Chapter 8
Atlas
Someone is trying to break my front door down.
At least, that’s what it sounds like when the doorbell rings aggressively for the fourth time in under a minute while somebody pounds against the wood hard enough to shake the frame. I yank the apartment door open, still wet from the shower and already irritated enough to commit a felony.
Joanna’s assistant visibly jumps. I probably would, too.
I’m standing there barefoot, with water still dripping down my chest, a towel hanging dangerously low on my hips, and the kind of expression that usually gets people to apologize before I even say anything.
“Oh,” she says quickly.
I stare at her.
She stares back.
Then her eyes flick briefly downward before snapping back up to my face.
“Can I help you?” I ask flatly.
She clears her throat and hurriedly lifts the garment bag in her hands like she suddenly remembered why she came here in the first place.
“Joanna sent me,” she says. “You and Damien have a talk show interview this afternoon, and she wanted you to have your outfit ahead of time.”
“Great,” I say.
She hesitates. “You also have a fitting tomorrow at eleven,” she adds carefully.
“Fantastic.”
There’s another beat of awkward silence.
Then, from somewhere deeper inside my apartment: “Atlas!”
Damien’s voice carries through the apartment clearly enough to make Joanna’s assistant go completely still.
Her eyes widen slightly, and I grab the garment bag out of her hands.
“Thank you,” I say quickly. “Have a good day.”
Then I shut the door in her face before she can say anything else.
I lean against the door for a second, dragging a hand down my face. “This is getting ridiculous,” I mutter.
“Atlas,” Damien calls again, sounding even more annoyed this time. “Where the fuck did you go?”
I can’t help but smile.
I toss the clothes on the couch and head back down the hallway toward the bathroom. I’m trying very hard not to think about the fact that Joanna’s assistant almost discovered why I answered the door looking like I got dragged out of a porno.
Steam pours out into the hallway when I push the bathroom door open.
Damien is standing under the spray like he owns the place, dark hair slicked back from the water, one arm braced against the tile wall while he glares at me through the steam.
He looks deeply offended that I interrupted his morning orgasm.
“You left,” he says accusingly.
I grin. “We had a visitor.”
“You were gone forever.”
“It was maybe three minutes.” I strip off the towel, enjoying the way his eyes dip down my body.
“It was at least ten.”
I step back into the shower and shut the glass door behind me, immediately hit with warmth and the smell of Damien’s body wash mixed with mine.
My hands find his hips, my fingers settling perfectly into the contours of his body. A scorpion tattoo stares at me boldly from his pelvis, and the thing I’ve been straining to see is finally on full display.
I run my nose against his jawline, enjoying the sudden clingy behavior that he so rarely grants me. “You’re being dramatic.”
He huffs, not meeting my eyes. “I was close.”
The annoyance in his voice is real enough that I laugh. “Are you actually grumpy because our shower sex got interrupted for a few minutes?”
His expression darkens. “Yes, idiot. We were busy.”
Something about the way he says it nearly destroys my ability to think coherently.
Because Damien doesn’t usually sound possessive about anything, especially not me. I move closer until the water runs over both of us again.
“You missed me?” I say softly.
“Shut up.”
I kiss him before he can keep arguing.
Damien immediately grabs my shoulders and pulls me in harder, all lingering irritation melting into something hotter the second our mouths meet.
That’s become a pattern lately—once we start touching each other, nothing else matters.
The steam thickens around us while the kiss deepens, Damien’s body pressing against mine as if the few minutes apart genuinely offended him.
I pull back just enough to look at him. “You know,” I murmur, “you get really clingy after you come.”
He stares at me flatly. “I could kill you.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I absolutely could.”
I laugh again and pick him up by his thighs before he can continue threatening me. He wraps his legs around me as I press him against the cool tile.
The worst part is that I’m becoming completely obsessed with moments like this. It’s not just the sex. It’s everything surrounding it that keeps getting under my skin.
The way Damien looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. The way all of his walls come down whenever we’re alone together long enough. The fact that every time he kisses me, it feels less guarded and more genuine.
All of that settles heavily in my chest.
Because Damien made himself very clear yesterday morning.
This is casual.
No expectations.
Just friends with benefits until the contract ends.
And I agreed to it because I didn’t know what else to do.
He breaks the kiss, his eyes searching my face. “What?”
I blink. “Nothing.”
“You’re thinking too hard.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
He narrows his eyes at me before kissing me again, slower this time, like he’s trying to shut my brain off manually.
Fortunately, it works.
The next few weeks blur together.
Everything becomes movement and noise and adrenaline.
Hockey games. Packed arenas. Interviews. Photo shoots. Too many cameras.
Too many people invested in what Damien and I are supposed to be.
The publicity campaign explodes harder than Joanna could have possibly expected.
Every game sells out. Fans bring signs with our names on them. There are edits of us online set to emotional music that somehow get millions of views overnight.
People dissect every interaction we have like they’re trying to solve a mystery.
And Damien somehow keeps getting hotter every time he gets annoyed about the attention.
Which is a serious problem for me personally.
Then there’s the sex.
