Chapter 5 #2
I come quietly because his hand has come up to cover my mouth a second before, and I sob into his palm and clench so hard around him that he hisses against my throat and his hips snap once, hard, before he gets himself back under control.
"Good boy," he murmurs. "Good boy, sweetheart. Beautiful. Beautiful. Again."
"I can't—"
"You can. Once more. For me."
He keeps going. Slow. Steady. Through every aftershock.
My body is loose and oversensitive and his cock keeps finding the spot that turns my breath into a whimper, and I am shaking against him, and his hand is at my mouth, and his other hand is laced with mine, and the bond is so loud in my chest I can barely think around it.
"Atlas—"
"I know. Stay with me."
"You're going to—"
"I am. Soon."
"Inside me."
"Yes, baby."
"Knot me."
His breath catches.
His arm tightens around my chest. His next thrust is deeper, harder, the controlled patience slipping, and I feel him swelling at the base of his cock—the catch at my rim, the stretch, the promise—and his mouth is at my ear and his voice is wrecked.
"Yeah, sweetheart. Yeah. I'm going to. Right here in this bed. Going to fill you up and stay there and you are not getting up for the next forty minutes, do you hear me—"
"Yes—"
"You are not moving, you are not getting up to go to the bathroom, you are staying right here on my cock until I am ready to let you go—"
"Yes—"
"Good boy."
His knot flares. He sinks home one last time and stays.
A long groan slips out of my lips as I arch into him, my entire body sensitive.
The stretch of his knot locking inside me is the sweetest pain my body has ever made room for.
He pulses inside me in long warm spills, his teeth grazing the bite at my throat, his hand still firm at my mouth as I sob through the second orgasm I didn't know was coming, and the bond between us roars white-bright and full and I can feel him in it the way you feel sunlight on a closed eyelid.
He goes still. He stays still. His mouth presses into the bite mark and stays.
"There," he murmurs. "There. There you are. There's my boy."
I am crying. I am laughing. I do not know how to be a person right now. He uncovers my mouth slowly, replaces his palm with his thumb at my lower lip, and I press my mouth to it and breathe.
"Good," he says. "Good. Good."
He keeps saying it. Over and over. The only word he has right now.
His hand snakes around to splay low on my stomach—lower than my navel, just above where his cock is buried in me. His palm presses there, possessive, and he uses it to pull me back into him, hard, impaling me deeper onto his knot until I feel him in my belly through the skin under his hand.
I cry out into his thumb.
I clench around him so hard he hisses against my throat.
"Christ, sweetheart."
"Atlas—"
"Do you have any idea." His voice has gone rough. Low. Almost slurred. The Atlas who runs a company and reads a room better than anyone in the room, undone, talking into the bond mark at my throat. "Do you have any idea what you do to me? Any idea."
"Atlas—"
"I think about this. Constantly. I sit in meetings, baby. With grown men in suits. Negotiating eight-figure deals. And I am thinking about your back against my chest. The exact sound you make when I push in. The way you smell after you come."
"Oh god—"
"I have ruined entire afternoons of my own thinking about you.
I have driven through red lights. I have signed contracts I cannot remember signing.
I get into the elevator at my own building and the doors close and I close my eyes and I am here.
In this bed. With my cock inside you. Listening to you breathe. "
He clenches the hand on my stomach. Pulls me tighter against him. The knot grinds deeper and I make a sound I don't have a word for.
"Sweetheart."
"Atlas—I can't—I can't take—"
"You can. You will. Look at you. Look at how good you take me.
Christ. I have wanted you back in bed since the second I left you last. I have not stopped.
The whole drive tonight. The whole afternoon at the beach house.
Sitting at lunch yesterday watching my brothers' hands on you.
I am rabid for you, Max. There is no part of me that is not. "
"Atlas—"
"I have power over a lot of people. A lot of things. None of them have power over me the way you do. None."
His thumb is still pressed against my lower lip. I bite it. He laughs—wrecked, low, a sound that is half a sob.
