Chapter 6 Thraka #2
Haven't been touched like this in... years? Ever? Battle touches, yes. Sparring and fighting and the casual physicality of the war band. But this gentle exploration as she pushes my shirt off my shoulders feels entirely different.
"You're covered in scars," she whispers.
"Proof of survival."
Her fingers trace a particularly large one across my ribs. "What happened here?"
"Troll. Bad day. I won."
"Of course you did." Something fond in her voice that makes my pulse kick. Her palm flattens over my heart. "You're so warm."
"You're cold." I cover her hand with mine, savoring the contrast—her cool fingers against my perpetually overheated skin. "Always cold in this building. Like a tomb. How do you work here without freezing?"
"Energy efficient temperature control." Even now, even half-undressed and breathing hard, she can't help correcting me with corporate speak. "Sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal setting for productivity and operational costs."
I snort, squeezing her hand gently. "Torture. Complete torture. Your people would last maybe two hours in the war camps before demanding seventeen blankets and something called 'central heating.'"
"Drama, oh." The last word comes out breathy because I've pulled her forward, sealing my mouth over the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
Salt. Lavender. The pulse point jumping under my tongue.
Perfect.
I scrape my teeth over the spot experimentally and she jerks, nails digging into my chest.
"Thraka."
"Yes?"
"That's, you can't—" She struggles for words while I work my way up her throat. "People will see."
"Good."
"Not good. Very bad. Terrible." Her voice wavers between stern and breathless, fighting for control even as her body leans into mine. "We agreed to discretion. We made an explicit verbal agreement about maintaining professional boundaries and—"
I pull back enough to meet her eyes, searching her flushed face, reading the contradiction between her words and the way her fingers are still gripping my shoulders. "You want me to stop?"
She bites her lip, internal battle playing out across her expressive face. Professional Orla warring with the woman who tastes like reckless abandon and sounds like temptation when she moans.
"No," she finally admits. "But nothing visible above the collar line."
Compromise. I can work with that.
I map the territory below her collar instead, finding sensitive spots that make her breath catch. The hollow of her throat. The upper curve of her breast where it swells above the white undergarment.
That elaborate contraption has to go. Immediately.
I need to see her, touch her properly without barriers of engineered cotton and underwire between us.
"How does this—" I tug experimentally at the fabric, searching for some obvious mechanism, some clear point of failure in the construction. There has to be a logical way to remove it, but the design makes no sense. No laces. No obvious clasps on the front. "Where's the fastening?"
"Hooks in the back," she says, slightly breathless, amusement threading through her voice despite the flush spreading across her cheeks. "Three of them."
Back. Of course. Why would humans make anything simple?
I reach around her, pulling her flush against my chest. She wraps her legs around my waist instinctively, locking her ankles. The pressure makes me groan.
The hooks are even more complicated than buttons but I manage through sheer determination.
The fabric loosens and falls away.
"Oh my gods," I breathe.
She's perfect. Soft and curving and entirely different from anything in my previous experience. I want to touch everything at once, taste every inch, figure out exactly what makes her fall apart.
"Stop staring," she repeats, but her voice lacks conviction.
"Never." I cup one breast, testing the weight. Soft. Warm. The peak tightens against my palm and she shivers.
Responsive.
I brush my thumb deliberately across the tightened peak, applying just enough pressure to make her nerve endings sing, and she gasps sharply, her head falling back to expose the elegant line of her throat.
There. That exact sound, that involuntary catch of breath, that wordless surrender. The precise reaction I've been craving to hear again, to catalogue and memorize and figure out how to recreate on demand.
I do it again, watching her face. Learning. Cataloging. She bites her lip to stay quiet but small whimpers escape anyway.
Not enough.
I lower my head and seal my mouth over her breast.
She cries out, immediately clapping a hand over her mouth. Her other hand fists in my hair, holding me there. Not pulling away. Pulling closer.
I lavish attention on sensitive flesh, alternating between gentle and rough. Sucking hard enough to mark then soothing with my tongue. Testing boundaries.
Every single time she tries to muffle herself, every time she bites down on those soft lips or presses her hand over her mouth to contain the sounds, I deliberately do something new—something different—something specifically designed to shatter that careful control and make silence absolutely impossible.
"The office," she gasps out when I bite down gently on the tender flesh, just enough pressure to send sparks through her nervous system. Her fingers tighten convulsively in my hair. "People will—people will hear. They'll know exactly what we're doing."
"Let them," I growl against her skin, the vibration making her shudder.
"Thraka—" she starts, probably about to launch into some perfectly logical argument about professional boundaries and workplace protocols and reputation management.
I switch to her other breast, giving it equal attention. She's writhing now, hips shifting against mine in a rhythm that's driving me toward the edge of control.
