Chapter 14 #2
"Do you? Because you keep making decisions for me like I can't make them myself.
You said no because you decided I wasn't ready.
You cloned my phone because you decided I needed monitoring.
You built a cover story and a timeline and a staggered return and you didn't ask me about any of it—you just did it. Because apparently, you know best."
My jaw tightens. Every word landing because every word is accurate.
"You're right."
"I know I'm right." He's not angry. That's the part that gets me. His voice is even. Calm. "I'm not saying it wasn't necessary. The cover story, the hotel, Margot—you did what you had to do. But at some point, you have to let me be a person in this. Not a problem you're solving."
"You were never a problem."
"Atlas." Gentle. Almost amused. "I've been a problem since I walked through the front door of this house. For you, for them too."
I look at him. At the dark eyes and the messed hair and the bare feet. He’s telling the truth and this is, perhaps, the most open he’s ever been. He doesn’t say it like a burden he’s carrying, just straight fact.
And he’s correct.
He walked through that door and I swear my entire life rearranged around him.
"You're right," I say again. And this time the words carry something heavier—an admission, a surrender.
"I don't know how to do this without controlling it.
I don't know how to want someone without building a cage around them and calling it safety.
That's—" I press my palms flat on the counter.
"That's the only version of love I know. "
Max is quiet for a moment. Then he looks at me—not with pity, not with judgment, just those dark eyes steady and warm over the rim of his coffee cup—and says, "For what it's worth, your version of love feels pretty good from my side of it."
Something inside me dissolves. Like a wall I've been reinforcing for months turning to sand and sliding through my fingers.
And every defense I have left—every reason, every calculation, every carefully constructed argument for why I should keep my hands to myself and my distance intact—just.. . goes.
I want to taste the skin at the hollow of his throat. Want to press my mouth against his pulse and feel it hammer. Want to know if his lips are as soft as they look in this light, if the sound he'd make would be the same one I've been hearing in my head since the kitchen, if—
I can't do this from a stool. Can't sit next to him like we're having a conversation about the weather when every cell in my body is pulling toward him like gravity rearranged itself around a twenty-year-old with messy hair and bare feet.
I stand up.
The stool scrapes against the marble. Max blinks—startled, maybe thinking I'm leaving, maybe thinking the conversation went too far and I’m pulling away again. His mouth opens to say something.
I don't let him.
My hands find his knees and I turn him on the stool—one smooth motion, the seat swiveling until he's facing me, his legs falling open.
He leans back against the counter, palms flat on the marble behind him, and the position puts his face level with my chest, his chin tilting up, those dark eyes finding mine in the low amber light.
I step between his legs. Close enough that his knees bracket my hips.
Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through the thin sweatpants, through the space between us that isn't really space anymore.
My hands find his hips—grip, drag him forward on the stool until there's nothing left between us but fabric and the last fraying thread of my self-control.
His breath catches. His palms press harder against the counter behind him. But he doesn't pull away. Doesn't flinch. Just looks up at me with the same expression he had the first time—the trust, the want, the please that doesn't need to be spoken.
My hand finds his jaw. Tips his face up further. The pads of my fingers against his skin. The pulse in his throat beating fast under my thumb.
"If I kiss you," I say, "I'm not going to stop."
"I know."
"I've been saying no for months."
"I know that too."
"I can't keep saying no to you." The words come out wrecked. "I've tried. I have tried, Max. And I can't."
His hand finds my wrist where I'm holding his face. His fingers wrap around it. Not pulling. Holding. Anchoring me to something real.
"Then don't."
I kiss him.
∞∞∞
Atlas kisses me and I stop thinking.
His mouth is on mine and it's nothing like what I imagined—nothing like the careful, measured precision I expected from a man who calculates everything.
This is messy.
Desperate.
His hand tightening on my jaw, his other hand gripping the edge of the stool beside my thigh, his body pressing forward until I'm leaning back and his chest is against mine and the stool creaks under the shifting weight.
He tastes like coffee and something darker.
His scent floods me—cedar and leather and the base note I've been catching in his sheets and his office and the collar of every shirt he's ever worn, the one my biology reads as safety and my body reads as want.
