16. Aubree
16
AUbrEE
A NEW WORLD ORDER
“ C ome on.” He takes my hand and turns to stroll off the dance floor. And though my heart sits firmly in my throat, blocking my air and risking my life, I follow. Because I’m the lamb and, it seems, I don’t mind walking toward my own slaughter. Tell him , my mind screams. Tell him you’re not… experienced .
“Wh-where are we going?” Tell him, Aubree ! “Tim?”
I paste on a pleasant smile as we pass my sister and Malcolm, and pretend steam doesn’t pump through my veins just as surely as blood. Because her eyes swing to mine, and her brows drop in concern. She knows when I’m lying, even when words are yet to leave my lips.
“Uh… Tim?”
He grabs the ballroom door and drags it open just wide enough to fit two people through. Then he swings his arm over my shoulders and pulls me in until my hand somehow ends up on his opposite hip. “Bed.” He turns his face and drops a kiss to my temple. “I’m tired. You’ve danced with the groom. I’ve met your entire family, and I’m officially done sharing you.”
“B-bed?” Nerves grow and swell in my throat. Beckoning me toward death and promising it would be more pleasant than telling this man, this experienced, somewhat terrifying man, that I’ve never slept with anyone before. “I mean… I know you were talking about it and stuff. And we were kinda teasing. And I know we kinda agreed to… ya know? A relationship. And we’ve known each other a while, and…” Shut up, shut up, shut up! “Tim?”
“I got us a room upstairs.” He leads me across an opulent hotel lobby and toward a triple bank of elevators. Leaning closer after he dips his free hand into his pocket, he taps a card to the sensor on the wall until a door magically opens. “I expected we’d be here kinda late and alcohol would probably be involved. I didn’t wanna drive across the city in the snow, and the forecast is looking pretty shit. So…” He leads me in, pleased when the silver cube is deserted except for us, then he presses me to the wall, my head crashing against steel and a cry of surprise— and delight and terror, all at once —escapes my lips when the doors close and Timothy friggin’ Malone the Third pins me down and buries his lips against my neck.
He reaches out blindly, waving that card around until the sensors read it, then when we start moving, he pockets the plastic and slides his hands along my hips instead. “Has anyone ever told you how fucking perfect your body is?” He nips at the warm space where my neck and shoulders meet. “Your curves are sinful, Aubree Grace. But you hide them behind loud clothes and a big attitude.”
Tell him! Tell him! Tell him!
“I’ve wanted to touch you from the first time I saw you.” Heat burns from his pores and scorches into mine. But he’s unapologetic about his desire. Unrelenting in his hunger. He traces his palms along my thighs and slides his tongue across my uncovered clavicle. “That first night you sat down at my bar, lobbing those heavy textbooks and ordering fries every hour like you thought you had to keep eating or I’d kick you out.” He wraps his palms around to the backs of my thighs, then he lifts, slamming his lips to mine when I squeal out in fright, and crushing me against the solid steel wall until I feel his rock-hard length pressing against my core.
Tell him! I’m a virgin. Tim! I’m a virgin.
“That’s always been your stool,” he groans, holding my weight and turning when the elevator comes to a stop. The doors open over his shoulder, but instead of stepping out into a hall, like I expect, a luxurious room spreads out with a massive bed almost butting against floor to ceiling windows that overlook Copeland City and the snow flurries currently drifting down to cover her.
“Oh God.” I sit tall in his arms, distracted by the opulence of what I know is a five-thousand-dollar-a-night suite. A chandelier hangs from the fifteen-foot ceiling, and a faux fireplace roars and turns what would be freezing air into something so much toastier. “This is your room?” I spy the massive television mounted to the far wall, and a sitting area with couches and a heavy coffee table, no doubt found in an antique dealership. “You have an apartment ten minutes away!” I bring my focus back and look down into his smiling eyes. “This was a completely unnecessary expenditure.”
“Not unnecessary when I knew I wanted to stay here for the night. I saw on Wednesday what you’d be wearing, and I knew approximately six years ago I’d eventually give in and carry you to my bed like a fucking Neanderthal. So I planned accordingly. Stocked the room with things we’d want, had the fireplace started, picked the best suite with the best view, and told them to make sure the bed was comfortable.” He holds me with just one arm, like carrying a hundred and something pounds in one hand is easy, then he brings his newly freed hand up to drag my face down. Nipping at my bottom lip, he grins when my breath comes a little faster.
Tell him, Aubree!
“You want this too.” He slowly crosses the room, stepping down when the living area sinks into the floor, then up again when that space ends and we approach the bed. “You’re panting for me, Aubree Grace.”
