by Virna DePaul
* * *
God, he tasted good, Aurora thought. Clean and warm and salty. She didn’t think she would ever get enough of his flavor. She swirled her tongue around the head and took him deep again.
Dante’s hips pushed up, seemingly of their own accord, and he flexed involuntarily in her mouth. Aurora held back a feline smile. It wouldn’t do to be smug at a moment like this, but she could tell she was taking him apart, piece by piece.
“Fuck,” Dante bit out. “Ah. No. Never mind.”
He was still on the phone and the thought of it was so hot to Aurora that she was already completely soaked through her panties. His free hand threaded through her hair and Aurora was as aroused by the pressure he put on the back of her head as she was by the tender way his fingers stroked at her scalp. She sucked him off for several wondrous minutes as he grew more and more intense. At one point, he tightened his hold on her hair, tried to pull her off of him. She sucked him in harder, farther down her throat.
* * *
Dante grunted, his eyes crossing at the sensations ricocheting through his body. Gio spoke in his ear again and the sound of that fucker’s voice suddenly enraged Dante. He looked down at the top of Aurora’s gorgeous head.
Was she acting out some erotic scenario that she had dreamed about doing to Gio? Was this on her bucket list? Was she still trying to bang Gio out of her system? It was something he could have ignored if not for the fact that Gio was fucking talking in his ear at that very second.
It sent the blood screaming through his body and broke something deep inside Dante. Whatever leash he’d been using to hold himself back snapped. He pulled Aurora off of him and stood, dragging her to her feet.
Fuck this shit.
Dante nearly smashed his phone in his grip. With his free hand, he flipped Aurora around so that she was bent over his desk. He grabbed the hem of her skirt and hauled it up over her hips. The white lace of her thong glowed against her golden skin and Dante yanked it out of the way.
“Yes,” she moaned quietly, the heat of her breath fogging the glossy finish of his desk as she laid her cheek on it.
He didn’t think anymore. There were no thoughts. There was only instinct. There was only need.
With Gio’s voice still buzzing in his ear, Dante reared back and pressed himself fully into Aurora, stretching her to the extreme. He knew it was just on the edge of pain and pleasure for her by the way she flexed and stretched her hands on the edge of the desk.
Dante held himself still, letting her acclimate, and then he reached forward and placed his palm around her mouth, keeping her moans inside. He might be willing to secretly fuck her with Gio on the phone. But he sure as hell wasn’t willing to let Gio hear her pleasure. Hell no. That was for Dante and Dante alone.
He pulled back and then slammed back into her wetness. Aurora’s back arched, her legs trembled, and he felt her mouth open against his palm.
And just like that, he didn’t give a fuck about Gio anymore. He had his hands full of Aurora and the only thing he could do was share his passion with her. The only thing he could do was to love her the only way she would let him.
“I can’t fucking talk right now, Gio,” he snapped into the phone and pressed end on the call, tossing the device away. He froze for a second. Shit, he shouldn’t have said Gio’s name. He gave it away. What if it took her out of the moment? Or worse, what if she was thinking about Gio now.
He thrust himself forward, almost savagely, and Aurora tore her mouth from his hand. She turned her head and looked him full in the eye.
During sex she was usually hazy, her eyes blurry and unfocused, but here she was, staring right through him. It sent a white hot thrill through Dante. She couldn’t be thinking of someone else when she was looking him in the eye. She could only be thinking of him. Of what he was doing to her. Of the pleasure he was giving to her. No one else. Just her. He plunged into her with the ferocity and speed of an animal. He was lost in her heat, in the tight squeeze of her. He could have died happy right then.
He felt her tighten around him, watched her face tense and release with her pleasure as her fingertips gripped the edge of the desk.
He slipped his hand around to her front and worked her clit through her orgasm, prolonging it as much as he could. He could have sworn that she came twice.
