Chapter 5
An arm snakes around my waist and pulls me back into a chest.
I am awake before I am all the way awake. Warm weight at my spine. Cedar. The soap from his shower. The bond in my chest going from steady-far to steady-here in one breath.
Atlas.
His mouth finds my ear.
"Hi, sweetheart."
I make a small sleep-rough sound that means hi. My face is in the pillow. I am smiling without permission. His palm is heavy and warm on my belly through my thin t-shirt and I am too pleased to form words.
"You won," I manage. Eventually. Slurred.
"Mm."
"Where are the others?"
"Driving."
"You—"
"I left them with a list and a closing checklist and the keys to lock up. Bane is at present going to murder me in my sleep. Zero is at present plotting more creative options."
I laugh into the pillow. It comes out a wet huff.
"You cheated."
"I did."
"They're going to be so mad."
"I know."
"Atlas."
"Mm."
"You really cheated."
His hand spreads wider on my stomach. His thumb finds the dip below my ribs. His mouth has not left my ear and his breath is warm and slow, and I can feel him smiling.
"I am the eldest," he murmurs. "Eldest privilege. I claimed it. I will be defending the choice in the morning, possibly with a chair."
"What was the list."
"The list was extremely thorough."
"You—"
"Linens stripped. Trash to the curb. Fridge cleaned. Outdoor furniture covered. Three pages."
"You wrote them three pages—"
"On legal paper. Single-spaced."
I am laughing into my pillow now. Quiet, helpless. He is laughing too, against my ear, low and barely-there. His hand slides up under the hem of my shirt and his palm is warm against the bare skin of my stomach and his fingers spread wide and I am suddenly very awake.
"They are going to murder you," I whisper.
"Probably."
His mouth at my ear. His thumb tracing the line below my navel. His voice has dropped into the register that lives somewhere south of my belly.
"Drove the whole way home hard, sweetheart."
"...what?"
"All those hours. Knew you were already in this bed. Knew you'd gone down without me. Knew I was the one with the keys and the route and the head start. Spent the entire drive thinking about you tucked under this duvet, all warm and just—waiting to be defiled."
"Atlas—"
"Mm. Roll back into me. Let me have you for a while."
I roll back into him. As if I could possibly get closer.
His chest is solid and warm against my back. His arm tightens. His mouth finds the bonding mark at the base of my throat—the older one, his, the one fully healed into the rest of my skin—and presses an open kiss against it, slow and reverent, and the bond between us flares warm down my spine.
"I missed you," he says. Into the skin.
"I saw you this morning."
"Mm. But I had to share you with my brothers and your mother and a beach house that was too small for any of us. This is what I missed."
His other hand has slipped to the waistband of my sweats. Two fingers hooked in. Slow.
"Atlas—"
"Shh. Let me."
He drags my sweats down. Just enough. Past my hips, down to my knees. The duvet is halfway onto the floor. The cool air of the room hits the bare skin of my thighs and ass and I shiver. He hums approval against my throat.
"There you are. Good boy. Lift this leg for me."
I lift it.
He hooks his hand under my knee and guides it up over his own thigh, opening me up against him, and I can feel that he is already hard, already pushed against the small of my back, hot through the thin cotton of his pants.
"Stay just like that for me. Don't move."
"Okay."
"Good."
He brings the hand he had on my stomach up to his own mouth.
I feel the wet of his tongue against his fingers more than I see it—two fingers, three, slow and deliberate, the soft sound of him licking them in the dark right next to my ear.
My cock jumps so hard against my own stomach that I make a small embarrassing sound.
"Easy, baby."
"Atlas—"
"I know. Relax."
His wet fingers slide down my body, between my thighs, find me. Press in.
The first finger goes easy because my body already wants him.
I am soft and open from the heat at the beach house and I am more than ready for him at three in the morning in my own bed with him pressed all the way against my back.
He slides in to the second knuckle and curls and my whole body shudders against him.
"There you go. There. That's it."
"Oh god—"
"Quiet, sweetheart. Can’t make too much noise."
I press my mouth into the pillow.
"That's it. Good boy."
The second finger slides in alongside the first and my mouth opens on a sound the pillow muffles.
He works me slow. He has all night and we both know it.
His thumb finds the hollow at the base of my spine.
His mouth is at my ear, my throat, my temple, the bond mark that thrums every time he passes over it.
