Fragmented bond
Chapter 15

I barely paid attention to the layout or decor of the house as he carried me up the stairs. All my focus was on him. I couldn’t help myself and pressed kisses to his neck and I swore he picked up his pace.

In between the kisses, I asked one of the burning questions plaguing my mind. “You were there that night?”

“I was,” he admitted as he set me on my feet. Fire surged through my veins and settled in my core, my entire body aching for him to touch me. His fingers lightly trailed up my neck and brushed my hair out of the way so he could lick and kiss my neck.

“Why didn’t you approach me if you’d been watching me all night?” My voice hitched when he found a spot on my neck that had me moaning and tilting my head to the side to give him better access.

His lips trailed over my neck inciting shivers of anticipation. “I watched you turn down countless men and wasn’t about to add myself to that list. Not when I could tell you didn’t want that kind of attention and wanted to focus on your friends.”

It was a struggle to focus on his words as he continued teasing me. “Is that…Is that why you didn’t show up to dinner?” When I first met his family, Agnes mentioned that Lukas’ older brother had been invited. Before we started eating Felix announced that something had come up. That was when Lukas had made several barbed insults about him, and after that, we never spoke of him again.

Atlas’ hands trailed up my sides in a light touch that had my body tingling with desire. “I showed up to that dinner because I couldn’t believe my selfish brother was planning on settling down. More so, I couldn’t believe there was someone out there unlucky enough to be paired with him. I wanted to meet the poor girl, see if she was as awful as him.” His fingers lightly trailed over the side of my breast.

“I was surprised and horrified to replace out you were the girl, and I knew I couldn’t stand to watch someone as vibrant as you, be with someone as unworthy as him. I didn’t know about the cheating—he would’ve already been dead, or at the very least, he would’ve had to regrow some body parts, but I knew he wouldn’t give up his childish ways. I told my father this, and he agreed it was best if I stayed away. Only a fool would try to interfere with a fated mate pairing.” I could feel his smile against my neck as he paused.

“So I stayed away until my father contacted me one day, and told me how that piece of shit rejected you and had been cheating on you. Lukas had the nerve to brag to him, Agnes, and Mira about how you had found him cheating and how he broke you.” His words abruptly cut off as he swallowed hard and anger came off him in waves.

He dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes squeezed shut and his fingers flexing on my hips. “I didn’t think, I immediately went to replace you and was barely able to get to you in time to see you fall into the river.”

“So it hadn’t been an accident you found me,” I murmured, twisting a curl of his hair around my finger.

While it was nice to finally have his perspective, talking was the last thing on my mind with the pulsing throb between my legs. Before he could say another word, I untied the strings at the sides of my clothes that held them together, and they slid from my body onto the floor.

His gaze heated as it trailed over my body, and I swore I could feel it like a physical caress. He grabbed my hips, pulling me against him so I felt his hard cock pressing against my stomach and had desire pooling between my thighs. His lips met mine in another passionate kiss as he backed me up to the bed.

After picking me up and placing me on the bed so my head rested on the pillows, he joined me on the bed, hovering over me.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” I complained, tugging at his shirt.

He chuckled, the sound was rich and had the coiling tension in my core growing tighter. Grabbing the back of his shirt, he pulled it over his head and tossed it off to the side, revealing the muscles I’d felt but never had the chance to see. “Better?”

“Not even close,” I muttered, grabbing at his pants, wanting to feel his naked body against mine.

“Patience, I want to taste you first,” he murmured, kissing and sucking on my neck again before I could complain.

It was a good thing it was cool inside because his words and their insinuation had lava pounding through my veins. I writhed against him as he found all the spots on my neck to drive me crazy as he made his way toward my chest. It was like he was trying to memorize or map out my body.

As I clawed at his back, my movements halted as the fire burning in my body somewhat died down. I tried sitting up to get a closer look at what I felt. Along his muscular back, I felt an imperfection, a scar. With how fast our kind healed, and how we had skilled healers and magic on our side, most of our injuries rarely left a scar. It took a lot of work to prevent a wound from healing properly for a scar to appear. Usually, they were only the result of some heavy torturing.

I was horrified to discover more on his back.

Atlas prevented me from sitting up, making soothing sounds to ease my panic. “It’s alright, they’re from long ago.”

“Who did this?” I asked, my rage and horror choking off my voice so it was barely above a whisper.

Atlas let out a long sigh before continuing to kiss down my chest. “My mother’s father—a miserable blood mage that was thankfully absent when mom was growing up. He abducted me when I was twelve,” Atlas said between slow kisses, so casually as if he didn’t just tell me his grandfather tortured him.

