Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76370 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76370 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I shouldn’t do it. It’s a mistake, and I already know it’s a mistake, but I can’t seem to help myself. I kiss Aurora. Her lips part in shock, and I use the opportunity to trace her bottom lip with my tongue. She has some of the most perfect lips I’ve ever seen, shaped as if a sculptor molded the ideal mouth. Something I’ve tried and failed not to notice over the years.
Aurora’s hands land on my thighs, and then she’s kissing me back. Here, she’s just as fierce as I know she can be, subtly fighting me for control. For dominance. A heady feeling rises in me, a flicker of something I’ve worked hard to keep locked down. This woman makes me want to fight and stab and scream. To annihilate everything in my immediate vicinity until she has no choice but to admit that she’s mine.
That’s enough.
It takes every ounce of my fraying control to break the kiss. Even then, I only gain an inch between our lips; our panting breath mingling in that tiny space a reminder of how easy it would be to just keep kissing her. To throw out any plan of scening or dominance and submission and simply sink into this woman until the hours tick away and we lose all track of time and ourselves.
It can’t happen. Losing control, any kind of control, is unacceptable. That’s what happened to my sister and now look at the situation back home. Two nieces and our brother in danger. The trust of our people wavering. An old enemy threatening everything our family has spent generations working toward. Aurora is hardly the Paine brothers, but there are thousands of people in my territory who depend on my keeping the status quo. Allowing myself to become wrapped up in her might not endanger everything I’ve worked so hard for, but I don’t know that for sure.
Because I can’t guarantee it to be true, I create more space between us. It’s not quite the boon I need it to be. Not when Aurora is clutching my thighs as if she’s fighting the pull of me as much as I’m fighting the pull of her. Her eyes are a little too wide, and her lips are parted with each harsh breath that escapes.
I don’t make a conscious decision to reach down and begin unbuttoning her nightshirt. My body simply takes over. With each button, a larger slice of her light-brown skin is revealed. The curves of her breasts, the smooth skin of her stomach, and finally her pussy. I sit back and study her. A stalling technique to keep myself from falling on her like a starving creature. It barely works.
“Why did you say yes, Aurora?”
She blinks those big brown eyes at me. “What?”
“You dislike me intensely. You have for years. Why say yes to this assignation?” I don’t know if I care. She agreed and that paved the way to the outcome I desire. But the way she hesitates now has curiosity flaring in response. “Answer the question.”
She meets my gaze for a long moment before pointedly dropping her gaze. “I was angry for a long time after that scene with you when I first started. I want you to want me, and then I will walk away and leave you wanting something you can no longer have.”
Shock and something like admiration course through me. “Do you think your pussy is so amazing that I’ll never get over fucking you?”
She flashes a look at me, and there’s no evidence of the innocent woman she’s played for nearly a decade. No, it’s all fire and fury and no small amount of lust. “I am more than my pussy, Malone. There’s a reason every single Dominant in the Underworld favors me; the same reason you’ve avoided me for nearly a decade.”
The statement is an arrow of truth I have no defense against, spearing through my carefully placed defenses. She’s not wrong. No matter what I’ve told myself—or pointedly not told myself—I’ve never treated another submissive the way I’ve treated Aurora. Still, I lean forward until our faces are almost within kissing distance. “Do you think to make me fall in love with you?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
That surprises a laugh out of me. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t be.” I sit back. “But it will never happen, so put whatever petty revenge schemes you’re considering out of your head. This is two weeks of simple lust. Nothing more.”
“Yes, Mistress,” she answers sweetly.
Why the hell am I irritated by how easily she agrees with me? I push the nightshirt off her shoulders and snap my fingers. “Up.”
Aurora rises gracefully to stand naked before me. The woman really is a work of art, all long lines and soft curves and the pretty bars piercing her brown nipples. I palm her breasts and coast my thumbs over the jewelry, enjoying the way she inhales sharply. “How long have you had these?”