Bear trots to my feet, wagging his tail, expecting the same man who left the house more than an hour ago, but I pay him zero attention. I leave the bottle on the kitchen counter and head upstairs to our bedroom.
I get inside, but I don’t turn on the lights. Enough moonlight is coming from outside for me to see her in our bed, sound asleep, that innocent face of hers luring me into forgetting anything and everything wrong, and crawling by her side.
Standing at the foot of our bed, I’m terrified to move, terrified to breathe, terrified to blink and lose her.
Chapter 39
Atlas
Iwas never a forgiving man, but right now I can be.For her.
I can forgive her for manipulating me.
I can forgive her for lying to me.
I can forgive her for hurting me.
I can forgive her, and Iwill.
She played me, tricked me into falling for her, but was it really a trick when everything I worship about her is real?
“Maeve,” I say her name out loud, but it doesn’t feel right. It’s foreign. Like it was never hers. For me, she is Summer. I will not call her by a different name when my mind has screamed the only one I knew a billion times already.
Taking the corner of the cover, I pull it away from her, revealing that perfect body of hers, naked like I always want it, there for me to take, to own. My hands find the mattress as I climb atop her, fingers gliding over silky skin, touching everything I’ve claimed, not sure if it’s all I tookor all that was given to me.
Leaning in, I trace her lips with my own, whispering over them.
“Are you still playing me, love?” The words choke me as I utter them, but once out loud, they stab my chest like I’m being cut open. “Look at what you are doing to me... Succubus.”
I draw back, standing on my heels, removing my shirt, and throwing it to the ground. My belt follows, the clinking of the buckle doing nothing to awaken my sleeping beauty. I unbutton my jeans until her favorite toy is out, though at this point I’m not sure if it’s my dick or me that’s her most beloved thing to play with.
Settling between her legs, I leave a trail of hungry kisses on the inside of her thighs, touching, inhaling her, like it’s the first, the last, and the only time I’ve ever done this, savoring everything about her I hold on a pedestal and worship every second she’s in my possession. My mouth seals on her pussy, letting her taste possess me, as my tongue enters her like I’m starving. The songlike, mellow sound she lets out is a melody I’d kill for. Pulling myself up, I find her lips, wanting to swallow those sounds and keep them for myself, while pushing my cock in, forcing her cunt to take all of me. But there’s nothing forced in the way she greets me inside, gripping tightly while her eyes snap open with a gasp. I kiss her as if I won’t be able to breathe if I don’t.
“You’re drunk,” she states against my lips.
I slam inside her hard, and her body arches beneath me on a moan to die for.
“Maybe I’m more fun like this.”
I halt, my thumb tracing those luscious, lying lips which can still, despite it all, command my soul.
“Atlas?” Her brows pinch. “What’s wrong?” Summer reads me all too well. Seems she always has.
I thrust to the hilt, harder than before, leaving her breathless. She left me suffocating with her betrayal, so it’s only proper to return the favor. And then the cadence of my movements shifts to match the rhythm of my madness.
“Stop!” Summer utters underneath me, hands on my cheeks, trying to make my eyes meet hers. “Atlas, stop!”
And like an obedient dog, I do, becauseher wishes will always be my command.
“What’s wrong? Talk to me!”
Her face changes, rearranges, to match the pain my own holds.
I pull myself out of her, lying atop, as my head finds her chest, heartbeat there telling me a story of how I got it all wrong. She’s no carnivorous flower. She’s poisonous. A unique kind of poison runs in my veins now—one that will kill me if I ever stop consuming it.
Her fingertips find their rightful place in my hair with a gentle caress, lessening the pain, luring me into forgetting anything but her exists.
But it does, doesn’t it?
