She broke me to pieces in a way that only she seems to be able to do, built my pain as beautifully as a cathedral, and then took a wrecking ball to it with pleasure.
Then she held me while I sobbed for hours.
My feelings are so tangled up inside. I didn’t expect to find parts of Malone that I like, that I am drawn to. Not beyond the physical. But, now that we’re several days into this, I am faced with the fact that she’s more complicated than I imagined. Ruthless and ambitious, yes, but if she was really the monster I’ve believed all this time, she wouldn’t have blinked at taking the throne from her sister back in Sabine Valley. She wouldn’t care about her team the way she obviously does. She wouldn’t carefully manipulate people who test her, rather than simply eliminating them and making a brutal example to foster fear so no one will challenge her. She’s a master chess player.
The two versions of her do not overlap. Not really. She can be cruel, but there seems to be a method to it. There’s a reason she chose my mother’s territory to come after, a reason the people here seem to welcome her in a way that I know they didn’t welcome my mother. My grandmother admitted as much a long time ago.
So what is true?
I can’t ask Malone. I’m not ready to. The moment I rip the veil off what this is, it’s over. Maybe I’m just as much a monster as I believed her to be, because I don’t want to give up the few short days I have left with her. No matter my goals at the beginning of this, it was doomed from the start.
I can’t kill her.
I sure as hell can’t fall for her.
There is no happy medium where I release the past and fall into her arms. There is no future where she catches me. These two weeks were merely to satisfy her curiosity. When they’re over, this is over.
Malone shifts at my back, pressing her hand to my stomach and bringing me back more firmly against her. “You’re thinking very hard over there.”
“Guilty,” I whisper.
The barest hesitation. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about it. “No.” No, there are better options for us. Last night she made me forget. Hell, every time she touches me, she makes me forget. If I’m a traitorous daughter, I might as well embrace it until the bitter end.
I turn in her arms and am already moving down her body before she rolls onto her back. I kneel between her spread thighs and hesitate, waiting for her to stop me. But Malone just looks at me with green eyes gone almost soft from sleep. She looks soft right now. Soft and rumpled and too beautiful for words.
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.