Her face shifted as the words slipped beneath her armor.
“You don’t have to be nice,” I continued, keeping my voice low. “You don’t have to be calm. You don’t have to know what to do for Bliss. You don’t have to fix the house. You don’t have to explain why you need quiet. You came to my room, Aura. That’s enough.”
Her lips parted, but whatever she wanted to say got trapped behind the brightness in her eyes.
I pulled her closer until her chest struck mine and her breath spilled across my mouth. “But you don’t get to hide from me while you’re sitting on my lap.”
She stared at me before her mouth curved, slow and dangerous, because Aura would rather set herself on fire than admit a man had made her feel safe.
“You’re so sure you can handle me.”
I slid one hand beneath the sweatshirt and up her back, spreading my palm against warm skin. She shuddered, and I felt every inch of it.
“No,” I said, dragging my mouth over hers. “I’m sure you came here because you already know I can.”
She kissed me again, harder than before, but this time something else lived inside it. Aura would have bitten off my tongue if I called it softness. It was trust, messy, reluctant, and buried beneath all that heat.
Her body pressed into mine, her hips rocking with a needy little roll she tried to control until I took over, using my hands to guide her down against me.
She gasped into my mouth, and I swallowed the sound. Her eyes stayed on me, wide and affected, while her fingers found my face again and traced the line of my jaw with a touch that was unexpectedly gentle and searching.
The truth hung between us, too heavy to deny.
She stayed silent for a long moment before leaning closer, slowly and deliberately, and putting her mouth near my ear. Her breath was a hot, damp promise.
“Say my name.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
“Say it,” she breathed, her teeth grazing my earlobe. “While you’re inside me. I want to hear you ruin my own rules.”
That was the match.
I grabbed the hem of the sweatshirt and pulled it over her head in one rough motion. The fabric caught against her braids for a second before coming free, and she gasped, the sound swallowed by the quiet room.
I tossed it aside, and then my hands were against her bare skin, sliding up her ribs while my thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. She wore a thin, lacy bralette, and I could feel the delicate fabric beneath my palms and the hard points of her nipples pressing against it.
I bent my head and took one into my mouth through the lace, sucking hard.
She cried out, both hands flying into my hair and fisting in the strands. “Easton—”
“Again,” I growled against her, circling my tongue. “Say it again.”
“Easton, please—”
“Please what?”
I moved toward her other breast, biting gently through the lace as she arched into my mouth, a broken, beautiful mess.
“Use your words. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to stop talking and fuck me.”
A savage grin cut across my face, unseen in the dim light. “There’s my bitchy, needy girl,” I said as her command hung in the air, filthy and perfect, while I stripped her bare and broke another rule.
I leaned back with my hands against her hips and looked at her beneath the lamp’s gold light, which spilled across her naked skin, the sweat shining in the hollow of her throat, and the defiant, desperate set of her mouth.
She was completely bare now. The bralette was a forgotten scrap on the floor, my sweatshirt was gone, and nothing remained between us but heat, want, and the terrifying, beautiful truth she had let me see.
