Chapter Forty-Five #2
And how, as crazy as this sounds, my breasts almost seemed, I don’t know, heavier.
My skin was heated and kind of uncomfortable, so even the brush of my dress created this scratchy, unpleasant sensation.
Then, yeah, there was that throbbing sort of ache in my core, between my thighs, that I could barely think past as my fingers kept moving upward, my knuckles brushing his warm skin as I went, the muscles twitching at the contact.
“What am I, a priest?” he asked, making my head shoot up, confused, and finding him smirking at me before glancing down toward his neck. Where I’d buttoned him all the way up.
“Oh,” I said, shaking my head at myself as I undid the top button. “Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, and his voice sounded different. Thicker somehow. I didn’t understand why but the sound of it washed over me, made my sex pulse hard.
“Sure,” I said, taking a step back. “I’ll, uh, go get your chair ready,” I said, rushing out of the room to do just that after tossing Samson out of the back door to go potty.
“Are you going to be able to lift that into your car?” Atlas said as he scooted down the hall toward where I was setting the chair up by the door.
“I lifted you off of the floor. I’m sure I can manage to shove it in the trunk,” I told him as he scooted closer. “Shouldn’t you put your sling on?” I asked.
“Not to sound like a kid, but I don’t want to,” he said. “It’s feeling okay,” he said. “And it’s not like I’m going to overdo it going out to dinner.”
“Alright, I agreed, moving closer to lower down, and wrap my arms around his midsection like I’d been doing every day for weeks.
It’s just that… my body was still throbbing with need right then. And the touch of him had all sorts of little sparks of desire pinging off all of my nerve endings.
“You okay?” Atlas asked.
“Yeah, why?” I asked, sounding breathless to my own ears.
“Because you’re barely touching me,” he said as his arms went around my neck.
“Oh, right,” I said, arms tightening, so he could pull against me.
And for just a second, as his much bigger body was yanking against mine, making me plant my feet to stabilize both of us, I got a break from the need.
But as I started to slowly twist him, our chests crushed together, it came raging back, leaving me needing to press my thighs together to ease the ache as I lowered him into his fancy electric wheelchair.
“Alright. Let me just go bring Samson in and grab my purse. Do you need anything?” I asked as he grabbed his wallet from the mail table by the front door.
“I’m all set,” he said, watching me with those gooey eyes, but there was something in them that I couldn’t quite place.
I was glad for Samson’s stubbornness as I moved outside to wait for him to finish sniffing the entire perimeter of the yard.
I leaned back against the house, feeling the cool of the late fall air chill me, bringing some calm back into my body.
By the time Samson came back, I felt somewhat less frazzled as I led him inside, gave him a quick biscuit, then made my way to the front door, pushing it open for Atlas, then following him out.
The transfer to the car was easier than I’d anticipated. But getting the chair in the trunk was another matter entirely.
“You alright?” Atlas asked when I dropped into the driver’s seat, letting out a frustrated breath.
“I think I just got a week’s worth of exercise getting that thing in there.”
“I hate feeling so fucking useless,” he admitted, face darkening.
“You’re not useless. You’re healing,” I insisted. “Okay, I hope you like my mixed CD from years ago,” I told him as I turned the car over. “Because it’s stuck in the player. And none of the radio stations work.”
My car was, to put it kindly, a piece of junk. But it was all I’d been able to afford when I’d gotten it. And it had been there for me. Steady, if a bit clunky, dated, and cold since the heat only worked sometimes. Also hot because the air didn’t work at all.
But it was a key to freedom.
Both then and, to an extent, now.
So I loved it and all of its eccentricities.
Atlas was a surprisingly upbeat passenger, jamming out to the pop songs, and belting out the ballads as we just… drove.
Honestly, for the longest time, neither of us even seemed all that intent on actually finding a restaurant. Until we found ourselves over the bridge and into the more city-type area of Navesink Bank that featured a ton of boutique shops and lots of little independent restaurants.
