Monarch

31. Atlas

31

ATLAS

I hate leaving Elena alone over dinner. I only do it because I know she’ll be in the dining room the whole time, surrounded by people, Amy watching and reporting back to me. But every mile I drive away from the Monarch makes me more nervous—because it’s a mile I’ll have to drive to get back to her again.

I know she wants to leave Lorne, but I really don’t think she understands how dangerous he is. She underestimates him.

And maybe…so have I.

So I drive back up to his castle, alone this time. When I know he’ll be busy. When I know his work crews will be away.

But when I see the uneven spires rising over the pine tops and then the high, barred gates and the empty, muddy yard, I realize there’s no need for work crews anymore. The castle is finished.

It looks monstrous. Maybe it’s the rain slicing down, or the purple clouds, or the hunched, humped look of the uneven spires…or maybe it’s the black soul of the thing, built by a man with no soul at all.

No architect made that. That castle came out of Lorne Ronson’s head, stitched together from the plans like Frankenstein’s monster.

I’d planned to scale the gates and search the place, but I can already see the cameras mounted and the heavy iron lock on the bastille-style door.

I don’t need to see inside to see the truth.

This isn’t a castle.

It’s a prison.

Built for Lorne’s bride.

By the time Elena stumbles up to the library, rain pounds against the windows and wind moans down the chimney. She’s obviously come directly up from the Reinstoff, her hair smelling smoky and sweet from the straw thatch and the carefully enclosed fireplace. And she obviously had a few, her ankles wobbly in her high-heeled shoes, her cheeks deeply pink.

“Atlas…” She puts her arms around my neck and leans against me, warm and heavy, kissing me in that immediate, hungry, wet way that makes me suspect I might have a drunk little slut on my hands. Which happens to be my favorite thing.

“You drunk little slut,” I growl aloud in her ear. “You better not have kissed him like that.”

“Never.” She grabs the front of my shirt, yanks me forward, and puts her tongue in my mouth. She tastes fucking fantastic, and her wild tongue is lighting me on fire. I have to talk to her, but also, I have to put my hands on every inch of her body right now.

I shut the library door and lock it. It locks from the inside—that probably should have been a clue that Mom had a lover. I’m realizing that now that I’m using this library for similar purposes. I found out about the lover when Dad shot him at a party. So I’m no stranger to the passions you can inflame when you steal someone else’s partner.

But Elena is supposed to be mine. I know it every time I touch her. I know it when she looks at me and says my name. I can smell it on her skin and taste it on her lips. I hear it in her laugh, and I read it on her face.

That’s why it feels so good when I take her in my arms like this. Not good like a massage—good like I’ll burn down my life to have it. To have her. To have this moment, and then this one, and then the next…her hand sliding inside my shirt, her mouth trailing down my chest. Elena on her knees, surprising me with her hands unbuttoning my pants…

“You’re too drunk.” I put my hands over hers though it’s the last thing in the world I want to do.

“Three drinks over four hours,” Elena scoffs, batting away my hands.

“How full were those drinks?” I’ve seen Lorne pour half a bottle into his glass.

“Don’t complain unless you don’t like it,” Elena says, which doesn’t exactly answer my question.

Then she puts her mouth on me, and I think, I’ll give my whole fucking life for this moment, and then I can’t think anything at all, because it’s a kind of pleasure without words or even images.

It’s pure sensation, almost unbearable, and so good that it becomes a new standard. Anything that feels good in the future will forever be compared to this.

The rain thrashes outside, furiously wet, but the heat of her mouth is softly unwinding…

I close my eyes and put my hand in her hair. It’s so pleasurable, I could never ask her to stop. The rain washes against the windows and washes out the inside of my brain. I almost lose it right there in her mouth.

Elena lifts her head, giving me a wicked look. “That’s what I’d do if I were actually sorry about something.”

“ Please do something horrible to me. I need another apology.”

Elena laughs and puts her lips on my cock. Almost losing it turns into exploding.

I warn her. She carries on anyway, using her hand as well as her mouth. The new standard of pleasure gets blasted apart, and the new new standard takes its place.

I give her my pocket square to clean up.

“You’re still hard,” she observes.

“You still look fucking gorgeous.”

