Chapter 17
Seventeen
ATLAS
The walk back to the room was slower than I wanted it to be, but it was nice to have a few moments to myself to think.
There were a million things I wanted to say to Ryan, and while I was feeling stronger and braver about myself, I also knew that if he didn’t feel the same way, it was going to crush me.
No, more than that. It would break me in ways that Raleigh never could. Because with Ryan, I’d allowed myself not just to hope, but to dream about what life could be like.
So I did need to know first. I did want to save some face if these feelings were mine and mine alone.
I could see the lights on in my suite, but the ones in his suite were dark, and it made me feel something that he’d made himself such a home in my space.
Even if it was a temporary space. I took a deep breath, then made my way up the walkway and tapped my key card against the door and waited for the small click before I pushed my way in.
Ryan was there waiting for me on the bed, wearing only his boxers, hands behind his head as he lounged on the messy covers. Turning his head, he smiled at me, but the expression fell when he saw my face.
“Did he upset you?”
I frowned. “Who? Oh,” I said, realizing he meant my brother. “No, he just wanted to apologize. Mostly.”
Ryan pushed up on his elbows. “Mostly?”
“It was a half-assed apology, but honestly, I’ll take it.
” I yanked my jeans to my knees, then dropped to the side of the bed to remove my orthotics.
My legs were exhausted from being up on my feet most of the afternoon, so I didn’t put much pressure on them as I shuffled around the mattress until I could slide under the sheets beside Ryan.
He took me into his arms and held me against his warm chest. “Mm. This is exactly what I needed. That dinner was…”
“Yeah,” I said when he didn’t finish his sentence. The dinner was a lot of things.
“I hope Gracie didn’t offend you. Or freak you out.” His voice was muffled by the back of my shoulder as he spoke right up against my shirt. “She can be a lot sometimes, but she means well.”
“I can see that, but it doesn’t bother me. She obviously loves you very much.”
Ryan sighed. “Yeah. She does. That’s kind of rare in my life these days.”
My heart ached for him. I twisted in his arms, then hooked my leg up over his hip and pinched his chin between my fingers. His eyes met mine for a moment, and then they drifted lower to my mouth, my throat, my chest.
“Short of telling me that you’re a secret serial killer, there’s not much she could say that’ll bother me or offend me. And the serial killer thing…”
“Don’t tell me you’d be cool with it,” he said with a slight laugh.
I dipped my head and kissed him. “Well. I mean, if you were one of those Dexter guys who killed other bad guys, I could probably learn to live with it. Hannibal and Will made it work, didn’t they?”
He looked up at me, eyes wide. “Dude. They died at the end. They jumped off a cliff together.”
“Mm, yeah. They jumped. But did they die?”
“Oh my god, I’m not arguing that with you,” he said, then smashed his face into my neck. “I want a better ending than jumping off a cliff.”
I held him a little tighter, trying to hide my grin. “Me too.”
His head moved, and then his lips found my pulse, and he kissed me there—soft at first. Then a little more demanding. Then wetter. Harder. Teeth grazed my tendon as his hips began to shift against mine. He was hard, brushing his dick along the inside of my thigh.
“If you’re not up for it,” he started.
I pulled back, then slapped my palm over the nightstand top until I found my little pill sleeve and looked down at it. I had three left.
Ryan met my gaze as he took it out of my hand, popping one out of the foil.
Sticking out his tongue, he placed it on the edge, then grabbed me by the face and kissed me.
The pill slipped into my mouth, and the moment I tasted the bitter tang, I swallowed it down, letting him kiss me through it—deeper and deeper.
“Want me to eat your ass while I wait for this to kick in?”
“Fuck,” he gasped, hips rocking harder against me. “I love the way you just…say shit. Please write me a song titled ‘Eating Your Ass While We Wait for Dick Drugs.’”
I burst into laughter as I rolled him onto his back and slipped between his legs. My own folded neatly beneath me, a little numb, but my nerve pain was mild. Staring down at him, I realized I wasn’t sure I could get sick of looking at him.
Not ever.
That was rare for me. I often craved hours upon hours where I didn’t have to look another person in the eye, but with Ryan, it was easy. And maybe this was just the honeymoon phase talking—if that’s what this was—but I couldn’t imagine a world in which I wasn’t obsessed with him.
“Get undressed for me,” I said.
