28. Atlas
28
ATLAS
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Elena standing below my window, the exact mirror of our positions last night when I stood beneath her window. Only, I have no idea how she found mine. Not even Amy’s seen my bedroom.
Elena’s hair looked redder than ever against the black sand and her leather coat, color whipped into her cheeks. That’s how I knew she wasn’t a ghost, because she’d never looked more alive—no matter how impossible it seemed for her to be standing there.
I shower quickly and still beat her to the darkroom. When she comes in, her skin is cold and salty and smells fresh as rain. Dew droplets soak her hair. She’s damper than I am until she strips off her coat. Then she slips into my arms in a thin jersey top, warm and completely dry on her torso.
“How did you know where my room was?” I demand because the mystery’s driving me crazy.
Elena laughs, equally delighted. “I just looked up, and there you were! I climbed over the rocks to take a picture of the back of the hotel. Do you always just stand naked at the window? Doesn’t anybody walk there?”
“Barely ever. And they never look up.”
“I did,” she says with a delicious thrill, standing up on tiptoe to kiss me with her arms around my neck. Her mouth is hungry, warmer even than her body. She tastes of coffee and sea salt and her own sweetness.
I run my hands all over her body beneath her shirt, lifting and caressing her full, warm breasts. She’s not wearing a bra, and I love the way my hands glide across her skin.
“Close the door,” Elena murmurs.
I lean over to pull the door tightly shut, sealing us in the windowless chamber deep beneath the hotel. We can be as loud as we want, and no one will hear us.
Elena’s body tightens and her breathing quickens when I close the door, but the surge of adrenaline only seems to fuel her. She throws herself into my arms, kissing me wildly. I kiss her and kiss her in the dim red light, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Each thud of my heart is a clock ticking down the seconds I have left with her. Every hour is stolen—she always meets the author for dinner.
How do I get her away from him?
I touch the body that should only be touched by me, that should never be touched by him. I hate that he found her first. I hate that he put his ring on her finger.
“Take that off,” I say to Elena, eyes fixed on that hideous, glittering rock.
She touches the ring with her right hand but hesitates. It means something to take it off. We both know this.
She looks into my eyes and slips the ring from her finger, setting it down on a nearby shelf.
There’s no speaking after that—just my lips on hers and my hands drawing gasps and moans out of her body.
I lift Elena onto the worktable, her thighs parted so I can stand between them, my hands cupping her face. She lifts her lips, her tongue slipping out to meet mine. She tastes like honeysuckle, like dew, like fresh morning air. In the underground darkroom, Elena blooms like a flower, fresh and alive.
“My whole body’s been throbbing all day,” she murmurs, her hands stroking through my hair. “What we did last night…it’s like a flood that’s still washing through me.”
“It’s good for you. Orgasms are healthy. They help with blood flow, heart health, reduce depression…”
Elena laughs softly, bringing kisses light as butterflies to my forehead, cheeks, chin, and mouth. “I was way less depressed afterward.”
I cup the side of her face with my palm, looking into her eyes. “Are you depressed?”
She looks right back at me, her eyes clear and unblinking. “No. But I’m stressed. Can you help me, Atlas?”
She scratches her nails against my scalp, gazing up at me. Asking me for exactly what she wants with those arctic-fox eyes.
“You know I’ll always take care of you.” I take her left boot in my hand and begin to unlace it. Elena watches me closely, her eyes on my face. “Do you know that’s true, Elena?”
“You will?” she says softly.
“Yes. I will.” I pull off the boot and strip off her sock, taking her bare foot in my hand. It’s warm and clean and soft. I press my thumb into the arch of her foot, making her groan. “You can trust me, Elena. I won’t hurt you. And I won’t let anyone else hurt you.”
I massage the arch of her foot with both thumbs, then the ball of her foot, and even her toes. Elena slumps back onto her elbows on the worktable as the deep pressure in her foot unlocks the tension in the rest of her body. I set her left foot gently down and pick up the right, slowly unlacing her boot.
“I like taking care of you,” I admit to her. “I like seeing you safe and happy.” I take off her sock and massage her right foot. I can fit her whole foot easily between my hands. I can rub long, slow strokes that make her eyes roll back.
“ O bozhe… ” Elena groans, her eyes glazed with pleasure. “ Do you work at the spa? I’m starting to wonder…”
“You’re going to have quite the bill at the end of the week.” I scoop her up, setting her on her bare feet only long enough to unbutton her jeans and slip them down. Then I lift her back onto the table, pulling away her jeans and her underwear.
