Up until this point, I thought I had been dreaming. A soft light trickled through the curtains, billowing gently in a breeze that came from the ocean. It took me a moment to get my bearings in the haze of the early morning, but the soft fabric of his t-shirt against my cheek and the way his arm draped across my shoulders was enough.

At this point, I could say I wasn't a stranger to finding myself tangled up with a Welsh race car driver...literally and figuratively. Wine and exhaustion overtook us both last night after our little dance party, leading us to the couch where we must have fallen asleep in each other's arms.

My phone buzzed in my shorts pocket, and it kept me tethered to reality - a reality that reminded me that whoever I was laying with, wherever I was...it was real. It was only Gemma, and I knew she'd understand my radio silence, so I set my phone down on the coffee table, glancing at our wine glasses still sticky with red, blood-like splotches. The Netflix screen flickered on the TV, illuminating us in a pale glow.

Atlas finally stirred under me with a groan. "What time is it?"

"Almost 7." Without thinking I reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of his face, then moved my hand down to his cheek and traced the lines of where he slept against the couch cushion. Still half asleep, a soft smile pulled at his lips as he leaned his head into my hand.

After a moment, Atlas opened one eye and glanced over at the television. "That was such a horrible movie. I have a new found fear of flying over Brazil and crashing in the Amazon."

I chuckled. "Well, thanks for letting me pick anyway."

"I'm convinced you purposely picked a shit scary movie so I'd hold your hand."

Instinctively, I reached down and gave his hand a squeeze. "It worked, didn't it?"

I felt him shift himself underneath me, but when I went to sit up, he gently pulled me back down, and my body warmed under his touch. I almost thought he'd gone back to sleep, but I felt his lips against my temple.

"I know I said it before but...I'm glad you're here."

My heart was so full of him, I wasn't sure I could call it my own anymore.

"Me too." I mumbled into his shirt. I meant it.

Silence felt different this early in the morning. It wasn't heavy, or punctuated by all the empty spaces in what should have been noise or words. It was exactly what it should be, and so were we.

"I don't want this to be a random, once every few months thing."

There was enough bravado to his words to sit me straight up, but he just continued to eye me up and down, like I was see through and all my emotions were visible underneath a layer of glass.

"I don't think you do either," he continued.

"That last night in Miami feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?" I rubbed the side of my cheek with my hand.

"I know what we said that night." Atlas raked a hand through his hair. "And I know we both have a lot of other shit to deal with, but I'm not thinking about any of that right now. I just...I want you. Tell me you want me too."

I wasn't sure if it was the haziness in his eyes or the soft, sleepy lustfulness in his voice, but it was more than just a want. It was desire in an unorthodox form, sort of like standing on the edge of a cliff and having a desire to jump into the ocean depths below. So I took a deep breath, and I jumped.

"I do."

Our lips brushed, slow and calm at first, like the rising sun as it crept through the windows. This wasn't in a car, with lust choking the air in a confined space. This wasn't 1 AM, coated in liquor with clumsy roaming hands. This was seven in the morning, soft and hazy and delicate. This was his hair already a mess, my body warm, and my head wondering if I was still dreaming. But I wasn't. He was real, and his touch was something I couldn't dream of if I tried.

Atlas wiggled me out of my t-shirt and wrapped his arm around my waist to move me underneath him, so my back was pressed into the couch and his knees straddled my hips. I gripped chunks of his shirt in my fists and pulled it over his head as his hands roamed up my thighs. He moved his mouth down my neck and to my collarbone, latching onto places he knew would unravel me. Even though we hadn't touched each other like this in months, he traced familiar constellations in the freckles on my skin like he'd mapped it himself.

"Savannah..." my name left his mouth in a lustful sigh, leaving a trail of goosebumps where his breath danced across my skin.

He sat up and brushed his fingers over my lips, keeping his hand on the side of my face. As soft as his touch was, it still revved my body like an engine and put my nerves into overdrive. I exhaled, watching flecks of morning light dance in his eyes as he looked me up and down.

"God you're beautiful," he sighed out.

I gently wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him back down close to me. "So are you."

The familiar sound of a jingling collar snapped Atlas's gaze up, and when I craned my neck back to follow his line of sight, I saw Phantom sitting by the coffee table, head tilted and tongue out.

