Chapter 10
CHAPTER
TEN
PHOENIX
It was fucking dangerous to assume the raiders we’d just killed had cleared out the hotel they’d been camping in, but I was willing to risk it for the fire in Aubrey’s eyes.
They’d been here for a while, judging by the way they had things set up, but that was as far as I got in assessing the situation. I veered toward what looked like the nicest room and threw the door open, slamming it shut behind me and flicking the lock.
None of that mattered anyway, because Aubrey was already all over me, his hands almost angry when they pulled at my vest, nails dragging against my skin until they cut in his desperation.
Desperate.
He was desperate for me, and he was painted up like mine . My handprints all along his skin in the blood of our kill, in my blood.
There was no way he was going to get out of this without a collar around his neck. When he shifted up on tiptoe to press his mouth to my throat, his teeth angry when they bit down, I let out a groan and pushed him back.
He looked half shell-shocked, half crazed.
“Fuck me,” he said before I had a chance to make demands.
It was hot, a low sound that seemed to vibrate through him and pull straight from his bones.
We were covered in blood, in death. I was clawed open, and I was pretty sure he’d taken a knife somewhere, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Fuck me, Phoenix. However you want. Just…” I could almost hear the cracks running along the edge of his voice, and I wondered if I’d get to understand why he’d been in such a frenzy, why there was a part of him that seemed hell-bent on burning out right here, right now.
“Just?” I prompted when he seemed to choke on the words, and when his hands came back, trying to tear at my clothing again, they were trembling.
“I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to feel anything. Nothing but this.” He slapped his hand against my chest, over the beat of my heart and the cuts on my skin. “You can do that, can’t you? You can fuck me until you’re the only thing I can feel?”
Fuck him. He wanted me to fuck him—not just put him on his knees and use his mouth like I wanted to imprint the taste of my dick on his tongue.
He wanted me to fuck him, and even though my body was burning and my adrenaline was still pumping from the way we’d fought together—the way we moved like we’d been doing that dance our entire lives—I wanted more.
I needed more.
My hand came up and my fingers wrapped around his throat—the strength in my grip cut off his next demand as I lifted him off the ground. When I moved in for a kiss, he turned his head, twisting to offer me his neck instead.
What a stupid fucking rule—but that was fine. It wasn’t his kiss I wanted right now.
It was his submission.
I walked toward the bed in the corner of the room—some huge thing with sheets rumpled from use. It looked clean, though. Cleaner than anything I’d slept in for years.
With the way Aubrey was clinging to me, I would have fucked him on top of the bodies we’d made together and called it a throne.
I grabbed him by the hips to push him away, and he snarled in response, clawing at me. He fought like some feral thing to keep hold of me, tearing scratches against my skin that added to the blood already soaking us both.
“Mmm fuck, you’d tear me apart to get on my dick right now, wouldn’t you?”
Aubrey pulled back to answer, and I threw him onto the mattress. He bounced, but I didn’t give him a chance to push himself back up. I was on him, pinning him down against the sheets and twisting his hands up above his head.
He surged up, trying to press against me, his body a hot, demanding force that was almost too much to resist. His desperation was clear, painted across his features and tearing from his throat in little growling whines that shot straight to my dick.
I jerked back before he had a chance to make me forget myself. My eyes narrowed, and I looked him over while he panted beneath me, with pupils half blown from need but still glassy with what he was trying to escape. He was a beautiful contradiction, ready and willing to break for me.
When I rolled my hips so he could feel how hard I was, Aubrey shivered, one word pouring from his mouth.
“Yes.”
Fuck, it was tempting to fuck him now and worry about the rest later, but now was when I knew he was desperate enough to give me exactly what I wanted—what we both needed.
“You wanna be mine, Aubrey?”
The question made him pause. I could see his expressions swirling behind his cloudy gaze—pain, desire, loathing… and beneath all of it, a need so strong that it drew his answer up above all the rest. “Damn it, Phoenix. Just… fuck. Fuck me.”
“No.” I leaned down, trailing my lips along his jaw and down to his throat, biting along the way. Aubrey whimpered with each nip, and by the time I came to his shoulder, he was trembling.
