Page 73 of Habibi: Always and Forever

SWEET LIKE STARLIGHT

BLAIR NOVAK

N ights like tonight are why I'm glad we moved to the countryside.

Not just because of the quiet or the open space for our ever growing family—Atlas, Noah, and I live here full time while there's a room set up for Shiloh and Corvin and another for any kids they're fostering, plus a room off the kitchen for Ryder and Rue when Rue and Atlas are up all night working on recipes for the bakery.

That's up there on my list of favorite things, but this right here: lying on a comforter spread out on the grass with Atlas' arms wrapped around me and my head tucked to his chest while the stars shine overhead? That takes the cake.

The house is empty tonight aside from Noah sleeping off his latest Little adventure, so for the first time in a while, we've got each other to ourselves.

Atlas’ fingers card through my hair absentmindedly, voice a deep rumble of words that are nothing but speed bumps on a highway in my ear. I don’t mean to tune him out, but my body feels like lead and my eyes like sandpaper even in the low light of the nighttime sky.

The arm drawing soothing circles on my side tugs me closer, and I tilt my face up to meet the soft kiss Atlas brushes over my lips.

“Am I boring you, Bumble B?” There’s a smile pressed to my mouth, and I answer back with a quiet hum that earns me a tight embrace. “If you’re tired, we can go to bed, baby.”

I shake my head because while I might be tired—excruciatingly so—I want this time with him. I want to hold one another, kiss, touch, just feel him like this.

“What I want,” I whisper, sliding my lips down his neck and sucking on that sensitive spot that makes him grumble and tighten his fingers on my waist. “Is for you to touch me.”

Atlas chuckles, hands gliding up my bare back as mine ghost along his chest and abs. He’s softened up quite a bit over the years—not as much time at the gym and lots more sweets in his diet—but he’s still fit, even if his muscles are a little more cushioned.

“I’ll never turn that down.” He flattens a large hand on my abdomen and pushes me to my back, rolling half on top of me to cover my mouth in another slow, sensual kiss.

His fingers map out a constellation of goosebumps along my skin, nails scratching lightly down my side, making my back arch. “Do you need me?”

If my body has any say, then yes , I need him like air, like water, like a budding flower needs pollen. We’ve both been so preoccupied with life—Atlas with the bakery, with his brothers, me with the tattoo shop, with Shiloh and the kids—that I can’t remember the last time we slept together.

Normally, casual touching is more than enough to keep me going, but there’s a deep, aching need starting up in my core, and with every gentle pass of Atlas’ tongue against my own, it grows stronger.

He doesn’t need me to give him an answer, because Atlas Huxley knows me so completely, so intimately that he’s already leaving my mouth to mark along my neck in the way that makes my toes curl and my dick twitch to life.

His lips trace the thorns decorating my collarbone, fingers pressing into the roses at my shoulders, practically holding me down when his tongue flattens over the petals on my chest. Atlas has made no secret of how my myriad of tattoos do it for him—he’d touch them all day if I’d let him.

I breathe his name as his mouth travels lower, as he breathes deeply into the dark red Dahlia on my stomach. He nips at my hipbone, hesitating at the band of my boxers, and even though my body is crying out for him, I take a shuddering breath and urge the need to simmer.

“You don’t have to.” It isn’t often that I ask Atlas for things like his mouth or his cock, only when the need is overwhelming, and while the desire might be there, I’m far from being at the brink tonight.

“Maybe I want to.” Atlas slides the band down a few inches, swiping his tongue over the newly exposed skin. “What do you say, baby? Green?”

My lips twitch into a smile. The traffic light system started mainly as a way to check in with Atlas on his sex aversion, especially when it collides with his desire to please, but we don’t use them much anymore.

“Always green for you, A.”

My boxers are pulled down my legs and sat god knows where because my eyes are closed, enjoying the sensation of Atlas’ mouth moving down to the crease of my thigh.

His strong, steady fingers push my knees aside, and then they travel inward to the spots on my inner thighs—ones always hidden just out of sight—that bear his permanent fingerprints.

Bruises he’d made that I’d photographed and stenciled and turned into a little collection of tattoos along with an assortment of hickeys and bite marks.

They aren’t all on my thighs—some on my chest, neck, and back—but those are my favorite because only one person in the whole world gets to witness them.

