Page 43

He pushed into me in one long, devastating stroke, and the sound that tore out of me was nothing short of obscene. He swallowed it with his mouth, groaning into the kiss as he seated himself fully, stretching me, filling me, until there was no part of me that didn’t belong to him. For a moment, neither of us moved. He just held there, buried deep, his forehead dropping to mine as a fine tremor ran the length of his body.

“You feel,” he breathed raggedly, “like something I was never meant to deserve.”

My heart cracked clean down the middle.

“You have me,” I told him, echoing his own words back, sliding my hands up into his hair. “All of me. So, stop being so damn noble about it and move my king.”

A breathy laugh escaped him.

“As my queen commands.”

Then he began to move, and every clever thought left in me scattered to the four winds.

He set a rhythm that was nothing like gentle. Deep and demanding and relentless, each drag of him pulling sounds from me I had no hope of containing, while that low, devastating voice poured filth and praise into my ear in equal measure. Telling me how perfect I was. How well I took him. How long he had ached to have me beneath him again, just like this, falling apart around him with his name on my lips.

And the whole time, those eyes never left mine.

I kept mine open too, even when the pleasure built so fast and so fiercely that it would have been easier to let them fall shut. Because he had asked me to. Because there was something almost unbearably intimate about watching him watch me. About seeing every flicker of hunger, wonder, and devotion play across his face as he took me apart piece by piece.

“That’s it.” His hand slid beneath my thigh, lifting, changing the angle until I saw stars. “Let me see you, little warrior. Let me see what’s mine.”

It was the word mine that did it.

The first peak hit me like a wave breaking, sudden and shattering, and I cried out as it rolled through me. Atlas groaned at the feel of it, his rhythm faltering for the briefest moment before he composed himself and pushed me straight through the climax. Refusing to let me come down, building me back up before the last of the tremors had even faded.

“Again,” he ordered roughly. “I want it again. I could watch you fall apart a thousand times and never tire of it.”

“I can’t…” I gasped, even as my body called me a liar, already winding tight once more.

“You can.” His mouth dragged along my throat, my collarbone, never once dipping lower than he should, never once asking me to move in any way that might turn me from him. “You will. You’re going to give it to me again, Alexandra, because your pleasure belongs to me now, and I am a greedy king.”

Somewhere in the haze, a small, watchful part of me stayed grateful for that. Grateful that he kept me here, beneath him, face to face, my spine pressed safely into the mattress, and the scar Riley had branded me with was hidden there.

He didn’t know.

He couldn’t know.

Not yet… not tonight.

Not when I had no idea how to tell him that the same darkness twisting through his brother had carved its mark into my skin. So, when his hands roamed, I guided them. When his grip shifted as though he might roll us, might turn me, I tightened my legs around him and pulled him back down, kept him exactly where I wanted him.

Where it was safe.

And if Atlas noticed at all, he only seemed to take it as eagerness, rewarding me with a deeper thrust and a groan of pure approval that chased the worry clean out of my head.

“Good girl,” he rasped. “Just like that.”

The second peak built faster than the first, coiling tight and low until I was clinging to him, nails biting into the broad muscle of his shoulders, his name a broken chant against his skin. He worked me higher with every stroke, every filthy word, every press of his clever fingers between us, until I hovered right at the edge, trembling, desperate.

“Eyes open now,” he reminded me, his own control visibly fraying now, his jaw tight, his breath ragged. “Look at me when you come for me. Let me have it.”

So, I did.

I held his gaze as the next wave crashed over me, and the look on his face as he watched me shatter, the awe and the hunger and the helpless adoration of it, sent me higher still. Only then, only once he had wrung every last tremor from my body and seen each one with his own eyes, did he finally let himself follow.

“Alexandra!” My name left him like a vow torn from somewhere deep, his whole body going taut as he buried himself to the hilt and spilled into me with a groan that I felt in my bones. The markings across his skin flared crimson, the bond surging bright between us, and for one suspended moment, there was nothing in either world but the two of us. Both lit from within and wholly, impossibly each other’s.

Then he collapsed over me, careful even now to brace most of his weight on his forearms, his chest heaving against mine.