He kisses the bond mark again. Slow. Open. Reverent. His hand stays splayed low on my stomach, holding me locked against him, holding me locked on his cock.
"I think about this when I cannot sleep," he murmurs. Quieter now. "Just this. You against me. Your breath. The bond. I close my eyes and I put myself here. And I sleep."
"Atlas."
"Mm."
"I—"
"Don't say anything, sweetheart. Just stay. Just stay right here."
I stay.
The knot holds us a long time.
"Bane will smell like seawater. Whenever we’d go to the beach as kids it always stuck out to me. I don't know what it is. It clings to him for days."
"Mm."
"Zero won't sleep when he gets back. He never does after a vacation. He'll be on the back porch at sunrise for a week."
"...okay."
"I set up coffee for the morning. Ready to go. The good beans. You'll like it."
He drifts on like that, soft, half to me and half to himself. Updates on the brothers. The week ahead. The driveway needing to be sealed. Anything. The kind of low murmur a person uses when they have nothing they need to say and want to stay close anyway.
I should be melting into it.
I am, mostly.
But somewhere underneath, the thought I have been holding back since yesterday at the kitchen island is rising slow.
Tell me about work.
I close my eyes against it. He keeps murmuring. Something about a contractor. Something about Richard's birthday next month.
Tell me about the long project.
His thumb strokes the back of my hand on the pillow.
Why did Richard know you were about to be traveling and I didn't.
I clamp down on it.
Too late.
The bond shifts.
I feel him feel me.
The thrum that was warm and full a second ago goes alert, focused, narrowing. His mouth lifts off the bite. His thumb stops moving at my lip.
"What is it?" His voice is quiet. Not alarmed. Just present.
I keep my eyes closed.
"Nothing."
"Max."
"It's nothing."
"Sweetheart. Look at me."
I don't.
He tilts my chin gently with his fingers. He doesn't force me. He just waits. The bond between us is wide open and I cannot lie in it, not really, but I have been lying my whole life and I know how to do the next-best thing, which is to redirect.
I open my eyes.
I make myself smile, soft, sleepy.
"I just—I miss the others. That's all. Stupid. I got used to all three of you fast. It feels weird to only have one of you."
I watch him watch me.
I watch him decide.
His face does not move. His thumb strokes my lower lip once, slow. His eyes stay on mine and I feel him, in the bond, land somewhere.
He has caught me.
He knows I am not telling him the real thing.
He has decided not to ask.
"They'll be home soon," he says. Mild. Soft. "Tomorrow."
"...yeah."
"They’ll be fighting over you."
"Probably."
"You can sleep through it if you want."
"...okay."
He kisses my forehead. Slow. Warm.
He has made his choice and I have made mine and we are both lying right next to each other and on top of each other and inside each other and pretending we aren't, and the bond between us hums steady and warm and full of all the things we have just declined to say.
I close my eyes again.
He pulls me closer. Tucks my head under his chin. His knot is still inside me, still pulsing softly with every beat of his heart.
"Sleep, sweetheart."
"...yeah."
"I've got you."
"I know."
I lie awake for a long time. He lies awake longer. Neither of us speaks. The bond between us is so full I think I could read his pulse through it if I tried, and I try. It is steady. It is not slowing. He is awake, and he is thinking, and he is going to keep thinking until after I fall asleep.
Eventually his knot eases.
He slides out of me with a careful slowness that almost makes me cry again.
Cleans us both with a corner of the sheet, which I will think about with embarrassment in the morning.
Pulls the duvet up over both of us. Settles me back against his chest, my head tucked under his jaw, his arm a heavy band across my ribs.
"You'll be here in the morning?" I ask. Small. Half asleep.
"I'll be here."
"Promise."
"I promise."
I let myself believe him.
I let myself feel the bond steady and full, all three threads, the one in my chest pressed full of cedar and weight and a man who has just claimed me again in the middle of the night–but even now there’s a distance.
I tell myself, as I drift: He'll tell me when he wants to. I trust that.
And then, the smaller thought sneaking in just as I am going under:
...don't I?