cause it.
Her fingers tense in my hair, so I keep doing that motion with my tongue, teasing her higher and higher. I look up her body to find her cheeks have gone pink and her lips are parted. She’s not making a single sound, but the evidence of how close she is to orgasm is written in her expression, in her legs tensing on either side of my face, on her harsh grip in my hair.
She moves the phone away from her face and hits the mute button. “Stop playing around and make me come.”
It’s so tempting to reach between my thighs with my free hand, but I already know she won’t grant permission. She might even stop me from making her come, which is something I desperately want to avoid. I suck her clit into my mouth and work her with my tongue, and she moans a little and orgasms hard, clamping around my fingers.
Malone’s grip in my hair softens, and she trails her fingers down my temple. Her expression isn’t exactly warm, but it’s not as distant as normal. “Don’t stop. This call will go on a while yet.”
I lick my lips, tasting her there. “Yes, Mistress.”
9
Malone
What am I going to do about Aurora?
Half my instincts want to continue to put her in her place, to prove that she doesn’t have the same pull on me that she seems to on every other Dominant she comes across. The rest of me wants to stop fucking around and take what’s mine for the next two weeks.
The rest of the call is as uneventful as I expect it to be. Marshall has things well in hand, he just needs a little confidence to fully step into his new position while working with a team he’s unfamiliar with. He’s got all the necessary skills and experience, but he’s still a bit green. He’ll figure it out.
I hang up and set my phone aside. That was the last obligation of the day. I purposefully lightened my schedule during this time because I didn’t want to be distracted—not from work, not from play. There are still things that can’t be shifted around, so that’s what I’ll spend my mornings doing. Aurora is a nocturnal creature like all the other Underworld residents, so it works well.
I dig my hand into her hair again, enjoying the way the indigo tresses feel against my palm, and pull her off me. “That’s enough.”
“But—” She catches herself quickly, losing some of the bliss that’s filtered into her expression over the last twenty minutes. If I let her, she’ll retreat from me again. It’s the smart thing to do, to allow that distance, but I find myself reluctant to let it happen. “Come here.” I guide her up even as I lean down.
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