Summer
Hearing his voice brings heat to my body, but seeing him sets every nerve alight, like a storm of fireworks detonating inside me.
“Atlas!” I choke on tears of joy. They taste sweet now.
He’s the one I hit.
Oh, fuck! I hit him.
At least I didn’t knee him in the balls.
“What are you doing, honey?”
My gaze drifts to the passed-out creep I’m still holding by the hair, whose upper body is slumped over the roof of his car. Well, Atlas has seen me in a worse light, and he’s still here, so I brace myself for a perfectly logical explanation.
“I-I’m . . . borrowing a car to escape . . . you. I mean, not you, obviously. I didn’t know it was you.”
An animalistic sound rumbles from deep inside his chest, like a mating call my body recognizes and answers without hesitation.
I stride for my handsome Chocolate Bar Thief almost as fast as he moves toward me. I barely make it a few steps before he meets me in front of the car, swooping me into his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist.
He kisses me like he’s been starving for me for far too long, and I offer the same fervor in return.
Half a month without him might as well have been an eternity of torture.
His hands leave rough, hungry imprints everywhere they land, and he devours my mouth like a man dying of thirst. The heat of his skin is burning even through the hoodie.
I’m his, and every part of me bathes in his touch, taste, scent.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” he says against my lips, letting my butt land on the cold metal of the car’s hood, though I swear it feels hot as if it’s been frying under the midsummer sun.
Only now, I notice the stubble on his face, the dark circles under his eyes, and the paleness of his usually lightly tanned skin. But he’s still my beautiful Atlas—the only man my eyes would ever want to see.
“I couldn’t sleep without you.” He stills, forehead pressed against mine, body nestled between my legs.
“I started hallucinating after day three, and it got so bad I began calling Carter honey. Connor drugged me so I would finally pass out. Can you fathom what you’re doing to me? I can’t function without you.”
“Then why didn’t you come to me sooner?”
He huffs a sigh.
“I would’ve come right after I dealt with Mason—”
“You . . .” I interrupt, opening my mouth to ask a question I’m not sure I should.
His palms cup my cheeks.
“There was never a scenario where someone would hurt you and live.”
I gulp, blinking away the tears.
Mason sought his vengeance. I sought mine.
And in the end, all I hoped for was that I could tell my mother and brother in my dreams that revenge was served, and maybe those terrors that plague my nights would eventually stop.
I thought it would be like a huge burden coming off my shoulders hearing that monster is no longer breathing, but instead, there’s a heaviness in my chest. Not the bad kind.
The kind that tells me my heart is overflowing with love for the man who so tentatively holds me in his arms.
“My father . . . I didn’t know,” I choke out.
“Let’s never again mention our fathers. Let them rot into oblivion.”
I nod. That’s all I can do, being grateful for not having to talk about those people who no longer hold power over our lives.
Atlas’s attention and fingers move to the small, poorly stitched wound on my arm, his touch turning gentle.
His thumb grazes the zigzagging suture that one of Owen’s friends—a first-year med student—barely managed to stitch with his disturbingly shaky hands, while repeating on a loop, “I’m sorry.
I never wanted to be a doctor,” each time the curved needle punctured my skin.
When Atlas’s gaze levels with mine, I can see the same rage and guilt I saw the moment I got shot.
But I don’t want those emotions eating at him, so I let my thoughts drift elsewhere and try to drag him along with me.
“How did you find me here?”
Noon at the Hemisfèric was my find-me-if-shit-hits-the-fan place and time, not at a beat-up hotel on the outskirts of the city, where I chose to hide myself, just in case.
Having a fake ID and covering my tracks makes me wonder if I could ever truly hide. Seems his promise to find me anywhere wasn’t empty after all.
“And don’t tell me you’ve followed the scent of crazy.”
He chuckles.
“Link tracked you through the city’s CCTV footage. I was pretty much watching you live every day until I got to you.”
“Stalker.”
“Only for you, Miss Lana Eros.” Oh, fuck! I bet he’s noticed the semordnilaps, which Owen was so unkind to arrange. “Anal Sore? Seriously, honey? You’re a sucker for insane fake names.”
“Well, I got the fakes for free, so I couldn’t exactly complain about the name, could I? The guy who provided them holds a tiny bit of a grudge over an accident involving a game of hot potato with M-80 fireworks. He kinda lost a pinky back then.”
“Who the fuck needs a pinky, anyway?” Atlas shrugs.
