Chapter 25 Scholarly Pursuits
SCHOLARLY PURSUITS
Kat
Kat was spun, and she didn’t even have time to lament Azrion’s hands leaving her most sensitive spots before he had her sitting up on the desk again.
Instinct told her to spread her legs so that he could fit himself between them and they could rub against each other for the satisfaction she’d been craving since the night in the caves.
But instead, he gripped behind her knees and hitched her legs up on the desk with another spin.
Azrion prowled to the narrow end of the desk to loom by her feet.
He had unbuttoned his coat while they worked, and now he shrugged it off, lost somewhere on the floor just like the books and papers.
His shirt hung open at the neck, and a deep vee of lilac skin covered in dark swirls of ink teased her from inside.
She pinched her knees together but licked her lips.
Fangs glistened as his grin shifted. He was never not charming, but it was always a threat-less charm with pretty teeth that would never bite.
Now, however, danger tinged the corners of his mouth and the gleam in his eye.
He gripped the edge of the desk and leaned toward her, shoulders broad and tail flicking behind him. “You will tell me if you want to stop.”
She nodded, peering at him over her bent knees covered in her shift but only just.
“And I’ll start again only under your command.”
“Command?”
“For instance you might say, Azrion, remove these pesky cages from my feet, and I would.” He tugged off one shoe and then the other. “Now tell me, do you want me to take off your stockings too?”
Kat swallowed, and it traveled painfully down her throat, choking back what little voice she had. The answer was yes, but the word sat like a boulder at the bottom of her stomach.
“You can keep them if you like.” His hand skimmed up slowly from the top of her foot along the wool. “In fact, I might like—”
“Take them off,” she squeaked, desperate to feel his touch on her skin.
“As you command.” Azrion hooked fingers into the top of her stocking without moving her shift and slowly rolled it down her calf.
She’d thought the office blazingly hot moments before, but cool air hit her skin and raised gooseflesh all the way to her toes as Azrion carefully peeled the material off her.
Kat held her breath until it was done, exhaling like she’d been hiding in someone’s cupboard with half their best silverware in a sack. The relief of his fingers on her bare ankle felt almost as criminal.
But of course there was another fucking sock.
Azrion was even more meticulous with this one, working one-handed. He had interesting control over his claws, letting just one grow out enough to trace her shin bone behind the sock being stripped. Her toes curled and her hips squirmed at the tickle.
Legs finally bare, Kat took another gasping breath. Azrion looked too pleased, gripping the desk again as he bent closer. She could kick him quite easily, and the thought made her giggle, which drove his white brows up. “Are you ticklish?”
Kat’s muscles tightened, shoulders coming in as she flexed her palms against the desk behind her. “Maybe. No one’s ever really…touched me.”
“Hmm.” Azrion slipped a hand around her ankle and skimmed it up her calf, and she bit back the sound she wanted to make, some sort of obscene moan surely, but too much for such a simple gesture.
“We can do better than that,” he said, cresting behind her knee.
His hand arced downward, fingers spreading as they glided over her thigh then squeezed when they could go no farther.
Kat huffed out a small sound, fighting the urge to fidget as she closed her eyes, but that only intensified the feeling of her flesh being kneaded.
He drew his hand back while the other took the same route on her other leg, and the sensation was overwhelming.
Her breaths came quicker, and her knees no longer felt compelled to touch, and she had the wild idea to demand he remove the rest of her clothes.
In one quick move, Azrion tugged her closer to him. Kat gasped, slipping down to her elbows as her feet flailed at the desk’s edge. “Az!” she hissed as her shift abandoned its one duty and slid up her thighs.
The demon froze, mouth open, fangs about to graze her knee. His grip was tight, but he waited, tongue peeking out and sliding over his teeth.
Oh, fuck did she want that tongue on her instead.
“Go on,” she murmured, and teeth and lips found her flesh, trailing up the inside of her thigh and urging her legs wider.
She let her head fall back, tensing her arms beneath her, the tickle almost too much as fingers finally slipped under her shift and found her belly.
Her head snapped up to see Azrion doubled over her, sinew in his back moving under the dim lights, his mouth working over one thigh and then the other, eyes closed and yet more focused than she’d seen when he was pouring over runes and spells.
