Chapter 15
15
ATLAS
A ll the blood rushing through my ears with my barely restrained fury suddenly shifts to a very different part of my body. “What did you just say?”
Wren locks her warm amber gaze with mine, and the cacophony around us—the band, the chatter of the hundreds of people, the click of expensive shoes on the dance floor—vanishes in an instant. All that matters is what is about to come out of her plump, pink lips right now. “I said, I want to break our rule.”
They’re the words I’ve been longing to hear for weeks, that I’ve begged her for, but not like this. Not after she just had a brush with Satriano and likely has a crazy adrenaline reaction occurring in her body.
Tightening my grip on her, I tug her to my chest even as my cock grows under her thigh, not getting on board with what my head is telling me. “You don’t mean that, Little Bird. You’re just upset.”
Rightfully so.
That monster has inserted himself into our lives and made threats with a fake smile for far too long.
And bringing Wren into it, targeting her when he knows she’s new to all of this and likely the most vulnerable of us, only shows what a devious, soulless motherfucker he really is.
“No.” Wren shakes her head, and a strand of her thick, dark hair falls from the pretty updo, drifting over her cheek. “I mean, I am, but…” She glances around us, ensuring no one is close enough to hear whatever she’s about to say. “I’m completely serious, Atlas. It’s what I want, what I need right now. You. Us. ”
Shit.
She’s obviously been shaken by her confrontation with Satriano, and we desperately need to talk about it. Go over everything he said to her in minute detail and try to unravel his dastardly purpose in coming here. But after she says those words, all I can think about is how badly I’ve wanted her again. How torturous it’s been to feel her come on my fingers, against my mouth, and not experience her cunt contracting around my cock.
All I can fantasize about is how badly I want to make love to her again.
That selfish piece of me screams to “go for it,” while the part of my brain that wants me to be a gentleman and protect her from making a decision and doing something she’ll regret later says “no.”
“Atlas…” Wren waits for me to focus on her again. “Whatever you’re thinking—don’t.”
Damn woman. Isn’t that what I said to her that first day we spent together?
She was overthinking everything, spinning out in her own head instead of just feeling and doing what we both wanted.
And now she’s asking me for one thing.
Something I’m more than willing to give her.
I wrap the stray strand of her hair around my finger and tug it lightly. “I’m taking you home.”
She shakes her head, shifting on my lap, further pinning my hard cock under her thigh with clear intent to do just that. To make it painful and impossible to say no to whatever she’s going to ask. “No, I need you now .”
Bloody fucking hell.
People always talk about strange reactions to intense situations and what adrenaline can do to you, physically and mentally. I’ve been through plenty of them myself, and I can definitely sympathize. After a fight, as soon as I step out of the ring, I want nothing more than to fuck and feel that pleasure.
That’s what I see in her eyes now.
That same desire.
As if dancing with Satriano is no different than me dancing with an opponent inside that square box.
Different circumstances.
Different partners.
Same effect.
I can’t deny her what I know she needs.
Not even if my conscience objects.
I issue a low groan of surrender and climb to my feet, setting her gently onto hers. With her body pressed to my front, I reach between us and adjust my cock to try to cover my erection the best I can.
After hosting this event here for so many years, I know the building like the back of my hand, and there’s only one place we have any hope of remaining undiscovered. Because as much as fucking her publicly, bent over this table, makes my cock twitch and might even make her wet, I don’t want to share her with anyone right now.
She’s all mine.
I lead her away from the table and toward the stairs tucked at the rear of the event space that rise to the old choir loft from when this place was still a functioning church.
Afraid of the potential legal liability if we let guests up there who had a few too many drinks, we’ve always kept it closed, roped off. Completely private.
Precisely what I need for what I have planned for my Little Bird.
I force smiles at a few people as we pass, but thank God, no one tries to stop us for a pointless chat.
Normally, I can turn on the charm necessary to get the attendees to open their wallets and help the charity, but tonight, I don’t know that I could be stopped for anything. Or that I could hide my straining cock or Wren’s wide eyes and blush, knowing what we’re about to do.
With one hand on her waist, I urge her to the bottom of the stairwell, where a rope stretches with a small sign blocking access.
Closed for event.
I reach down and unhook it from one side, then usher her up and re-secure it behind me before I follow her on the old stone stairs.
The ascent seems to take forever. Each step—with her magnificent ass swaying in the tight, feather-covered gown directly in front of my face—more agonizing than the last.
That iron restraint I’ve used for weeks to try to respect her rule, threatens to snap before we even get to our destination.
By the time we reach the loft that once held the choir, my cock presses so hard against the front of my pants that I feel like it might rip through the fucking fabric before I can get them down.
