Chapter 21 #2
Phoenix watched me with careful eyes as I swept my finger across the bridge of his nose to cover the scar there.
The paint settled into the ridges of it before I worked my way back beneath his gaze and over his temple.
After a moment, he lay back against the pillows and finally closed his lids.
A small hum of satisfaction rumbled from his chest when I swept my thumb carefully across his brow.
There was something complicated and intricate about the pattern that he drew on himself; it was all webbing and spattering.
It wasn’t random, because he made sure the same outline kissed his skin every morning when he freshened the paint on his face.
I wasn’t sure I could completely replicate it, but I knew I could do enough to make sure that he looked like the raider who had dragged me out into the rain and fucked me until I lost my voice last night.
I could transform him from what-if back to the roughness that had kept me tethered to him from that first night he’d fucked my throat when I’d tried to run…
to the monster capable of making the emptiness inside me seem less empty in the moments when we were fucking, fighting, when we were together.
I worked in silence, except for the satisfied little purrs that escaped his chest—my fingers pressed strokes here, careful touches there.
I dipped my nails back into the paint to trace the spider webbing that ran from the top of his lid, along his brow, and to the shaggy fall of black tresses that spilled across his forehead.
I kept my touches light, careful, feathery and soft in a way that drew goosebumps along his bare arms and chest.
The proximity of our bodies wasn’t lost to me, and I could tell it wasn’t lost to Phoenix either.
Whether it was how I lay atop him, or the gentle glide of my fingers against his skin…
I could feel his cock reacting. He pressed hard against my thigh where I half straddled him, though his body stayed still as I kept working.
Everything about him was so big and hard, so rough around the edges. I needed to make his face match.
“Aubrey.” The sound of someone breaking the silence was nearly too much, but I was surprised at how gentle his voice could be when he wasn’t fighting or barking out demands.
He was a completely different creature when he was relaxed.
We’d never spent a morning like this before…
bare and clean and wrapped around each other in what I could only call—and refused to acknowledge to be—a lover’s embrace.
“Hmm?” I kept my voice soft, unwilling to spark the fury I’d unleashed last night unless he started trying to break me apart with questions again.
If I was being honest, there was something so intoxicating about him when he was gentle.
It was another facet of him that could fill the empty parts of me and make me forget all the ways I was broken, but I didn’t know how to use this part of him, how to catch Phoenix when he was sweet and keep him .
It was too dangerous anyway—Phoenix with gentle eyes and a soft voice was too close to that what-if from earlier.
I bit my lip as I waited for him to answer while I smeared the last bit of paint across his jawline.
After I finished, I leaned back as far as his grip on my wrist would let me and surveyed my work.
Some of the tightness in my chest eased— what-if had disappeared back into the dangerous mask of a man named Phoenix.
He looked like my raider again.
My raider … fuck.
At least I could look at him now without seeing possibilities that threatened to shred me to pieces until there was nothing left.
His lids fluttered open—a sharp contrast made harder now that they were lined in black—and the look he gave me held the edges of the command he usually had.
“Roll over.”
The demand made my breath catch, my body clench.
I didn’t want—no, I wasn’t sure I was capable of a rough fuck.
My body ached, my soul ached. What happened last night in the rain had broken me along every line I’d been trying so hard to hold together for the last few years, and he didn’t even realize it.
He didn’t understand what he’d done for me by making me feel all of that and scream that pain into the rain.
I’d had it all trapped in my chest for so long.
Instead of waiting to see if I’d listen, Phoenix rolled his hips and easily flipped me with the strength of his lower body. I ended up flat on my back, and the position made some of the tension in my chest ease.
I could see when he straddled me, his thick thighs caging my own and his broad chest filling my view, that fucking wasn’t his intention.
My next breath came in a soft sigh when he took the paint from my fingers and I realized what he wanted.
He drizzled the black across his hand and pressed lines over my chin, my lips.
The motion ran more than skin deep, and my body instantly relaxed into the familiar feel of the ritual.
