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Atta watched his face. This man she hadn’t quite realised she’d fallen so hard for. “One time?”

“One time.”

“Am I a ‘one time’?”

He looked wounded, his face dropping. “Atta. . .”

“I’m sorry.” She waved a hand. “This is juvenile. I’m just tired.”

Sonder took her wine glass and set it down on the table, kneeling in front of her for the second time that night. “Should I tell you then that I can’t stop thinking about you? That I haven’t thought of another woman since the first moment I saw you outside Achilles House with a corpse you’d cut open yourself?” He took her chin in his fingers. “Or how I haveneverthought of a woman the way I think of you?” He kissed her gently on the lips. “How I thought I was destined to be alone, but it turns out I wasstarvingall these years, waiting for you?”

Atta swallowed.

“Or”—he brushed her hair away from her neck and kissed her collarbone—“how many nights I’ve thought of you while alone in my room?”

Breathing was becoming quite difficult.

“Are you still jealous,a stór?”

“Only of the walls of your room,” she breathed out.

He laughed against the hollow of her throat, his stubble tickling, and her toes curled. “Would you like to see the walls of my room, then?”

The moment the door closed behind them, Sonder had her pressed against a wall, his mouth on hers, his hands roving over her body. Atta pushed at his chest, refusing to break their kiss as he walked her backwards toward the bed. They fell on it in a heap of limbs and he chuckled, that deep laugh that had been under her skin for months. Every place he touched was set aflame as they sloppily undressed one another.

He laid her out, slowing down, savouring her until she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, his lips exploring, their skin colliding.

Sonder moved atop her and whispered in her ear, “Are you certain?”

“Please,” she confirmed breathily.

He needed no coaxing. He slid inside of her and sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Fuck, Atta.”

She gasped, arching her back and driving her fingers through his hair, watching the way his brows knit, looking at her as if he might consume her.

After a moment, she stopped him, pushed him down, and climbed on top. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her forward and pushing her back. His control snapped, she saw it in his eyes the second before it happened, and he rolled her. Nimbly, he stroked her, kissed her breasts, whispered how beautiful she was.

“Sonder, please,” she begged and he shuddered.

“Anything for you, darling.”

He moved inside her again, and she arched her back, moaning, and he let out that low, rumbling laugh, her whole body vibrating with it. But then he began a rhythm that felt so familiar it was as if they’d done this countless times. Loved each other countless times in countless other lives, other realities.

Sonder wrapped his arm around the small of her back and pulled her up to sitting, never severing their connection. He held her to his chest, her hair draped over his shoulder, his breath hot on her neck, rising and falling on his knees, driving into her.

“Atta,” he breathed when she was close, tightening around him. “Look at me.”

She pulled her head from his chest as he held her up, gripping her waist. She looked into his hazel eyes and came. Her head fell back, her body on a whole other plane of pleasure, and she felt Sonder come within her as he kissed her breasts.

The second time was sweeter, slower, lingering. A savouring and an acquainting.

They collapsed together on his bed, and he held her tucked against his chest as if he never wanted to let her go.

Sonder

It felt like he’d barely closed his eyes when he awoke to the sun beginning to rise, as he always did.

Atta was curled against him, her arm wrapped around his middle. He kissed the top of her head, relishing the floral and rain scent of her. She let out a little sigh in her sleep, and he regretfully detangled himself, slipping into a pair of lounge pants to venture down to the kitchen for a glass of water.