by Katee Robert
I’m a fool because I don’t want to stop this. I want her to keep looking at me like that, as if she cares. As if I’m hers and she’s mine.
Unforgivable thoughts, but I lean down and kiss her stomach before they can take root. They’ll still be there when this is all over. They can wait for now.
I’m rationalizing and I know it. It’s enough to say I want this, so I’ll take it. There’s time for recriminations and doubts later.
“Aurora.”
I ignore the question in her voice just like I ignore the half a million doubts circling my brain. But Malone isn’t the type to let something go once she’s set her mind on it. She clasps my chin gently. “We should talk.”
“Not yet.” I feel my lower lip quivering despite my best efforts. “Please not yet.”
She hesitates, and for once, her thoughts are written across her face for me to see. Conflict. Warring desires. My confused feelings reflected right back at me. Finally, she nods. “Before the end of this, then.”
Relief makes me a little light-headed. “Yes, before the end of it.” Cowardly. So fucking cowardly of me not to just deal with this now, to grab as much light and pleasure as I can handle before reality crashes back in. Before I have to answer for what I’ve done…and what I haven’t.
Even if the only person I have to answer to is myself.
Malone releases me, and I keep kissing my way down her stomach. She lets me urge her thighs wider, lets me dip down and drag my tongue over her pussy. It strikes me all over again how she took care of me last night. My needs, my emotions, my comfort. She put all of it before her own. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it at all.
But I want to make her feel good right now, to lose myself in the taste and feel of her until it washes away everything else.
She lets me lead. As I grip her thighs and suck on her clit, I distantly recognize that she’s taking care of me even now, offering me an escape I desperately need. My heart gives a dull thud and then another. Gods, I can’t fall for Malone. I can’t. Everything else is forgivable, but not that.
I’m terrified that it’s too late.
That maybe it was too late the moment I agreed to this assignation.
I push two fingers into her, chasing her pleasure the same way I chase forgetting. She arches her back, and I find myself captivated by the sight of her. The arch of her spine. The way her breasts shake with each ragged exhale. Most of all, the way she holds my gaze as I taste her. It’s so tempting to close my eyes, to shut out this vulnerability. Except… I don’t want to.
I pick up my pace, focusing on winding her pleasure tighter, on driving her higher. I want to see her come undone; I want to be the one to cause it.
I want her to remember these two weeks forever.
When Malone orgasms, it’s as beautiful and powerful as she seems to do everything. She barely slumps back to the mattress before she’s tugging me up her body and kissing me as if this is the last time. As if she cherishes me. As if she never wants this to end.
She pulls away a little. “Aurora.”
“Please.” I don’t know what I’m begging for. I just know we can’t follow the road where her tone leads. “Please not yet.”
She exhales slowly and leans up to press her forehead to mine. The contact grounds me even as part of me continues to spiral out of control. Finally, she gives me another long kiss and eases back. “Let’s run you a bath.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’re going to be extremely sore today. The bath will help.” She gives a ghost of her normal cruel smile, though her eyes remain warm. “Otherwise you’re going to be limping around for days, and neither one of us wants that.”
Now that she mentions it, I am incredibly stiff and sore from the scene last night. I grimace. “You didn’t miss an inch of skin, did you?”
“No.” She carefully nudges me off her. “It’s what you needed.”
I can’t argue that because it’s the truth. It is what I needed. I sit up and look at her. It feels strange to say this but… “Thank you. For last night. You didn’t have to do that, any of it.”
“Aurora.” She cups my face and presses a quick kiss to my lips. She’s gone before I can sink into it, climbing to her feet and heading for the bathroom. “Don’t you understand by now? It’s my pleasure to take care of your needs. You’re mine, after all.”
Only for another week or so.
I don’t say it aloud. We both are in this strange place and thrusting forth the reminder that this is nearly halfway over isn’t what I want to do. I don’t think it’s what she wants, either, though I’m scared to try to guess. Instead, I let myself play her words over and over in my head as I listen to her get the water running in the bath.
You’re mine, after all.
It feels right, which means it feels wrong. How can I simultaneously want to be Malone’s but also acknowledge that she’s the one who put my mother in a coma that she was destined to never wake up from? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Malone returns a few minutes later and looks down at me. “Can you walk, or do you need me to carry you?”
I can walk. There’s no doubt about it. I’ll probably be limping just like she projected, but I am capable of it. I lick my lips, feeling suddenly unsure. “What if I want you to carry me?”
She gives a smile that’s nothing like her usually icy expression. It’s warm and soft and makes my chest give another of those dull thuds. “I’d like that, too.” She carefully scoops me up and gives a sympathetic look when I hiss at the touch of her arm against the back of my thighs. “I know it hurts. It will feel better in a little bit.”
She carries me into the bathroom and sets me into the tub with the utmost care. Malone grabs a hair tie and gently pulls my hair back and fastens it out of the way, allowing me to sink into the warmth of the water. She presses her fingers lightly to my temples and starts a slow massage that has me melting even further.