The moment we round the corner and step out into the open space, I turn her to face me and slam my mouth against hers.
Tasting her.
Holding her.
Needing that confirmation that she’s all right.
And that this is what she really wants.
After fighting it for so long, after withholding, after weeks and weeks of her telling me this is what I needed, to abstain, to keep my focus on my recovery instead of on her, she’s all I can see now…
Her raven hair twisted up at the back of her head.
Her amber eyes warm and shimmering with the same lust and attraction coursing through me.
All I can feel…
The frantic grope of her hands against the lapels of my tux.
Her tongue tangled with mine.
All I can hear…
The rustle of the stupid fabric that separates us.
Those little moans that slip from her mouth into mine.
They should be drowned out by the orchestra, by the din of voices and laughter floating up from below us, but everything else vanishes, washed away by the wave of desire overwhelming us and threatening to drag us under.
I tear my mouth from hers. “Christ, Wren, you utterly destroy me. You understand that?”
She moans and nods.
“You sure you want this, Little Bird?”
Her head bobs again, and she frantically presses her lips to mine, grinding her hips and pinning my cock between us.
Fuck.
“This is the choir loft, Little Bird. If you sing up here, it’s going to project out across the entire space. Even that band isn’t going to be able to cover it, so you have to be quiet. Do you understand?”
She issues a little mewl against my lips as I dig my fingers into her hip.
“Are you sure?”
A groan of frustration travels up her throat, and she tugs on my lapels again to pull me even closer. The tiniest hint of anger flashes in her gaze. “I need your cock inside of me. Right here, right now. I don’t care that there are four hundred people down there. I don’t care that somebody could come up those stairs and find us. I just need you. ”
There it is.
The thing I needed to hear and the one way to flay me and make it impossible to say no to her.
To voice it.
For her to tell me exactly what she wants and how she wants it.
I fought so hard to get her to open up to me about sex, about what she needed from me, to teach her to let go and to give herself over, and to believe that, in the end, I would show her all the things she’d never had before.
Hearing those words from her lips after this long causes a positively feral snarl to roll through me.
While the thought of fucking her with everyone oblivious below us certainly holds an appeal, I’d much rather we were back at home, where she wouldn’t have to bite back anything. Where she can beg and scream and be as loud as she wants.
But that isn’t in the cards tonight.
Not with as desperate as we both are.
I spin her around to face the brick wall and push her up against it. She issues a little yelp, pressing her cheek to the rough surface and watching me from the corner of her eye as I reach down to start gathering the skirt of the feathered gown.
Fuck, do I love this woman.
In the time we’ve been together, I’ve fought the words.
I don’t know why, other than fear.
Fear of losing her, of losing this when so much else is on the line.
But I can’t restrain them now.
I can’t pull them back any more than I could deny her request tonight.
Because I love her too much for that.
I press my lips to her cheek, holding them there. “You know how much I love you, don’t you, Little Bird?”
She sucks in a sharp breath and squeezes her eyes closed, nodding. “Yes.”
“Good, because the way I’m about to fuck you, it might feel like I don’t.”
Wren shudders, and I finally get the bulk of her dress up around her hips, exposing her bare ass cheeks in the tiny thong she wears underneath it. Using my body to keep her pinned, I reach down and undo my fly, freeing my cock. It jerks in my hand, and I stroke it slowly, the pleasure already coursing through me nearly uncontainable.
I nudge her stiletto-heeled feet wider and tug the thong to one side, so I can glide the head of my cock through the moisture already pooling at the apex of her thighs. “Fuck, Wren. I have been dreaming about this…”
“Me, too.”
Even between her strained, heavy breaths, the sincerity of her words and the depth of her desire hits me square in the chest, and I don’t hesitate for a second before I push into her in one long, determined stroke that has me bottoming out inside her with a grunt.
She gasps, and I slide the fleshy part of my hand between my thumb and forefinger into her mouth to silence her.
Wren bites down and clenches around me, and my cock throbs inside her hard enough that I have to grit my own teeth to keep from coming already.
Fuck…
So hot.
So wet.
So tight and ready for me.
I drag my hips back and plow into her again, holding nothing back.
This won’t be slow and sweet.
This won’t be an exploration, the way many of our nights together have been, especially since the no-sex rule was initiated. Taking the time to truly learn every intimate detail of each other’s bodies.
But what it will be is exactly what we both need.
That man had his hands on her again, and all that pent-up frustration of the last sseveral weeks mixing with the rage at that vision in my head makes me drive even harder until my hips piston so fast I can’t even control them anymore.
Plunging in and out of her.
Pinning her tighter to the wall.
