He lowered his head until his lips brushed my ear. “Don’t even think about it, trouble. You sleep with me.”
Then, he dropped his hand from around my waist, swatted my ass, and guided me into his room.
I wasn’t going to complain. I’d gotten used to having a furnace at my back each night, not to mention the whispered conversations between us that always seemed to come a little easier in the dark. I’d also gotten used to him fucking me to sleep or waking me up with his mouth on my pussy. I was truly living the dream.
Atlas hadn’t been lying—barring extenuating circumstances like a migraine from hell, he meant what he’d said. We hadn’t gone more than twenty-four hours without him inside me, and I definitely didn’t mind.
“Was tonight better or worse than you were expecting?” I asked as I headed into the en suite.
Atlas leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, as he watched me grab my toothbrush from the spot next to his, an unmistakable surge of male satisfaction sweeping across his features.
With my toothbrush in my mouth, I met his gaze in the mirror and raised a brow. “You gonna answer or just keep watching me like a weirdo?”
The corner of his mouth twitched—a full-blown cackle in Atlas-speak—and he walked to his sink before grabbing his toothbrush. “Went pretty much how I figured it would. I knewLincoln would flirt with you to piss me off. I knew Dec would egg him on. And I knew my mom would love you and Laurel.”
“I loved her too.” I rinsed my mouth and set my toothbrush down. “And your brothers weren’t all bad.”
He grunted in what I took to mean,yes, they fucking were, but I don’t want to argue about it.
“Lincoln did make a good point, though. When he said that you looked like you were going to murder Doug at the bar.”
Atlas spat water into the sink, his hard eyes locked on mine in the mirror. “I don’t know why that’s such a fucking surprise to everyone. He’s a?—”
“Stalker.” I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Atlas, you’ve said this before. Which made me wonder about the fact that Doug just left and you just let him, and that was it. You didn’t dig any more into it?”
“Of fucking course, I dug into it.”
“How?”
“Had my PI look into Pillow Humper.”
My mouth dropped open as I stared at him. “Oh my god, Atlas, that’s such an invasion of privacy.”
“Are you kidding me?” He spun around to face me rather than watching me in the mirror. “I don’t give a shit about his privacy. He sure as hell didn’t give a shit about yours.”
“Fair point. Well, first of all, did you find anything good?”
“Besides some questionable and, quite frankly, disturbing emails between him and his mom? No,” he grumbled, as if he’d been hoping for something worse just to have an excuse to go after Doug. “I think he’s an idiot, but ultimately harmless.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“Didn’t stop me from letting him know that if I ever saw him in Starlight Cove again, I was prepared to go to jail.”
I breathed out a laugh and shook my head. “I hope you didn’t threaten him in an email.”
“’Course not. But it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. He wouldn’t dare come after me or what’s mine.”
Those words had come so easily, so naturally, it was almost as if Atlas didn’t even realize he’d said them. Or what kind of effect they’d have on me. My stomach flipped as I watched him, this mountain of a man, so casually claiming me as his.
But the real question was if it was all part of the act.
“What was second of all?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“You said first of all when you asked about Pillow Humper.”
“Oh, right. You said you had your PI look into it. You do so much investigating that you have someone on retainer?”