"I think we have an audience," I chuckled.

"C'mon mate, go back to bed," Atlas jerked his head towards the direction of his bedroom. "I mean it. This isn't a free show."

He said something else in French to the dog, who only then got up and meandered back to Atlas's room.

"Why aren't we going to the bedroom?" I asked coyly, running my hands up along his jawline to pull him back closer to me. The little pulses of his heartbeat were frantic under my fingers.

"Patience Savannah," Atlas crooned softly in my ear. "There's quite a few rooms in this apartment and I do plan on fucking you in all of them."

Heat flared up all over my body, and I grinned up at him. "Atlas Vaughn, that was uncharacteristically naughty."

"Well, kind of easy to be when there's a gorgeous half-naked girl underneath me."

I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hoisted myself into a sitting position before guiding Atlas down to put his back onto the couch. I straddled his waist with my thighs and leaned down close to him.

"What about that girl on top of you?" I grinned.

"Now who's being naughty?" His lips just barely brushed against my own when he spoke, and his hand roamed down to graze the inside of my thighs. "But I bet I can still outdo you there."

"Go ahead and try."

In a flash, Atlas had us flipped around again, with my back to the couch and his hands squeezing at my hips, fingers teasing the hem of my underwear. "Don't test me. I've been told I'm a sore loser."

We were both competitors by nature, but lust and desire took it to a level that pushed both of us to the edge. We kissed again, clawing at what was left of each other's clothes and tangling up in one another, the way stars tangled themselves up at the frayed edges of the galaxy, burning and bright and flickering on the brink of something infinite. Never in my life did I crave the feeling of someone's skin like I craved his.

He brought his lips back to my neck, planting kisses all the way down the front of my chest and my stomach, then paused as he let out another lustful sigh that danced across my hip bone. He let his fingers gently stroke inside me, and I was ready to just unravel from his touch alone. He glanced up at me with clouds in his eyes.

I reached down and grabbed a fistful of his hair. "Don't stop."

The moment his lips hit the inside of my thigh, my entire body electrified. He squeezed me tighter as he pulled me closer into him, his tongue teasing every spot and every nerve that would send me over that edge.

His touch became more fervent, his movements more urgent, and my body jittered with the prospect of climaxing.

"Oh fuck Atlas."

It took me a moment to realize those words came out of my mouth. I was out of my own body, worlds and galaxies away.

We were too wrapped up in each other to hear the door click open, but Phantom did. I just barely registered a big black shadow dash by us out of the corner of my eye, and it was obvious Atlas hadn't noticed at all. Until an unfamiliar voice said his name.

"Atlas? Are you up? I wanted to drop off your groceries before I left for Paris and-"

In a panic, Atlas ripped himself away from me and fell backwards off the couch with a thud, scrambling for his sweatpants discarded on the floor. "What the fuck, Mum!"

Mom? I mouthed to him.

Atlas put a finger to his lips and threw his shirt at me. I quickly shimmied it on and untangled my underwear from around my ankles before pulling them back up.

"Language, Atlas Deveraux," the woman scolded with a subtle French cadence.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep a cackle from escaping my lips, and it prompted a seething glare from Atlas.

Thankfully the back of the couch faced the kitchen, so she hadn't witnessed her son with his face buried between some strange girl's thighs. Atlas stood up with a weary sigh and walked around to the other side of the couch.

"Mum, it's 7 in the morning, you can't just show up to my apartment when you feel like it just because you have the door code."

There was a rustling of what sounded like a paper bag, followed by the jingling of Phantom's collar that I'd grown to know too well. "I went to the market when they opened this morning to make sure I had the best pick of the fruit. I even got you avocados."

Another sigh from Atlas. "Mum, I leave for Miami in four days, I can't have avocados in my fridge, they'll go rank."

"Who puts avocados in the refrigerator? Have I raised a neanderthal?"

Atlas's hand came down on the arm of the couch, and I tried to set my focus on the way his fingers gently tapped away at the plush material. Up until then, I'd never noticed the three faded little dots he had tattooed on the inside of his middle finger. "Okay look, I love you dearly and I appreciate you, but I'm 23 years old and I'm perfectly capable of ordering my own groceries and having them delivered like the proper busy millennial I am."

