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