Oh God. Oh shit. Oh man! It’s time to pay up or speak up.
“I mean… I am.” Panting for you. “And I do.” Want you . I search his hungry eyes and try to piece a brain cell or two together to come up with what I want to say. But most of the blood in my body pools elsewhere. And hell, it’s not like I don’t want this. I just want… slow. And honesty. And full disclosure. “I just?—”
“Bed.” He tosses me down, my arms and legs splaying absurdly wide and a scream echoing from the base of my throat. Then he crawls onto the mattress after me, his knee stopping between my legs and his thigh touching, barely, teasing, my fiery core. “When you sleep tonight, I want you to know you’re mine.” His shoulders fire up, bulging as he rests on his fists and leans down to press a kiss to my lips. “I need you to know that your future is tied up inextricably with mine.”
“Tim…”
“Love already exists.” He brushes a loose lock of hair off my cheek and replaces it with a kiss. “We both know that. We’d kill for each other. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t.”
“I mean…”
Fire sparks in his eyes, burning me up and conveying approval almost as though he spoke the words out loud. Good girl . “I’ve made myself come every single day for the last six years, and I’ve always, always had you on my mind when I do. ”
“Jesus.” I drop my head back, arching my spine and inadvertently curling my sensitive core against his leg. “Tim…”
“Now I want to come in you.”
Good lord and fuck me. Tell him, Aubree! Stop being a pussy and speak your truth. He won’t freak out.
“I can’t be gentle.” He drags the silky fabric of my dress up, exposing my legs and revealing the lace of my underwear. “I’ve never been the guy that was gonna be gentle. So I need you to speak up, okay?”
“Um…”
He grabs my hip and shoves me over so fast I gasp and roll, my hands frantically dropping to the mattress and my neck aching as I attempt to see him over my shoulder.
“You worried this dress would be too revealing.” Shaking his head, he unfastens the single, tiny catch at the back that keeps an entire gown from exposing me in front of a hundred people, then he tugs the dress down until I remember I’m not wearing a bra. Oh my good lord, I’m not wearing a bra . And Timothy Malone is gonna see in a minute. He’ll flip me over just as easily as he managed the first time, and then he’s going to see my breasts. And, well… boobs are boobs. They’re all kind of the same at the end of the day. But still, they’re my boobs, and no man has ever seen them before, and he’s the guy I’ve been pining after for too damn long. “Aubree?”
“Hmm?” My heart screeches to a painful stop that feels like cogs jamming up and a manufacturing line going on the fritz. The word for that, of course, is a myocardial infarction. But I’m Virginal Aubree right now. Not Medical Examiner Aubree. “Yeah?”
“You seem nervous.”
“Uh… nope.” I lift my hips, giving him room to drag my dress down and expose me completely. And he’s a Malone, so of course, he does exactly that until I’m left with nothing but lacey black underwear, a pair of heels that make my feet ache, and an expensive necklace that leaves my heart a sighing, swooning mess. “We can have sex now, I guess.” I dig one arm under my stomach and use it to cover the bulk of my breasts, then I turn on the mattress and sit up, the rolls of my stomach folding forward and my entire existence, nothing short of cringy. “Do you have a condom? That’s important, of course.”
“A condom?” He looks me up and down, his eyes glittering and his lips curling despite the beard hiding a lot of what he does. “You’re ready, then?”
“Mmhmm. Sure.” I don’t dare lower my arm. But I use my free hand to reach down and unclasp my heels. “I’m ready. ”
“So you’re wet for me?” He backs off the bed and wanders slowly, infuriatingly casually, to the duffel bag set on the rack by the closet. But while he walks, he shucks his coat off, dropping it to the back of the couch as he passes, then he drags his tie off and starts on the buttons of his shirt. “Wet between the legs, Aubree Grace? And not nervous at all?”
“Nope. I’m…” Dying. Terrified. Horny, but horribly nervous . “Wet.”
Chuckling, he opens his shirt and slides the fabric off to reveal a muscular back marred with ink and scars. I don’t know where one begins and the other ends, and I have no clue how he could stand to tattoo over what would have been horribly sensitive sections of skin. But I do know that, despite my nerves, my heart beats for him.
An over-pouring of empathy has a flood of pain settling into the base of my stomach. Every time we spend the night together and I see his body, sadness envelops me until it feels like I’ll never catch my breath. Anger, for the boy who deserved better. Rage, for the man who earned his place in hell.
“Seems to me that…” He slides the zipper open on the bag and digs his hand in. Then he turns, a shirt and a book bundled together and a filthy smirk curled across his face, “the woman who demands honesty isn’t being entirely truthful right now.”
