"Yes."
"Open them."
I open them. The room is completely dark except for the soft green light of the alarm clock on my nightstand. His face is right behind my ear, half in shadow, the silver at his temples catching the low light. His eyes are dark and steady and on mine.
"Watch me," he says. Quiet. "Watch me take you. Tonight is mine, sweetheart. I want you here for it."
"I'm here."
"Good boy."
He pushes in.
Slow. So slow it is almost unbearable. Inch by inch. The stretch is everything—deep and full and right, my body opening for him like it has been waiting since the heat ended for him to be back inside it, and when his hips finally meet mine and hiscock is buried as deep as it will go I make a sound into the pillow that is not a word.
He goes still.
Breathes against my temple.
"There," he says. Wrecked. "There we are. Look at you taking me. Christ, look at you."
"Atlas—"
"I know. Shh. Just feel it for a minute."
I do. I lie there spooned against his chest with his cock buried inside me and the bond between us thrumming so loud I can feel it in my teeth, and I feel him. All of him. The way the thread in my chest goes brighter the deeper he is in me. The way his pleasure rolls down it into my own body in a slow warm wave I have nothing to compare to. The way I can sense his restraint—tight, careful, holding himself off the edge so we can stay here, in this, longer.
For the first time in my life I am inside my body without chemicals dampening it and without biology stimulating it. No suppressants. No heat haze. Just me, full of him, and the bond like a second sense sharpening every nerve. I can feel the soft cotton of my sheets against my hipbone. The slow thud of Atlas's heart against my back. The pulse of his cock inside me. The breath he just took.
A tear trickles down my cheek onto the pillow beneath me.
His hand spreads warm and flat over my chest, right over my heart, and his other hand laces our fingers together on the pillow next to my head.
"Hi, baby."
"...hi."
"There you are."
He moves.
Long, slow strokes. Pulling almost all the way out and sliding back in to the hilt. Each one drawn out and deliberate, his hips rocking into mine in a rhythm I could fall asleep to if it weren't unraveling me.
"That's it," he murmurs at my ear. "There you go. Good boy. Take it. Take all of me."
I take it.
His mouth finds the bond mark on my throat and presses there—open, wet, his tongue dragging across the half-moon of his own teeth from weeks ago. The bond pulses bright at the contact and I clench around him hard enough that he groans against my throat.
"Fuck, sweetheart, do that again."
"Atlas—"
"Again. Clench around me like you did. Show me what that body does for me."
I do it. I do not know how to do anything else. He growls into the bite mark and his rhythm stutters once before he gets it back, and I can feel the restraint costing him now, can feel it in the bond.
"Other ones too," he murmurs. "Show me where my brothers marked you."