It’s impossible to tell if Elena’s blushing in the scarlet light, but she goes still and quiet, her thighs pressing against the outsides of my hips. I drop to my knees in front of her, hands on her inner thighs, her exquisite pussy spread open in front of my face.
But then I stop. Because even in the red light, I can see marks on her inner thigh. Clusters of bruises, dark and shaped like fingerprints.
The rage I feel is a flaming furnace, turned instantly from zero to inferno.
“Did he do this?”
Elena stiffens. She’s staring at my face, shrinking away, and that’s what makes me realize how awful I must look. And how awful I sound.
When I’m with her, I forget that I’m scary to everyone else—even Amy sometimes. But never, I hope, to Elena.
“I’m sorry,” I say in my gentlest voice, massaging her thighs with my palms, loosening the tension. “I’m not angry at you.” But then I lift my head and look into her eyes. “But if he does that to you again, I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Don’t say that,” Elena whispers.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“I’m afraid that’s exactly where we’re headed. Because I’m telling you, Elena, I won’t let him hurt you .”
She can’t even pretend that he won’t. Because there it is on her thigh, the evidence that he already did.
“Leave him.” I should have said it before, a hundred times.
Elena shakes her head, biting her lip, looking away. “It’s not that simple.”
That’s what she said before, many times, in many ways. She’s trying to tell me there’s another piece, something I don’t understand. But she won’t come out and say it.
Fear makes us want to run and hide.
I see it in her dilated pupils, the tension in her muscles, the pallor of her skin. Elena’s running on a level of anxiety that won’t let her think straight.
In the Victorian era, doctors invented vibrators to help their female patients unwind. It was a popular therapy because it does actually work.
I look up at Elena, leaning my head against her inner thigh.
“Fine. You’re right, it’s impossible; it could never, ever work.”
Her mouth quirks slightly as she shakes her head. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“Oh, I’m not.” I spread my fingers, palms covering her inner thighs. I gently press her knees outward, breathing in the warmth of her skin. “I just can’t fight with you. Not when you’re not wearing any pants.”
I lean forward and press my face into her cunt and inhale her sweet, sweet scent. Elena gasps, thighs tightening around my ears, hands thrusting into my hair.
“You smell incredible,” I tell her. “So I give up. Just tell me what I have to do to taste you.”
Elena bites her lip. Her smile slips out anyway, wicked and white. She seizes a handful of my hair and pulls my face toward her.
I nuzzle my nose against pussy lips softer than rose petals and slip my tongue up her soaking-wet slit. Her taste is like her mouth, like her breath, like her sweat, like her skin, a chemical combination that only becomes more intoxicating as it slowly sinks in.
Elena gasps and shivers as my tongue glides across her skin, crying out when I find the nub of her clit. I lap it with my tongue, slow strokes, then circles, and then back to strokes. I read the shudders of her body with my hands, the way she bucks her hips and clenches her thighs around my ears, finding what she likes best, teasing her with it, pulling back, and building up all over again…
I draw it out much longer than the night before, building the waves in sets, taking her all the way to the edge again and again. Her scent is feral, her thighs sweating, her pussy swollen and sensitive in all the right ways. When I slide one single finger inside her, her puffy, warm flesh grips me and she lets out a long, dragging groan. Her back arches, and her nails dig into my scalp.
Latching my mouth gently on her clit, I hold her by the waist, sucking and flicking lightly with my tongue. Elena gasps and squirms, the stimulation almost too much to bear. I slide my hands from her waist down to her hips, cupping her ass, pulling her body toward me. Elena rocks her hips, holding my head with both hands, my face pressed between her thighs.
Her cries grow higher and louder. She rocks her hips against my face, sliding her clit over my tongue. Her pussy is so soaked I’m drowning in it, to the point where I’m not getting air. Black sparks snap across my eyes, but I already decided I’ll pass out on the floor before I’ll interrupt her orgasm.
She’s right there, no going back now. She holds my head between her legs, back arched, face tilted up to the ceiling, crying out long and loud. And then she collapses all the way forward, sliding off the table to join me on the floor, curled up in my lap, her face against my neck.
She’s still breathing hard. I can feel her pulse throbbing through her body, even down her arms and legs.
“Holy Jesus,” she gasps. “That was…even better.”