23. Elena
23
ELENA
I race down the carpeted stairs, no longer worried about Lorne. If it weren’t safe for me to come down, Atlas wouldn’t have beckoned.
I make a sharp left at the base of the stairs, not even straining for a glance at the front desk or the lobby, knowing that Atlas is already outside.
I’ve completely forgotten to put on a coat or shoes. The cold shocks me as I run out into the midnight rose garden, damp leaking through my socks. All I’ve got on is an old T-shirt and shorts worn thin and pale from years of sleeping.
Then I see Atlas and heat blasts through my blood. I get a rush like no other, and I’m not cold at all anymore, not even a little bit. In fact, I’m warm and throbbing even as my breath makes silver clouds in the air.
I don’t stop running when I see him. I don’t slow down or play it cool. I sprint down the rows of roses and leap into his arms.
Never in a million years would I chance that maneuver with someone smaller. Atlas scoops me up easily, huge hands around my waist. He lifts me in the air, swooping me up way higher than I expected, terrifying and exhilarating, whirling me around in a sudden vista of stars and only then slowly lowering me to the level of his mouth. I kiss him with my head still spinning.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. “I was worried about you.”
“Do you ever sleep?”
“Not much.” He smiles slightly. “Not since you’ve been here.”
No smile has ever softened a harder face than his. He looks impossibly stern until, somehow, the parts of him that seemed carved from granite become warm and interested in the subtlest of ways, and my whole body melts.
My skin’s burning, my blood’s rushing, my heart’s pounding, and something deep in my belly is begging more, more, more…
“I couldn’t sleep either. I was thinking about you.” It feels so good to confess it. To say it out loud.
The look on Atlas’s face is even better. He hooks his arm around my waist and drags me closer.
“Tell me more…”
I shiver with pleasure.
As I look into Atlas’s eyes, I notice something for the very first time. There are bits of green in all that blackness. Flecks of color and light.
I find myself saying something I had no intention of saying. “I was trying to make myself come.”
Atlas makes a low, growling sound that thrills me to my toes. “Thinking about me?”
I nod, cheeks flaming.
“But you were trying, not succeeding.” A smile tugs at his lips. “I wasn’t quite enough to get you there.”
I almost lose heart. The fact that I can’t even make myself come is deeply embarrassing to me. The older I get, the worse it is, and the more certain I become that I’m somehow defective. Before I told Lorne, the only person I’d ever confessed it to was Mina. Even with her, I played it off like I didn’t care, like it was only a matter of time. But inside I began to worry more and more that there really was something wrong with me.
I thought I’d die of shame if Atlas knew. I thought he’d be less interested.
But in this moment, looking into his eyes, I don’t see ridicule and judgment. His tone is teasing, while his eyes radiate warmth and acceptance.
And I realize…
Atlas likes me. He is interested. He doesn’t know that I’m a virgin, but he knows what I’m like, how I am, how I kiss him, how I touch him…
I’ve never pretended to be anything I’m not with him, and he liked me the whole time.
So why am I hiding? What am I so afraid of?
“I’ve never had an orgasm,” I tell him. “Never once, in my whole life.”
I hold my breath. Watching his face.
Atlas simply nods. “That’s completely normal. Of course you never did with Lorne—it’s almost impossible for a woman to come if she doesn’t feel safe.”
Relief rushes through me. My knees go loose, and I almost want to cry. I love this casualness Atlas has with the human body, like nothing can phase him. I guess not much is shocking after med school.
Emboldened, I say, “I haven’t slept with Lorne. I haven’t slept with anyone.”
“Oh.” Atlas is mildly surprised now but works to hide it. “Does Lorne know you’re a virgin?”
“He loves it,” I say, failing to conceal my bitterness.
“I bet he does.”
“What about you?” I bite my lip, sneaking a glance at Atlas. “Do you…hate it?”
Atlas laughs in a low, rough way and seizes me in his huge hands. “I don’t hate anything about you.”