"Oh Atlas," I heard a scoff. "You cannot possibly think that having someone else pick your produce is acceptable." A pause. "What were you doing on the floor?"

I instinctively sunk lower into the couch cushions.

"I fell asleep on the couch and uh...I just dropped something."

After another few moments, I allowed myself to let out a relieved sigh in the silence, but then the sound of that same jingling collar grew louder and closer. I glanced to my left and saw Phantom sitting beside the couch, staring at me. I'd been betrayed.

"Is there someone else here?"

"W-What?" Atlas stuttered. "No. There's nobody."

I rolled my eyes at his pathetic attempt at a lie. There was no point in hiding any longer, so after sucking in one last breath, I braced myself for embarrassment and stood up from the couch.

"Hi," came out much meeker than I intended it to when I came face to face with the owner of that subtly accented voice. Dark chocolate brown hair framed her angular, freckled face, and the same icy blue eyes she'd clearly passed down to Atlas stared me down from across the room and over the kitchen island. She wasn't youthful, but she'd clearly aged well - like good wine.

"Shit," Atlas hissed under his breath.

I squirmed under her gaze and instinctively pulled Atlas's shirt down further on my thighs, although at this point, attempting to cover myself up more wouldn't have made a difference - it didn't take a genius to figure out what we'd been doing before she walked in.

"Mum, this is Savannah." Atlas gestured to me. "Savannah, this is my mum Sophia."

Before I could react, her eyes lit up, and it was like a switch had been flipped as she eagerly walked around the kitchen island and over to us by the couch, her designer heels clacking against the hardwood floor.

"Oh my goodness, I am so sorry for my manners," she said as she gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "Atlas never has lady friends here - if I'd known I wouldn't have interrupted your-"

Atlas let out a frustrated sigh. "Alright well it's done and over with now, innit? You're already here and you've already interrupted so..."

Sophia leaned over and squeezed Atlas's cheeks with her hand. "That English slang is unbecoming." She walked back into the kitchen to continue unpacking the canvas bag of produce on the counter, Phantom following eagerly behind her. "And neither is your attitude as of late, mon monde. You need to be nicer to Callahan, especially in your post-race interviews."

This time laughter audibly sputtered out of me, which prompted another frustrated groan from Atlas. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Perhaps I would be inclined to be nicer to Callahan if he didn't try to run me off the track at every opportunity. He cost me first place and 10 points at Silverstone."

"I was there Atlas," she droned on as she rummaged through a cabinet below the kitchen island. She reemerged with a large glass bowl and placed a few peaches in it. "It was ruled a racing incident, was it not?"

"See, that's the problem." Atlas wrung his hands together. "It's always either a racing incident, or my fault. Never Callahan's, because god forbid if Callahan Jane does something wrong and he gets slapped with a five second stop-go penalty, the entire racing world might collapse."

"Now you're just being dramatic," Sophia said with another dismissive flick of her hand. It was hard to miss the diamond Cartier bracelets on her wrist that matched the ones Atlas always wore. She came back around to us and leaned forward on her toes to plant a gentle kiss to Atlas's cheek. "I'll see you in a few weeks, okay? Je t'aime."

She then turned her attention to me. "It was really very lovely to meet you. And you have beautiful skin."

"Oh," I perked up and gave her a soft smile. "Thank you, you too. I mean, it was lovely to meet you...I-I mean you also have nice skin, but...I mean..." I huffed out a sigh, which prompted delicate laughter from her. "It was really nice to meet you too."

Atlas walked her to the door, and with one foot in the doorway she turned back to him. "You behave," she said to him, then called over to me, "If he's being naughty just give him a smack."

I couldn't contain my laughter again, and even more so seeing Atlas roll his eyes to deflect from the scarlet building in his cheeks.

"I'm an angel, okay?" Atlas groaned, waving her through the doorway. "Go, you'll miss your train."

He turned on his heel and leaned back into the door to close it with a click. "Fuck me," he sighed out, but the faintest grin pulled at his lips. "I'm sorry about her, sometimes she still thinks I'm a child and that I can't take care of myself - hence bringing me groceries before she leaves like I wouldn't do it otherwise."

