Crowning Aaron (Wintermoon Academy #2)

Mara

ONE YEAR LATER—FIRST DAY OF THE NEW SEMESTER

My folder is already pressed to my chest when the shower shuts off in the bathroom.

I’ve been standing at the kitchen counter of our suite turning my lesson plans over in my hands like I haven’t gone through them over and over since last night.

Syllabus, reading list, the first assignment I stayed up half the night writing out because it had to be exactly right.

My first teaching day. My own classroom in the Lion Shifter Wing with my name on the door and a room of lionesses I’ve never met waiting on me.

Behind me, Aaron hums under his breath, tuneless and low.

He woke up late, and he was the one who said last night that I was welcome to go decorate my classroom one more time if I really wanted to.

Then he spent long enough trying to talk me out of it with his mouth against my neck that I nearly gave in, and I still went.

When I finally came back to our suite in the small hours, he was asleep with the lamp on and his hand splayed open on my side of the bed like he’d been reaching for me in his sleep.

The bathroom door opens and steam rolls out.

I already know how he looks coming out—the towel knotted low on his hips, water still beading on his shoulders.

My lion stirs inside me. A year in, and she still perks up every time he walks into a room.

She has no dignity about him. Coffee beans hit me first, warm and dark under the clean heat of the shower, and I tighten my grip on the folder and take a long breath in through my nose like that’s going to help anything.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He’s leaning against the doorframe, scanning over me. My tail twitches. I know that look, and I take one careful step back from him and press my folder tighter against my chest.

“Aaron, no.”

“You stayed out all night decorating that classroom.” He pushes off the doorframe and starts toward me. “Even after I spent the whole damn week helping you get it in order.”

“It’s my first teaching day—”

“I almost lost my shit waiting for you to come back and get into bed with me.”

My back hits the edge of the kitchen table and I gasp.

The corner of his mouth lifts because he’s seen me run out of room.

His scent rolls ahead of him. I shake my head.

I open my mouth to remind him about the lionesses waiting on me, but he’s already there, sliding the folder out of my hands, setting it down on the table.

His hands find my waist, and he lifts me.

“Aaron—”

He sets me down on the edge of the table, nudges my knees apart with his hip, and his mouth closes over mine before I can finish saying his name.

This kiss has nothing good-morning about it.

His tongue pushes past my lips, his hand slides up my side and settles heavy at the curve of my breast through my dress, and my lion unspools so fast I have to grab a fistful of the towel at his hip just to keep from sliding sideways off the wood.

I drag my mouth off his, my breath coming fast. “Aaron, come on, baby—”

“Don’t baby me, Mara.” My eyes fly open, and his grin goes lazy and mean. “I want some pussy.”

My mouth falls open, because he doesn’t talk like that. This is something rougher. My thighs clench around his hips. The heat of it puts color all the way up into my scalp, and before I can get a word out he stuffs his tongue back in my mouth.

My body answers him, because when Aaron wants me my body and my lion won’t give me the dignity of saying no. She presses forward shameless, and my tail comes around behind him on its own and slides up his back, stroking him slow in approval.

When the end of her finds the knot at his hip, she flicks once, and the towel drops around his ankles.

He’s fucking me with his mouth, slow because he knows he has me, and my legs have fallen open for him without my brain signing off on it. My dress rides up my thighs under his hand. I break the kiss to breathe and his mouth follows me down—my neck, the soft hollow above my collarbone, lower.

To my claim mark.

His lips brush over it and my whole body goes liquid. My head drops back.

“That’s alright, baby,” he murmurs against the mark, his voice softer now, coaxing. “I’ll just take it on my tongue. So you can work.”

“…huh?”

He lifts his head to look at me, and his eyes are dark. His hands come up and cup both my breasts through my dress, thumbs dragging across my nipples. Then he steps back and drops to his knees in front of the table.

“Aaron—”

He lifts one of my legs and drapes it over his shoulder, then the other, and my dress bunches at my hips as he settles in between my thighs.

“Aaron, I have a class in—”

“Just come on my tongue, Mara.” His breath is already on me through the damp cotton of my panties, and my hips jump toward his mouth. “That’ll hold me until you’re done with work.”

I’m already so wet that I’m going to need to change my panties before I walk out of this suite.

His nostrils flare once and a low pleased sound catches in the back of his throat.

He hooks one finger under the hem of my panties and slides them to the side without bothering to take them off, and then he buries his face between my thighs and the first slow drag of his tongue up the center of me knocks the breath out of me.

My elbows shake and give, and I fall back against the wood of the table, my folder of lesson plans sliding under me.

He licks me broad and slow, works his tongue into a point and strokes up, flattens again to drag it over me, and he settles.

