21. Breaking Point
Chapter twenty-one
Breaking Point
Atticus POV
The fire has burned down to coals.
I don't remember deciding to close the distance. I don't remember moving. One second there's six inches between us and the rule I made to protect both of us, and the next her mouth is under mine and the rule is gone and I don't care where it went.
She makes a small sound against my lips. Not surprise. Recognition.
Like she's been waiting for me to stop pretending too.
I kiss her slow. Deliberate. The way I do everything: controlled, measured, in charge.
Except my hands are in her hair and my chest is pressed against hers and there is nothing controlled about the way I feel right now.
Nothing measured. I've wanted this for so long that the wanting has its own shape, its own weight, and now that it's here I'm trying not to sprint at it.
She pulls at my shirt. Fingers curling into the fabric.
I let her.
Her hands slide under the hem and I exhale against her mouth and she does it again, harder this time, pulling me closer, and I break from the kiss to get air and look at her.
Her face in the low light.
Her eyes, dark and certain and open in a way I have never once seen Sienna Hart be open.
"Tell me to stop," I say.
It comes out rough. Barely words.
She shakes her head. Slow. Certain.
"Don't stop."
That's all I need.
I kiss her throat and feel her pulse spike beneath my mouth.
I drag my lips to the curve where her neck meets her shoulder and she tilts her head back and I stay there, because I want to, because I've thought about that exact spot more than I'm willing to admit, until she makes a sound that lives somewhere between a sigh and something more urgent.
Her hands are still twisted in my shirt.
I ease them loose. Lace my fingers through hers.
"Lie back," I say against her skin.
She does.
She looks up at me with her hair spread across the pillow and her lips parted and her breathing too fast, and I hold it. The realness of it. The fact that she chose this. Before I let myself move.
I take my time on her collarbone. On the soft curve below her ribs. On the place just above her hip where my thumb traces a slow circle and her breath catches sharp.
"Atticus."
My name in her mouth.
I've heard her say it a hundred times. Exasperated. Sarcastic. Under her breath when she thinks I'm not listening. I've catalogued every version of it.
This one is new.
This one goes straight through me.
"Tell me what you want," I say. Lips at her stomach. Her skin warm under my mouth.
She tells me.
The words come out quiet and unguarded, stripped of the armor she keeps on everything, and I press my forehead to her skin for one second just to stay steady.
Because hearing Sienna Hart ask me for something without bracing for the answer, without pre-loading a comeback in case I disappoint her, hits me somewhere deep and wordless that I'm not ready to look at yet.
I start to move down.
I take my time. Every inch deliberate. Learning the map of her, what makes her inhale, what makes her fingers curl into the sheets. By the time my mouth finds the inside of her knee she's already breathing in pieces, short and uneven, and I don't rush it. I'd stay here all night if she'd let me.
I work my way higher and she makes a sound that isn't a word.
I stay where she needs me. Steady. Patient. All the things I'm not anywhere else.
Her hand finds my hair.
She doesn't push. She just holds on.
Her hips roll once and I pin them gently with my forearm, not to stop her, just to hold her steady, keep her here, keep her with me, and she makes a broken sound that I feel in my spine.
"Don't stop," she breathes. "Don't... Atticus... please..."
I don't stop.
She says my name at the end of it. Half question, half answer, like she's been holding it in her mouth for months and finally has permission to let it out.
Her fingers tighten in my hair. Not guiding. Just holding on.
I feel the moment she gets close. The way her thighs tremble against my shoulders, the way her breathing fragments into something urgent and uneven.
I don't pull back. I press closer, open-mouthed, relentless, my tongue working slow circles while my hands grip her hips and keep her right where I want her.
"Atticus." Broken. Breathless. "Don't stop, don't — please —"
I don't stop.
I stay with her while she falls apart. While her back arches off the mattress and her fingers twist hard in my hair and the sound she makes goes rough and raw and completely open.
I work her through every wave of it, slow and thorough, until her grip loosens and her hips sink back down and the only sound left in the cabin is her trying to remember how to breathe.
After, she's quiet. Breathing.
I press a slow kiss to the inside of her thigh. Then I come back up.
She pulls me to her before I finish moving. Both hands on my face. Kissing me with an honesty that knocks something loose inside me. Not frantic, not performance. Just her, wanting me back, and I feel it land somewhere behind my ribs and stay.
My hands are everywhere she'll let me. The soft curve of her waist. Her spine. Her hip. I've wanted to touch her like this for so long that now I can, I don't know how to stop. I'm not sure I want to stop. I'm not sure I remember what it felt like to not want her.
We get close to the edge.
We both feel it. The point where pulling back becomes genuinely hard, where all the remaining logic says keep going and the threadbare part of me that can still calculate consequence says not yet.
She feels me hold back. She pulls her mouth from mine and looks at me.
"Hey." Her voice is quiet. Eyes clear. She searches my face and finds whatever she finds. Her thumb traces my cheekbone once. "We can stop."
"I don't want to stop."
"Then why..."
"Because if we don't pull back now, we won't." The words come out rougher than I plan. "And I want to do this right. I want you to have no questions about what this is. After."
She's quiet for a moment.
Then something in her face goes soft in a way I've never seen and I have to look away. I don't have anywhere to put that.
I press my forehead to hers. Close my eyes. I don't say anything for a long time because I don't trust what would come out. I stay there with my forehead against hers and her hand flat against my skin and the fire breathing low behind us.
"I won't make you collateral damage," I finally say.
It comes out like something I've been holding since the night I drove her home in silence and called her off-limits and drove away before I did something I couldn't take back.
She exhales slowly. Her fingers curl against my chest.
"I know," she says. "I think I've known for a while."
I press my lips to her forehead and hold them there and I think: this is the most honest I've been with another person in years. Maybe ever. I think: she should have had this years ago. I think: I'm not going to waste it.
The cabin is very quiet. Her hand is flat against my side, not gripping, just resting — like she decided to stay.
I can feel her pulse against my collarbone where her face is turned in.
It's slowing down. So is mine. I put my hand over hers without thinking.
The fire is almost out. I should say something.
I don't. I press my mouth to her hair instead and that says enough, or nothing, and I'm not sure it matters which.
Her breathing evens out.
The cabin is warm and dark and quiet.
I should sleep. I know I should sleep.
My phone lights up on the nightstand.
Unknown number.
I reach for it automatically, league, legal, PR, any of a hundred fires, and unlock it.
A video clip. Three seconds long.
Sienna. Younger. Crying in a way she doesn't cry now, like she hasn't learned to hold it back yet. Her face raw and young and terrified.
I watch it once.
Then I read the caption below it.
Send money or every outlet gets this by morning.
I look at her. Asleep against my shoulder. Finally, actually at rest, the lines she carries in her face gone quiet.
Then I look back at my phone.
My teeth set hard.
I don't flinch.
He's not bluffing. A man with nothing to lose doesn't have to.
My thumb hovers over the screen and I think about her father's voice in the recording I made. The charm that peeled back to nothing. The practiced ease of a man who has been doing this for years, threatening her, extracting from her, using her fear like a currency he earned.
She is asleep.
She is safe.
And somewhere out there, the man who taught her that love comes with a price tag is waiting for me to flinch.
I don't flinch.
I pull up the contact for the team's legal counsel.
And I start typing.