We sit like that for a long time, Malone carefully massaging my head and neck and the water doing the rest of the work. I feel ridiculously pampered and cared for, and it only makes my chest ache more. I love this. Last night and this morning. The kink and the sex and the comfort. Truth be told, I even love our conversations. Sometimes it’s verbally sparring and sometimes it’s simply getting a glimpse at how her brain works. She’s magnificent. A part of my soul recognizes something in hers that feels like kinship, even if I can’t fully describe why. “Malone?”
“Mmm?”
But words fail me. I really am a coward, after all. I don’t want to say or do anything to break moment of calm, of peace. I’m greedy for as many moments as I can have, because eventually it will end.
The balance will tip, the sky will fall, and reality will come rushing in.
25
Malone
Aurora and I settle into a smooth rhythm over the next week, interrupted only by the check-in that Hades insisted on. It goes off quickly and without an issue, but it’s still strange to have Allecto prowling around my house as if she expects to find evidence of nefarious activities. She and Aurora disappear into the spare bedroom for twenty minutes, and when they come back out again, Allecto announces herself satisfied and Aurora has shadows in her eyes. She doesn’t want to talk about it.
She never wants to talk about it.
I leave her in my bed each morning and head down to work for a few hours. We meet in the gym and spar. She wins a few matches; I win more. Then we end up back in my penthouse, fucking until we’re too exhausted to move. She’s still a little brat, but the edge of hatred is gone, leaving something warm and almost soft in its place.
It should be perfect.
This is what I want, after all. A slow and steady build into something more. A chance to pave the way for this to extend beyond our deadline.
But after ten days, there’s no escaping the truth.
Aurora is holding something back.
I have no business demanding mor
e of her, especially so soon, but sometimes she looks at me and gets this strange expression in her dark eyes. It’s not grief. I’ve seen her grieving, and the night I beat her with a cane and then shattered her with pleasure seems to have blunted the edge of her sorrow. No, this is something else.
I’ve never met a mystery I was able to leave alone, and this is no exception. The stakes are too high. I want her. Whatever she’s hiding is preventing me from having her entirely.
It comes to a head three nights before the end of the assignation. I can feel the seconds slipping through my fingers with each tick of the clock, and it puts me in a foul mood. “Aurora.”
“Hmmm?” She looks over from where she’s been contemplating the fire crackling in the fireplace.
Maybe I’ve been going about this wrong. Wanting her to give herself to me without being vulnerable in turn isn’t going to work. I should have known that from the start. I take a slow breath. “I care about you.”
She tenses as if she’s going to jump off the couch and flee the room. “Don’t say that.”
My patience threatens to snap, but I hold it together through sheer force of will. “I realize that things are complicated between us, but I’m not misreading things when I say we’ve both had a lot of fun since you’ve been here.”
She won’t quite meet my gaze. “Yes, we’ve had fun.”
“More than fun.” A small part of me tries to put on the brakes before I push us into something we can’t take back, but I’ve never been good at sitting still when the prize I want is before me. “You’ve enjoyed your time with me.”
“Malone, please.” There it is, that expression I can’t define. “Let’s just enjoy the next three days.”
I should let it go. I already know I won’t. I lean forward and try to get her to meet my gaze. “What if this extended past the next three days?”
Aurora clears her throat. “Why did you leave Sabine Valley?”
This is what’s bothering her? What she’s been chewing on for the last week? No, it doesn’t make any sense. We’ve talked about this already, or at least touched on it enough that it’s not a mystery.
This is just the lead-in question to circle whatever is bothering her. With that in mind, I answer honestly and without hesitation. “Because if I didn’t, I might have ended up fighting my sister for the Amazon throne.” I catch her look and shrug. “I was never going to be content with second place, but I love my sister and I love my people, so I chose to leave to spare us all that.”
“Couldn’t you have just not tried to stage a coup?”
“I am ambitious. I always have been.” She’s still looking at me like I’m speaking Latin, so I try to elaborate. “My mother was the most powerful person I’ve ever known. Sabine Valley has fail-safes in place to ensure the territories don’t go to war, but there are a thousand things that could happen to spell the end of an heir’s life that have nothing to do with violence. She wanted to ensure our people would be cared for regardless, which meant she raised us both to rule. But my sister was healthy and strong. There was no need for the spare.”
“She raised you to be a queen and then gave you second place.”
“Yes.” I don’t begrudge her that. Her plans made sense from a tactical point of view, and they ensured the Amazons would remain under a strong leader. If I got the raw end of the deal, I’ve never held it against her. I would have done the same in her position. “I stayed in Sabine Valley until Aisling had her third daughter, Winry, but the second-in-command position chafed. And my sister might love me as much as I love her, but she doesn’t trust me entirely.”
“Can you blame her?”
I arch an eyebrow. “Of course not. I wouldn’t sleep well with someone like me as next in line for the throne, either.” I sit back and pick up my wine glass. “It was better for everyone that I leave.”
“Why Carver City?” She’s still not looking directly at me, still edging this conversation in such a way that I’m not sure of our destination.
