Chapter 24

24

Aurora

Iwake up encircled in Malone’s arms, her body curled around my back as if determined to protect me, even in sleep. As if she sought to fight off my nightmares through her presence alone.

The irony is not lost on me.

The reason I’m grieving right now is because of actions she took twenty years ago. The reason we met in the first place is because I had nowhere else to turn and ended up in the Underworld out of sheer desperation. She’s the very last person I should allow to comfort me.

And yet that’s exactly what she did last night.

She broke me to pieces in a way that only she seems to be able to do, built my pain as beautifully as a cathedral, and then took a wrecking ball to it with pleasure.

Then she held me while I sobbed for hours.

My feelings are so tangled up inside. I didn’t expect to find parts of Malone that I like, that I am drawn to. Not beyond the physical. But, now that we’re several days into this, I am faced with the fact that she’s more complicated than I imagined. Ruthless and ambitious, yes, but if she was really the monster I’ve believed all this time, she wouldn’t have blinked at taking the throne from her sister back in Sabine Valley. She wouldn’t care about her team the way she obviously does. She wouldn’t carefully manipulate people who test her, rather than simply eliminating them and making a brutal example to foster fear so no one will challenge her. She’s a master chess player.

The two versions of her do not overlap. Not really. She can be cruel, but there seems to be a method to it. There’s a reason she chose my mother’s territory to come after, a reason the people here seem to welcome her in a way that I know they didn’t welcome my mother. My grandmother admitted as much a long time ago.

So what is true?

I can’t ask Malone. I’m not ready to. The moment I rip the veil off what this is, it’s over. Maybe I’m just as much a monster as I believed her to be, because I don’t want to give up the few short days I have left with her. No matter my goals at the beginning of this, it was doomed from the start.

I can’t kill her.

I sure as hell can’t fall for her.

There is no happy medium where I release the past and fall into her arms. There is no future where she catches me. These two weeks were merely to satisfy her curiosity. When they’re over, this is over.

Malone shifts at my back, pressing her hand to my stomach and bringing me back more firmly against her. “You’re thinking very hard over there.”

“Guilty,” I whisper.

The barest hesitation. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about it. “No.” No, there are better options for us. Last night she made me forget. Hell, every time she touches me, she makes me forget. If I’m a traitorous daughter, I might as well embrace it until the bitter end.

I turn in her arms and am already moving down her body before she rolls onto her back. I kneel between her spread thighs and hesitate, waiting for her to stop me. But Malone just looks at me with green eyes gone almost soft from sleep. She looks soft right now. Soft and rumpled and too beautiful for words.

I’m a fool because I don’t want to stop this. I want her to keep looking at me like that, as if she cares. As if I’m hers and she’s mine.

Unforgivable thoughts, but I lean down and kiss her stomach before they can take root. They’ll still be there when this is all over. They can wait for now.

I’m rationalizing and I know it. It’s enough to say I want this, so I’ll take it. There’s time for recriminations and doubts later.

“Aurora.”

I ignore the question in her voice just like I ignore the half a million doubts circling my brain. But Malone isn’t the type to let something go once she’s set her mind on it. She clasps my chin gently. “We should talk.”

“Not yet.” I feel my lower lip quivering despite my best efforts. “Please not yet.”

She hesitates, and for once, her thoughts are written across her face for me to see. Conflict. Warring desires. My confused feelings reflected right back at me. Finally, she nods. “Before the end of this, then.”

Relief makes me a little light-headed. “Yes, before the end of it.” Cowardly. So fucking cowardly of me not to just deal with this now, to grab as much light and pleasure as I can handle before reality crashes back in. Before I have to answer for what I’ve done…and what I haven’t.

Even if the only person I have to answer to is myself.

Malone releases me, and I keep kissing my way down her stomach. She lets me urge her thighs wider, lets me dip down and drag my tongue over her pussy. It strikes me all over again how she took care of me last night. My needs, my emotions, my comfort. She put all of it before her own. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all.

But I want to make her feel good right now, to lose myself in the taste and feel of her until it washes away everything else.

