Page 35 of Possessive Ink

Taking them from me too, he places his hand on the base of my spine and guides me toward the door, reaching around me to open it before ushering me back into the living room. Just like always, I hold my breath as I step across the threshold, hoping that Avery has retreated to her room or gone out, but instead, she’s waiting in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed across her chest.

“He needs to leave,” she says, like she’s been waiting for us this whole time.

“Lemon is going to be staying with me for a few days,” Atticus tells her calmly, ignoring Avery’s agitation.

“He can’t come back here,” Avery wails, ignoring him and speaking to me instead.

“Avery—” I start, but she speaks over me before I have the chance to say anything more.

“No, no, no. This is my home. I refuse to have drug dealers in my home. He can’t come back. You can’t bring him back. Get out. You need to get out,” she rants, her face getting redder with each word she spits.

“He’s not a drug dealer,” I hiss. “And I live here too. You can’t refuse to let me bring people to my own home.”

“I’ll change the locks. I’ll call the police. He’ll be arrested and so will you,” she says, indignation pouring from her in frantic waves.

“Let’s go, Princess,” Atticus says softly, using his hand on my back to turn me away from my crazy roommate and toward the front door.

I try to decide how to apologize as we leave my apartment, but honestly, what do you say to someone after your insane roommate accuses them of being a drug dealer and a criminal?

“I’m so sorry,” I start. “She’s⁠—”

“Don’t apologize for her,” Atticus says, cutting me off. “I don’t care what she thinks of me, but I don’t like that she’s managed to make you an unwanted guest in your own home.”

“I don’t…she hasn’t.”

“Do you ever use the living space, or do you spend all of your time in your room when you’re there?” he asks as we wait for the elevator to arrive.

Sighing, I shrug. “I mainly stay in my room. Avery has very strong opinions about mess and clutter and…things.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry, Princess. Has she been like this the whole time, or is this some kind of escalating mental health crisis?” he asks seriously.

“She’s definitely gotten worse, but the day we moved in she created a seven-page list of rules for me before I’d even unpacked my stuff. By the time I realized how incompatible we are, we’d already committed ourselves to a two-year lease.”

“Did you try explaining the situation to your landlord? He might have allowed you to take your name off the lease and just let her stay there on her own.”

“For the first few months, I thought it was just teething problems and that she’d calm down.”

“But she never did?” he asks.

“No,” I admit. “But only sixty-six days and counting,” I say with a self-deprecating laugh.

Opening the car door for me, Atticus takes my purse and holds it while I climb into his car. Watching me fasten my seat belt, he hands my purse back to me and closes the door once he’s sure I’m securely fastened inside.

He should look silly wheeling a pink suitcase and carrying an armful of dresses, but instead, he somehow looks even sexier as he strides to the trunk and places my stuff in it. My eyes land on the crotch of his sweatpants when he climbs into the driver’s seat, and I swear I see his dick jerk when he turns to smile at me.

“I’m new to town, so you’re going to have to tell me which dry cleaners you use,” he says with a knowing expression etched across his handsome face.

It only takes a couple of minutes for him to drive to the cleaners, and after he parks at the curb, he insists on taking the dresses in for me while I wait in the car. This time when he slides into the seat beside me, I’m sure I can see the outline of his cock through the material of his pants.

By the time he turns his car into the gated driveway of his house, I’m breathless and feeling a little feral. I’ve already had four orgasms today. I should be done. But I’m physically biting my tongue to stop myself from calling him Sir and asking him to worship me again.

Like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, Atticus turns to me as he kills the car’s engine. “Are you ready, Princess?”

Incapable of saying anything that doesn’t end with the word Sir, I nod, and he climbs from the car, opening my door and offering me his hand to help me out. After collecting my things from the trunk, he guides me into the warehouse where the sound of pulsating dance music hits me like I’ve walked headfirst into a wall.

Taking his cell from his pocket, Atticus opens an app and taps at the screen until the music stops so suddenly that I feel like I’ve gone deaf from the lack of sound.

“We’re back, bro,” he calls to Felix, who turns, flicks a lazy-handed wave at us, then turns back to his sketch pads. “Tori is coming for dinner. She’ll be here at six p.m. I’ll set the timer on the music to turn off at five forty-five p.m. so you have time to come and get ready to eat.”