“A book?” I snag a pillow, slamming it to my chest so I can argue with a modicum of dignity. Sort of . “You brought a book?”
“But sure,” he snickers, leaving his shirt behind and wandering back to the bed so the flicker of the fireplace bounces off his firm stomach. “Let me get a condom. No real foreplay. No prepping. Not even my tongue on your sweet pussy first?” He drops the book by my thigh, then a shirt—one of his—on my shoulder. “If you think I’m gonna wrap my cock in rubber and lube, and fuck you when you’re dry and terrified, then I’m scared to wonder who you really think I am in the back of your mind.”
When I remain stock still, clutching to my pillow and indignation, he snags the shirt, opens the fabric, and plops it over my head. “I’ll fuck you, Aubree. And I’ll make it hurt, a little, at least. I don’t know any other way. But you’ll tell me when you’re ready, and you’ll mean it.”
“You set me up?”
“Consider it a test, maybe.” He crouches in front of me and reaches across to cup my face. “You’re an outspoken, people pleasing, rule breaking contradiction. It’s hard keeping up sometimes. But I know one thing, Emeri, and it’s that I’m not gonna fuck you while you have to hype yourself up and mentally chant ‘ you got this. Be brave. You can do this .’”
“I wasn’t hyping myself. I was?— ”
“When it’s time, you won’t think of anything else except me. And when you’re ready, you won’t be able to stop. That’s when I’ll have you. And fuck,” he groans, his jaw tensing with the movement, “that’s when I’ll claim you. But we’re doing this on your timeline. So while you’re brave enough to let me carry you, and crazy enough to ride your charade all the way to my bed, you’re not prepared for what happens next. When you are, we’ll both know.”
“So you brought a book.” Disappointment washes through my veins and brings my shoulders down into a slump. It’s so dumb, really, considering I was freaking out a moment ago. But now he’s letting me off the hook, and there’s a huge part of me that wanted to do this. Get it done. First times will always be awkward, but if I can get past that, the rest is bound to be better…
“Stop looking like that.”
Stunned, I glance up into his emerald stare, only to squeal when he wraps his arm around my belly and drags me along the mattress.
“We’re going to bed.” He tears the blankets down and deposits me at the end, my back plastered to the headboard and my legs horrifyingly bare and on full display. We’ve slept together before, of course, and I’ve dressed down almost every single time. But never to my underwear. Never to a lacey black scrap of material that is, I admit, wet . A little, at least. “You’re going to read to me, and I’m going to fall asleep with your fingers in my hair.”
“So all of that was a lie?” Blood continues to pump in the wrong half of my body. My pulse throbbing horrifyingly south, when I wish, so desperately, I could reroute it back to my brain. “All the, ‘ I touch myself and think of you ’ stuff. It was?—”
“Absolutely the truth.” He pushes up to stand at the side of the bed, grabbing the book and dropping it into my lap. Then he presses a kiss to my forehead and turns away to peruse the kitchen area. “Every single morning. Every fucking day for as long as I’ve known you.”
“But you’re?—”
“A Malone,” he grumbles. “And being ashamed of where I come from doesn’t mean I’m free of my DNA. It’s a well-known fact Malones are…” He snags a bottle of champagne from an icy bucket on the counter, but forgoes the wineglasses, turning back in my direction instead. “We fuck to cope. I can hate it, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore it. So that’s how we get through. Stress. Worry. Anger. Whatever.” He comes to the bed and sits by my leg, then he removes the cork with a pop that makes me jump, smiling because my chest heaves. Up. Down. Searching for sense in nonsensical chaos. “I was introduced to sex when I was twelve years old. ”
Horror burns through my veins. Tears scratching at the backs of my eyes. So I set the book aside and lean closer, resting my chin on his shoulder and wrapping my arms around his in a weird, almost awkward, and yet completely comforting hug. “That wasn’t sex. It was rape.”
“It felt good.” He brings the bottle up, sipping from the end. “Or at least, I was led to believe it did. Twelve, Aubree. And I didn’t stop after that. So no, when I’m feeling a certain way?—”
“Stressed,” I guess on a sigh. “Worried. Which is always.”
He offers the bottle and grins when I accept. “I’m always stressed. And you worry me to no end. But I’m also a grown ass adult who gets to make his own choices. So I stopped after Anne.”
“You stopped?”
“Searching for women to fuck.” He sets his fingers beneath the base of the bottle, tipping back until I take a hint and join him in our un-classy drinking session. “Anne was a means to an end. She was a woman I had no emotional connection to, which made her safe and easy. Until she wasn’t. But I saw the pain she caused you.”