But then her orgasm tugged his right out of him. He was rutting her, claiming her. He tangled his hand in her braid and her head came up off the desk as he tugged back. She was bowed for him, accepting everything he gave her, and he gave her everything. Every ounce of liquid pleasure was rung out of him as he rode her through it.
And then there was nothing to do but collapse over her back, kiss along her neck and over the shell of her ear.
“Baby,” he whispered to her, sliding one arm around her to hug her as tight as he could. “Jesus, baby. Sweetheart. You gorgeous girl. You perfect, luscious goddess. God, you undid me. Tore me apart.” He continued whispering in her ear until she chuckled.
“Guess you liked it, huh?”
“I saw the white light. Almost went through the pearly gates on that one, sweetheart.” Dante reached between them to grab the base of the condom he always wore when he realized in a heart stopping moment that there was no condom.
He pulled out anyways, grabbed her hand, and dragged her into the adjoining bathroom. He closed the door behind them, wetted some paper towel and fell to his knees in front of her, gently cleaning her up.
“Sweetheart,” he started, unsure on how to proceed. Better just go whole hog. Tell the damn truth. “I forgot to put on a condom.”
“Shit,” she murmured reflexively. Then she reached out and smoothed his furrowed brow. “We both forgot.”
That soothed a bit of his guilt, but it didn’t soothe the panic racing through him. “I’m clean, got tested just before we slept together the first time and you’re the only one I’ve been with since then.”
Now Aurora was the one furrowing her brow, as if she almost didn’t believe that he hadn’t been man whoring around Los Angeles. “Me too. I’m clean.”
Dante put her underwear back in place and pulled her skirt down, smoothing out the wrinkles. Rising, he took her hands in his. His heart was in his throat. “Could I have gotten you pregnant?”
Aurora’s face instantly went flat, and a careful expression came over it. She cleared her throat. “No.”
So she was on birth control of some kind. Dante let out a deep breath. “Thank god. That could have been really bad.” He let his hands trail down her shoulders and bent to kiss her lips, unaware of the flash of mortal pain that stabbed across her features at his words. “You just got me so revved up, I couldn’t even think straight. That’s never happened to me before.”
She cleared her throat again and raised an eyebrow as she turned to wash her hands in the sink. “You’ve never gotten head before?”
He laughed. “No, I mean I’ve never gone bareback before.”
“Really?” She looked at him with complete disbelief.
Feathers ruffled, he reached around her to wash his own hands. “Sometimes your low opinion of me gets a little old, Aurora. I’m not Hugh fucking Hefner. So I’ve dated a lot. Who hasn’t? But I don’t lie. And I’m telling you I’ve never fucked a woman without a condom.”
Aurora took a step back from him, dried her hands on a towel and tossed it into the trash. “Okay.”
She was opening the door to the bathroom when he slammed a hand on it to keep her from leaving. “That’s all you have to say about that?”
In a move that was extremely out of character with the polished, ladylike exterior, Aurora slapped his hand right off the door.
She spun around, one finger directly in his face. “You obviously have your panties all in a twist over something, Callaghan. But trust me, you don’t want to get into it with me.”
And then she was striding out of the bathroom, leaving him to stare at every graceful, Amazonian inch of her. He barely got in fro
nt of her before she could exit his office. “I’m sorry. I’m being a total ass and I’m sorry. But you’re being a little bit of an ass too.”
She stepped back, cocked out one hip and folded her arms across her chest, raised an eyebrow.
“And,” Dante continued, “while I’m trying hard to be mad at you for being an ass and thinking the worst of me, you’re so mad right now that your New Orleans accent is finally coming out and turns out I find that really cute.”
Aurora’s hands dropped from over her chest and fell to her sides. “Oh. Well, I tried to lose it during business school but sometimes it creeps back in.”
Knowing that the irritated heat between them was on a low simmer right now, Dante hedged his bets and stepped forward, slipping his hand over her golden hair.
“I don’t know why you’d try to lose it. It’s beautiful. Makes you sound like a Georgia peach.”
