves closer into the fridge. “That’s not a week’s worth of meals.”

“No, I had her do something special tonight.” I realize how that sounds, but I don’t take the words back. They’re the truth. “She’ll come around this Sunday and get back into the swing of things, but this week was irregular.”

“I see.” Aurora peers at the food containers. “Interesting.”

“Are you allergic to anything?” Something I should have asked before, but I didn’t even think of it.

She shakes her head. “No.”

I bring out a bottle of wine and pour us each a glass. We drink in what’s almost a comfortable silence as we wait for the oven to preheat. It dings its readiness, and I put the container into the oven and set the timer. Then I motion for her to follow. “We’ll wait in here.” I lead the way into the living room and sink onto the couch.

After the briefest of hesitations, Aurora sinks down next to me. Does she realize that, even a few days ago, she would have chosen another seat, would have put as much distance between us as possible? I don’t comment on it, though. A patient hunter gives the prey plenty of time to settle in before making their move. It doesn’t matter that this woman makes me feel frenzied and out of control.

I will have patience.

I sip my wine and study her. She looks good here in my home, dressed in the clothes I purchased her. A feeling almost like possession rises up in me, but I stifle it. This isn’t the time or place for such messy emotions. Not yet. I need her to want me first. Crave me. Desire me like a fire in her blood that she never wants to douse.

Then, and only then, will she be mine.