Page 53

Every muscle in my body locked tight as ice flooded my veins, and the words came tumbling out before I could stop them, clumsy and panicked.

“Atlas, I… I was going to tell you, I swear, it’s not… it wasn’t…I just got hurt and I…” I fumbled for the right words more than I ever had in my life.

“Shhh.”

The sound was soft, soothing, and his hand never stopped its slow, tender stroke across the mark Riley had left burned into me.

“It’s alright, little bird,” he said quietly. “Aster told me what happened.”

I twisted to look at him then, searching his face. He lay propped on one elbow beside me, dark hair falling loose across his brow, watching me with an expression so calm it didn’t make any sense at all. Not after everything. Not given what he now knew.

“Then why aren’t you…” I frowned. “… murderous?”

Something flickered behind those dark eyes. A heat, there and gone in an instant.

“Oh, I am,” he said pleasantly, as though we were discussing the weather. “Make no mistake about that. There is a part of me that wants to tear a certain world apart with my bare hands.” Then the corner of his mouth tilted, and the warmth came flooding back. “But I have to say… finding you still naked in my bed does help.”

A startled laugh escaped me, surprising us both.

“You’re impossible,” I muttered, but some of the tension finally eased from my shoulders. His gaze softened as he looked at me, and when I spoke again, it came out small and quiet, the way the truth always did when it cost me something.

“He wasn’t himself, Atlas,” I said. “Riley. Whatever did that to me, it wasn’t him. Not really.”

Atlas said nothing, as if contemplating my words. Then he leaned down and pressed a slow kiss to the very center of the scar on my back.

I shivered.

“That,” he said against my skin, his voice low and dark, “does not give anyone the right to touch what is mine.” He lifted his head, and his eyes found mine, burning. “Let alone hurt you.”

My heart did something complicated and entirely unhelpful.

I opened my mouth, though I had no idea what I’d intended to say, and never got the chance to find out. Because in one fluid, infuriating motion, Atlas rose from the bed, seized me around the waist, and hauled me clean off the mattress and over his shoulder.

I squealed. There was no dignified way around it. I squealed like a kettle.

“Atlas!” I shrieked, my hair tumbling toward the floor as the world flipped upside down. “Put me down! What are you… this isn’t… You can’t just keep picking me up whenever you feel like it!”

His answer was a laugh and a sharp, ringing swat to my bare backside that made me yelp.

“I beg to differ, my little turnip”, he said, infuriatingly cheerful, and I laughed at his reference to our vegetable conversation last night.

“What are you even doing?!” I asked as he strode across the room.

He carried me through a doorway into a flood of warm light, then bent and set me down on my feet, steadying me with both hands when I swayed. Then he stepped back, looked me up and down slowly, and smirked.

“You’re so little,” he said, “and I’m hungry.”

I blinked up at him, thoroughly lost.

My brain, still half-asleep and entirely scrambled, snagged on the word hungry and went somewhere it absolutely shouldn’t have, given we were standing in what I now realized was an enormous, gleaming bathing room. Oh, and I was also naked, so there was that. Which was why heat crept up my neck. Atlas watched it happen, and his grin widened wickedly.

“I wanted to get your little legs to the bathroom quicker,” he explained, the picture of innocence, “so you can get yourself ready for breakfast.”

Then he leaned down, pressed a kiss to my forehead, and patted me on the top of the head.

Patted me. On the head. Like a pet.

A low growl rumbled out of me, which only made him chuckle. The smug, beautiful menace actually had the audacity to look delighted by it. Before I could decide which heavy object to throw at him, he took me by the shoulders, turned me firmly to face the room, and delivered one more swat to my naked behind.