Chapter 7 Atlas
seven
Atlas
My house at night is quiet in a way I built deliberately. The metal roof turns rain into white noise. The double-glazing cuts the wind. The stone floor holds heat from the woodstove through the whole main level. I know every sound this house makes.
I'm learning new ones.
I walk her back to the bed and the lamp on the nightstand is the only light and her face in it stops me for a second. Three weeks of watching her and I'm still not done. I put my hand along her jaw and she turns into it and that's enough. I'm done waiting.
I take my time with her shirt. The buttons are small. I don't rush them.
"You're being very deliberate," she says.
"I'm a deliberate person."
"I've noticed." The dry voice she uses when she's paying close attention. "Is this on purpose?"
"Yes." I get the last button and push the shirt off her shoulders and look at her. "The hotel was real. But I was still running on the roof." I put my hand flat on her sternum, feel her heart under my palm. "I want to know what this is when we're both just here."
She looks at me. Then she puts her hand over mine. "Okay," she says. "Then be here."
I take her at her word.
I get her shirt off and her jeans and I stop. Just look at her. All of her, in the lamplight, unhurried. She lets me do it, which I notice — Willa who manages everything, still under my hands, letting me take my time.
"You're staring," she says.
"Yes," I say. "I am."
She reaches up and pulls me down by the back of my neck and I go, and I get my mouth on her throat and she tilts into it and makes a sound low in her chest. I work down slowly — collarbone, sternum, the soft skin below her ribs — and she says yes quietly, like she's confirming something.
I get my mouth on her breast and her back arches off the bed.
I stay there until she's making sounds she didn't plan, her hand pressed to the back of my head, holding me there.
I keep going down.
I get my mouth between her thighs and she exhales hard.
Her fingers go into my hair and grip. I take my time.
I find the right angle, the right pressure, the exact rhythm that makes her stop trying to be quiet about it.
Her thighs press against my shoulders. Her hips move against my mouth.
I keep her exactly where she is, tightening my grip on her ass so she can’t do anything but take what I’m giving her.
“Fuck, Atlas!” She squeals, her thighs shaking.
She tastes like heaven. I keep going until she comes hard, her hand fisting in my hair, my name loud in the quiet house, her whole body pulling tight and shaking through it.
I give her thirty seconds.
"Come here," she says. "Now."
She's already rolling as I move up onto her stomach, looking back at me over her shoulder, her hair loose, her mouth open. Something about the look on her face goes straight through me.
I run my hand down her spine. She arches into it.
I grip her hips and pull her up onto her knees and push inside her. My cock is so deep in her tight heat. I let out a groan.
Then she pushes back against me, impatient, and I get the message.
The sounds she makes. I set a pace, and she takes it and asks for more and I give her more, one hand splayed on her lower back, feeling her move with me, my cock deep and her pushing back to meet every stroke. I give her exactly what she asks for and I don't hold anything back.
Her hand finds the headboard.
"Atlas." Wrecked. "Don't stop."
"I'm not stopping," I say.
I reach around and get my hand on her clit and she gasps.
“Fuck, yes just like that!”
I keep moving and keep my hand exactly where it is until she comes the second time— harder than the first, her whole body shaking. I feel it everywhere.
I follow her, two more strokes and I'm gone, my face against her shoulder, her name the only word I have.
We come down slowly. I pull her onto her side against me, both of us breathing hard, her back to my chest, my arm around her waist. She puts her hand over mine and laces our fingers together, and doesn't say anything.
I don't say anything either.
We lie there. The lamp is still on. Her hand finds my chest and settles there and I cover it with mine.
She's quiet for a while. The good kind — not working anything out, just here. Her thumb moves slow against my ribs like she's making sure I'm real.
"Hey," she says.
"Yeah."
"I like your house."
"Good," I say. "It's yours too."
She goes still. Then, very quietly: "Okay."
She puts her head back down on my chest, and I pull her closer. Outside, the rain starts properly. The metal roof takes it and turns it into white noise, and she goes still against me, really still this time, completely settled. She lets out a long, happy sigh.
The thunder comes, low, rolling down from the ridge.
I feel her settle.
This is what I built the house for, I think. Not the storm straps and the glazing, not the metal roof rated to last fifty years. Someone warm in it while the weather stays outside.