1
Mara
ONE YEAR LATER—FIRST DAY OF THE NEW SEMESTER
My folder is already pressed to my chest when the shower shuts off in the bathroom. I’ve been standing at the kitchen counter of our suite turning my lesson plans over in my hands like I haven’t gone through them over and over since last night. Syllabus, reading list, the first assignment I stayed up half the night writing out because it had to be exactly right. My first teaching day. My own classroom in the Lion Shifter Wing with my name on the door and a room of lionesses I’ve never met waiting on me.
Behind me, Aaron hums under his breath, tuneless and low. He woke up late, and he was the one who said last night that I was welcome to go decorate my classroom one more time if I really wanted to. Then he spent long enough trying to talk me out of it with his mouth against my neck that I nearly gave in, and I still went.
When I finally came back to our suite in the small hours, he was asleep with the lamp on and his hand splayed open on my side of the bed like he’d been reaching for me in his sleep.
The bathroom door opens and steam rolls out. I already know how he looks coming out—the towel knotted low on his hips, water still beading on his shoulders. My lion stirs inside me. A year in, and she still perks up every time he walks into a room. She has no dignity about him. Coffee beans hit me first, warm and dark under the clean heat of the shower, and I tighten my grip on the folder and take a long breath in through my nose like that’s going to help anything.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He’s leaning against the doorframe, scanning over me. My tail twitches. I know that look, and I take one careful step back from him and press my folder tighter against my chest.
“Aaron, no.”
“You stayed out all night decorating that classroom.” He pushes off the doorframe and starts toward me. “Even after I spent the whole damn week helping you get it in order.”
“It’s my first teaching day?—”
“I almost lost my shit waiting for you to come back and get into bed with me.”
My back hits the edge of the kitchen table and I gasp. The corner of his mouth lifts because he’s seen me run out of room. His scent rolls ahead of him. I shake my head. I open my mouth to remind him about the lionesses waiting on me, but he’s already there, sliding the folder out of my hands, setting it down on the table. His hands find my waist, and he lifts me.
“Aaron—”
He sets me down on the edge of the table, nudges my knees apart with his hip, and his mouth closes over mine before I can finish saying his name. This kiss has nothing good-morning about it. His tongue pushes past my lips, his hand slides up my side and settles heavy at the curve of my breast through my dress, and my lion unspools so fast I have to grab a fistful of the towel at his hip just to keep from sliding sideways off the wood.
I drag my mouth off his, my breath coming fast. “Aaron, come on, baby?—”
“Don’tbabyme, Mara.” My eyes fly open, and his grin goes lazy and mean. “I want some pussy.”
My mouth falls open, because he doesn’t talk like that. This is something rougher. My thighs clench around his hips. The heat of it puts color all the way up into my scalp, and before I can get a word out he stuffs his tongue back in my mouth.
My body answers him, because when Aaron wants me my body and my lion won’t give me the dignity of saying no. She presses forward shameless, and my tail comes around behind him on its own and slides up his back, stroking him slow in approval.
When the end of her finds the knot at his hip, she flicks once, and the towel drops around his ankles.
He’s fucking me with his mouth, slow because he knows he has me, and my legs have fallen open for him without my brain signing off on it. My dress rides up my thighs under his hand. I break the kiss to breathe and his mouth follows me down—my neck, the soft hollow above my collarbone, lower.
To my claim mark.
His lips brush over it and my whole body goes liquid. My head drops back.
“That’s alright, baby,” he murmurs against the mark, his voice softer now, coaxing. “I’ll just take it on my tongue. So you can work.”
“…huh?”
He lifts his head to look at me, and his eyes are dark. His hands come up and cup both my breasts through my dress, thumbs dragging across my nipples. Then he steps back and drops to his knees in front of the table.
“Aaron—”
He lifts one of my legs and drapes it over his shoulder, then the other, and my dress bunches at my hips as he settles in between my thighs.
“Aaron, I have a class in?—”