Hot, aggressive, all-consuming sex.
In the locker room showers when nobody else is around.
Quick kisses that turn into entire lost evenings.
Moments where one of us says something flirty and then neither of us remembers what the original conversation was about anymore.
It becomes constant.
Addictive.
And every single time it happens, I tell myself I can still keep this casual, because Damien clearly needs it to stay that way.
I find myself thinking about the next time I get to have him wrapped around me. I often picture what he would look like ruined, crying, and covered in my cum. It gets to the point where I can’t wait until we’re home to fuck him.
The tension boils over again at the late-night talk show we booked.
The producers are scrambling outside, interns rushing back and forth with clipboards while someone nearby argues loudly about lighting. Damien is sitting in the makeup chair looking deeply offended that someone put concealer over the fading bruise on his neck from where I bit him two nights ago.
“That’s the point,” he says flatly, while the makeup artist tries not to laugh. “It’s supposed to look bad.”
“Yes,” she says patiently. “But not that bad.”
Damien mutters something under his breath that definitely qualifies as a threat.
I grin from where I’m leaning against the wall.
The makeup artist finishes a minute later and escapes after reminding us not to wrinkle our outfits before filming.
The second the door shuts, Damien exhales dramatically. “I hate this.”
“I know you do.”
He rolls his eyes and stands, straightening the sleeves of his black button-up.
The outfit department clearly decided to lean into the whole contrast thing again tonight.
Damien looks polished and dangerous in all black, while they shoved me into softer colors and layered jewelry to make me look approachable.
Damien catches me staring. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring at me.”
“I’m appreciating the effort Joanna’s team put into making you look like somebody’s toxic ex-boyfriend.”
His mouth twitches slightly. “You’re one to talk. You look like you play acoustic guitar in somebody’s apartment for emotional support.”
I laugh. “That’s incredibly specific.”
“It feels accurate.”
I push off the wall and slowly walk toward him. His expression changes just slightly, eyes tracking me in a way that makes heat settle low in my stomach.
We’ve gotten very good at this.
At reading each other.
At noticing the shift before it fully happens.
“You know,” I say quietly, “you get meaner when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“We go onstage in fifteen minutes.”
“And?”
“And you’ve insulted three people in the last five.”
“That’s normal for me.”
I stop directly in front of him, close enough to smell his cologne under the makeup.
Damien tilts his head slightly. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“That’s concerning.”
I grin and kiss him before he can keep talking.
He melts immediately into my kiss, his hands tangling in my hair. That part still destroys me every single time. Damien acts like he’s all sharp edges until I touch him, and then suddenly he turns warm and responsive so fast it almost feels unfair.
His hands slide into my jacket instantly, pulling me closer while I deepen the kiss.
“You’re distracting,” he mutters against my mouth.
“That’s kind of the point.”
“We’re supposed to be working right now.”
“You say that like it’s stopped me before.”
Damien huffs out a laugh that turns into a quiet moan when I kiss along his jaw.
The dressing room suddenly feels too warm.
“You look really good tonight,” I murmur against his neck.
“That line shouldn’t work on me anymore.”
“And yet…”
He glares weakly at me before kissing me again, harder this time.
That’s usually how this starts. One kiss. Then another. Then suddenly we completely forget we’re supposed to be professional athletes with media training and publicists and functioning frontal lobes.
Damien backs into the makeup counter while dragging me with him, and I laugh quietly against his mouth before kissing him deeper.
“Atlas,” he breathes.
“Hm?” I pick him up and place him on the counter.
“We have to?—”
I swallow his words with my mouth as my fingers work his belt and pants open.
The door flies open, revealing an intern with his clipboard, standing there stunned. We all stare at each other for one horrible second.
Damien is flushed, pinned between me and the counter with his hands tangled in my shirt.
I’m very obviously on my way to ruining him before we get on national television.
The intern makes a choking sound. “Oh my God,” he says.
Then he immediately turns around.
“Sorry, holy shit.” The door slams shut behind him.
“Sorry!” I yell after him.
Damien goes completely still. Then he slowly turns his head toward me.
“Oh my God,” he says flatly.
I completely lose it, laughing like this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Atlas!”
“I said I was sorry!”
Damien shoves my shoulder weakly while trying not to laugh himself. “We can’t have sex in a talk show dressing room.”
“Counterpoint,” I say, kissing him again immediately. “We definitely can.”
He makes an exasperated sound against my mouth that lasts all of two seconds before he kisses me back anyway.
A few nights later, I’m sitting beside him in another sold-out arena while cameras flash around us as I think something deeply dangerous.
I don’t think I know how to stop falling for him anymore.
That realization settles slowly and heavily in my chest while the crowd screams loud enough to shake the stadium. Damien glances over at me on the bench, sweat dampening the curls at the back of his neck, his expression sharp and focused in a way I’ve become helplessly attached to.
“You good?” he asks.
I stare at him for half a second too long.
Then I smile. “Yeah,” I lie.
Because the truth is much worse.
The truth is that every day this continues, I want more from him.
And I’m starting to think he’s never going to give it to me.