Atlas’ warm hand cradles the underside of my balls, and a hot burst of arousal goes off in my gut. My hands twitch for him, but I want him to explore at his own pace, so I keep them clenched in the blanket beneath us.

“I love you, Blair,” he says in the softest voice, stubbled cheek resting on my thigh. “I love seeing you, every day, thriving in our life together.”

Those lips touch the base of my dick, sending shivers along my spine.

“The way you sit at the kitchen counter sketching while I bake in the middle of the night. How you light up whenever Shiloh and the kids come busting through the door. When Noah comes downstairs for movie marathon cuddles.”

I chuckle, but it’s cut off by Atlas’ tongue sliding over my semi-hard length torturously slow. How this man can melt my heart and light a fire in my belly at the same is beyond me.

“Your happiness is what makes our home come alive. It’s everything to me, Bumble B. You’re my everything.”

He plays with the barbell at the head of my dick, enough to make me harden and throb for the promise of his touch. Then, the heat of his mouth is wrapped around me, and I’m not convinced the sound that leaves my throat is human.

I love you, I think as he swallows around me, as drool collects at the base of my cock that he spreads over his fingers and down my crack to my hole.

Atlas might not fuck me often but fingering he has down to an art. A masterfully pleasurable art. His finger slips in easily, and he focuses his tongue on my slit until the burning recedes.

First one, then two, and then he pops off my dick with a gasp and crashes his lips into mine. He doesn’t push for three, not without lube, because I haven’t been stretched for this in so long, and his mouth isn’t going to cut it.

“Roll over,” he whispers against my mouth, and I whimper my disapproval.

“I like it face to face.” I sling an arm around his shoulder, and he kisses the pout on my lips.

“I know, baby. Trust me.”

Aren’t those the magic words? I sigh out any inkling of fight I might have left and let him pull away.

The blanket is warm as I settle on my front, arms folded to lay my cheek on.

Atlas doesn’t waste a second, lips and teeth leaving little nibbles and future bruises along the tree taking up space on my back.

When he comes across his tattoo—the one with stars and lights and swirls at the base of the tree with his name written in Hangul—I feel him take a shuddered breath on my skin.

“I will never stop being madly in love with you.” His fingers and lips trace every inch of the tattoo sitting just above my ass, and when he’s done, his tongue slips through my ass crack with a moan that vibrates along my skin.

“Atlas.” The first pass of his tongue over my hole has my mind going blank and my eyes squeezing shut. I can count on one hand the amount of times in the last seven years that we’ve even attempted rimming, and I know it’s not one of Atlas’ favorites. “Baby, you don’t?—”

Atlas’ hand smacks down on my ass hard enough that I jump, shoving up onto my elbows to crane my neck back at him. He’s got his chin resting on the swell of my ass with his eyebrow cocked—goddamn does he look hot staring at me like that.

“If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t. Now lay down, shut up, and let me worship you, B.”

Is that what we’re calling this? Worship? Who knew something so holy could feel so filthy?

It feels like I’m at the edge of my sanity with Atlas’ tongue in my ass, his strong arms holding my legs open, fingers bruising my ass cheeks in just the way that settles my ever present bundle of nerves.

I’m half tempted to beg him to fuck me, because the foreplay is driving me wild, and I haven’t been this desperate for him in years.

“Blair-Bear?” The litany of moans filling the backyard catch in my throat as I look up and see Noah with his sandy brown hair and crust-laded eyes standing at the entrance to the back door in his Winnie the Pooh pajamas only half buttoned.

“Hey, baby bear.” My voice cracks because I know Atlas heard Noah, but he’s still tongue-fucking me like he didn’t. “Yellow, A.”

He pulls away to place a series of kisses along my back, but he doesn’t stop touching me all over, making it really hard for me to concentrate.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral as if my best friend isn’t watching my boyfriend work me up to make love to me.

“Atlas invited me.”

I furrow my brow and glance between the two of them.

That’s definitely odd. I’m not sure why Atlas would instigate sex if he knew Noah was coming down.

Sure, over the years Noah has sought out tiny fractions of sexual interaction—more often than not watching and being a part of other people’s play where he’s not directly sexually involved—but considering he just got back from a weekend with his Daddy and some other Littles, I don’t suspect he’s up for anything like that.

“Atlas?”

His lips have made their way up to my neck, and I don’t have enough self control to stop my eyes from fluttering closed as he sucks a mark near my collarbone.