“Broke my damn heart.” I take another swig of the sweet wine. Fuck her. Fuck them. Fuck the very idea of him and her in bed together. “Smashed it open.”
“I know.” He takes the bottle and sips. “All my efforts to save you were a waste, because I was hurting you. So I stopped. I’m a Malone raised with sex as a coping mechanism, but I’m done using that as a crutch. So I wake up every morning instead, and I wrap my hand around my cock. It’s not the same. But fuck,” he shakes his head. Though I swear, hidden behind his beard is a smile. “Thinking of you makes it good enough. I offload my stress, I get to be with you, even without you knowing it, and then I can get on with my day with a clear head. Someday, when we’re actually together, we’ll fuck. And it’ll be like coming home for me. It’ll become my new addiction.”
“Tim—”
“But I’m still that grown ass man who can take care of himself. So it won’t become a chore for you. There won’t be pressure, and it won’t become an issue in our relationship, all because I was raised in toxicity and chaos.”
“You’re worried I’ll consider sex with you a chore?” I reach across and grab his beard. My new favorite way to force his eyes around and his attention onto me. “You think I’ll hate it?”
“No.” His lips curl higher. “I think you’ll fucking love it. I’ll make sure. But I worry I’ll want it more often than you do, since I clearly have all this unresolved bullshit bred into me. Now read.” He leans over me, crushing my legs with his chest, and snags the book with fire on the cover and a warrior brandishing a sword. “She’s fucking the enemy and told the football player goody two shoes to get lost, as she should.”
“Literally not what’s happening.” I settle back against the headboard and open the book to where we left off, then I slide my fingers into his hair and drag him down until his head is in my lap. His lips and nose settling wildly close to lace, and my mind, horrifyingly jumping to conclusions that undo all the work I did to move my pounding blood north again.
He could just…
And I would die.
But he’d make it feel good, I have no doubt.
And he’d enjoy it.
I would sleep a satisfied woman.
And he’d have new memories to pluck from tomorrow morning when he’s in the shower.
“You tell me when you’re ready.” He presses an intoxicating kiss to my thigh and peeks around to catch my eyes. “I can taste you in the air, Aubree. I can feel you. But I also know you’re scared. So you’re gonna need to use your words and tell me what you want, when you want it.”
“I don’t?—”
“I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life.” He turns and rests on one elbow, facing me. Then he peels my shirt up and exposes the lower portion of my belly, rolling skin because of my bad posture, and the waistband of my underwear folded over. Because I’m classy like that . But then he kisses my stomach and steals every self-destroying thought from my mind. “I’ve killed. I’ve tortured. I’ve broken the law, and I’ve been the villain in someone else’s story.” Another kiss. “I’ve been the villain in your story.” A third. “But I won’t be the guy who takes something before you’re ready. So first time, you need to say the words out loud. You need to ask me to fuck you, and then you need to actively participate. Look into my eyes when we’re together, so I know you’re not floating off somewhere else in your mind until it’s over.”
“You ask too much of me.”
He chokes out a laugh. “God forbid I ask you to pay attention to me when we’re in bed together.” He lowers to my lap once more. “She’s fucking the villain. Read. ”
“He’s not the villain. She just thought he was for a while. But now he’s in love with her, and they’re gonna rule their kingdom together.”
“Hmm.” His beard tickles my thigh. But then he wraps his arm around my hips and presses a kiss to my lacey core. “Sounds about right.”
“What if I want to do things to you?”
Confused, his brows pinch tight while he puzzles out my words. Only to come up short and glance up to search my eyes. “What?”
“You said you won’t do things to me, sexually, unless I ask clearly and without duress.”
He snorts. “I don’t remember mentioning the last bit.”
“But what if I wanted to touch you?” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up ! “What if I got a wild hair and a streak of bravery and just…” I peek along his firm body and stop on the black pants still covering his lower half. “Ya know?”
“Consider this my consent.” He drags his hand along my back and up to my neck, then he pulls me down until our lips touch. “From now until forever, I give you consent to do whatever the fuck you want to my body.”
“Says the little boy never taught autonomy.”
“Says the grown ass villain who fell in love with the little lamb. There’s nothing you could do to me that I wouldn’t want, so if you get that wild hair and think you’d like to try something out, go for it.” Another kiss. “Surprise me.”
“There’s something fundamentally wrong with you.”
“Yep.” He lies back in my lap. “But we knew that already. Read.”
“ I walk the halls ,” I read from the crisp white pages in front of me, gratified when his eyes instantly droop with comfort. “ With my new queen squished between me and my little brother. Either Tully has no clue she has a new Guild wherever she walks… or she simply doesn’t mention it. But Ari needs no instruction to know his part in this new world order .”