“And Naomi accidentally got rip-roaring drunk.”
“Bingo.”
Atlas handed back the ring. “Dude. Mazel. I wish you all the happiness in the entire world. I’ve never met two people more well-suited for one another.”
Just then, Brooke’s cries from the other room had the two men swiveling back in that direction.
“I’m gonna go put my niece to bed. Lemme know when we can plan the bachelor party.”
“Kind of already feel like I had a bachelor party after Elena got home from your girl’s dance lesson.”
Atlas grinned. At some point, he was going to want to be the man that benefited from Bex’s past as a stripper, but in the meantime, he was willing to wait while she shared the wealth.
When he got back to the living room, it was obvious that Brooke had realized that all the love was because it was bedtime. And she did not love bedtime. She was red faced and sweaty in her dad’s arms as he attempted to stand without disturbing his now sleeping wife.
Atlas stepped forward. “I’ll take her.”
“Thanks,” Sequence said as he handed off his baby with one last kiss.
“Brookie,” Atlas said. “This won’t do. Let’s see if we can’t cheer this Cookie up.”
Atlas strode over to the sound system in the corner that had been playing quietly in the background. He cranked it up a little bit and luckily it was an old Marvin Gaye standard that Atlas felt absolutely no reservations about boogeying down to.
He held his niece high in the air, making eye contact with her little grumpy, teary face. She sniffed and cried, but he could tell he had her attention. This wasn’t their first rodeo.
He started with the shoulders, bringing one forward and then the other. His hands made her shoulders do the same move. She stopped crying.
Next came the booty. He swiveled his hips one way and then the other, keeping the baby in step with him. That got him a grumpy, reluctant smile from his niece, which he quickly transformed into a genuine smile when he tossed her high, caught her and swung her into a tight little two-step.
By the time he tucked her under his arm like a newspaper and slid neatly into the hustle, she was belly laughing, her face red with mirth instead of unhappiness.
He lifted her back up and cradled her sweaty cap of hair against his chin, pressing a kiss there and doing a few more wind-down dance moves.
He made the now-smiling baby do a quick wave to the room and that’s when he caught sight of Bex. Her eyes were glassy and shocked, burning with something they’d never burned with before. She was looking at him like he was another species but also like she wanted to cuddle him into the next century. She was soft and sharp and spinning all at once. He wanted to go to Bex, to nudge his shoulder against hers, but the baby tugged back on his attention and he turned from the room to put her to bed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Atlas wasn’t entirely sure what the hell was even happening. Bex had his hand locked in hers as she dragged him into their apartment, kicking the door closed and locking each lock. He’d just finished putting Brooke to bed, expecting to rejoin the party, but he’d barely made it back to the living room when Bex had taken him by the hand and yanked him unceremoniously from Sequence’s apartment back to their apartment.
She turned to him, her eyes liquid with an intensity that Atlas had no idea how to interpret.
“Baby—”
“Strip.”
His brow battened down. “Um. What?”
“You heard me,” she whispered. “I want you to strip.”
Atlas put one hand on his hip and scratched his head with the other. “I’m playing catch-up here. What exactly is going on?”
“You don’t understand the look on my face?”
Atlas stared at her and, yeah, there were only so many ways to interpret the wild lust that he read there.
“You… want to have sex?” he guessed.
She gave a terse nod. “Strip.”
Atlas attempted to run this interaction through an internal translator. He felt as if this were a riddle with more than one answer. “Bex, maybe we should watch a movie? Or have a cup of coffee and talk about this? I’m kind of thinking that no matter what I do, I’m shooting myself in the foot.”
“Atlas, if you don’t start stripping, I’m going to lock myself in the bedroom, alone, for the rest of the night so that I can take care of this problem on my own.”
He immediately unbuttoned his cuffs and started on his collar. He was halfway down his chest when she started advancing on him.
“Bedroom,” she growled and he started backing up.
He figured he could strip and talk at the same time. “I really think we should talk about this. We don’t have to do this if you’re not ready. Seriously, Bex, I can wait. I mean, I’m not a naturally patient person, but I’ll wait for you, as long as necessary. Longer than necessary. We can be old and gray before we get it on. I don’t care.”
“Pants,” was her only reply as his shirt fluttered to the floor.
He knocked his elbow on the doorframe to his room as he continued backing up but he barely felt it. “Um.”
“Now.”
His eyebrows in his hairline, Atlas thought that sometimes the best way to survive the wave was to surf the wave. He kicked off his shoes and shucked his pants off. He stood there in socks, boxer briefs and a smile.
Bex’s breaths came in sharp puffs. She looked like she wanted to drizzle him on ice cream and lap him back up. She also looked halfway down the road toward a freak-out.
“Tell me the rules,” Atlas said.
She blinked. “What?”
“I don’t want to mess up, Bex. I want this to be good. So, tell me the rules. Where can I touch you and when? What do you like? What do you hate? Please, just give me some directions.”
“Directions.” She blinked at him some more. He watched a thought settle over her like an oxygen mask. She suddenly looked like she could breathe again. “Let’s make this simple, shall we?”