At that, Aurora threw her head back and laughed. “Trust me when I say I am not that at all. And no New Orleans girl wants to be called that. We’re in our own category, baby.”
And Dante just said, “Abso-fucking-lutely you are.”
chapter eleven
“Lunch,” Dante said a minute later, taking her hand and dragging her from the office.
Aurora couldn’t help but glance back at his desk, all cluttered and messy from where he’d just bent her over it. She couldn’t believe she’d just stormed into his office and devoured him. And with Gio on the other end of the line! It somehow made her feel both proud and horrified.
“It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, Dante.”
“Happy hour drinks, then. I just don’t want you to go yet. Come out with me, Aurora. We don’t even have to call it a date.”
Her stomach flipped, as it so often did these days. She wasn’t sure if it was from the baby growing inside her or from the idea of going on a real date with Dante.
“Coffee,” she finally said.
Ten minutes later, they settled themselves at a small cafe a few blocks from Dante’s office.
“Want to play a game?” he asked.
“Um, I thought we already did,” she said with a smile.
He laughed. “You’re right. And it’s my favorite game of all. But for the sake of variety, let’s play a different kind this time. One I used to do with Michelle all the time.”
“What is it?”
“It was something we did when she wanted to be a detective. I called up this guy I knew in college who ended up being a P.I. and he told me the best way to train to be a detective was to observe as much as you could about every person you were with and every place you went. So everywhere she and I went, we played the observation game. For like a full year. By the end, it sort of became second nature. But then she got into her Harry Potter phase and it all went down the drain.”
“You didn’t call up a wizard you knew in college to give her some tips on harnessing magic?” Aurora asked dryly. Although inside she was quaking, stunned at the sweetness inside him. He’d called up a P.I. for career tips because his little sister wanted to be a detective. It was almost painful it was so cute.
Dante shrugged. “So you wanna play?”
“The observation game?” Aurora looked around, taking in the doilies on the tables and the geriatric clientele. “Sure.”
“Not about the place though, just about one another.”
“Oh. You want me to tell you what I observe about you?”
“And vice versa. I’m pretty sure I already know what you think about me, but let’s give it a shot.”
“Alright.” She smoothed her hair back in a nervous gesture. “You go first.”
“There are two Aurora LeMondes.”
“What?”
He leaned back in his chair, his large hands spread on the delicate table cloth, his coffee cooling in front of him. His eyes were so blue in that moment, Aurora swore they made her thirsty. “There’s the woman that I’ve known for years. The version of you that works at the Esposito Group. Polished, calm, never misses a deadline. Deadly beautiful, of course, but you keep it behind a glass case. Like the rose in Beauty and the Beast. I didn’t know why, but I knew that the polished version of you wasn’t the whole picture. And I thought, why is she hiding? But now I get it.”
Aurora took a sip of tea, trying to keep her hand from quaking on the cup. He was freakishly accurate so far. She didn’t trust her voice so she said nothing.
“It’s because you have to keep the other part of you under wraps. I got a glimpse of her every time I would flirt with you and it would annoy you. I’d see just a little bit of the spice. The temper. The flare of heat. But I wasn’t prepared. I had no idea what it would be like when you finally raised the gates and let it loose. The night you asked me to take you home? I’ll never forget it. Part of me is still recovering. It was like pressing my tongue to a battery. The other part of you, the other version, is so passionate, so fiery, so free and wild, that you have to keep her in the cage. Or else nobody will ever get any work done.”
She took another sip of tea. “I don’t know if that’s true. But…my first year of college, I had not one, but two married professors try to hook up with me.”
Dante’s brow instantly furrowed. She didn’t miss the way his hand balled on the table.
She shrugged it off though. “My body, my nature, it all worked against me. No matter how smart I was or the grades I got or the ideas I had, it was all liable to go down the drain the second I got labeled a slut. I realized that the only way to rise in the business world was to become an ice queen. Untouchable, as you called it.”