Fingers hooked into the waist of her underwear, but they didn’t pull.
“Tell me,” he said up against her skin.
Her throat went thick with all the words she couldn’t say.
“Command me,” he growled into her flesh.
“Undress me,” she breathed so quietly she was afraid he wouldn’t hear, but the slip of fabric against her skin was confirmation enough.
Oh no. All the shittiest parts of her brain woke at once the moment she’d been bared. She hadn’t noticed amid all the touching and kissing, but now it was painfully apparent: everything was very wet.
Kat clamped her knees back together, nearly catching Azrion as he was pulling away, another attempt at a slow undressing thwarted. He blinked but didn’t let go. “Kat?”
Her skirt had bunched itself up on her hips, but she had her thighs locked together tightly, the last barrier of protection trapped between her knees, and…oh, gods now the entire inside of her thighs was slick too. She whimpered and squeezed her eyes shut.
“What’s wrong, darling.” Azrion let go, spreading his hands gently on her shins, the animal craving gone from his voice, and a comforting tone in its place.
She shook her head, incapable of saying. The moss had made her forget to be humiliated in the cave, and his own mess was at least equitable, but now she was about to show him.
Azrion wrapped an arm around her legs and pressed his chest to her shins, setting his chin on her knees.
She finally peeked at him resting there, gazing down at her with worry and something else in the blackness of his eyes, something wholly sweet that she wanted to gobble up and keep inside her forever.
No one had ever looked at her like that, with worry that only wanted the truth instead of demanding she deny anything was amiss.
And really, the situation was at least a little funny, so she cracked half a smile and sputtered out, “It’s a little slippery down there.”
“Oh!” Azrion cracked a whole smile, brows shifting humorously over his forehead. “Well, I would certainly hope so. How else am I to know if I’m getting anything right?” He walked his fingers down from her knee along her thigh, creeping closer and closer to said slippery bits.
She tried to turn off the part of her mind that calculated outcomes and somehow always decided the worst would win out.
“But,” Azrion said, fingers stopping, “as I said, only on your command will I continue.”
Kat huffed, arms shaking beneath her. “Then…continue,” she said meekly, but at least the word came out.
Like he was afraid she would change her mind, he snatched her underwear from between her tentative knees and pulled them off so quickly she barely noticed they’d gone.
That was a tiny relief followed by a massive swell of anxiety as he bent his head toward her legs again.
But he kissed away the worst of it, and she let her legs fall apart as his hands no longer tickled but teased, drawing out anticipation as they sank toward her middle.
Kat’s elbows slid against the desk, and she eased onto her back, taking a full breath as she stared up at the ceiling.
Lavender lights danced across it like constellations come to life, hypnotizing and comforting.
Touches grazed her belly and hips, dipping closer and closer until fingers swiped over her center.
Kat tensed, and there was a murmured question about comfort up against her thigh.
When she affirmed, she was rewarded with another touch and he with less of a twitch, and finally pressure as her wetness was dipped into and drawn across her, lighting up her insides and pulling a moan of delight from the depths she could no longer keep hidden.
Azrion groaned up against her thigh, nipping at her skin as he rubbed slow circles between her legs.
Kat’s breath went shallow, and her legs shook.
He stroked her shin until she calmed, but then Azrion’s head dipped farther down, and he placed his thumb on her mound, gently stretching her skin upward.
Kat gasped and sat upright, snapping her knees together and trapping his neck between her thighs. “What are you doing?”
Azrion coughed, and she eased up only to reach for one of his horns and tug his head away, knees snapping shut in its wake.
“I’m just getting a better look, darling.” There was a hint of whininess to his voice, his head forcibly cocked under the hold she had on his horn. “There’s something different about you.”
Her stomach flipped. “No there isn’t. I even asked a woman once who worked at a brothel. They’re all unique looking, but that’s normal.”
“I mean because you’re human.” His eyes softened, and he tipped his head up when she let him go. “I don’t have experience with your kind, so this is all new for me too, and demon women don’t have…” He slid a thumb between two knuckles in a gesture she couldn’t comprehend.
“What in the hells does that mean?”
Azrion shrugged. “I don’t know. You won’t let me explore.”