“Simple is good. I’m down with simple.”
“Lie on the bed.” She bit her lip. “Please.”
He immediately did as she asked, lying himself down in the middle of the bed, propped up on his elbows to watch her.
She rummaged through his underwear drawer for a moment and came up with two knee-length socks that he’d used when he’d played in a soccer league two years ago.
“Sock fetish?” he asked.
She had that lip between her teeth again, but there was a fire in her eyes. “I want to tie your hands down.”
Atlas worked very hard to keep his expression neutral. He felt as if anything could send Bex flying from the room at that moment and he desperately wanted to keep her in the room.
“Okay,” he nodded. “To the bed frame?”
“Okay?” she asked, cocking her head to one side and worrying the socks in her hands. “That’s all you have to say? You don’t want to know why?”
He backed himself up on the bed until his back was against the headboard, choosing his words carefully. “I imagine it’s because you want to touch me but you don’t want me to touch you. And this is a really good way of guaranteeing that I won’t be able to. I’m fine with that.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you done this before?”
“Had sex with my girlfriend? Nope.”
She rolled her eyes and he chuckled.
“No,” he answered. “No one has ever tied me up before. But I’m down, Bex. I’m down for anything that makes you comfortable. And not just, like, in a sensitive-new-age-guy type of way. I mean, whatever makes you hot turns me on too. You being into it is going to fucking light me up. So, yeah. Tie me up.”
He propped his wrists on either side of him, to the headboard. Bex took a long minute to watch him then approached, padding softly across the carpet.
She took the sock and one of his wrists and tied it tightly to the headboard.
“Does that hurt?” she whisp
ered.
“Nope, but…” He gave a few good tugs and the sock came undone. “It’s not gonna work either. Here, grab my phone from my pants and we can google the best knot to use.”
She didn’t move for a moment and when he looked up at her, perched on the edge of the bed, there were tears in her eyes. They raced down her face and fell off the cliff of her cheekbones, the way her tears always did.
“I love you,” she whispered, her eyes on his chest.
All the blood rushed to his head and Atlas choked on all the words that tried to tumble out of his mouth at once. Bex clapped a hand over his lips.
“No. Don’t say anything. Please. Don’t say anything. I love you. You’re the sweetest man of all time and I’ve never loved a man before. And—shit. Please, just don’t say anything and let me tie you up now.” Bex laughed at herself, tears spilling down her face. “This is so screwed up.”
“I don’t care,” he said behind her hand.
“Me either.”
She took his wrist and tied it as tightly as she could to the headboard, crawled over him and did the same to the other.
Then she backed up off the bed. She smiled down at his still-socked feet and ripped off one sock and then the other.
“Bex—”
“Not a word, Atlas.” She pinned him with a vicious stare. “Unless it’s dirty.”
He nodded, testing the bonds around his wrists. He knew how important it was that his hands stay out of play, so he wrapped his fingers around the bars of the headboard as well.
Bex followed the movement and her eyes flared.
“You have no idea how you look right now,” she told him. “So gorgeous it hurts.”
He intentionally flexed his muscles, planting his feet and pushing himself a few inches back toward the headboard.
Her eyes darkened. “Your tattoos,” she whispered. “They make you look alien. Like a reptile. Your face is so handsome. And God. Atlas. You’re so unbelievably big. I’ve never been attracted to a big man before. But even just the size of your feet.”
Her eyes fell between his legs and Atlas couldn’t help but move his hips. His boxer briefs felt too tight and scratchy against his skin. He wanted to be naked and pushed up against her. He wanted to drown in her heat.
“Come here,” he growled, for the first time irritated with the bonds at his wrists. He wasn’t sure he had the patience for games.
She shook her head no but his irritation immediately faded away when she reached down and slicked off her skinny jeans. She stood there in front of him, swallowed up in his t-shirt, a look on her face that he’d never seen before.
He opened his mouth to speak but clapped his mouth closed when her fingers found the bottom hem of the shirt. She danced it up her thighs a few inches and let it drop, letting the palm of one of her hands skate up her thigh and disappear.
He groaned. She let the shirt dance up her thighs again, this time giving him a glimpse of her white panties slashing across one hipbone. She dipped her knees, cocked her hips to one side and let the shirt drop again.
He closed his eyes and knocked his head backward the second he realized what was happening. “You’re stripping for me. God.”
When he opened his eyes, she had a little smile on her face. She turned her back and yanked the shirt up and off all at once. She wore white panties and a black bra.
He gulped. “You don’t have to put on a show for me, baby. I want you no matter what.”
But the words dissolved to sand on his tongue when she turned halfway, giving him her gorgeously smirking profile.
She looked like she was made of silk. The lamplight moved like liquid gold over her skin, she was draped in it, slender and delicate. Her hips dipped and her hands traced over her. He thought she looked like a goddess. The thought came out of nowhere and disappeared into the ether the second she turned to face him. Her bra was two triangles over her breasts and the underwear was even smaller than he’d thought originally.
Her eyes on his, she placed one knee on the bed and he couldn’t help but gulp again as he realized what she was about to do.