"Are you kidding me? She's great," I returned his grin. "Good to know even superstars aren't immune to embarrassing parents. It's just her way of caring, ya know?"

Atlas hopped up onto the kitchen island and plucked a peach from the bowl, turning it over in his hands a few times. "Is your mum like that too?"

His question froze me where I stood, and a bitter knot constricted my throat. I managed to squeak out, "Um, no. She's not."

The only way Lorelei Forrester embarrassed me was by forcing me to pretend my mother was normal, when in reality she was an airheaded flake who I wasn't sure even knew I was still surfing professionally. It was times like this I wished she'd just be a normal mom and embarrass me in front of boys instead. I swallowed all that down and brought my attention back to reality. Back to Monaco. Back to Atlas Vaughn.

Atlas seemed to buy my curt response, and he shrugged and bit into the peach. "I know she means well, I just wish sometimes she didn't treat me like I need to be stage managed. I mean c'mon, Callahan and I have been civil at best since we were 13-year-olds running each other off the track in karting. That's just not the way things are, and I think she's just bitter we're not close like she is with his mum."

Juice trickled down his chin and dripped onto his bare chest. My stomach rolled at the thought of licking him clean, and walked over to him, positioning myself in between his knees. "Well, she was right about one thing. You've been naughty this morning, Atlas Deveraux."

Atlas let out an amused scoff. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Deveraux? It's got kind of a sexy kick to it, doesn't it?"

I took hold of his wrist and brought the peach to my mouth, taking a bite with his fingers still wrapped around it. It seemed like everything was sweeter in Monte Carlo.

Atlas slid himself off of the counter and took another bite of the peach. "Speaking of sexy...I seem to recall being in the middle of something rather important before we were so rudely...interrupted." A soft sigh escaped his lips as his free hand traveled down my chest and to the hem of my underwear, running his finger along the inside.

"Maybe we actually go to the bedroom this time?" I looked up at him with a coy grin. "Just to avoid any more compromising situations."

"Couldn't agree more." He pressed a kiss to my temple. "Go ahead in, I'm just going to clean up out here first."

I did as he instructed, giving him one more wistful gaze before retreating to his bedroom. Morning sun filtered through the open blinds and cut across his plush grey bedspread like little swords of light. It illuminated all the little corners I was afraid to investigate before, and all the places I was afraid to lose myself in. I walked over to a shelf on the far wall by the bathroom door, where a few of his racing helmets and trophies gleamed in streaks where the light hit them. Beside what appeared to be the smallest trophy, there was a single framed picture of 10-year-old Atlas with a toothy grin, standing beside who I could only assume was his father, with that same white streak of hair he passed down to Atlas. He was holding that same little trophy, and my heart swelled.

I thought about the last time I was in his bedroom, tangled up in his sheets and knowing nothing except how perfectly those jeans he wore fit him and how much I liked the way my name sounded in his voice. I wish I knew then what I knew now. I pulled the blackout curtains down, and as the room darkened, I dropped onto his bed and didn't want to move for an eternity.

Atlas slid into the room, closing the door behind him before Phantom could follow him in. He gave me a long, lustful once-over as I laid there in nothing but his Gucci t-shirt and my underwear before lowering himself down next to me. "Didn't miss me too much, did you?"

I shook my head with a grin. "Atlas, this is going to sound crazy, but...what if we like, actually slept for a little while?"

Atlas wrapped his arms around me and pulled me as close to him as humanly possible, until I could feel the subtle and steady beat of his heart against my cheek. "Honestly..." he sighed. "Actual sleep sounds lovely."

He pressed another kiss to my temple, then threw a blanket over both of us, enveloping us in warmth.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" I said, reaching up and gently brushing a lock of hair off his forehead.

"Anything."

"Earlier, your mom called you mon monde. What does that mean?"

Atlas pursed his lips into a musing smile. "It means my world."

spinning on that dizzy edge
i kissed her face and kissed her head
and dreamed of all the different ways i had
to make her glow

just like heaven / the cure

monaco is, in fact, just like heaven...for now.

anyway the beginning (before the kids were so terribly interrupted) is the spiciest lil scene i've ever written (and won't be the first of this story), and i'm slowly trying to step out of my comfort zone there, but pls let me know if it's cringe. i'm a baby.