Chapter 21 Aurora
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Aurora
My heart hammers so loudly I can hear it in my ears.
Dim amber light pools around us, the polished mahogany bar slick with sweat and spilled whiskey.
I know this is a bad idea.
Kissing my older boss after also having fun with his friends is a terrible plan… but how can I resist when he keeps looking at me like he wants to devour me whole?
As the kiss intensifies, his fingertips press into the small of my back, anchoring me, and I taste the sharp sweetness of black coffee on his breath.
The rough edge of his stubble scrapes my lower lip as he tilts my head, deepening the kiss until I’m gasping.
His hands roam, fingertips trailing sparks down my arms, then looping around my waist so firmly I can feel the ridges of his palms against my ribs. He pulls me impossibly closer, body to body, and I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
The coarse linen of my top crumples under his grip. A low, guttural sound rumbles in his throat, vibrating through my chest.
“Fuck, Aurora…” he breathes against me, sounding like a man who has finally lost control.
My pulse spikes. He slides his thumbs along the curve beneath my bra strap, just grazing skin, barely there, and I shiver against him. He smiles against my mouth, that wicked tilt to his lips that sparks both longing and warning.
“You like that,” he murmurs.
I should deny it, but heat floods my cheeks. I throw caution to the wind. I cup his shoulders, push him closer, and when he guides me back until my hip bangs the edge of the bar, I don’t resist.
“Up,” he orders, rougher now.
My legs wrap around him as I climb onto the bar’s lacquered surface. The polished wood presses cold against my thighs while he stands between my knees, the bar’s sconce light outlining his broad shoulders and the hard line of his jaw.
His hands greedily trace the outside of my legs, thumbs brushing over my inner thighs with a slowness that makes nerves ignite.
“You’re shaking,” he whispers, eyes locked on mine, dark and glinting. His fingers tease the zipper of my jeans, but don’t pull.
I dig my nails into his shoulders, ready to beg him to stop, to slow down, but he crushes my lips with another kiss, fiercer than the last. His arms tighten around me, hauling me flush to his chest. The friction of his hard length against my thigh sends a fresh wave of warmth straight to my core.
I bury my face in the crook of his neck, desperate to anchor myself, to keep from flying apart in the onslaught of sensation.
I can smell the faint sharpness of his aftershave, the trace of the sweetness of cedar.
My hands are trembling, and I hope he can’t tell as he finally frees me from my jeans.
I yelp, startled, as the chilly air kisses my bare skin. He swallows the noise with his tongue, then breaks the kiss to look at me, that gaze like a hand braced flat against my sternum. It pinions me. My shirt is rucked up to my chin.
“Ryder,” I gasp, trembling.
The jeans pool on the floor, and my panties vanish in a swift motion of his fingers. Then he descends in front of me.
“Oh shit, Ryder, are you…?”
Fuck. His mouth is on me, tongue parting my folds, and electricity crackles up my spine. Every stroke of his tongue fans flames across my nerves. My hands flatten on the bar, nails gouging shallow crescents into the wood.
“Oh shit,” I moan, hips arching.
He alternates between circling my clit with feather-light licks and slow, pressing sucks that have me teetering on the edge. The world narrows to his mouth, the thunder in my veins, and the frantic drumming of my heart.
“Don’t stop,” I beg as the pressure of pleasure builds. “Never stop.”
He groans, the sound vibrating through me, and the overwhelming reality of what I’ve done, what I’m doing, stings like cold water in my chest, but I can’t stop now.
It’s not that I’m powerless; it’s that every bit of power I have is fused into this slipstream of sensation and the bright, burning focus Ryder gives me.
His hands massage my thighs, and his mouth is wicked, powerful, relentless.
I’m vaguely aware that someone could walk in at any second, but the idea only makes me tremble more.
I fist his hair, tugging, anchoring myself to him, but I’m floating miles above the bar, nothing but pulse and heat and reckless, tingling want threading me together.
Just when my vision flashes white, he backs away, lips glistening. I’m left trembling, clinging to the bar’s edge as pleasure recedes like a tide. He zips his jeans down in one swift motion, face dark with need. There’s a deliciously gleeful spark in his eyes.
And I now need to play with him the way he did me.
I drop to my knees, the floor cool under me. He presses between my thighs, and the tip of him grazes my lips. I flick out a lick of my tongue, just to tease him a little.
He hisses through his teeth, pupils blown, and I savor the sound. I lick him again, slower this time, dragging the flat of my tongue from root to tip before taking him into my mouth, savoring the weight and heat.
He fists my hair, gently at first, then tighter as I hollow my cheeks around him.
The taste of him is dizzying, bitter and salty and utterly Ryder.
I work him with my tongue and lips, watching the way his jaw clenches, the way his free hand goes white-knuckled on the bar, as if he’s keeping himself from shattering.
He curses, a low bark of “fuck” that sounds half wild, and it rips through me, raw and honest. I can tell he’s seconds from giving in, but he holds himself in check, jaw flexed, head thrown back.
I ease up, letting him slip from my lips, and look up at him with one eyebrow cocked. I stand, body humming, ready for him.