“Tell me you want to be mine.”
He squirmed and let out another low sound—he really was desperate. Aubrey needed to be fucked senseless so badly that it seemed like it was going to break him.
I wanted to break him .
My fingers were rough when they trailed down the length of his body, nails digging against the exposed skin peeking between his waistband and the shirt he wore.
He struggled in my hold, though I wondered how much he actually wanted to break free as I reached my hand into his pants and grabbed his cock.
I dipped my head as I did it, my teeth greedy to find that same place I’d torn him open before—I wanted him to scar .
Aubrey screamed, and in that scream I could hear the war he’d been fighting with himself end.
“Yes. Fuck, okay. I want to be yours, Phoenix. Just… please?” He was panting, gasping against me. “Please? Please… please…”
I’d never heard anyone say my name the way he did.
I’d made people cry, I’d heard people beg, but my name on Aubrey’s tongue was pure desperation, pure need.
I wasn’t fool enough to think he needed me .
It was my strength, my darkness, the pain I could give him and the way it seemed to fill up all the places inside him that were broken, all the holes his obviously fucked-up past had left behind.
I didn’t have to know much about him to see that he was torn open and the mask he wore was cracking around the edges.
Lucky for him, I didn’t give a fuck about the why—I only cared that he’d said the words.
I dropped my hold on him long enough to shift and unfasten one of the collars I collected from my pants—I hadn’t found anyone worthy of it before.
It was black metal, shining brighter than most of the shit this fucked-up world had to offer.
I dropped his hands and tangled my fingers in his hair, yanking him up so I could fasten it around his neck before he realized what I was doing.
“Wh—”
My fingers slid beneath the collar and twisted. It jerked him against me, and made the gasp that ripped from his chest cut off in the most delicious little choked sound I’d ever heard.
The leverage gave me a chance to strip him out of the jacket he wore, and greedy fingers found the places his shirt was already torn so I could rip it from his body.
Another little punched-out sound escaped him at the violence, but he was still looking at me with those blazing, demanding eyes. Still pressing closer.
My free hand made quick work of unfastening his pants and shoving them down.
I pushed him back against the bed so I could finish stripping him, marveling at the way our blood was already soaking the sheets.
Everything I touched ended up tainted. We probably both needed to tend to the wounds we’d got in our fight, but there wasn’t really a point now.
By the time I was finished, I knew there’d be more.
I straddled his hips and pinned him beneath me while I yanked off my clothes, focused on his expressions as he looked up at me with his pretty, painted face and his glassy eyes.
Between his low moans as I tore my shirt over my head and the way the collar around his throat looked, I knew I wasn’t going to draw this out.
As much as it would have felt amazing to tease more confessions out of him, I’d never been a man with much patience.
I fell on him like we were caught in the rain, like the most primal parts of me were already awake and we were nothing but animals.
He was lucky I had any mind at all, because I reached to where I’d discarded my pants and grabbed a bottle out of one of my pockets.
I was always prepared—I’d found a supply of oil a few months back and we’d taken every single bit of it after we’d killed the camp we’d come across.
I didn’t want to know what it was made from, but it made fucking better than doing it with spit and whatever else I could find in the heat of the moment.
He watched me drizzle it on my fingers with wide eyes, and spread his legs like an absolute whore when I dropped my hand between them.
I wasn’t gentle when I pressed against his hole.
“Fuck,” he hissed through clenched teeth, but his hips rocked down to meet me, forcing me deeper when most people would have tried to pull away, would have begged me to take it slow. Instead I pulled back, and he groaned, rocking into me again. “Harder.”
Harder . Did he realize I was barely holding back as it was—that a real part of me wanted to flip him and fuck him even though I could feel his ass squeezing my finger, all tight and hot?
How long had it been since he’d been touched like this?
I came back with another finger, drizzling more of the oil onto my hand as I did. He hissed, working his body against me as I thrust into him in hard, shallow motions until his back bowed off the bed.
“Ah… found it.” I crooked my fingers against the little bundle of nerves and watched him writhe again, watched th e desperation on his face melt away to soft, aching pleasure.