Chapter 34 – Aurora #2
I walk. The robe brushes my calves. The slip slides along skin the way silk does when someone thought about how fabric should behave. He waits until I’m inside the circle of the lamp. Then he steps just close enough that I have to tilt my head to keep eye contact.
“What do you want from me?”
“Truth,” I say. “And you. In that order.” The sentence makes me blush like I’m twenty, but I don’t withdraw it. If he wanted coy, he wouldn’t have picked me.
He raises a hand and halts it a breath from my jaw. I lean into the space and make the contact for both of us. His palm warms my face. I feel his pulse in the base of his thumb, steady and faster than he wants to admit.
“Look at me,” he says.
“I am,” I answer, but I make my eyes stay where he wants—his face, his mouth, the tired line at the edge of his brow. He is the most dangerous when he is gentle; I know that now. He is also the most honest when he wants me to look.
“If I show you more,” he says, “you don’t get to pretend you weren’t shown.
If I bring you closer, I keep you there.
I don’t let Caldwell have a picture of you to hold up at a hearing.
I don’t let you walk into a room alone when he has people who will make it look like you did.
I will put a hand at the small of your back and it will be both choreography and protection.
If you want out of that, you say it now. Not tomorrow.”
“I walked here,” I say. “Barefoot. Don’t make this sound like you dragged me.”
The corner of his mouth moves. “I’m not dragging you.
” His fingers curve, asking the question they asked the first night.
Tell me to stop. He doesn’t say it out loud because we both heard it then.
I nod one short, deliberate nod and feel the answer settle in my chest like a stone that fits the palm.
“Then keep me in here,” I say again. “All the way in.”
He leads me deeper into his private wing, the hallway narrowing like a vein pulsing under skin, until we reach a room where rain-blurred moonlight filters through tall windows, casting everything in smeared silver and shadow.
The air hangs heavy with the scent of old books and storm-damp wood, cool against my heated skin.
He takes the belt of the robe with two fingers and lifts, not yanking like some desperate claim, but enough that the slack unravels, the fabric parting like split flesh exposing the slip beneath.
It drops open, the chill air licking my collarbone, raising gooseflesh where moonlight paints my exposed chest in pale streaks.
He watches my face, eyes dark and unblinking, searching for any fracture in my resolve.
I keep my gaze locked on his, refusing to glance down, refusing to turn this into a show for the empty room—there's power in that, in holding the moment raw between us.
He steps behind me, his presence a solid heat at my back, not caging me like some predator bullshit, but deliberate, his fingers drawing the straps of the slip together where they've slid askew.
He sets them back on my shoulders with the precision of wrapping a wound, two points of contact that sear into my skin, redrawing boundaries I didn't know were blurred.
His breath ghosts my ear, warm and steady, and my cunt clenches involuntarily, a deep ache blooming low in my belly.
“Say what you need from me,” he says, voice low and gravel-rough, the kind of instruction that assumes I'll meet him halfway.
“Don’t lie,” I say, the words tumbling out sharp and unfiltered.
“Don’t talk to me like a donor. Don’t make me beg for information you already decided to give.
If you want to touch me, say it. If you want me to touch you, ask.
” They hit the air like stones skipping across water, building a solid ground we can both stand on without slipping.
“Done,” he agrees, no pause, the word snapping into place like a lock. Then, softer: “And you—tell me when no is the right answer. If I’m holding you wrong. If you want the door open, say it before we forget there is one.”
“Okay,” I breathe, and the relief crashes through me—shoulders easing, throat loosening, lungs expanding like they've been holding back. The fear sharpens, gains definition, but doesn't rule.
He turns me gently, my back meeting the wall beneath the windows, cool plaster biting into my skin through the thin fabric, grounding me in the night's chill.
He doesn't slam my wrists up like some dominance play; instead, he lifts my hands and places them on his shoulders.
“Here,” he murmurs, voice steady as if directing pressure on a bleed.
I curl my fingers into the damp cotton, feeling the warmth of his body seep through, the fabric clinging where rain has soaked his collar.
I could linger like this, just breathing him in, the solid rise and fall under my palms.
He kisses me differently now—not the edged tension from last night in that cedar-scented room thick with unspoken debates.
This is mine by choice; I came to him, I asked.
He doesn't crowd or chase; he deepens only when I lean in, matching my rhythm, slow enough that my mind syncs with the heat pooling between my thighs, no longer a bystander to my own want.
When his hand settles at my waist, fingers splaying wide and firm, the old instinct to tense dissolves.
He's careful, as promised, but the undercurrent of his strength is undeniable, a promise of more if I reach for it.
