6. Lemon #4
“Here, Princess, let me,” Atticus coos, moving from his spot leaning against the doorjamb for the first time since I started raiding my closet. Gently moving me to the side, he presses down on the case with one hand and effortlessly closes the zipper with the other.
“Thanks,” I say, a little breathless from the exertion of fighting with my bag.
“Do you have everything you need?”
“I think so, but I should shower and get changed before we go.”
“Just grab what you need and get changed at home,” he says.
“Nothing else is going in that case,” I admit, laughing and cringing at the same time.
“You won’t be needing all those panties you packed, so we could take those out.” He smirks.
I’m not sure if he’s joking, but I ignore him and quickly grab one of the more casual dresses I own from the rail, hooking my arm through the hanger as I shove fresh underwear into my purse.
Kicking off my blue shoes, I swap them for white leather ballet pumps and then turn to see him holding my stuffed bunny.
“Does the bunny need to come?” he asks, wiggling the stuffed toy at me.
It takes everything in me to shake my head. “No,” I tell him. I’m not a child. I can sleep without a stuffy, but my mom gave me the bunny when I was a kid, and it’s come to every sleepover, vacation, and overnight trip with me since then, even if it never came out of my bag.
Scowling, Atticus narrows his eyes at me. “Put him in your purse, Princess.”
Freezing, I stare at the toy he’s holding out to me.
I don’t know how he knows that the bunny is important, but instead of asking, I snatch the pink ball of fluff out of Atticus’s tattooed hand and shove him into my purse, silently apologizing to my childhood best friend for handling him so roughly.
Smirking, Atticus doesn’t even try to hide his smugness as he lifts my case off the bed, then takes the dress hanging from my arm and drapes it over his own. “Grab whatever you need to take to the dry cleaners, and we can drop it off on the way home.”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I forgot again,” I gasp, pulling the handful of dresses that I need to take to the cleaners from the bathroom door.
Taking them from me too, he places his hand on the base of my spine and guides me toward the door, reaching around me to open it before ushering me back into the living room.
Just like always, I hold my breath as I step across the threshold, hoping that Avery has retreated to her room or gone out, but instead, she’s waiting in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed across her chest.
“He needs to leave,” she says, like she’s been waiting for us this whole time.
“Lemon is going to be staying with me for a few days,” Atticus tells her calmly, ignoring Avery’s agitation.
“He can’t come back here,” Avery wails, ignoring him and speaking to me instead.
“Avery—” I start, but she speaks over me before I have the chance to say anything more.
“No, no, no. This is my home. I refuse to have drug dealers in my home. He can’t come back. You can’t bring him back. Get out. You need to get out,” she rants, her face getting redder with each word she spits.
“He’s not a drug dealer,” I hiss. “And I live here too. You can’t refuse to let me bring people to my own home.”
“I’ll change the locks. I’ll call the police. He’ll be arrested and so will you,” she says, indignation pouring from her in frantic waves.
“Let’s go, Princess,” Atticus says softly, using his hand on my back to turn me away from my crazy roommate and toward the front door.
I try to decide how to apologize as we leave my apartment, but honestly, what do you say to someone after your insane roommate accuses them of being a drug dealer and a criminal?
“I’m so sorry,” I start. “She’s—”
“Don’t apologize for her,” Atticus says, cutting me off. “I don’t care what she thinks of me, but I don’t like that she’s managed to make you an unwanted guest in your own home.”
“I don’t…she hasn’t.”
“Do you ever use the living space, or do you spend all of your time in your room when you’re there?” he asks as we wait for the elevator to arrive.
Sighing, I shrug. “I mainly stay in my room. Avery has very strong opinions about mess and clutter and…things.”
“Fuck. I’m so sorry, Princess. Has she been like this the whole time, or is this some kind of escalating mental health crisis?” he asks seriously.
“She’s definitely gotten worse, but the day we moved in she created a seven-page list of rules for me before I’d even unpacked my stuff. By the time I realized how incompatible we are, we’d already committed ourselves to a two-year lease.”
“Did you try explaining the situation to your landlord? He might have allowed you to take your name off the lease and just let her stay there on her own.”
“For the first few months, I thought it was just teething problems and that she’d calm down.”
“But she never did?” he asks.
“No,” I admit. “But only sixty-six days and counting,” I say with a self-deprecating laugh.
Opening the car door for me, Atticus takes my purse and holds it while I climb into his car. Watching me fasten my seat belt, he hands my purse back to me and closes the door once he’s sure I’m securely fastened inside.
He should look silly wheeling a pink suitcase and carrying an armful of dresses, but instead, he somehow looks even sexier as he strides to the trunk and places my stuff in it.
My eyes land on the crotch of his sweatpants when he climbs into the driver’s seat, and I swear I see his dick jerk when he turns to smile at me.
“I’m new to town, so you’re going to have to tell me which dry cleaners you use,” he says with a knowing expression etched across his handsome face.
It only takes a couple of minutes for him to drive to the cleaners, and after he parks at the curb, he insists on taking the dresses in for me while I wait in the car. This time when he slides into the seat beside me, I’m sure I can see the outline of his cock through the material of his pants.
By the time he turns his car into the gated driveway of his house, I’m breathless and feeling a little feral. I’ve already had four orgasms today. I should be done. But I’m physically biting my tongue to stop myself from calling him Sir and asking him to worship me again.
Like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, Atticus turns to me as he kills the car’s engine. “Are you ready, Princess?”
Incapable of saying anything that doesn’t end with the word Sir, I nod, and he climbs from the car, opening my door and offering me his hand to help me out.
After collecting my things from the trunk, he guides me into the warehouse where the sound of pulsating dance music hits me like I’ve walked headfirst into a wall.
Taking his cell from his pocket, Atticus opens an app and taps at the screen until the music stops so suddenly that I feel like I’ve gone deaf from the lack of sound.
“We’re back, bro,” he calls to Felix, who turns, flicks a lazy-handed wave at us, then turns back to his sketch pads. “Tori is coming for dinner. She’ll be here at six p.m. I’ll set the timer on the music to turn off at five forty-five p.m. so you have time to come and get ready to eat.”
“Okay,” Felix says distractedly.
Nodding more to himself than to either his brother or me, Atticus steers me over to the stairs, following behind me until we reach the huge door at the top.
Opening the door for me, he turns the volume back to deafening as the door closes behind us, blocking all the noise and making me feel a little disoriented.
“How does he cope with the music playing that loud?” I ask, feeling like I’m yelling, even though it’s quiet in the apartment.
“His brain is a little different, and the music helps him focus,” Atticus says, wheeling my case straight into his closet where he starts to unpack it, hanging my dresses beside his things in one of his many cabinets.
Once all of my things have been carefully put away, he turns to me.
“Now, Princess, do you need to come or shower first?”
His tone is so casual, it takes me a moment to process his question.
“I’m waiting, Lemon,” he prompts a few seconds later.
“I…”
“Orgasm or shower?”
“Orgasm,” I whisper.
I think I’m expecting him to pounce on me, but instead, he stays still and stares at me expectantly.
“I’d like an orgasm, please, Sir,” I say, hoping that it’s what he’s been waiting for.
“Strip for me,” he orders.
My fingers are clumsy as I unzip my dress, trying hard not to rip the buttons at my neck as my dress billows down my body, landing in a heap on the floor.