He obeyed, yanking his boxers off and exposing himself entirely. Fuck, I loved the lines of his body—soft in places, sharp in others.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. A flush crept up his neck.
I reached out and traced the edge of where his skin was heating, then down to his right nipple. He groaned loudly and arched into my fingers. “That I love how responsive you are. And…” I hesitated, but fuck it. Fuck it entirely. “…how I feel like I’ll never get tired of this.”
He swallowed hard as I passed my fingers up his throat. “Me too.”
I wasn’t going to ask him to elaborate. I wanted to get through the next few days. To deal with the anniversary of my life changing and a new year beginning. Then, before he left, we would figure it out.
Whatever he was thinking, I knew I wasn’t going to give this up without some kind of fight.
Pushing his legs up, he sucked in a breath as I exposed him to the room. His muscles were trembling, and I knew it wasn’t fear. It wasn’t cold. It was the anticipation of my touch—of the pleasure I could bring him.
I leaned in and took his balls into my mouth, one by one, rolling them along my tongue before letting them drop, heavy and warm. Gripping his dick, I began to stroke him slowly, not nearly enough pressure, just enough to torment him as I kissed his perineum, then lower. Then lower.
Stretching my free hand up between his legs, I felt his abs jump under my palm as I scratched down his muscles.
“Oh god, oh please,” he said, his voice a strained whisper.
“Love the way you beg me. You’re so good at it.” I was unused to giving praise the way he did, but the way he groaned when I did, I realized that maybe he needed it just as much as I did. “You’re so good at everything, Ryan.”
“I—oh.” His words ended on a soft, moaning sigh as I put my mouth where he wanted me.
His hole fluttered beneath my tongue, tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing.
I licked around him, then gently rolled my tongue over the muscle before pressing the tip inside.
He let out another moan, louder this time, his hips shifting restlessly against the mattress as he fought himself not to take more than I was offering.
I pulled away and tested the weight of the words on my tongue before I said them. “Such a fucking good boy.”
“Shit, shit,” he gasped. Yeah, he liked that just as much too. Maybe not as often as me, but sometimes. And I was okay with that.
His thighs were shaking now, and he gripped them tightly to steady himself as he pulled them closer to his chest. I let his dick go and palmed the globes of his ass, spreading him wider as I gave in and devoured him.
I shoved my tongue deep inside him and urged him to fuck my face.
He did, his moans closer to sobs as his hips moved, taking what I was offering but knowing it wasn’t enough.
I could already feel myself getting hard—not hard enough. Not yet. But the warmth in my belly was spreading downward, and the pressure of the mattress beneath me was a delicious tease. God, I couldn’t wait to fuck him. I couldn’t wait to sit against the headboard and have him ride me into oblivion.
My dick twitched, and I thrust my tongue in him deeper, harder, feeling his entire body on a knife’s edge, desperate to come but unable to get there.
“I need,” he said, his head shaking back and forth. “Atlas, I need…I need more.”
“I know.” I kissed his hole, then dragged my lips upward along his thighs, over his painfully hard shaft, over the head, which was leaking like a fountain over his stomach. “Just a few more minutes. You can be patient for me, right?”
His eyes were hazy as he stared at me. “I can be anything for you. Anything you want.” He licked his lips. “Anything you need.”
I had to close my eyes against those words. I wanted to hear them now, but I needed to hear them when we weren’t doing this. When he wasn’t fueled by lust and desperation.
“I want to watch you finger yourself open for me,” I told him, reaching for the nightstand and grabbing the bottle of lube. It was getting low, and I wondered if he’d be embarrassed to go shopping with me for more.
I doubted it.
I took his hand and coated his fingers, then sat back on my tingling legs to watch his fingers search, then find what they were looking for. He groaned loudly when he slipped his first finger inside, and I looked down at my dick, which was now almost fully hard.
Gripping it tightly, I used the remnants of lube to slick myself, and I began to stroke in time with the way he was fucking himself.
“You look gorgeous like this,” I told him. “You want me to write songs about you? I’m definitely going to write one about how you look with your ass stuffed with your own fingers.”
“Oh Jesus,” he muttered, adding a third finger. “Atlas…fuck. You’re just…”
I braced myself. I was what? Over-the-top? Too much? Ridiculous?
There were a million things I’d been called over the course of my life by lovers—well, one lover—and they all stuck like old gum to a venue sidewalk.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The things you say—no one has ever talked to me like that before. No one’s ever made me feel so…so wanted.”