The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“And you’re leaving me to do the convincing?” prompted Tristan drily, as Libby’s heart pounded in her chest. “I rather thought that was your expertise.”

Parisa glanced at Libby, laughing melodically.

“Oh, but she doesn’t trust me,” murmured Parisa, reaching out to toy with Lib

by’s hair again. “She’s curious about me, fine, but if I do it she’ll only get up and run.”

She let her hand fall, sliding her palm around the slats of Libby’s ribs.

“I’m not mocking you,” Parisa offered Libby softly. “I’d be happy to have a taste of you, Miss Rhodes,” she mused, and Libby shivered again. “But it’s not simply that. You’re useful, Libby. You’re powerful. You,” Parisa concluded with another fleeting kiss, “are someone worth knowing well, and fully, and—” She broke off, the tips of her fingers stroking up the inside of Libby’s thigh. “Perhaps deeply.”

Libby was startled by the sound from her lips, mouseish and yearning.

Parisa lifted a brow knowingly, turning to Tristan.

“Kiss her,” Parisa said again. “And do it well.”

“And if she doesn’t want me?” Tristan asked, glancing at Libby.

The moment their eyes met, Libby tried to conjure Ezra. She tried to think of something, anything, to remind her that she had left him at home, left him behind, but she could see only glimpses of her own frustration, her fury, her irritation. She tried, fruitlessly, to see him, and saw only Tristan instead.

Helplessly, Libby felt the pounding of her heart the way she had once felt Tristan’s touch, ricocheting through her chest like tribal drums. She had stopped time with him, once. This was the problem: that within these walls she wasn’t Ezra’s, wasn’t one of his trinkets or possessions or pets, but entirely herself. She had stopped time! She had recreated a mystery of the universe! Here she had done as she pleased and she had done it well, fully, deeply.

She was powerful on her own. She did not need his oversight. She did not want it.

“You’ll have to tell me what you want, Rhodes,” Tristan said, and if his voice was gravelly with something, it might have been the absinthe. Or it might have been the fact that he was looking at her like he had already undressed her, already kissed her, already peeled her underwear from her hips with his teeth. Like he was already glancing up at her from the foot of her bed, his broad shoulders securely locked between her thighs.

“Shall I tell him, or will you?” Parisa asked with a quiet laugh, giving Libby a knowing glance. She stroked Tristan’s cheek with the knuckle of one finger, teasing along the bone until she brushed his mouth, beside his lips.

Libby couldn’t decide what was more troubling; the thoughts she was having about Tristan, or the fact that Parisa could see them and still didn’t believe Libby was capable of taking what she wanted.

What did she want?

Libby glanced at Tristan and felt it again; that little sway, the pulse of time stopping. It had been so unlike her, so much more about feeling and instinct than anything she’d ever done before. Whether a result of her sister’s loss or her own psyche, Libby thought constantly, relentlessly, perpetually wavering between states of worry or apprehension or, in most cases, fear. Fear of ineptitude, fear of failure. Fear she’d do it wrong, do it badly; be the disappointing daughter who lived instead of the brilliant one who died. She was afraid, always, except when she was proving herself to Nico, or letting Tristan lead her blindly, forcing her to trust in something she couldn’t see.

She took hold of Tristan’s face with one hand and pulled him close, dragging his lips to hers, and he let out a sound in her mouth that was both surprise and relief.

She kissed him.

He kissed her back.

It was enough of a thrill to have Tristan’s tongue in her mouth, his arm wound tightly around her ribs, but then Libby reached out further, finding the silk of Parisa’s slip dress. Parisa’s hand slid over Libby’s hip and when Tristan pulled away, catching his breath, Parisa kissed Libby’s neck, the tip of her tongue tracing a line across Libby’s throat. Libby slid a hand gracelessly up Parisa’s thigh and Tristan groaned in Libby’s mouth; evidence Parisa’s other hand must have found an equally suitable location.

Was this actually happening? It appeared it was. Remnants of the absinthe burned in Libby’s chest, sending her thoughts scattering. Tristan pulled her astride his lap and Parisa tugged at her sweater, casting it aside to join the near-empty bottle.

For a moment, half a lucid thought flashed through Libby’s mind before reverting to base sensations: hands, tongues, lips, teeth. Somehow Tristan’s chest was bare, and she dug her nails into the fibers of his muscle, his skin sparking where she touched it.

Things progressed hastily, drastically, euphorically. She tasted from them both like sips from the bottle, and they each had her like the last laugh. If she would regret this, that was for tomorrow to decide.

“Don’t let me wake up alone,” she whispered in Tristan’s ear, and it was quiet and fragile, crystalline, like glass breaking, the splinter of a hairline fracture that crept up from an unsteady base. Her vulnerability was misplaced among the multitude of sins, but she didn’t care. She wanted Parisa’s hair wrapped around her knuckles, she wanted Tristan to put her in positions she’d undeniably shiver to recount, but she wanted this, too. To be connected to someone undeniably, even temporarily, at least until the first garish rays of light came through.

Fleetingly, at the back of her mind, Libby knew things would always be different between them now, irreversibly so, and a saner piece of her wondered if that had been Parisa’s intention from the start. She’d practically spelled it out already, that sex was a means of asserting control—of creating strings, chains of obligation, where there had been none before—but whether Libby was being used or maneuvered or devoured, she didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care. It was enough to taste, to feel, to touch, instead of think. Enough to be that free of feeling.

Enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else.

CALLUM

Something had happened to Tristan.