“Why would he do that?” I choked out, both due to rage, and how he finally made it to my breast.

“Because I had blood mage in me and was “worthy of his time and energy”—his words. It took my mother, grandmother, and father over a year to replace me.” There wasn’t an ounce of tension coming from him as he shared this horrible story, all the while he trailed his fingers up my body.

I arched up into his touch as he swirled his tongue around my nipple and cupped my other breast. I opened my mouth to ask more questions—which I was struggling to form with how he rolled my nipple between his fingers—but he spoke before I could. “I’ll tell you all you want to know, but later. I’ve been waiting for you for five years, and I’m done waiting.” To punctuate his point, he pinched my nipple, just hard enough to wring a gasp from me.

He paid special attention to my breasts, focusing on them for far longer than I was used to. His attention had me quickly building toward a release, and that was a surprise since I’d never come from just having my breasts touched. It could’ve been because it had been years, but I suspected that was only part of it.

When he lightly nipped at my breast, the sudden shock of pleasure melded with the slightest bite of pain was enough to push me over the edge and send me reeling into a toe-curling orgasm. My fingers wound through his hair as I unraveled, holding his head in place as I threw my head back.

Atlas didn’t let up, trailing kisses, licks, and bites down my stomach and across my hip bones. Even though I just came, I was already wound tight by the time he made it to my clit. His tongue flicked over the sensitive nub, and my hips jerked as my grip on his hair tightened. My breathing was uneven as he repeated his actions, creating a quick pace that had me lifting my hips, only for him to hold them down. At some point, I wrapped a leg around his upper back to keep him there without realizing it.

I was incapable of coherent thought as he quickly built me toward another crescendo. Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more of the build-up, I fell over the edge into an all-consuming release that had euphoric tingles racing through my body. Not once did he stop working his tongue against me, all he did was change his pattern, adding in long licks starting at my pussy up to my clit.

“Atlas.” My words were cut off by a moan as he slid a finger inside my pussy.

He added in a second finger and I tried lifting my hips again to gain leverage. His mouth and fingers worked in tandem, building me up to yet another orgasm. My legs were still shaking from the first two and how he kept winding me up, pushing me toward the edge.

He didn’t stop or slow down until I was screaming his name once more as I clawed at his sheets.

My muscles felt like liquid and I doubted I’d be able to stand for a long time afterwards. Why had I wasted so much time and energy on his brother? Lukas never made me feel half of these sensations.

Atlas must’ve finally had his fill of tasting me since he now hovered over me, his lips brushing mine, allowing me to taste my own arousal. He took control of my mouth as he’d done with the rest of my body. His cock brushed my entrance and I groaned at the lack of barrier between us. I wrapped a leg around his hip, urging him to ease the throbbing ache. It wasn’t a want at this point, it was a need that had to be fulfilled or I’d lose my mind.

At long last, he finally eased inside of me, taking care to keep his movements slow. A stinging ache followed as my pussy stretched to accommodate his size. Once he was fully seated inside me, he halted all movement, allowing me to adjust and for the burn to subside.

His movements were slow, almost teasing as he made shallow thrusts. The entire time, he held my gaze, giving me the intimacy I hadn’t realized had been lacking with all my past partners. Every once in a while, he would press a kiss to my lips and neck as he picked up his pace.

The combination of the filling sensation and the friction had me coming way faster than I usually would, but I was far from complaining. It was almost like it was Atlas’ personal mission to see how many times he could get me to come in one session.

He switched it up between fast and shallow thrusts, to slow and hard thrusts. Every once in a while he’d switch pace and angles as if he was testing to see which I preferred. All of his focus was solely on my pleasure and the thought of that almost had me choking up.

As I came again, the orgasm so intense I swore I saw stars, he dropped his forehead against mine as he spilled his release inside me. We lay in silence, just staring at each other for many moments, taking in the moment of intimacy.

When he eventually untangled himself from me, he rolled onto his back and pulled me close so my head was on his chest.

We had lay like this many times in the cabin, but it was nowhere close to being the same as I listened to his pounding heart and fast breaths. My hand shook as I placed it on the hard muscles of his sweat-soaked stomach and my eyelids became heavy.

The last thing I wanted to do was sleep, not wanting to leave this perfect moment, but my body wasn’t in the mood to listen. All the blinding pleasure had wrecked my body in the best of ways and left me completely drained.

Atlas stroked my back, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Rest Thea, I’ll be here when you wake up,” he promised, and I knew they weren’t pretty words. He would always be there for me when I needed him.