It fills my lungs and my head goes light and my hands find the front of his shirt and pull.
He makes a sound. Low. In his chest. Not a groan—something more private, more surprised, the sound of a man who's been holding his breath for months and has finally exhaled. His forehead drops against mine and he breathes and I feel him shaking.
Atlas Graves is shaking.
"God," he says. Against my mouth. "Max—"
I kiss him again. Harder. My fingers working the buttons of his shirt because I need to touch him, need skin under my hands instead of fabric, need to know what he feels like without the armor.
The buttons give. My palms find his chest—warm, solid, his heart hammering so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
His stomach tightens under my hands as I drag them down.
The ridge of muscle along his ribs. I trace every line of him because I've been imagining this—in my room, in my bed, in the shower with the water too hot and my hand between my thighs—imagining what Atlas would feel like under my hands.
The reality is better. Harder. Warmer. More real than anything I've let myself want.
His hands move. My waist. My hips. Pulling me forward on the stool until my legs are tight around him and I can feel him—hard against my inner thigh, thick and straining against his dress pants, his body betraying every no he's ever said. He rocks forward. Not involuntary this time—deliberate. A slow grind that drags the length of him against me through layers of fabric and my head falls back and my mouth opens on a sound that’s obscene.
"Fuck—" The word tears out of me. My hips roll forward to meet his, chasing the friction, my hard cock aching against the thin sweatpants. His grip tightens on my hips hard enough to bruise and I don't care.
I want the bruises. I want proof that Atlas Graves lost control and I was the reason.
"Upstairs," he says against my neck. The word vibrating through my pulse. "Come upstairs."
"Yes."
His hand finds mine. Laces our fingers together. Pulls me off the stool and toward the stairs and we're halfway up before my brain catches up to what my body already knows.
His bedroom. His bed. The sheets that smelled like cedar the morning I woke up in them. The room where he watched me sleep and spent the night in the chair by the window because he didn't trust himself to be horizontal in the same room as me.
We're going there. Together. And this time he's not saying no.
The door closes behind us. The lock turns. And Atlas's hands are on my face again—both palms, thumbs on my cheekbones, tilting my head back, looking at me in the dark like he's trying to memorize what I look like before something changes.
"Tell me to stop," he says. "At any point. Any moment. Tell me and I'll—"
"Atlas. Shut up."
I pull his shirt off his shoulders. It falls to the floor and he's bare-chested in the dark and my hands are on him and his skin is hot under my palms and I want to taste every inch of him.
So I do.
My mouth on his collarbone. His chest. The flat plane of his stomach that contracts when my lips drag across it. He sucks in a breath—sharp, hissing—and his hand fists in my hair and holds. Not pulling. Holding on. Like he'll fly apart if he lets go.
He pulls my t-shirt over my head. Careful—his fingers skimming the healing welts, adjusting the fabric so it doesn't drag. Even now. Even with his pupils blown and his cock pressing against my hip and his breath coming ragged—some part of him is reading my body for pain and adjusting.
That's Atlas. The man who can't stop being careful even when he's falling apart.
His mouth finds the junction of my neck and shoulder.
The bonding gland. His lips press against it—warm, open, his tongue flat against the skin—and every nerve in my body ignites.
My hands grip his broad shoulders. My hips push forward against his.
The friction sends a bolt of heat straight through my core and I'm so fucking hard, aching, leaking against my sweatpants, and I want him so badly my teeth hurt.
"Atlas." His name comes out wrecked. A plea. A demand. Both at once.
His answer is his mouth on my throat. His teeth grazing the bonding gland—not biting, just threatening, the promise of pressure without the commitment of pain—and the sound I make is something I'll be embarrassed about tomorrow but right now I don't care because his hands are sliding down my sides and his hips are rolling against mine.
His hand slides lower. Cups my cock through the sweatpants.
Squeezes. My vision whites out. My hips buck into his palm and the moan that escapes me is loud enough that we both freeze for half a second—Richard and Margot are down the hall somewhere—and then his mouth covers mine, swallowing the sound, kissing me deep and filthy while his hand works me through the fabric.