Page 119 of Atone

And as he picks up pace, he becomes that for me.

I lock my ankles around his hips and move in time with him. Splitting us apart. Melting us together.

Our tongues dance, and I taste every groan. Every good feeling I give him when he stopped believing he could.

My hands trace down his sides. One is smooth, and the other rippled. Torn halves of the man I’m in love with.

He angles his hips and strikes a new place, where there’s no amount of resistance that could stop my climax from ripping through my body. But I want him to follow me, so I reach under my ass and grab him by the balls, forcing him to follow suit.

“Fuck.” Alex grunts, burying his face in my neck as I squeeze him.

His hips piston, and I swear he meets my heart with every pulse. Hot cum spills into me. All sweetness is gone as his thrusts are endless and harsh. We can’t be contained. I wouldn’t want to.

“You feel so good.” He kisses the side of my neck as his body shakes and the remnants of his release leak out between us. “Better than anything I would have believed existed before I met you.”

I trace my finger over his hard pec, around the heart I carved in his skin. “So do you.”

My hand pauses on the marks he wears for Sigma House. For the mark he wears for me. Which will he embrace in the end? The pain or the pleasure? His heart or his bloodline?

The House or me?

38

NEVER A WHIM

ALEX

Mila slipsa dress over her curves, and it takes every ounce of my control to stay seated on the bed instead of walking over and slicing it off her body.

I’m possessed.

Lovedoesn’t have enough letters. Enough bite. Enough sickness between the lines to describe what this girl does to me.

When I pulled her from the fire years ago, I didn’t think much about what I was doing past the fact that I couldn’t let this girl die. I was too messed up to see past the demons raging in my head to process why I helped her.

It wasn’t until I saw Mila years later, walking into Montgomery to meet up with my sister, that I started to understand how she changed me when she tried to run into that fire to save her friend.

Before Mila, there was only pain and the various ends of things.

There was only darkness.

But Mila isfight. She’s life breathing wildly around me.

She’s survival.

Her green gaze finds me through the mirror, and it lances my chest. If she only knew murder is the least of what I’d do for her. I’d go to the ends of the earth. The edge of my sanity. The brink of death.

I’d cross every line.

If she knew the full extent, she might not have let me carve into her last night, but there’s no escaping me now. This is beyond commitment—it’s devotion. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

Especially when she watches me through the mirror with that look that hints I’m not the only protective one of the two of us. It flared on her tongue when I tried to explain my father’s tactics last night. She cares about my well-being, as if I’m not already past the point of salvation.

No flesh unmarred.

No corner of my soul intact.

She fights for me anyway, without ulterior motives.

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