"They're going to be so mad."
"I know."
"Atlas."
"Mm."
"You really cheated."
His hand spreads wider on my stomach. His thumb finds the dip below my ribs. His mouth has not left my ear and his breath is warm and slow, and I can feel him smiling.
"I am the eldest," he murmurs. "Eldest privilege. I claimed it. I will be defending the choice in the morning, possibly with a chair."
"What was the list."
"The list was extremely thorough."
"You—"
"Linens stripped. Trash to the curb. Fridge cleaned. Outdoor furniture covered. Three pages."
"You wrote them three pages—"
"On legal paper. Single-spaced."
I am laughing into my pillow now. Quiet, helpless. He is laughing too, against my ear, low and barely-there. His hand slides up under the hem of my shirt and his palm is warm against the bare skin of my stomach and his fingers spread wide and I am suddenly very awake.
"Theyaregoing to murder you," I whisper.
"Probably."
His mouth at my ear. His thumb tracing the line below my navel. His voice has dropped into the register that lives somewhere south of my belly.
"Drove the whole way home hard, sweetheart."
"...what?"
"All those hours. Knew you were already in this bed. Knew you'd gone down without me. Knew I was the one withthe keys and the route and the head start. Spent the entire drive thinking about you tucked under this duvet, all warm and just—waiting to be defiled."
"Atlas—"
"Mm. Roll back into me. Let me have you for a while."
I roll back into him. As if I could possibly get closer.
His chest is solid and warm against my back. His arm tightens. His mouth finds the bonding mark at the base of my throat—the older one, his, the one fully healed into the rest of my skin—and presses an open kiss against it, slow and reverent, and the bond between us flares warm down my spine.
"I missed you," he says. Into the skin.
"I saw you this morning."
"Mm. But I had to share you with my brothers and your mother and a beach house that was too small for any of us. This is what I missed."
His other hand has slipped to the waistband of my sweats. Two fingers hooked in. Slow.
"Atlas—"
"Shh. Let me."