He was putting my mask back on for me too, wiping away the Aubrey he’d demanded to see last night—the Aubrey who’d been beaten by his father, who’d been captured by scientists, who’d fallen in love with a soldier and ended up mourning everything he’d never be able to have.
That was fine. I couldn’t be that Aubrey, but I could be the raider he painted me to be. I could be his dog that wore a collar, a killer ready to cut down anything that stood in the path of his master.
I knew I probably looked vulnerable beneath him, and I could tell by his expression that he could see it. I felt so fucking raw, so broken. So bare without my paint that my eyes pleaded with him to put me back together even though my lips weren’t moving.
I wasn’t sure if my emotions were too much, or he simply didn’t like what he saw.
Whatever it was, Phoenix’s hand came up to press against my jaw.
The wet feel of paint turned my face to the side and broke our eye contact, and when he came back and ran his fingers across my lips, I let out a groan. His touch was so soft.
I had no idea Phoenix knew how to be gentle.
He took a few minutes to add on the finishing touches in familiar strokes that I recognized, but the feel of his hand coming up to cup my jaw and keep my face pressed to the pillow was new.
It flooded my world with the smell of sweat and sex and Phoenix, and left me blind as he moved to press his lips against the side of my neck.
I waited for the feel of teeth sinking into my skin—he was hovering over that spot that he’d bitten so many times I knew the scar would never fade.
Instead, there was just the feel of his breath, warm and soft, and the heat of his tongue as he licked the lines in a slow, deliberate motion that made me groan again and squirm.
I’d meant to stay passive beneath his hands and hope he realized that I was too exhausted, too fucked out from last night to do this again, but this touch was so different from anything he’d given before.
It was a punch in the gut to realize that as much as I wanted his violence, my body had missed this.
The low hum of satisfaction against the curve of my throat told me he could tell whether I said anything or not, and the sweep of his mouth against my jawline made me squirm again.
I couldn’t hide the little cut-off sounds of pleasure and surprise any more than I could hide the goosebumps that sprang up across my bare skin.
His mouth brushed the edge of the collar I wore, before tracing featherlight kisses along the line of my shoulder in such a tender motion it nearly made me beg him to stop.
Phoenix kept his hand on my face so I couldn’t turn to look at him—I didn’t know if it was because he didn’t know how to be this person when someone could see him, or if he knew me seeing this would be too much, that I’d try to run.
Whatever it was, it left me helpless to know what he was going to do next when I felt his tongue trace the jut of my collarbone, leaving behind the cool sensation of saliva.
He trailed back across the line with gentle kisses and nips that made my entire world feel like it was slowly catching fire.
Why the fuck was he doing this to me?
His lips worked like he had a map to every place on my body that had ever ached, and his tongue was hot when he flattened it against my nipple and circled the taut peak in a slow, lazy motion that made my back nearly come off the bed.
I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn’t do this—that I couldn’t take this version of him, and he slid two fingers between my lips and pressed down on my tongue.
I sucked the taste of bitter paint from his skin to hide the moan that tore from my chest when his teeth gently bit at my other nipple in warning that he wasn’t going to take any interruptions.
His head worked lower, and Phoenix mapped out the path of my abdomen with steady strokes of his tongue, dipping and delving into each valley and plane until I was a squirming, writhing mess.
It was worse because I could feel the fullness of his lips curve into a wicked grin every time I reacted, proof that he noticed how much my body wanted this side of him too.
He turned and ran his tongue along the jut of my hipbone, biting down until my legs started to shake and I cried out around the muffle of his fingers as he soothed the sting with a kiss.
Phoenix was relentless—he blew a hot breath across the line of my pelvis and gave my other hip the same treatment, then dropped his head lower and nuzzled at the juncture of my thigh, pressing open-mouthed kisses against my skin that had me spreading my legs almost against my will.
He took the invitation, turning his head to lazily lap at my balls for a moment before dragging his tongue along the underside of my cock, which had jumped to life at his saccharine touch and unexpected softness.
Who was this?