She laughs. She’s sitting on the couch in that black velvet dress, flushed and glowing. There’s a kind of hectic energy I haven’t seen in her before—nerves with an edge of aggression.

I ask, “What happened?” Amy’s updates were slightly enigmatic.

“It doesn’t matter.” Elena shakes her head.

“Did he hurt you?” I’d be furious if Amy didn’t tell me that.

“No.” Elena says firmly. “He didn’t lay a hand on me.”

I believe her, but something is off. She’s too keyed up.

I’m dying to touch her again, to somehow try to repay the most pleasurable experience of my life. But I have to talk to her first. So I zip my pants and sit down next to her, putting my arm around the back of the sofa, not quite around her shoulders.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

She nods, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, lips swollen. “I’m fine, Atlas, I promise you.”

Hoping that’s true, I say, “I need to talk to you.”

“I’m listening.”

“I want you to leave Lorne. I don’t know what your circumstances are, what you might have done back home, and I don’t care. I’ll help you.”

Elena stiffens. I put my arm all the way around her, drawing her close against my side. Looking into her eyes, I say, “Elena, I will help you. I will protect you. I don’t care what you’ve done. You can trust me.”

Her breathing is so shallow it’s almost nonexistent, her eyes wide and strained. In a tiny voice, she says, “What if I did something really bad?”

“I see who you are. I don’t care what you did.”

She presses her lips together, squeezing my hand, eyes lifted, almost believing…

I ask her, “Was it a mistake?”

She nods.

“Then I don’t care.”

She finally believes me, shoulders dropping with relief. “Really, Atlas?”

“I promise you, I’ll help you. But you have to leave Lorne. He’s lying to you. He’s dangerous.”

Elena drops her head, looking at her hands wrapped around mine. “I know.”

“You do?”

“He lied to me about how we met. And a lot of other things, too. It seemed like it was little things at first—how long he’d been staying at the hotel, when the move-in date would be…but then I realized he’d misrepresented almost everything. Especially his relationship with Ivy.” Elena falls silent, frowning.

“I think it’s a lot worse than that. Do you know what happened to Ivy’s mom?”

Elena bites her lip. “I read online there was a carbon monoxide leak.”

“Ivy almost died, too. Lorne was conveniently out of town.”

“You think he did it?”

“Here’s what I know: Linda Lovelace was from a wealthy family. From what I hear, they didn’t like Lorne. They thought he was a deadbeat and a leech.”

“Lorne makes good money,” Elena points out.

“I don’t think his books sell nearly as well as he wants people to think. That ‘award’ of his, it doesn’t exist. His books were self-published on Linda’s dime—or so her sister tells me. And the clerk at Books n’ Brews says they only sell a couple of copies a week—copies Lorne brings in himself.”

“But he has a Wikipedia page!”

“Anybody can make those.” I didn’t want to tell Elena all this until I knew for certain, because it makes me look petty and jealous. But I don’t think there’s anything petty about this at all, not when it’s a pattern: Lorne is not who he pretends to be.

Which means we have no idea what he really is.

“He’s dangerous,” I repeat. “You need to leave him.”

“I know,” Elena says. “I will.”

Good.

“But not until after Halloween.”

Not fucking good.

“No way,” I growl. “It’s not safe, Elena. He’s escalating.”

“I don’t care,” Elena says, her chin firmly set. “I promised Ivy, and I’m not breaking my promise.”

I know I have to tread carefully here. “Elena…she’s not your daughter.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“And you can’t marry Lorne because of her.”

“I know that, too.” Elena looks at me steadily with those clear blue eyes. “I’m not marrying Lorne. But I made plans with Ivy for Halloween, and I can at least keep that promise. It’s one more day.”

A lot can happen in a day. But I can tell she’s already made up her mind, and I don’t want to pressure her.

“You’ll leave after that?”

Elena sits quietly for a moment, looking unhappy. “As soon as Ivy goes to bed,” she says at last. “Before midnight.” Her hands tighten on her thighs, and she looks up at me. “But I’m still going to try to help her.”

“Fine. I’ll help you help her. But not anywhere he can hurt you.”

I don’t know what Elena can do for Ivy, but she can do it safe and sound with me.

I hate the idea of giving Lorne even one more day.

But he’s not the one asking for it…Elena is. And I’d give her anything.