“Except for your crooked teeth,” he quipped, making her smile just as he intended.
“Right. I knew I should have sprung for the Invisalign.” She sighed and looked out the window for a second. “The ambition I have to survive in the business world isn’t just for personal satisfaction. It isn’t a game. For me and my mother, my job is a matter of survival.”
He almost interrupted, but she opened her mouth again, her eyes blurry as she watched her own finger play in a ring of condensation left behind by her tea cup. “You know, I think it became even worse when I started at Esposito. The cold and polished version of me intensified, crystallized. Gio recognized my talent right away, but part of me was so worried that I’d slip up and he’d see the other part of me. The part that spent the first eight years of my life in shelters while my mother sold fortunes on corners for five bucks a pop. The part of me that never knew my father and secretly had absolutely no idea how to talk to men. The part of me that every once in a while, lost her shit and had to find a man to let loose on. I was so scared that Gio would see that part of me that I locked her away, never to be seen or heard from again.”
* * *
Dante was riveted. Absorbing every piece of information from her like it was the coolest, cleanest water. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he’d been to know her. Her story was hard to hear but he wanted to know more. He wanted all of it.
“Well,” he said, sliding his hand across the table to hers, a little smile on his face. “Maybe not ‘never’. She’s been known to come over to my house a few nights a week.”
Aurora smiled down into her tea. “Fair enough.”
He paused for a second, and then decided to do what his intuition told him to do. “When you say shelters, you mean homeless shelters?”
Aurora gave him a sad little smile then nodded. “Yeah. My mom is a free spirit in a lot of ways and she wasn’t planning on getting pregnant with me. She was young.”
Aurora turned to look out the window, watch the pedestrians pass by as she told her story. The afternoon light slanted across her face and lit her hazel eyes from the side, making them look like a glass bottle. Dante had the sudden urge to take her to the beach. Somewhere tropical where she could full-out lay in the sun. Take that full, deep breath she never quite seemed able to take.
“She’d been couch surfing, I guess. Which isn’t too much of a hardship a
t age twenty. But then she was plus one and a lot of those couches were suddenly occupied. She had a few friends who stuck it out with her. But we were often in shelters.” She straightened her top suddenly, as if she was having to remind herself that she was here, now, a successful woman, not the vulnerable child she’d once been. “It wasn’t as bad for me. When you’re a kid, you don’t really know what’s going on. And I always had her there with me, so I always felt safe. She was a fierce protector. But it must have been terrible for her.”
“God.” Dante tried to imagine what that would have felt like with Michelle. “I’ll bet she barely ever slept. I know I wouldn’t have if Michelle and I were in that position.”
Aurora looked at him for a minute, her eyes inscrutable x-rays.
“What changed?” Dante asked. “How did you get back on your feet?”
“My mother started taking a few courses that they offered at one of the community centers we used to go to for dinners sometimes. She got just enough under her belt that she made a fairly decent secretary. She did that for a while at some accounting office. It was enough to put us into a little apartment and give us health insurance. One of the accountants started to get a little handsy, so she moved on to a therapist’s office. But pretty soon, the clientele started talking more to my mother about their problems than they were to the therapist.”
“Because of all the witchy stuff?”
Aurora smiled. “Because my mother sees a lot of things other people don’t. And it makes her pretty easy to talk to.”
“Let me guess, the therapist fired her out of jealousy?”
“The opposite, in fact. The therapist was very impressed with her. Fired her as a secretary and renovated this big old coat closet to be her office.”
“Her office for what?”
“Fortune telling, advice, aura readings. It all sounds so mystical, and a lot of clients thought it was hooey. But there’s plenty of people in New Orleans who need occult help with their lives. And not only is my mother the real deal when it comes to that kind of thing, but she also wasn’t trying to squeeze every dollar out of every client’s pocket. She really wanted to use her gifts to help people.”