SUTTON
Even the physicaldistance between us as I’d driven home in my car with Atlas following in his SUV hadn’t been enough to dull this hum beneath my skin.
What I’d hoped would dissolve with time and space only seemed to intensify. It didn’t matter if I lived in the guest cottage. It didn’t matter if he was close enough to touch or if he disappeared for days at a time.
Noneof it mattered, because he was constantly on my mind, regardless.
If it wasn’t the explicit memories bombarding me, then it was the smaller gestures he’d made since I’d moved here to Starlight Cove. The coffee and the delivered lunches and my always-full gas tank. But it was also the emergency kit he’d assembled for my car in deference to the upcoming Maine winter. And when he’d adjusted the thermostat to be warmer in the mornings after I’d come downstairs wrapped up like a burrito.
It washim.
Atlas didn’t say a word as he followed me to the back door. Or when I pressed my fingerprint to the scanner. Or when the door unlocked and he reached around me to open it. Not a singlesyllable as the heat of his chest pressed into my back, his breath ghosting over my neck as he guided me inside.
He might not havesaidanything, but the way he stared at me left very little to the imagination. I knew exactly what he was thinking because it was written in every coiled inch of his body and in the hungry way he stared at me.
He wanted to bend me over this kitchen island and fuck me until we both saw stars. And I couldn’t lie to myself and say I didn’t want the same thing.
I blew out a breath and averted my gaze. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked, his voice low and rough, gravel coating his throat.
“You knowexactlylike what. Like you don’t care that no one is around to witness it, or that my daughter is in her bedroom down the hall.” I swallowed thickly, trying to put as much conviction into my words as possible. “Or that we’ve already established rules.”
“The ‘only in public’ rule was yours, not mine.”
“And it’s a good one! You know sex between us will only complicate things now that Laurel and I are living here.”
“We’ve already had sex, trouble. Several times. And if you think I don’t spend half my day remembering exactly what it feels like to be inside you, you haven’t been paying attention.”
I leaned back, bracing my trembling hands on the edge of the counter, and shook my head. “See? That’s what I mean. I can’t do this with you.”
“No?” he asked, stalking toward me until he braced his hands on either side of mine. “So you don’t want me to lift you onto this island, sit down on that stool, and dine on my favorite meal? Make you come over and over again against my tongue until you beg me to stop?”
I exhaled a shaky breath, my voice coming out in a croak. “No.”
He hummed low, the vibration echoing from his chest to mine. “Just to be clear, you also don’t want me to take you into my bedroom and give you every fucking inch your pussy has been aching for?”
“No,” I breathed, the word just a whisper in the space between us.
Dropping his face to my neck, he traced along the column with his nose, the only part of himself he allowed to touch me. “Then I guess you also don’t want me to use one of your battery-operated friends while I’m fucking you? Which kinds do you have? Would I be able to stuff your ass full of one while you took me inside your pussy? Or maybe I could press one of those little clit suckers against you while I filled up your perfect little cunt until you soaked me with your come?”
This time, I didn’t even try to speak. Instead, I shook my head in response. Too worried that if I opened my mouth, I’d actually tell him, Yes, abso-fucking-lutelyyes. Ididwant him to do that, along with everything else, multiple times.
Atlas’s gaze pinged over my face, reading every subtle shift in my expression. With a single nod, he stepped back and tipped his head toward the steps. “All right, then. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll close myself off in my room and pretend you’re not getting yourself off with your new little toy, and you can go into yours and pretend I’m not stroking my cock imagining it.”
I wasn’t goingto admit to Atlas that I’d done exactly as he’d suggested I would. I’d been so worked up, I hadn’t even neededmy toy to get me there. But I’d grabbed it anyway because I relished the idea of him imagining me doing so.
I’d fucked myself with it, the suction against my clit and the fantasy of Atlas standing in my doorway watching me sending me over the edge in less than a minute.
Usually, orgasms were my ticket to dreamland. If I was having trouble falling asleep, a quick fap session was my surefire way to get there. This orgasm, though?Thisonly seemed to rev me up more, had me strung even tighter in the end.
I glanced over at the clock, the red 1:27 glaring back at me.Tauntingme, just as it had for the past hour. Because I knew the answer to my problem of not being able to sleep was, in fact, another orgasm.
It just wasn’t an orgasm by my own hand.
After tossing and turning for another seventeen minutes, I slammed my arms down on the mattress and huffed out a frustrated groan. Between an early morning wake-up, courtesy of the kitten, followed by a full day of patients at the clinic, and then a festival to top it all off, it had been a long-ass day. I was exhausted. Obviously sleep-delirious.
That was the only excuse I had for throwing off my covers, tiptoeing out of my bedroom and into the hall, and turning the knob on Atlas’s door. Not even a creak broke the silence as I crept into his room, the hardwood floors cold under my bare feet.