“Good thing your chair is all charged up,” I said as we parked in the main lot in the center of town. We’d decided a little Italian place was calling to us, and I was suddenly having dreams of some really good penne vodka. And bread. All of the bread.
About twenty minutes later, we were seated at a table with a basket of bread and a little dish of herbed olive oil for dipping.
“So, you’re not from Navesink Bank, right?” Atlas asked as we both picked at the bread. “When you talk about it, it sounds… new to you.”
“It is. Just since a few weeks before I started renting your house, actually,” I told him. I went ahead and left out all the other details.
“What made you settle here?”
“I actually don’t know really,” I said, aside from nearly running completely out of money, that is.
The thing was, a quick online search told me that Navesink Bank wasn’t exactly the most reasonable place, financially, to call home.
“It just… felt right,” I added. “I can’t explain it.
I was walking Samson down the road and I just got this feeling of home. You know?”
“No, I mean… I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess nowhere has really ever felt like home.”
“Ever?”
“We moved around a lot. As little kids with my mom. There wasn’t a lot of money.
Especially after she got sick and her medical bills started piling up.
Then after she passed, we were with King, and there was even more moving around.
A fuckton of moving around. Never stayed anywhere longer than a few months. ”
“Is that why you travel so much?” I asked. “Because it’s what you’re used to?”
“I think that’s part of it, yeah. I got to see almost all of the States growing up. But there was so much else to explore. But then there’s the love of the thrill of doing new or crazy shit.”
If he didn’t even know what home felt like, I could honestly see why he didn’t think twice about not being in his own home much.
“Don’t you miss your family?” I asked. “Since you moved around so much with them,” I clarified.
“We all crashed here for a while when Scotti got with Mark. And everyone else was eager to start putting down roots. I just… wasn’t ready for that.
Back then, I was in the area more than I was gone, though.
I needed the money, so I worked for King.
Then as soon as I had enough, I was off again.
I was lucky to have a brother who would put up with that bullshit. ”
“Kingston seems like an all-around great guy,” I said.
“He is. The man doesn’t have a flaw,” Atlas agreed. “Was really fucking happy when he got with Savea. He deserved that kinda happy.”
“All your brothers have wives, right?” I asked. Even though I knew the answer, thanks to my handy dandy list of phone numbers.
“Hard to believe someone actually wanted to put up with Nixon for life, right?” he asked, shooting me that smirk I liked so much.
I’d met Nixon briefly. And, yeah, he was kind of a grump. But a lovable sort of grump. Always picking at Atlas, but just as willing to take a ribbing too.
“He’s the one who is with the, like, whiskey heiress or something like that, right?”
“Right,” he agreed, nodding. “You know all about my family. I know nothing of yours.”
“Because I don’t have any,” I said, shrugging off the pang of hurt, of need. “We were a very small family. And then my parents each passed. Now it’s just… me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Atlas said, those gooey eyes of his looking so sad for me. As if I needed more reasons to like him.
“I really envy your family,” I admitted. “You have such a big circle around you. That must be so nice.”
“You must think I’m a real dick, huh?” he asked, making me stiffen, my belly twisting hard. An old, familiar feeling. That worry I’d screwed up. That I said the wrong thing.
“What? No!”
“It’s okay,” he said, watching me with those eyes I swore saw just a little too much sometimes. “I meant because I have this big circle and I don’t spend any time with them. When you, clearly, would like to. They’d totally fucking adopt you, by the way. That’s how they are.”
“I don’t think that about you, though,” I said, shaking my head. “I just… don’t understand it, is all.”
“Guess I don’t really either,” he admitted, then looked really far away, like he was trying to wrap his head around why he did things the way he did.
Luckily, the server showed up to save us from the awkward turn of the conversation.
“So, did you always work with animals?” he asked after we ordered.
“Ah, no,” I said, trying not to lie, but also not offer him the truth of what I’d been doing prior to coming to Navesink Bank. “I did volunteer at the animal shelter a lot as a kid and teen, though.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I told him truthfully. “I love dogs. They’re full of life and love.”
“Never had one of my own, but I’m digging Samson,” he said. “He does the weirdest shit.”