Need her closer. Need her now.
My hand slides up her thigh, pushing her skirt higher. Skin like silk under my rough palm. I reach the edge of her undergarment and pause.
"Yes?" I check, even though stopping now might actually kill me.
"Yes. God, yes. Please."
I slide my hand higher, cupping her through thin fabric that's damp with arousal.
She chokes on a moan.
Heat. Wet heat soaking through the barrier between my hand and where I want to touch her. I press my palm against her and she bucks, grinding down with desperate friction.
"Off," she demands, tugging at the waistband. "Get these off."
I hook my fingers in the elastic and pull down. She lifts her hips to help, legs still wrapped around me. The fabric catches on her shoes and she kicks them off impatiently.
Bare now except for the skirt bunched around her waist, pushed up high enough to give me access but still twisted around her middle like evidence of our urgency.
I slide one finger through slick folds, parting them slowly, exploring, and we both groan at the contact. The sound tears from my chest like a growl, vibrating against where my mouth is pressed to her throat.
"So wet," I rumble against her skin. Her pulse hammers under my lips. "This all for me, Little Manager?"
The evidence of her arousal coats my finger, hot and slick, and I have to pause for a moment just to process the reality of it, that I've reduced my perfectly controlled, perpetually composed Orla to this state of desperate need.
"Don't—" She breaks off when I find a particularly sensitive spot. "Don't be smug."
"Orla." I circle that spot slowly. "I'm going to be insufferably smug about this for weeks."
She would probably have a sharp response except I push one finger inside and her back arches, words dissolving into incoherent sounds.
Tight. Hot. Perfect.
I add a second finger, watching her face. She's flushed from her cheeks down to her chest, lips parted, eyes half-closed. Gorgeous in her abandon.
No corporate mask now. No professional distance. Just pleasure and need and the way she clenches around my fingers when I curl them just right.
"There," she gasps out, her voice breaking on the word, fingers clutching desperately at my shoulders. "Right, oh god, right there. Don't stop. Please don't stop."
The desperation in her tone, the raw need stripped of all her usual composure, sends a surge of satisfaction through me that's almost primitive.
I keep my rhythm steady, exactly where she needs it, watching every microexpression that flickers across her face, the way her eyebrows draw together in concentration, the slight parting of her lips as her breathing becomes more erratic, the flush spreading down her neck.
I wouldn't dream of stopping. Couldn't stop now even if the entire office burst through the door. She's right there, trembling on the precipice, and I'm going to push her over it.
I work her steadily, building rhythm. My thumb finds the bundle of nerves above where my fingers are buried and she keens, high and desperate.
"Too loud," I murmur, sealing my mouth over hers to swallow the sounds she can't contain.
She bites my lip in retaliation but kisses me back with bruising intensity. Her hips rock against my hand, chasing friction. Getting close.
I can feel it in the way she tightens, the way her breathing gets ragged, the way her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
Want to see her fall apart. Want to watch what she looks like when control splinters completely.
I break the kiss to watch her face, maintaining the steady rhythm that's driving her toward the edge.
"Look at me," I order.
Her eyes flutter open reluctantly, glazed and unfocused with pleasure but managing to lock onto mine. Even through the haze, I can see the struggle, her desperate need to maintain some shred of control warring with the unstoppable tide building inside her.
"That's it," I encourage, voice low and steady. "Good. Keep those eyes on me." I increase both pressure and speed, working her with deliberate precision, my thumb circling that sensitive bundle of nerves while my fingers stroke deep. "Let go, Orla. Stop fighting it. I've got you."
She shakes her head frantically, even now trying to resist the inevitable. "Can't," she gasps out between ragged breaths. "Too loud. I'll be—"
I lean in close, as my breath fans hot against the shell of her ear, my mouth brushing the sensitive skin there. My voice drops to a rumbling whisper. "Then bite me."
Her teeth sink into my shoulder with savage intensity the precise moment she comes apart, her whole body going rigid before dissolving into shuddering waves of release.
The pain-pleasure combination nearly undoes me. She shudders and clenches around my fingers, muffling her cries against my skin. I work her through it, drawing out every aftershock until she finally goes limp.
Trembling.
Satisfied.
Mine.
I withdraw carefully and she whimpers at the loss. Her forehead drops to my shoulder, breathing hard.
"That was..." She trails off.
"A successful reward?"
She huffs something that might be laughter. "Shut up."
I'm about to respond when the door handle jiggles.
We freeze.
Every muscle locks. Her eyes go wide, meeting mine in shared panic.
The handle turns again, meeting the resistance of the lock.
"Hello?" Male voice. Unfamiliar. "Is someone in there?"
The janitor.
Neither of us breathes.