She lets me lead. As I grip her thighs and suck on her clit, I distantly recognize that she’s taking care of me even now, offering me an escape I desperately need. My heart gives a dull thud and then another. Gods, I can’t fall for Malone. I can’t. Everything else is forgivable, but not that.

I’m terrified that it’s too late.

That maybe it was too late the moment I agreed to this assignation.

I push two fingers into her, chasing her pleasure the same way I chase forgetting. She arches her back, and I find myself captivated by the sight of her. The arch of her spine. The way her breasts shake with each ragged exhale. Most of all, the way she holds my gaze as I taste her. It’s so tempting to close my eyes, to shut out this vulnerability. Except… I don’t want to.

I pick up my pace, focusing on winding her pleasure tighter, on driving her higher. I want to see her come undone; I want to be the one to cause it.

I want her to remember these two weeks forever.

When Malone orgasms, it’s as beautiful and powerful as she seems to do everything. She barely slumps back to the mattress before she’s tugging me up her body and kissing me as if this is the last time. As if she cherishes me. As if she never wants this to end.

She pulls away a little. “Aurora.”

“Please.” I don’t know what I’m begging for. I just know we can’t follow the road where her tone leads. “Please not yet.”

She exhales slowly and leans up to press her forehead to mine. The contact grounds me even as part of me continues to spiral out of control. Finally, she gives me another long kiss and eases back. “Let’s run you a bath.”

I blink. “What?”

“You’re going to be extremely sore today. The bath will help.” She gives a ghost of her normal cruel smile, though her eyes remain warm. “Otherwise you’re going to be limping around for days, and neither one of us wants that.”

Now that she mentions it, I am incredibly stiff and sore from the scene last night. I grimace. “You didn’t miss an inch of skin, did you?”

“No.” She carefully nudges me off her. “It’s what you needed.”

I can’t argue that because it’s the truth. It is what I needed. I sit up and look at her. It feels strange to say this but… “Thank you. For last night. You didn’t have to do that, any of it.”

“Aurora.” She cups my face and presses a quick kiss to my lips. She’s gone before I can sink into it, climbing to her feet and heading for the bathroom. “Don’t you understand by now? It’s my pleasure to take care of your needs. You’re mine, after all.”

Only for another week or so.

I don’t say it aloud. We both are in this strange place and thrusting forth the reminder that this is nearly halfway over isn’t what I want to do. I don’t think it’s what she wants, either, though I’m scared to try to guess. Instead, I let myself play her words over and over in my head as I listen to her get the water running in the bath.

You’re mine, after all.

It feels right, which means it feels wrong. How can I simultaneously want to be Malone’s but also acknowledge that she’s the one who put my mother in a coma that she was destined to never wake up from? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Malone returns a few minutes later and looks down at me. “Can you walk, or do you need me to carry you?”

I can walk. There’s no doubt about it. I’ll probably be limping just like she projected, but I am capable of it. I lick my lips, feeling suddenly unsure. “What if I want you to carry me?”

She gives a smile that’s nothing like her usually icy expression. It’s warm and soft and makes my chest give another of those dull thuds. “I’d like that, too.” She carefully scoops me up and gives a sympathetic look when I hiss at the touch of her arm against the back of my thighs. “I know it hurts. It will feel better in a little bit.”

She carries me into the bathroom and sets me into the tub with the utmost care. Malone grabs a hair tie and gently pulls my hair back and fastens it out of the way, allowing me to sink into the warmth of the water. She presses her fingers lightly to my temples and starts a slow massage that has me melting even further.

We sit like that for a long time, Malone carefully massaging my head and neck and the water doing the rest of the work. I feel ridiculously pampered and cared for, and it only makes my chest ache more. I love this. Last night and this morning. The kink and the sex and the comfort. Truth be told, I even love our conversations. Sometimes it’s verbally sparring and sometimes it’s simply getting a glimpse at how her brain works. She’s magnificent. A part of my soul recognizes something in hers that feels like kinship, even if I can’t fully describe why. “Malone?”

“Mmm?”

But words fail me. I really am a coward, after all. I don’t want to say or do anything to break moment of calm, of peace. I’m greedy for as many moments as I can have, because eventually it will end.

The balance will tip, the sky will fall, and reality will come rushing in.