“More,” I say into his mouth, not to guide him but to claim the words, to feel them vibrate against his lips.
He delivers. His mouth charts a path—down my throat, teeth grazing the pulse there, then to the hollow at my collarbone where skin always burns hot, no matter the storm outside.
One hand stays open on my hip, an anchor that steadies without demanding submission, while the other cups the back of my neck—warm weight that could tighten into restraint if I invited it.
I don't. He doesn't presume. That restraint, that held-back power, sends a fresh rush of slick heat between my legs, my clit throbbing with neglected need.
I'm fully in it now, no detached narration buffering me from the scrape of his cheek against my jaw—rough, unshaven, human as fuck.
He tastes like the dregs of whiskey from his glass, clean linen from his shirt, and that underlying salt that's purely him, primal and unmasked.
My hands roam, tracing the hard ridges of muscle under cotton along his back, the taut line between his shoulder blades I could sketch blind, his waist narrowing where my palms flatten and he exhales sharply, like he'd forgotten how to claim his own breath.
I haul him closer by fistfuls of his shirt because I fucking can. He surges forward with a low rumble, like a dam cracking under pressure he'd bottled himself.
His next breath lands hot against my skin, turning my knees to liquid fire I need to quench fast. He senses it, his hand at my hip guiding me down those inches until my body presses fully against the wall again, solid and unyielding.
He tips my chin with two fingers—not to control, but to realign, and I follow, the kiss shifting from measured to a freefall where we could both halt it, but neither does.
Thoughts of those texts intrude like shards in the quiet, spiking anger through me; I inhale it sharply, and he reads it etched on my face.
“They can’t get in here,” he says, lips brushing mine, voice forging a barrier as solid as steel. “Not to you. Not tonight.”
It doesn't mend the world outside, but it stitches something raw inside me, letting me sink deeper.
I tilt my head and kiss him harder, bruising, tomorrow's swell on my lips a badge I'll wear without regret. He meets it head-on, no retreat—the response an echo to my demand, raw and reciprocal. I asked; he answers.
The rest unfolds without inventory, because tallying it cheapens the grit: his hand sliding under the slip, fingers finding the soaked fabric between my thighs, pushing it aside to stroke my folds, parting them with deliberate pressure that makes my hips buck.
My cunt aches for fullness, and he obliges, two fingers plunging in slow, curling against that spot that sends sparks up my spine, his thumb grinding circles on my clit with unerring rhythm.
I grind down, riding his hand, the wet sounds filling the room like the rain outside, my breaths turning to ragged moans I don't stifle.
He watches my face, checks once with words—“This?”—and I nod, fierce, before he pauses again, lifting his gaze, waiting for my silent yes.
I give it, full-bodied, and he drives deeper, faster, until the coil snaps, my walls clenching around him in shuddering waves, release flooding me hot and unrelenting.
The robe puddles on the floor at some point, the slip rucked up uselessly around my waist. I tug his shirt wrong, buttons popping like confessions, and he laughs low, the vibration loosening knots in my chest better than any scripted reassurance.
When I reach for him, palming the hard length straining his pants, he doesn't stop me—his breath hitches as I free him, stroking the thick shaft, veins pulsing under my grip, pre-cum beading at the tip.
I guide him between my thighs, slick and ready, and he enters me in one controlled thrust, filling me to the hilt, the stretch burning sweet as we find a rhythm—his hips snapping forward, my legs wrapping his waist, nails raking his back as the wall bites into mine.
He checks non-verbally, a pause in the thrust, eyes locked; I nod, pulling him deeper, and we chase it together, sweat-slick and urgent.
When I trace the scar on his chest, fingers pressing the raised line, his breath stutters, but he covers my hand with his, holding it there—yes to the vulnerability, warm and alive under my touch.
It crests raw, and unpolished as I shatter around him again, cunt gripping his cock in vise-like pulses, pulling his release from him with a guttural sound from his throat, hot spurts filling me as we grind through the aftershocks.
No grace, just the honesty of bodies chosen on purpose.
The wall anchors us; he holds me through it, breath syncing in the quiet that follows.
Afterwards, I lie against his chest, body still thrumming with echoes of the high, skin sticky and marked where his grip bruised just enough. “Now you’ve shown me,” I whisper, voice hoarse, fingers tracing idle patterns on his sweat-damp skin.
He murmurs back, lips brushing my temple, “Not yet. But soon.”
My phone buzzes again across the room, the glow cutting through the moonlight like an intruder. Neither of us moves to answer, the world outside held at bay in this shadowed space we've claimed.