Like he’s just now getting comfortable. His beard scrapes the softest part of my inner thigh in a way I’m going to feel all day.

His palm slides up my belly and settles flat above the hem of my dress, heavy, holding me down.

He is not letting me squirm away from this.

He hooks his arm under my thigh and drags my hips closer to his mouth. A low rough sound leaves him and he doubles down, sucks me into his mouth, pulls, releases, goes back in with his tongue and works me deeper. His nose presses into me.

My tail slides down his back, traveling lower. When she finds the hot hard length of him between his legs she curls once, testing. He groans into me, a deep low rumble that runs up into my body through his tongue. His hips roll toward my tail on their own, greedy, but he doesn’t stop eating me.

“Aaron—”

He doesn’t answer. He grips my hip harder, pulls me into his face, and keeps going.

His tongue slides inside me and swirls, withdraws, flattens, goes in again faster.

My walls are already tightening around nothing, my legs shaking hard on his shoulders.

I dig my claws into the edge of the table until the lacquer splits under the points of them.

My thighs try to close on his ears. He shoves them back open with both hands without ever lifting his mouth off me.

“Oh, Aaron—oh my god, Aaron—”

He sucks hard, one deep, slow pull, and holds there, his tongue working, while my whole body bows up off the table.

My tail tightens around him at the same time, dragging, stroking him hard and fast. He bucks once into the curl of my tassel, then again.

A helpless broken grunt leaves his throat straight into my body.

His length pulses hard against my tail, hot and spilling. And that’s what does it.

It rips the orgasm out of me so hard I cry out loud in our suite. My tail milks him through his finish, every last pulse, while my legs shake on his shoulders and my toes curl.

He doesn’t stop.

He keeps eating me, still coming himself, grunting into me, and the vibration of him finishing straight against my clit drags me right back up before I’ve even come all the way down.

My first hasn’t finished and there’s already a second one building underneath it, tighter, meaner, fed by the fact that his face is still wet between my thighs and he will not ease off.

“Aaron—” It comes out broken. “Aaron, I can’t—I can’t again, I—”

He answers by hooking his arm tighter under my thigh and pulling me into his mouth.

My tail is still wrapped around him, limp and wet from him, and he’s still twitching against her in the last of his own aftershocks while he works me toward the second, and my body does not know which sensation is mine anymore.

The second climax builds slower, deeper, and when it breaks over me it breaks long.

Wave after wave, my walls clenching on nothing, my whole body arching up off the wood, a wet embarrassing sound coming out of me.

My claws tear straight through the lacquer this time.

My tail squeezes him once more and falls limp.

My legs shake so hard they nearly slide off his shoulders.

Only then does he finally ease off, licking me slow through the last tremors, coaxing a small helpless shiver out of me, before he presses one last wet kiss to the inside of my thigh and lifts his head.

He reaches past my leg, picks up the towel from the floor, and wipes the mess clean.

He slides my panties back into place with the knuckle of one finger.

He tugs my dress down over my knees. Then he wipes the mess from his beard and the lower half of his face with the heel of his other hand, grins up at me from the floor, pleased with himself and not hiding it.

My tail uncurls from around him slow, sliding up his chest, stroking once over his heart, and my tassel finds his mouth. He catches the end of it between his lips and kisses the fur.

“I love you too, my beautiful lioness,” he murmurs against it.

I push myself up to sitting on the edge of the table, breathing hard, my face burning and my thighs still trembling. He stands up, completely naked, the lower half of his face shining, and the grin on his face is the most smug thing I’ve ever seen.

“That’ll hold me. Until you’re done with your students.”

He scratches the back of his head, almost sheepish now. “The first day is really the most boring part anyway, baby. Just getting to know them. Honestly the whole first week. You’re not gonna miss much.”

“This is my experience, Aaron.”

He holds both hands up, palms out, backing up a step. “I know, baby, I know. I wasn’t trying to overstep.”

He turns and disappears into the bathroom, and I hear the sink run and him splashing water on his face. I look down at my lap, at the crumpled folder, and I start to laugh.

When he comes back out, his face is clean and his mouth is still curved at one corner.

He crosses to the dresser, pulls a pair of black shorts out of the top drawer and slides into them, then opens the drawer next to mine and pulls out a fresh pair of my panties between two fingers.

He holds them up to me across the room, and his face has gone soft again.

“Here. Let me help you get cleaned up so you can get to class.”

I just look at him, still on the edge of the table. He crosses the room and plants a kiss on my forehead. Then his hands close around my waist, and he lifts me down and sets me on my feet. He takes my hand and pulls me gently toward the bathroom.

A whole year with this warlock, and I still can’t quite believe I’m allowed to have him.