Atlas #3
“You’re becoming far too comfortable with me, Julian,” I sneer, doing my best to narrow my eyes at him.
“It is Young Master Atlas when you speak to me. And I am unsure which nightmare of yours mixed with your Peeping Tom activities from last night, but I’m certain my boyfriend does not know how to disappear into thin air. ”
I am doing everything I can to manipulate Julian, and he’s growing angrier by the second. I can see it in the way his thick muscles are tensing, his skin growing red, a vein throbbing in his neck.
“I know what I saw. I didn’t even sleep last night; how could I have mixed a nightmare with reality? Hm?” He presses himself further into me, and the familiar feeling of arousal lights up my nervous system.
I swallow thickly, fighting the unwanted reaction I’m having to his hands still touching my face, the length of his body now flush against the length of mine.
“I’m not a doctor nor a psychologist, Julian,” I tell him. “I can’t analyze your mind. But I can tell you to stop taking my serious medical condition and trying to turn it into a fairytale because you can’t handle the fact that another man is getting to, what is it you said? Fuck me until I cry?”
An expression of genuine, pure rage explodes over Julian’s features. His body presses into mine impossibly further, his hands sliding from my cheeks and back into my hair where he grips it just hard enough to hold me, but not enough to hurt.
“This is not about jealousy, Young Master Atlas. You can only be jealous of someone if you feel inferior to them, and I know for a fact that if given the opportunity, you’d come much harder on my dick than you ever have on his.”
I shiver aggressively, my hands instinctively gripping his sides. And right as I’m about to begin spiraling over his words, unsure of how I’m supposed to move forward in this sudden mood shift, it hits me.
His. He said his, not it.
“Very well,” I agree quietly, grasping onto this small win. His hot breath is caressing my ear, and I can barely think around it. “Even if that is true, it does not matter. Because at the end of the day, he will still be the one to take me.”
Julian groans in discontent, his fingers tightening slightly around my curls. “You like it then? Waking up with all of those harsh marks? Being fucked so brutally?”
The urge to sob returns to me, now mingling with my arousal, because I do. I do enjoy the way it pounds into me, and that is my greatest shame.
“Yes,” I whisper, and I hear the guilt in my own voice.
Julian leans back slightly, just enough to peer down into my eyes. His features soften, and the fingers of one hand begin to massage my scalp.
“There are worse things to like,” he tells me.
“Like what?”
“Like murder, or arson.” Julian grins, and I can’t help but chuckle at his declaration.
“That’s true.” Slowly, my smile fades, and I remove a hand from his side to lay it gently on his chest, right over his heart. “Julian, do not ever enter the west tower again.”
He stares at me, those dark eyes full of anger and concern, his smile long since fallen away.
“You really expect me to believe I made up half of what I saw?” he asks me, still caressing my head gently. Every word he speaks lands against my mouth with how close he’s standing.
I nod. “It’s the truth; why wouldn’t you believe it? You saw something you wish you hadn’t seen, so you’re trying to find a way around it. There is no such thing as monsters, Julian. Only men.”
“You’re right: I wish I hadn’t seen it,” he agrees.
My heart splits in half.
Julian pulls away, taking backward steps until he stands in the center of the room, leaving me to pant against the door alone.
I’m thankful at this moment that I chose to wear a high-necked, black shirt today. If he had the marks, convincing him might have been a bit harder.
“I guess my imagination is very active in this big house,” he continues. “I won’t go into the west tower again. I’m sorry for interrupting you and your boyfriend; it won’t happen again.”
The look of disgust and anger on his features is making me nauseous; it confirms all of my worst fears. I need to run; I need to escape his eyes.
I nod again, my trembling hands lying flat against the wood behind me. I’m watching him the way a wounded, terrified animal would. As if my entire life rests in the palm of his hands, and I’m desperate to know when he’ll strike next.
After a long moment of just watching me, Julian says, “Please leave now, Young Master Atlas.”
I have never fled from a room so fast in my entire life.
As my loafers slap against the hardwood, drowned out by the rushing in my ears, I let the tears fall.
He was disgusted by me. In the end, I convinced him it was my boyfriend rather than the incubus, and he was still disgusted by the method of the pleasure he believed chosen.
If he were to learn the truth, it would only get worse. If he learned that I liked what a monster did to me? Oh, god.
There is every possibility that Julian hates me now. That he saw what he did, and now he despises me. I mean, he just kicked me out!
And worse than that—worse than the only man I’ve ever looked at and wanted to devour whole, looking at me like I’m scum—is that I was wrong.
I am still sick. I am uncured.
Who knows when the incubus will show up again?
Was there ever a cure at all?