22. Elena
22
ELENA
S o now I’m locked in my hotel room. And I have never felt less like masturbating.
I’ve been in here for six hours. About four hours in, I inhaled all the snacks in the minibar. I know Lorne will see the charges, but I don’t give a damn anymore.
I could have ordered a proper dinner from the restaurant, but I was worried that Atlas would bring it up. Then I’d have to explain to him why my fiancé sent me to bed without any supper like a naughty child.
Well, I could tell you why, but then I’d have to die of embarrassment.
It’s bad enough that one man in America knows I’m a twenty-seven-year-old virgin. It doesn’t need to be two—and especially not if one of them is Atlas.
He wouldn’t be quite so attracted to me if he knew that little piece of trivia. He probably thinks I’m experienced like Mina, that I know all kinds of sexy tricks. He’s probably constructed some fantasy image of me in his head, like everybody else seems to do. Isn’t that what all humans are up to?
I imagined a whole future life around Lorne. And now I don’t like who he is quite as much as the fantasy I built in my head. That’s my fault, not his.
That’s what I tell myself.
But that’s not what I felt, alone in the restaurant with him.
Then, I felt scared out of my skin. Even with Atlas twenty feet away.
Because it felt like twenty feet might not be close enough. Not the way Lorne was looking at me.
Escape from goblins to be eaten by wolves, as the old saying goes.
I was looking into the eyes of a wolf.
So I went upstairs, deeply concerned that I may have gotten myself into a very bad spot.
An orgasm has never seemed more distant. My skin crawls at the thought of my handsome, devoted fiancé.
How could I be so fucking stupid? I don’t even know what happened to his last wife. Where is Ivy’s mother? Why is that little girl so sad?
I don’t know.
But I know what I saw when I looked into Lorne’s eyes…fucking nothing.
I don’t know how I missed it before.
I guess I was just a little too desperate, hurrying along, grasping at a fairy-tale hope. Even though I’m way too old to still believe in fairy tales.
Some people tell a really good story. For a while, at least. But then the cracks begin to show. The wolf leaks through the walls.
I’m afraid to go downstairs.
Lorne has texted me twice:
How’s it going?
Making progress?
I haven’t responded to either message, and I don’t believe he’s waiting in his room. He could be right down the hall, watching to see if I leave.
Atlas wouldn’t let him do that.
Let him do what? Visit his own fiancé? Stand outside her room?
A hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. The pattern on the wallpaper seems to subtly shift.
Maybe I am in a fairy tale after all. I’m the foolish maiden bewitched and betrothed to a monster.
Calm down, you’re overreacting.
The “voice of reason” rings hollow and false. Everything inside me screams that I’m not overreacting. I’m not safe, not in my room and not in Grimstone.
But where else is there to go?
Nowhere. Not for me.
I lie down on the bed in the dark, though I’ve never felt less like sleeping. I put my hand on my breast under my clothes, mostly for comfort. But that reminds me of what I’m “supposed to be” doing up here, and suddenly, I’m furious.
Am I actually going to practice masturbating? Report to Lorne? Show him my progress?
The thought repulses me.
As does his porn on the laptop—videos of women begging and crawling, slavishly serving the men who handle them so roughly. The thought of Lorne standing over me, looking down at me with that cold, dead stare of his…
Fucking never.
Anger flares again, anger with a delicious, glowing edge that won’t die away but instead only spreads, slowly consuming the fear that’s been paralyzing me.
I’m never going to come thinking about Lorne.
If I were going to think about anyone while I touched myself…it would be Atlas.
With that one, single thought, heat flushes through my body. My hands slide across my breasts under my shirt. My nipples tighten.
Atlas…
That thought spawns countless more, a rush of color and images flooding my brain. His well-shaped hands, his growling voice, his sandpaper laugh swiping down my spine…his intelligence, his self-possession, his kindness to Ivy, to Amy, to me…every stolen fragment of touch, of sight, of sound, all build an image of Atlas that fills my mind, as solid and immovable as the man himself. It’s like I can feel him here with me. It’s like my hands are his hands on my body, bigger, warmer, stronger than mine could ever be.
Heat and pleasure flush down my legs. My skin buzzes, my feet sliding back and forth beneath the sheets. I’m tangled up in the bedding, lost in the rush that comes over me when I think about who I want to think about, when I feel what I want to feel.
I haven’t let myself picture this. Not yet, not in detail. The ways I wish he would touch me…how I think it would feel…
I’ve been holding back out of guilt, out of fear.
But now I’ve tasted how good it feels to give in, to let Atlas fill my mind, and it’s like sliding one leg into a warm bath. I’m dying to sink all the way in.
I slip my hand down the front of my shorts, shocked at the wetness. If Lorne could feel this, he’d know everything.
Fuck Lorne.
I squeeze my thighs together around my hand, applying the pressure that seems so desperately needed in just the right spot. I close my eyes and think of Atlas again. The warmth of his hands…the sternness of his voice…the way it turns smooth as melted butter when he looks at me…the way his eyes cut through me but his words never do…the way I know when he’s watching, and it makes me feel safe…
My back arches. Little bolts of pleasure zip across my skin. My hands caress my body, not only between my legs but everywhere, rubbing all over under my clothes the way Atlas would do if he were here right now.
That elusive feeling builds and spreads, not only in a tiny, concentrated point in my belly, but all through my pelvis. It’s warm and liquid and melting, and it seems to spread down my legs.
It builds and it builds, and I start to build a rhythm, too, rubbing on my clit softly with two fingers, with so much wetness that there’s hardly any friction at all, just a smooth slipperiness that’s thin and warm like massage oil, spreading like it’s made of pleasure itself.
It’s like he’s here, right here beside me in the bed. Like I can smell his scent and feel his breath on my skin.
Warm air shivers across my skin…the blankets seem to float and lift…
This room belongs to Atlas. The entire hotel belongs to him. It smells like him subtly, expensive like his cologne, old-world like his suits. He is the Monarch, the Monarch is him, and it’s never felt more like he’s here and all around me, holding me in his arms…
I’m the closest I’ve ever been to that thing, that elusive thing, my heart pumping, my hand moving faster and faster but never too much. I close my eyes and imagine I’m down in the darkroom, no lights on at all and definitely no clothes, just Atlas’s hands on my body in the darkness.
There’s some hollow, scrabbling sound in the adjoining room, odd and sudden. I startle upright in the dark, heart racing, ears straining.
I hear nothing now, but just a moment ago, the noise was real and close. Too heavy to be just a mouse in the walls.
When the sound doesn’t reoccur, I spend another four or five minutes stoking my courage. Then I slip out from under the sheets, crack the door, and pass into the main room.
Moonlight streams in through the picture window, gilding the furniture silver. I tidied up hours earlier. The room is so still and silent, so obviously the same as before, that I know I’m alone.
I stand there anyway, waiting. I know I heard something.
But as I wait and listen, I slowly realize…I’m not frightened anymore.
My skin is still flushed, my heart still pounding. But my blood is saturated with all the good chemicals from before, and not even adrenaline can wipe that away.
Instead, I feel a quiet kind of clarity. And with a strange and certain impulse, I walk over to the window and look down.
The rose garden below is bathed in silver, the bare vines spiky and sculptural. The figure that stands in the garden looks like a statue, too, dark and motionless. Taller than any man has a right to be, with that rough, brutal face made achingly beautiful in the moonlight, gazing up at my window.
I raise my hand to Atlas, pressing my palm flat against the glass.
He lifts his hand in return. Then tilts his head sideways, inviting me down.
Flushed with lust and adrenaline, I practically run.