Trying to fuck away all the pain and anguish we’ve both felt and vanquish all the fear threatening to consume all the good things we have.
Pushing for that perfection we can be together.
WREN
Growing up in New Orleans and then living along the Texas coast, I’ve experienced countless massive storms rolling in off the Gulf.
Thunder.
Lightning.
Wind.
Torrential rains that threaten to drown anything in their path.
The destructive force of those storms left scars on the people and the landscape. They shaped the future and changed the trajectory of lives. No one can deny the power and intensity of Mother Nature or what she’s capable of.
But nothing compares to the hurricane that is Atlas tonight.
I should have known what I was letting loose when I told him what I wanted, should have anticipated what all this time would have built up in him, yet I was wholly unprepared for this .
The man is wild.
Bordering on out of control.
Wrapping me up.
Consuming me.
Pinning me to the unyielding, rough wall and overwhelming me with his lips, his hands, and his cock as he pummels me with a reckless abandon I’ve never experienced—not even that first night when I thought I was getting all of him.
It was only the tip of the iceberg floating in those blue eyes of his that can switch so easily from frosty to warm.
Which would it be now?
That thought disappears the moment he plunges into me again.
I clench around him and dig my teeth into his hand at my mouth to keep from crying out as the pleasure courses through me with every rough thrust.
He doesn’t hold back.
This is Atlas completely unleashed.
This is the Atlas I’ve seen in the ring in those videos that always heated my body.
This is the Atlas I’ve been trying to build back up after his self-belief was stripped away from him with that single bullet.
This is Atlas “the Hurricane” Hawke.
His hand tightens on my hip, and he drags me back, angling my hips higher so that he can drive even deeper.
I gasp at the sharp intrusion and whimper around his hand.
He soothes me with some unintelligible murmur in my ear, with the soft play of his lips at that spot directly behind it, with the swipe of his tongue along my neck, the press of a frantic kiss against the marred skin there.
Atlas said he loved me.
And I believe him.
They weren’t just words said by a desperate man who has wanted this for so long. They were said by someone who has been withholding them, painfully keeping them back for some reason.
The same way he kept this part of him back.
Maybe because he didn’t think he was capable of it anymore due to his injury.
Maybe because he didn’t have confidence in himself anymore.
Maybe because he didn’t trust himself.
Or maybe because he didn’t believe I would return the sentiment.
But now, as he drives into me, his cock stretching me, the head dragging against that spot deep inside me that only he’s been able to find, I moan around his hand and turn my head toward him.
Determined.
Desperate.
Needing him to understand what he means to me.
What he has always meant to me.
“Atlas…” I gasp as he pushes deep, then pulls back and does it again in a way that tries to rip my soul from my chest. “I-I love you…”
A tear trickles from my eye as I say the words, but it’s from relief that I don’t have to keep them in any more, that I don’t have to pretend I don’t mean it because things were moving too fast because it all felt too unreal for me to trust it.
Atlas kisses the single tear away, stilling his hips for a moment and pulling my chin, twisting my head back so he can take my mouth in a deep, languid kiss, tangling his tongue along mine in a greedy possession that feels somehow so much more intense than the way he’s fucking me. “I know you do, Little Bird, and you love when I do this, don’t you?”
He rolls his hips and thrusts hard, bottoming out in a way that makes my clit throb.
I struggle to breathe, panting against his mouth. “God, yes.”
His hand leaves my hip and slides up under the billows of my skirt and down into my thong to find that aching spot. The second his fingertips brush against it, I spasm in his hold. He groans, tongue delving deep into my mouth again, devouring me as he resumes that punishing rhythm, this time swirling his fingers around the tiny, hard bud, certain to make me explode.
And he’s right—keeping silent is hard when all I want to do is cry out for him and for God, who brought him into my life.
Fucking thank you for giving me this man—
His thrusts become erratic, and I know he’s as close as I am.
Like a sunrise on the horizon.
Right there.
This was never going to be long, drawn-out lovemaking.
It’s a rush.
A frantic race.
A hurricane slamming against the shore at a category five.
Barreling down on land with such brutal force because it wants to destroy everything.
And I want to let him destroy me in the best way possible.
With each slam of his hips, that white-hot ball centering low in my belly starts to spread out, and he tears his mouth away from mine, letting me press my cheek back against the rough brick.
He grips my hip with one hand and continues to roll and tweak my clit with the other. “You’re going to come for me, Wren. Hard . I want to feel your cunt squeezing my cock, milking me, sucking me up deep inside you. I want you to take my cum like my good Little Bird.”
Jesus, when he talks like that—
I shudder and finally explode.
