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“What you’re saying is,” I start off slowly, waiting for his eyes to lift to mine, “you like the build-up. You like the sensuality of it.”
He nods, running a hand through his wet hair and pushing it away from his face. “I tend to drop after I have an orgasm.” He winces, bites his lip. “I don’t know a good word for it. It feels good while it’s happening, but then it stops and I feel… awful, gross. My mood dips, and I have to fight to drag myself out of it. The panic attack though, that’s a new one.”
“Has that happened every time?”
He scratches the back of his neck, averting his eyes. “Mostly. Not all the time when I solo it, but a lot. Every time I get off with someone else? Definitely.”
I can feel the awkward tension radiating off of him, the shame at something he has no reason to be ashamed about. But in a world where sex is practically everything, I understand better than most that not wanting what everyone else wants can make you feel like a failure.
I wind my arms around his neck, pulling him out of the direct line of spray, and he loops his around my waist.
“I let a lot of men touch me,” I say into the breath of space between us. “I don’t let a lot of them fuck me or get me off. I only hook up when the need is high, which isn’t often. But Atlas?”
His lips graze mine, but I pull away before he can apply any pressure.
“I haven’t stopped wanting you since that first thought experiment. I have wanted every touch you’ve offered and then some. I don’t know what this is or why it’s happening now, but I know I’m not ready for it to stop.”
Chapter 16
Atlas
Blair is wearing my sweatpants. Correction: Blair is wearing my sweatpants with nothing underneath. I watched him slip them on when we came to his room after our shower, and I couldn’t stop looking at the shape of his dick through the material until he grinned and flipped onto his stomach.
Which helps, but now I’m staring at his ass—which I’ve learned I really like touching and squeezing, because I keep absently doing it while talking and only stop when Blair moans into his arms and pushes his hips into the bed.
Since I obviously needed something to do with my hands, I made him lay there while I worked at the kinks in his shoulders, sure to be easy around all the superficial cuts. How the hell can he act like this is normal? Like being patched up is just a part of his every day?
It makes me angry. It makes me sad. It makes me want to cradle him in my arms and give the whole universe a big ole middle finger because Blair doesn’t deserve all the shit he goes through—and the world doesn’t deserve Blair Novak at all.
Now I’m lying beside him, following the lines of his tattoos with my fingertips. I like mapping trails from one spot to the next, finding new details on every pass, and the sweet, content sounds that fall from Blair’s lips are enough to keep me going over them again and again.
The pillowcase rustles as he turns his head to look at me, a soft smile on his face that I lean forward to kiss.
“You don’t have to stay,” he says, but the look in his eyes says he yearns for the opposite. “I’m okay.”
“Tough shit.” I cup his face in my hand and bring his mouth to mine again. He lets out a relieved breath as soon as our lips touch. “Maybe I could stay the night? You could… maybe practice touching me?”
“What about Shiloh? What will you tell him?”
One thing that we’ve both pushed aside these last few weeks, even though I know we both think about it every time we’re together, is worry over what Shiloh would think. Neither of us wants to hurt him, but we also don’t have the will-power to give this up.
“I’ll come up with something.”
He smiles at me like he’s so goddamn happy that I’m here, and for a moment I wish I could always be. Lying here in bed with Blair, trading kisses and innocent touches until they become not so innocent?
I’ve never wanted that before.
“You could say you’re staying the night with your brother.”
Blair’s voice jostles me out of my thoughts, and I frown at the suggestion. He chuckles and scoots up to prop himself up on his elbow. “You don’t get to see your family enough. It’s always me or Shiloh monopolizing all of your time.”
“I like you monopolizing me,” I say, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing my lips to his neck. “Both of you.” I wrinkle my nose and laugh into his skin, loving the way I can feel his own laughter in his chest. “That sounded wrong.”
Blair’s lips brush my ear, the arm not holding him up hooking around my neck. “I love you, Atlas.”
We both freeze. Not because Blair telling me he loves me is strange—because while he’s always been less verbally affectionate with Shiloh and me, the three of us trading ‘love you’s’ around isn’t unusual—but it’s the first time it’s slipped out since whatever this thing we have going on has started.
He huffs a quiet laugh into my ear, but he doesn’t apologize or take it back or over-explain himself. He knows I understand. He knows I won’t take it the wrong way.