He watches me with that feral hunger, then gestures to the barstools. I straddle one, legs parting for him. His strong hands grip my hips and lift me, repositioning until I’m on the very edge, back arched, aching for him to fuck me.
“I can’t believe you’re real,” he growls.
He rolls his thumb over my hipbone and hitches me closer.
When he thrusts inside, the shock of it, full and overwhelming, knocks all sound out of my lungs.
The world contracts to pain, heat, the pulse of his body inside mine. I swear we’re suspended in time, everything else in the universe shrunk to just this, his arms caging me, the taste of whiskey and sweat and desperation, the scent of us shrouding us. I hold his gaze as he moves.
It’s… exquisite.
Relentless. Each thrust builds a pressure in me that’s both pleasure and ache, the two blurring until I can’t distinguish one from the other.
He buries his face in my neck, exhaling a shaky breath, body straining, trying to crawl inside my skin. I grip his hips, nails digging in, and match him for rhythm, for intensity. It’s a battle and a surrender, a silent conversation in motion and sweat. The bar trembles under us.
Glasses shudder as he slams his palm down, knocking over an abandoned shot glass. The clatter is sharp and bright and thrilling. There is no room for shame, not even the polite kind—every part of me is awake, howling.
I surrender to him and, at the same time, I take what I need. And what I need is more. I pull him closer, thighs clamped, and ride the heat climbing through my gut. When his hand snakes up, tugging my head back, the nerves in my neck sing.
"You need to come for me," he says, teeth gritting, and the command settles between my lungs, heavier than gravity. “Then I’m going to fuck you from behind.”
I can’t talk; I can only hold. The tension coils and tightens, and then, blinding, it snaps. The barstool threatens to topple, and I scramble for balance, but Ryder holds me still, bracing my back as the whole world blows apart behind my eyes.
I'm nearly sobbing with relief and pleasure, my body liquefied, trembling. I want to bask in it, float on the aftershocks forever, but Ryder barely gives me a moment.
He pulls out, spins me, bends me over the bar, and hikes my hips up so fast I don’t even have breath to react. I feel the brush of his jeans against my skin, the dry, rough heat of his hands clutching my waist, and then he’s inside me again, deeper than before.
I arch my back, the wood biting into my sternum, my cheek pressed flat to the cool bar. He moves, an animal rhythm, like he’s going to fuck the words right out of me. He gathers my hair in a fist, forces my head back, and I moan, sharp and unguarded, my voice echoing through the empty bar.
I can’t see anything but blurred bottles and streaks of light; I can’t even say his name. The world is awash in sensation: the creak of the bar, the slap of skin, the feral growls in his throat turning every thrust into a promise.
I’m going to splinter apart. I want to, and when that second orgasm rolls through me, I do: everything shatters and reforms, the bright white of it lancing up my spine and through my skull.
The bar shakes so hard that bottles topple behind us, thudding to the floor, but I’m gone, so far gone it feels my soul is a fistful of confetti scattered over a canyon.
Ryder’s grip on my hips bruises as he slams in deeper.
My mind goes white. My vision, blue spots, the taste of metal and salt. He fucks me with purpose, with bone-deep intent. No pretense. He wants to fill me, mark me, and when his hand wraps around the curve of my hip, thumb digging in, I swear I can feel the shape of his will in my bones.
His climax hits fast and ruthless. He groans, hoarse, and holds himself inside, shuddering, rutting once more before collapsing forward so his chest braces the length of my back. I taste blood from biting my tongue.
Or maybe I’m tasting the sharp, electric inside of his name. Ryder, Ryder, Ryder, pinging around the hollow of my mind like a coin flung at a bell.
For a while, we don’t move. Just breathe.
Our bodies stacked, trembling, softening around each other. The bar is a mess behind us, but none of it matters. The only thing that exists is the heavy drag of his breath against my shoulder and the way his hands are still gripping my hips like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
Slowly, he eases his hold.
There’s no wildness now.
No feral edge.
Just heat.
His thumb brushes a strand of hair off my cheek. It’s such a small gesture compared to what we just did that it almost undoes me.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod, throat tight. “Yeah.”
The amber light catches the line of his jaw. The faint bruise of my nails along his shoulder.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” I say, though my body is still humming.
His mouth curves slightly. “Probably not.”
“But you’re not sorry.”
“No.”
The honesty is immediate. Unflinching.
Neither am I.
I slide off the bar, legs a little unsteady, and reach for my jeans. He watches me the whole time, eyes dark but calmer now. Controlled again… mostly.
When I pull my shirt back down, he steps in close enough that the space between us disappears again, but this time he doesn’t grab me.
“You know this changes things,” he says.
I meet his gaze. “Everything has already changed. You know that.”
A muscle ticks in his cheek.
“I don’t regret you,” I say, before I can lose my nerve.
His eyes flicker. “I don’t do casual.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t compete.”
“I’m not a prize.”
His gaze hardens. “You’re not something I’m willing to lose either.”
Then he exhales.
“Founders Day,” he says. “We do it right.”
I nod. “Our way.”
“Our way,” he agrees.
And as I step back, gathering my things, heart still racing, one truth settles deep in my bones:
This wasn’t a mistake.
It was a line crossed.
And neither of us is stepping back over it.