Oh well. I resign myself to being along for the ride. If she needs to talk this out, it’s the very least I can do to indulge her. “Of the two cities closest to Sabine Valley, Olympus is too entrenched in its leadership. There’s no way I could come in as an outsider and end up as one of the Thirteen.” And no way that I would be content as one of the bit players beneath Zeus. “Carver City offered more opportunities.”
Aurora pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “Why this territory?”
There’s no harm in telling her. The news is two decades old, after all. “It had the most potential for growth—and the weakest leader. The people were unhappy; they needed someone strong to give them a path forward.”
She inhales sharply. “I suppose that makes sense.”
It does, but what doesn’t make sense is her reaction to this mundane information. I frown. “Aurora, what does this have to do with continuing this thing between us past the end of the contracted assignation?”
“I…” Aurora takes a deep breath. “I heard that you almost killed her when you took over.”
It feels like there’s a question within her statement, but I can’t figure out the flavor of it. I debate for a moment but decide to answer instead of pushing her. This time. But I want an explanation, and I want it soon. “I dislike coups that come in the form of a blade in the back. It’s cleaner to have a fight for it out in the open. I declared my intentions to take over, and Amelia chose not to take me seriously. She could have left, and I wouldn’t have touched her, but she didn’t. We fought. I won. It’s as simple and complicated as that.”
“You almost killed her.”
I study her. “Where is all this concern for something that happened twenty years ago coming from?”
“You had her down and beaten, and you still chose to keep going.” She’s still not looking at me, her voice low and fierce.
“An Amazon doesn’t leave an enemy at their back,” I say softly, my mind racing. Why is she so worried about the former leader of this territory? It’s no coincidence. Aurora’s anger is too personal to be on behalf of some faceless stranger. No, there’s something else going on here. But what? Aurora was maybe ten or so when that fight happened. There were no children involved; neither Amelia nor her inner circle had kids. I would have known.
“I see,” she whispers.
I cup her face and gently guide her to look at me. Part of me wants to let this go, to kiss her and distract us both until whatever lurks beneath the surface of this conversation stays locked away. I can’t shake the feeling that this revelation will crush the fragile bloom of possibility we’ve nurtured the last week.
It’s not in my nature to shy away from an ugly truth, let alone a fight. I search Aurora’s pretty face, looking for answers she’s determined to hide from me. Finally, I ask the question I know, deep down in my poisoned heart, that will break us. “Who was she to you?”
The silence stretches thin between us. Aurora shudders out a sigh. “My mother.”
Shock has me dropping my hand. “Impossible.”
“It’s really not.”
I’m already shaking my head. “She had no family. It was the first thing I looked into when I got into the territory.”
Aurora goes back to staring at the fire, her expression curiously blank. “I lived with my grandmother. She didn’t want the dangerous elements of her life to touch me. At least not when I was a child. I doubt the same would have held true if she were still ruling when I turned eighteen.”
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this revelation. Twenty years is a long time. I barely remember what Amelia looked like, let alone down to the kind of details that I could hold up to Aurora as a comparison. I remember she was a slim Black woman, but that’s it. Her features have blurred over time, and I never spent any effort into solidifying them. Why would I bother?
Now, I wish I had.
“I didn’t know,” I find myself saying faintly.
&nbs
p; “Would it have mattered if you did?”
A comforting lie might work in my favor right now, but I don’t make a habit of untruthfulness. Not with the people I care about. “No.” The die was already cast the moment I chose this territory to make my own. Amelia was a shitty leader, sloppy and far too willing to give in to excess and power. Even if I hadn’t been the one to take her out, someone else would have stepped in before too long. She was an opportunity just waiting to be plucked.
I can’t say that to Aurora. Not now, knowing the woman was her mother.
Aurora lets out a painful laugh. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
Several things become clear all at once. “That’s why you made the deal with Hades. For her.” When Amelia was put in the hospital in a coma, no one thought she’d wake up. She’s been medically brain dead since about a week after our fight. I know. I checked. For Aurora to have made a deal that desperate, there could only be one cause. “You’re the one who moved her to a private clinic.”
“Yes.”
I look at her closely, my chest getting strangely heavy. “Is she still alive, Aurora?” If one can call her existence life. It’s been argued either way by medical professionals, but I land on the negative. I went to visit her once before she was moved from the hospital, and the spark that made her Amelia had been extinguished. Only the shell remained.
But Aurora came to me grieving someone close to her.
“No. Not anymore. I made the call before I agreed to this assignation.”
Fuck.
She kept her mother alive for twenty years, sold herself to Hades to do it, and all for nothing. The woman never woke up. She was never going to. Gods, this situation is so fucked. “I’m sorry my actions hurt you.”
At that, she flares to life. “That is the shittiest of apologies. You’re not sorry you hurt her.”
I won’t lie to her, not even in this. “No, I’m not. She was a weak leader, petty and cruel, and if I didn’t take control, someone else would have staged a coup. Everyone looked at her and saw an opportunity.”