He kisses me, cupping my face, his tongue warm, his stubble deliciously rough. His hands move down my body slowly, deliberately. His huge palms cover entire parts of me: my back, my belly, my breasts, my upper arms. To be touched by him is to be possessed by him, moved, warmed, manipulated in his hands.
He slips a hand beneath my loose T-shirt, caressing my bare breast. His skin against my skin isn’t just twice as good; it’s a next-level exponent. I groan and kiss him, gripping handfuls of his hair, the taste of his mouth driving me wild.
The heat low in my belly is throbbing and insistent, an urge like hunger, like thirst, to rub, to squeeze, to do something, anything to find relief.
I press against Atlas, kissing him deeper, wilder, my hands roaming the thick muscle of his arms, feeling how it flexes under my hands, harder and denser than any part of my body but bone. He’s not wearing a coat either, only a dress shirt. I fumble with the buttons, then tear his shirt open, greedy for my hands on his bare skin.
I can barely reach all the way around him. The skin on his back is thick and soft like worn-in leather, and his chest radiates heat. I press my lips against it, and it’s like the steady heat of a stove, not feverish or sweaty but deeply, endlessly warm.
He tilts my face up in his huge hands, looking down at me. He slides his hands up under my hair and kisses me until my legs seem to disappear.
I press my body against him, his thick thigh sliding between mine. The pressure and heat makes me moan, and my mouth feels especially wet. I press against him instinctively, convulsively.
“Put your hand in your shorts,” Atlas growls in my ear. “Touch yourself.”
I make just enough space between us to slide my hand down the waistband of my shorts. When I touch my pussy, it’s soaked and slippery.
“Feed it to me…”
I lift my hand to his lips. His mouth closes around my fingers, sudden, shocking, and hot. His tongue rasps; his stubble scratches me.
“Mmm…give me more.”
I touch myself again, and now I’m soft and aching and so wet that my fingers glisten as I raise them to Atlas’s lips.
He closes them in his mouth, licking them clean, sucking my wetness off my fingertips. Then he lifts my shirt, ducks his head, and takes my nipple into his mouth. He sucks it into a point, then pinches it between his fingers, using the wetness to pull and squeeze.
I cry out too loudly. Atlas puts a hand over my mouth, dragging me back against the vine-covered stone wall, out of sight of the hotel windows. Then he covers my lips with his instead, kissing me deeply. He takes both my breasts in his hands, dragging his thumbs across my nipples, catching them, playing, teasing, driving me to a frenzy, smothering my cries with his tongue in my mouth.
I grind against Atlas, touching myself, hand sliding frantically between my thighs. That feeling is building; it’s the closest it’s ever been…a fever, a frenzy that surely has to break…
“Please,” I groan in frustration, touching, rubbing myself.
Atlas slips his hand down my shorts, completely covering mine. His hand is paw-like and heavy. My body is butter, and his heat makes me melt. My hand slides away, and his takes its place. His big, thick fingers sink into my flesh in the most delicious of ways as he begins to rub slow circles around and around…
I start to come. There’s no tipping over, no slide down a hill like a sled. It’s more like a bomb that explodes not once but three, then four, then five separate times, the blasts rocketing outward in concentric rings.
Pleasure flows from my belly down my limbs, all the way up my spine to the base of my brain. I close my eyes and press my face against Atlas’s arm, clinging to him, breathing in the scent of his skin. I think of his face, and the way his scowl softens, and those green flecks in his eyes, and the delicious friction of his fingers…and my mind explodes into ten thousand stars.
And when it’s all over and I’m taking deep breaths, still drunk and swaying on the chemicals flushing my body, Atlas keeps his hand cupped on my pussy, warm and dissolving, his other hand stroking my back.
“See?” he says, in that deep, soothing voice. “You can do it if you just relax.”
I cling to his arm, swaying like a drunken sailor. Whatever I thought I would say turns to helpless giggles instead. I’m half-hysterical on the glee of what I just felt. And the relief that I finally know what it’s like.
I snort, “You should add that onto your spa services.”
Atlas’s hands tighten on my body. With a wicked chuckle, he says in my ear, “I’ll put it on your tab.”