“Stay with me,” I tell her, kissing her gently, caressing her face. “Be with me always. Live here. Love me. Let me love you.”

“That’s crazy,” Elena gasps, but she’s kissing me back, hands on my face, sliding onto my lap. “We just met.”

“It doesn’t matter. I love you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“ I love you.”

She makes a sound that’s almost a groan.

I kiss her. “Do you feel that? I love you.” I kiss her again and again. “What do you want me to do to show you? Ask me for anything. I’ll give it to you. Will that prove it? Ask me to do anything. Try me, Elena.”

She looks into my eyes a long time, hands on either side of my face. With a soft sigh, she says, “I already believe you.”

She kisses me, and there’s a new taste in her mouth, pure and bubbling and bright. I can taste that she’s happy. I feel it in her hands in my hair, in the way she kisses me, in the shape of her lips on mine, almost smiling.

She whispers, “Because I love you, too.”

I feel a burst of pure sunlight, though the wind and the rain are howling.

I meant to take her down to my room to do this properly. I meant to wait until she was mine, fully and completely. But Elena’s looking into my eyes, sliding down her underwear. And I’m unbuttoning my trousers, cock springing free.

She straddles me on the sofa, still wearing her black velvet dress, her hair glowing in the firelight. The long, loose strands dangle around her face, her lips red and swollen. She positions herself over my cock.

“Wait,” I say, and I tip her over on her back, her head tilted over the arm of the sofa, her thighs around my face. Even though she’s already wet, I lick her until she’s swollen and shivering and drenched.

Then I pull her back onto my lap, just as she was. And I let her slide the head of my cock around with her hand, lining it up where it feels right until with tight, exquisite slowness, she lowers her weight and begins to slide down.

Her arms around my neck, she looks into my eyes. “I want to give this to you and only you. Because I trust you, Atlas. I know you’ll be gentle and make it feel good. And I won’t regret it after.”

The pressure and friction increase. Her face turns pink, her eyes widen, her mouth opens, and she gasps.

For me, the squeezing and sliding are like being eaten alive by a boa constrictor if the last living moments were pure pleasure. I hold Elena’s waist to help her down slow, but it’s hard not to squeeze her back, because every inch of me feels like it’s compacting, compressing, like she’s somehow sliding down my whole entire body.

When my fingers tighten on her waist, her stomach tightens, too, and she moans. She throws her arms all the way around my neck, pressing her body against me, turning her face to my neck. I hold the back of her head and breathe in the scent of her hair. All of a sudden, I’m right on the edge. I thought I was safe since I already came, but here we are again way too soon.

“Jesus, slow down,” I groan, cradling her head and the small of her back. Her body feels unreal in my arms, like an idea, a fantasy brought to life. It’s too much to have what I wanted so badly. All my control is shredded.

“I’m barely moving,” Elena murmurs in my ear, sliding another delicious millimeter down my cock.

It’s like a countdown to a rocket launch. Ten seconds, now nine… I have to make this last, but she smells so good, it’s outrageous.

And I’ve never felt a sensation quite like this, the inside of her pussy softer than that velvet dress…

“I’m not going to make it,” I moan when I can’t take any more.

Eight… Seven… Six…

“It’s okay,” Elena whispers into my ear. “I’m right here.” And she slides all the way down, letting out a sigh.

Five… Four…

She barely made a sound, but her whole body relaxes, and then comes the groan. So long and so satisfying that I finally understand that she’s coming as she rocks her hips an inch up and down.

Three… Two…

On the last rock, I explode. I’ve never come in so little time or from so little motion, but I’ve also never come so hard. She curls her body around me, legs wrapped around my waist, arms around my neck, my cock squeezed tightly inside her. I blast and blast upward until I reach the starry skies.

Eventually, I’m back in the library. It’s the same books, the same dusty sofa, the same fireplace, and the same rain.

But I’m a new man.

Elena straddles my lap, her hands in my hair. Her hair has come undone and her dress is slipping down her shoulders. She’s flushed and rosy all the way to her breasts.

“Marry me,” I say, “not him.”

She laughs and shakes her head, saying again, “That’s crazy !”

But when she sees I’m not smiling, she stops laughing. Her hands slide down to my face.

“Do you mean it, Atlas?”

“Kiss me and see if I mean it.”