∞∞∞
Atlas kisses me and I stop thinking.
His mouth is on mine and it's nothing like what I imagined—nothing like the careful, measured precision I expected from a man who calculates everything.
This is messy.
Desperate.
His hand tightening on my jaw, his other hand gripping the edge of the stool beside my thigh, his body pressing forward until I'm leaning back and his chest is against mine and the stool creaks under the shifting weight.
He tastes like coffee and something darker. His scent floods me—cedar and leather and the base note I've been catching in his sheets and his office and the collar of every shirt he's ever worn, the one my biology reads as safety and my body reads as want. It fills my lungs and my head goes light and my hands find the front of his shirt and pull.
He makes a sound. Low. In his chest. Not a groan—something more private, more surprised, the sound of a man who's been holding his breath for months and has finally exhaled. His forehead drops against mine and he breathes and I feel him shaking.
Atlas Graves is shaking.
"God," he says. Against my mouth. "Max—"
I kiss him again. Harder. My fingers working the buttons of his shirt because I need to touch him, need skin under my hands instead of fabric, need to know what he feels like withoutthe armor. The buttons give. My palms find his chest—warm, solid, his heart hammering so hard I feel it in my fingertips. His stomach tightens under my hands as I drag them down. The ridge of muscle along his ribs. I trace every line of him because I've been imagining this—in my room, in my bed, in the shower with the water too hot and my hand between my thighs—imagining what Atlas would feel like under my hands.
The reality is better. Harder. Warmer. More real than anything I've let myself want.
His hands move. My waist. My hips. Pulling me forward on the stool until my legs are tight around him and I can feel him—hard against my inner thigh, thick and straining against his dress pants, his body betraying everynohe's ever said. He rocks forward. Not involuntary this time—deliberate. A slow grind that drags the length of him against me through layers of fabric and my head falls back and my mouth opens on a sound that’s obscene.
"Fuck—" The word tears out of me. My hips roll forward to meet his, chasing the friction, my hard cock aching against the thin sweatpants. His grip tightens on my hips hard enough to bruise and I don't care.
I want the bruises. I want proof that Atlas Graves lost control and I was the reason.
"Upstairs," he says against my neck. The word vibrating through my pulse. "Come upstairs."
"Yes."
His hand finds mine. Laces our fingers together. Pulls me off the stool and toward the stairs and we're halfway up before my brain catches up to what my body already knows.
His bedroom. His bed. The sheets that smelled like cedar the morning I woke up in them. The room where he watched me sleep and spent the night in the chair by the window because he didn't trust himself to be horizontal in the same room as me.
We're going there.Together. And this time he's not saying no.
The door closes behind us. The lock turns. And Atlas's hands are on my face again—both palms, thumbs on my cheekbones, tilting my head back, looking at me in the dark like he's trying to memorize what I look like before something changes.
"Tell me to stop," he says. "At any point. Any moment. Tell me and I'll—"
"Atlas. Shut up."
I pull his shirt off his shoulders. It falls to the floor and he's bare-chested in the dark and my hands are on him and his skin is hot under my palms and I want to taste every inch of him.
So I do.
My mouth on his collarbone. His chest. The flat plane of his stomach that contracts when my lips drag across it. He sucks in a breath—sharp, hissing—and his hand fists in my hair and holds. Not pulling. Holding on. Like he'll fly apart if he lets go.
He pulls my t-shirt over my head. Careful—his fingers skimming the healing welts, adjusting the fabric so it doesn't drag. Even now. Even with his pupils blown and his cock pressing against my hip and his breath coming ragged—some part of him is reading my body for pain and adjusting.
That's Atlas. The man who can't stop being careful even when he's falling apart.
His mouth finds the junction of my neck and shoulder. The bonding gland. His lips press against it—warm, open, his tongue flat against the skin—and every nerve in my body ignites. My hands grip his broad shoulders. My hips push forward against his. The friction sends a bolt of heat straight through my core and I'm so fucking hard, aching, leaking against my sweatpants, and I want him so badly my teeth hurt.
"Atlas." His name comes out wrecked. A plea. A demand. Both at once.