Oh my God! We’re soulmates.
“That’s exactly what I said.”
I grin so wide it hurts, while his fingers pull the fabric of my panties to the side, and a finger plunges inside me. A pinky? I could probably come just from the way Atlas is looking at me. On a pinky at that.
“I have a problem with that name.”
He rumbles as he pulls the finger out and sucks it clean.
“You and I both.” I chuckle.
“Summer Holt has a much better ring to it. Don’t you think?”
Wait!
What?!
What?!
My heart somersaults in my chest before my brain can process what’s happening. That fucking churro I ate earlier must’ve been spiked to make me hallucinate.
Summer Holt?
“Are you asking me to marry you?” He opens his mouth to answer, but I cut in. “Oh wait, I know . . .” My eyes roll so hard I catch a glimpse of the empty parking lot at my back. “You have a problem with the word ask.”
He gives me a lopsided smile before landing another soft kiss on my lips and reaching for his back pocket.
“No, love. I will ask. I will plead. And I will beg if I have to, as long as you say yes.” His hand closes around my left one, holding a huge cushion-cut ring against my finger.
“And if by some deranged and inexplicable reason you say no, I’ll still make you my wife.
” How romantic! “I want the world to know you are mine and I am yours.” Then he slides the ring on my finger without waiting for my reply.
My mind flings between the gorgeous diamond on my hand that will certainly tempt someone to try and mug me for it, and Atlas, unbuckling his belt.
I want to tease him, because it wouldn’t be us if I didn’t, or at least say yes.
Despite his big talk, I know he wants to hear it, but nothing comes out of me as I stare thunderstruck.
Atlas sliding up my flimsy velvet dress is the only thing pulling me out of my speechless daze.
A groan ripples through the air. Not his. Not mine.
Then there’s a faint scrape of movement, forcing both of us to look in the direction the sound comes from. I guess I didn’t hit the creep hard enough.
Without saying a word, Atlas’s hand moves to the back of his jeans, taking out a gun.
“No!” I force the weapon down, and he looks back at me with brows knit in confusion. “We don’t kill innocents.”
“You were making an omelet out of his brain minutes ago.”
“I was fixing his deviated septum.”
“He’s ruining my proposal.”
“And you wanna kill him for that?”
“Fine,” he grumbles, leaving the space between my legs to tuck the gun back before striding for the creep trying to get up. Grabbing onto that man’s shirt, he pulls him off the ground, landing a sucker punch to his face, effectively sedating him once more. “There! All fixed.”
Atlas nestles back where he belongs, fingers digging into the skin of my thighs to spread my legs further apart. Then the sound of the zipper of his jeans makes me rethink the whole “not into exhibition coitus” statement. Right about now, I don’t care if anyone sees us.
He presses against my core, making shivers scatter through every corner of my body, as a wave of pleasure makes my hands give in and my back plasters on the hood of the car. But he keeps teasing me, coating his dick with my wetness, making me lose my mind, while trying to grind myself against him.
“Don’t rush me! I’m proposing here.” He smirks.
Atlas’s palm glides down my neck, to my breasts, traveling further south, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, while gripping my thigh with the other.
But the way his eyes are raking all of me is what’s truly incinerating.
I let my own hands glide underneath his hoodie, craving to feel his hot skin.
He leans in, supporting his weight on one arm, lips inching for mine, eyes locked there, too.
“Those luscious, lying lips . . . If they tell me it’s a sunny day outside while all I see is pitch black, I’d believe them over my own eyes.
If they tell me left is right, and right is left, I’d take that at face value.
And if they tell me to pick up the gun and put a bullet inside my brain, I’d do it without hesitation. ”
Caressing my bottom lip with his thumb, he traces it with both gaze and touch, like it’s what his dreams are made of.
“That’s what you do to me.”
Just the tip of his cock slips inside me, but it’s enough to pull a broken moan out of me. Then he retreats, leaving me whimpering at the emptiness.
“And I’m asking you . . . No! I’m begging you to have mercy on me and love me back.”
Atlas enters me slowly, filling me, stretching me, making me wonder if those more than two weeks away were enough for my pussy to forget exactly how big he is, and he’s pushing a reminder without room for objection.
I take all of him, even when seemingly I can take no more, trembling with the amount of bliss traversing my body.
When he’s balls deep inside me, he stills, his eyes shifting from my lips, searing into mine with raw desperation.