I lift my hips, hoping that’s enough of a conversation.
Every part of my body feels like it’s on fire when he slips two more fingers into my underwear. Then, when his entire hand makes the move, I’m a goner. I release a trembling breath and grip the sheet at my sides, arching my back and my hips up and against his hand.
He brings his mouth to mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. He remains close to my lips, using the movement of my hips and the sounds of my moans to guide him toward the finish.
He’s extremely intuitive. It doesn’t take me long at all before I’m tensing around his hand, pulling his neck down so that I can kiss him through the end of it.
When it’s over, he slides his hand out of my panties but then cups me there, leaving his hand over me while I recover. My chest is heaving as I try to catch my breath.
Atlas is breathing heavily, too, but I need a minute to recover before I can do anything about it.
“Lily.” Atlas kisses me gently on the cheek. “I think you…” He pauses, so I open my eyes and look at him. He shifts his eyes to my breasts, and then back at my face.
Then he pulls at his white shirt and looks down at it and I see there’s some kind of stain on it.
Oh, shit.
I look down at my bra and it’s soaking wet.Oh my God.Breast milk. Everywhere. I am such an idiot.
Atlas doesn’t seem at all fazed by it. He rolls off the bed and says, “I’ll give you some privacy.”
I’m a little mortified that my bra is covered in breast milk, so I grab the sheet and cover my chest with it before meeting Atlas at the foot of my bed. It kind of killed the mood. “Are you leaving?”
“Of course not.” He kisses me and then leaves the room as if it’s completely normal for a man to make out with a woman who is breastfeeding a baby that isn’t even his. It has to be at least a little awkward for him, but he covers it well.
I spend the next several minutes in the bathroom pumping, and then I take a quick ten-second shower. I throw on an oversized T-shirt and some pajama shorts before heading back into my living room.
Atlas is sitting on my couch, waiting patiently with his phone in his hand. When he hears me enter the living room, he glances up at me and looks me up and down. I’m still a little embarrassed, so when I sit next to him, I don’t sitrightnext to him. I sit, like, two feet from him, and then I mutter, “Sorry about that.”
“Lily.” He can sense my embarrassment, so he reaches for me. “Come here.” He settles against the couch and pulls my leg over his so that I’m straddling him. He slides his hands up my thighs, to my waist, and lets his head fall lazily against the couch. “Everything about tonight was perfect. Don’t you dare apologize.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re being nice. I got breast milk on you.”
Atlas slides a hand around the back of my neck and pulls me to him. “Yeah, while we were making out. Trust me, I don’t mind one bit.” He kisses me after that, which might be a mistake becausehere we go again.
It’s going to be impossible for him to leave at this rate. I probably should have put on another bra, but I honestly thought I was going to the living room to tell him goodbye. I didn’t know we were going to pick up where we left off on the couch, but I don’t mind it at all.
We’re situated so perfectly, we don’t even have to adjust to get the most out of this position. He groans during our kiss, and that just urges me on even more.
One of Atlas’s hands slides up the back of my shirt, and I can feel him hesitate when his hand never meets a bra. He pauses our kiss and looks me in the eye. I’m still moving against him, and the way he’s looking at me is piercing my core. He starts to move his hand from my back around to my breast. When he cups it in his hand, that seems to flip a switch in him. In both of us.
Our kiss turns feverish as I start to unbutton his shirt. Nothing else is said. We just frantically remove every piece of clothing left between us, and we don’t even bother moving to the bedroom. We barely pause the kissing when he reaches for his wallet and pulls out a condom and puts it on.
And then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, Atlas kisses me while he pushes into me, and I feel every bit as loved as I did the first time this happened between us. There are so many feelings that come out in this moment, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced anything so chaotically beautiful when we’re finally connected.
He sighs against my neck, like the same feelings are running through him. He starts to move in and out, slowly, kissing me gently the whole time. But several minutes later, the kisses are frantic and we’re both sweaty, and I am so completely and wholly in the moment, nothing else matters to me other than the fact that we’re together again, and it’s right. Everything about this is so right.
I’m exactly where I belong, being loved by Atlas Corrigan.
Chapter Twenty-ThreeAtlas
I should definitely go home, but it is so hard to crawl out of this bed after the last couple of hours with her. Once the couch happened, then the shower happened. Now we’re both too tired to do anything other than talk.
She’s lying on her back, her arms folded beneath her head. She’s staring at me, listening intently as I tell her about my meeting with a lawyer yesterday. “He says I did the right thing by taking him to the hospital. They were legally obligated to notify Child Protective Services. I’m not sure how I feel about that, though. It puts the power in the hands of the state, and what if they don’t think I’m the best place for him?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I work a lot. I’m not married, so Josh will be alone some of the time. And I have no experience raising kids. They might think Tim is a better fit since he’s the biological father. They could even give him back to my mother; I’m not even sure what she did is enough to have him removed from her custody.”