She crawled forward on the bed, toward him, like a wildcat stalking prey through tall grass. Her eyes were huge and hooded, black emeralds winking at him in the dim light. His arms flexed as he tried to bite back the urge to reach for her. Flip her over, suck on her.
She crawled up between his legs and leaned forward, one hand planted on either side of his hips. He had the straight, unholy view between her breasts. She tipped up and there was her soft, silken stomach, there were the shadows bracketing her hipbones.
“Fuck,” he growled when she crawled forward farther, planting her knees on either side of his hips, her hands on the headboard beside his head. Still, she undulated.
Unable to help himself, he leaned forward a touch, trying to put his mouth to the skin of her chest. But she pulled back, smirking again. She tipped back, balancing her hands on the bed behind her, her body in a painfully beautiful arch for him, her breasts pressing against her bra. And, yeah, damn it, her panties were almost translucently wet where she wanted him most.
Atlas couldn’t help but press his hips up and into her, his hardness pushing into the plush country of her ass.
She gasped and pressed back down for a second before she rotated away, giving him her back. For a moment, he’d worried he’d pushed too fast, that he’d ruined it, but then, all at once, she laid her weight against his chest, her head falling back into the crook of his neck.
His hardness was between her legs and spearing up, trying like hell to work its way through the part in his briefs. Her back was smooth and hot against his chest, her hands were on his thighs and then up, in his hair, her ass pressed against the cradle of his hips.
She worked herself in a rhythm. Sexual, but it was still more of a dance than an imitation of sex. Atlas’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, praying for fortitude as she undulated against him, one sinuous wave of everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. His hands gripped the bars of the headboard in a death grip.
“I want you so bad, Bex,” he growled, knocking his head back against the headboard again, trying to keep the reins on himself. And failing. He figured that she was trying to get him so worked up that he was out of his mind with desire by the time they actually had sex. He figured that two could play at that game. He figured that maybe if she wanted him enough, some of her reservations might get burned to a crisp in her heat for him. Usually, he’d use his hands to get a woman going. But right now, the only tool he had was his voice.
“If I could touch you right now, you know what I’d be doing?” Her head was still in the cradle of his shoulder, so he tipped his mouth down to her ear, his eyes on her breasts, on her hips twisting against him. He didn’t bother waiting for her to answer. “I’d have one hand on your knee, opening you up even more.” Because he could, he lifted one of his knees between her legs and hitched her open a few more inches. She gasped and shuddered and Atlas smiled into her hair. He let his tongue slick over the lobe of her ear but that was all he gave her for a moment. “Put your hand in your bra.”
She immediately complied and shuddered again.
“That’s what I’d do next. I’d finally, finally touch on your itty bitties.”
She laughed and moaned as he lifted his other knee and effectively pinned her legs open on the outside of his.
“I’d be firm and gentle at the same time, Bex. I’d let you feel my heat.” He pushed his hips against her ass. His fingers opened and closed against the bars of the headboard. “Then I’d take one hand and drag it across your stomach.” She took her free hand and did just that. Atlas was hypnotized by the sight of it. Her slim hand doing exactly what he told it to. “Are you imagining it?”
“Yes,” she whispered, shuddering again. “But my hands are too soft. Yours are rougher.”
“My rough fingers would trace the line of your panties,” he said into her ear, both of them watching the trail her hand made to the
white line of her underwear cutting from one hip to the other. Her fingers dipped under panties and Atlas almost blacked out. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anything hotter than that. The demure little mound of her own hand under her own panties. “I’d touch between your legs, Bex. I’d find out if you were wet for me.”
She gasped at whatever her fingers discovered and her legs tightened against his, as if she were trying to close them, but he kept his knees pressed out, pinning her open.
“Are you wet for me, baby?” he asked, his lips at her ear, his eyes glued to her hand exploring herself.
“Yes—God. Atlas.” Her hips bucked upward, into her hand, and suddenly she was pushing up, off of him.
There was a wildfire in her eyes, raging, consuming, obviously out of control. She ripped her bra off over her head, not even bothering with the clasp. He was drugged with lust for her, sharp and dozy at the same time, that’s the only reason it took him a second to understand what exactly was happening here.
Then she leaned forward, grabbed the waistband of his boxers in her hands and yanked them down to the tops of his thighs. He was revealed in a sudden, bouncing second and Bex’s eyes rounded as she took him in. But even the size of him didn’t stop her.
His brain caught up as she straddled him, yanking her panties to one side.
“Bex, wait. Baby, you need more. Let me get you ready. Not yet,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, his eyes glued to the pink, glistening folds she’d just revealed. He wrenched his eyes to her face and saw a wild expression there. He’d never wanted to touch her more. But this time to soothe her, to stoke her fire, to guide her.
“I’m clean and on birth control. I swear,” she said.
“That’s not what I mean.” His eyes flicked to her perfect, small breasts with the tipped points, the gorgeous plane of her stomach, her underwear tugged to the side. “I mean that there’s no rush. Lemme get you ready, baby. Just touch on yourself and let me talk to you.”
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