"Look at you," he breathes. "Look at how easy you are for me. Already relaxed. Already opening up. Christ, sweetheart, what you do."
"More—"
"More what."
"Another—Atlas, please—"
"Yeah, baby. Of course. Anything you ask me for."
The third finger eases in and I see stars. He scissors them gently. Hooks them and finds the spot inside me that turns my vision white. My hips push back against him without my permission and he chuckles, low, against my temple.
"Fucking me now, are you."
"Atlas."
"Patient, sweetheart. We have all the time in the world. I am not going anywhere. You are not going anywhere. Just lie there and let me get you ready."
His pants come off somewhere in there—I don't see it happen, I just feel his bare cock hot against the back of my thigh, then between my thighs, then sliding slow against me where I am aching for him.
His fingers slip out of me and his hand moves to my hip and tilts me.
He guides his cock against my hole and pauses there.
"Eyes closed?"
"Yes."
"Open them."
I open them. The room is completely dark except for the soft green light of the alarm clock on my nightstand. His face is right behind my ear, half in shadow, the silver at his temples catching the low light. His eyes are dark and steady and on mine.
"Watch me," he says. Quiet. "Watch me take you. Tonight is mine, sweetheart. I want you here for it."
"I'm here."
"Good boy."
He pushes in.
Slow. So slow it is almost unbearable. Inch by inch.
The stretch is everything—deep and full and right, my body opening for him like it has been waiting since the heat ended for him to be back inside it, and when his hips finally meet mine and his cock is buried as deep as it will go I make a sound into the pillow that is not a word.
He goes still.
Breathes against my temple.
"There," he says. Wrecked. "There we are. Look at you taking me. Christ, look at you."
"Atlas—"
"I know. Shh. Just feel it for a minute."
I do. I lie there spooned against his chest with his cock buried inside me and the bond between us thrumming so loud I can feel it in my teeth, and I feel him.
All of him. The way the thread in my chest goes brighter the deeper he is in me.
The way his pleasure rolls down it into my own body in a slow warm wave I have nothing to compare to.
The way I can sense his restraint—tight, careful, holding himself off the edge so we can stay here, in this, longer.
For the first time in my life I am inside my body without chemicals dampening it and without biology stimulating it.
No suppressants. No heat haze. Just me, full of him, and the bond like a second sense sharpening every nerve.
I can feel the soft cotton of my sheets against my hipbone.
The slow thud of Atlas's heart against my back.
The pulse of his cock inside me. The breath he just took.
A tear trickles down my cheek onto the pillow beneath me.
His hand spreads warm and flat over my chest, right over my heart, and his other hand laces our fingers together on the pillow next to my head.
"Hi, baby."
"...hi."
"There you are."
He moves.
Long, slow strokes. Pulling almost all the way out and sliding back in to the hilt. Each one drawn out and deliberate, his hips rocking into mine in a rhythm I could fall asleep to if it weren't unraveling me.
"That's it," he murmurs at my ear. "There you go. Good boy. Take it. Take all of me."
I take it.
His mouth finds the bond mark on my throat and presses there—open, wet, his tongue dragging across the half-moon of his own teeth from weeks ago. The bond pulses bright at the contact and I clench around him hard enough that he groans against my throat.
"Fuck, sweetheart, do that again."
"Atlas—"
"Again. Clench around me like you did. Show me what that body does for me."
I do it. I do not know how to do anything else. He growls into the bite mark and his rhythm stutters once before he gets it back, and I can feel the restraint costing him now, can feel it in the bond.
"Other ones too," he murmurs. "Show me where my brothers marked you."
I tilt my head back further. He kisses the second mark—Zero's, near my pulse—open and slow.
Then he leans across me and finds the third—Bane's, the newest, on the opposite side of my throat—and his mouth is reverent on it in a way I would not have expected.
Like he is honoring something. Like he is grateful to his brothers for putting a piece of themselves in me where he could not.
"There," he breathes. "All three. Mine. All three of yours, all yours, all mine. Look at you. Look at what we made."
"Atlas, oh my god—"
"You feel us, don't you. Right now. All three of us in you."
"Yes."
"Tell me. Out loud."
"I—I feel all three of you. Atlas, I feel—I feel you in the bond, I feel them too, I—I—"
"That's it. That's my boy."
His hand on my chest slides down. Wraps around my cock. He strokes me in time with his thrusts. Slow. Patient. Filthy with care.
I come.