Atlas somehow manages to get his hand up from my hip and over my mouth before my scream cuts through the party.
Bright light flashes against my closed lids.
Scorching pleasure ripples through every nerve ending in an aggressive rush.
My legs start to give out.
I jerk against his cupped hold on my cunt.
Clenching and grasping his hard length.
He continues to thrust relentlessly, the same unstoppable intensity I’ve helped him try to regain in the ring, until I finally feel him harden even more and hot spurts hitting deep inside me.
Sweet mother of God…
Every muscle twitches as I come down from my high, and I finally manage to gasp in another breath as I sag forward to the brick. Atlas falls on me, giving me his entire body weight—his solid frame, all that muscle and power pressing into me against the unyielding, rough wall.
But I don’t even care.
It’s exactly what I needed.
A reaffirmation of everything we are, of what we’re working for, of the fact that Satriano is not going to be able to do anything to hurt the Hawkes or me.
Atlas will always protect me.
Just like he is now, with his arms wrapped around me, holding me to him, keeping me safe in a way only he can.
The hazy cloud of orgasm starts to fade, and the sound of the orchestra playing finally fills my ears again—a light and upbeat number that likely has the dancers below us out enjoying the floor, spinning in their gowns and tuxes with their masks, hiding behind them as much as I have.
I may show them on a daily basis, walk around in the studio in things that reveal them, but I also used my scars as an excuse not to come back, not to face the man still hard inside me.
But it was a mistake.
A huge one.
I should have returned home earlier.
Right after the fire.
If I had, maybe none of the horrible things would’ve happened to him. Maybe everything would’ve been different…
“What are you thinking, Little Bird?”
Humming lightly, I relax against the brick and relish the heat of his body along the exposed skin on my upper back, of his arms around me, of his cock still filling me, and his thighs pressed to mine. “I was thinking that was a pretty stupid rule.”
He chuckles low and deep, the sound vibrating through his chest into my back. “Well, I tend to agree with you, but I can’t deny I felt like I’ve been making progress in the gym lately.” His lips press over my throat, and he drags his tongue along the edge of the scars, down to my collarbone covered in them. “And you’re right. You’re a horrific distraction. I’m not sure I would’ve had the energy to put into what we’ve been doing if I’d been doing this to you every night.”
I grin at the compliment, unable to hold back the question his statement creates in my head. “So, you’re not going to do this to me every night?”
Because that would be a true tragedy.
Though, that may just be the post-orgasmic brain fog talking.
His laughter fills my ears, shaking us and rolling through our bodies. “If you’ll let me.”
It would be so easy to just say yes.
To give in to Atlas and what he does to me at every available moment.
And God knows it would feel good.
I could spend every night like this, in a constant state of bliss, and I could wake every morning knowing I could have it again. But remembering the panic in Gramps’ gaze when he told me why he brought me back, knowing how much he worries about Atlas and the upcoming fight, I know I can’t do that.
That would be selfish when he needs me to be the voice of reason.
Which he clearly does not have when it comes to getting me naked and beneath him.
I take a long, slow breath, allowing my lungs to expand fully before I push it free and say something that might start a fight I don’t want to have. “I won’t let it get in the way of our schedule, of our plan. If it does, the rule comes back into play. Understand?”
He nips at my earlobe, sending a shudder through me that makes me clench around him again and draws out a low groan from his chest. “I understand, Wren. You’re in control.”
While I like to hear him say that, I’m not so sure it’s true.
Not when every nerve in my body still sparks from my orgasm, when he’s still buried deep inside me, when my heart still thunders against my chest, when him telling me he loves me still rings in my ears.
I can never tell who is in control when it comes to this relationship.
Bishop was right when she warned me about Hawke men, when she said they see something and take it and never let it go.
That’s exactly what he did to me.
Only it wasn’t a handful of weeks ago.
It was back when we were eight.
It was when we had our little pretend wedding and I said, “I do,” and he slipped that little plastic ring onto my finger.
That was when all this started.
I just never wanted to admit how deep it went.
Because it’s crazy.
No one finds their soul mate, the person they’re meant to spend the rest of their life with, the one who is their perfect match in every way, when they’re eight.
At least, you’re not supposed to.
Atlas seems to have proven me wrong.
And now that the rule is out the window and we’ve said those three little words, it feels like things are finally right.
We can focus on his recovery and training without all the tension built up between us.
Maybe he’ll actually be ready to face whatever is going to happen in that ring the night of the hotel opening. But it’s what might happen outside the ring that keeps nagging in the back of my head.
Satriano showing up and asking about Atlas wasn’t random.
He has something up his sleeve.
Something we won’t like.