Chapter 24 #2
When I’d found her there, I’d had a brief flash of how things could be—I’d saved her, I’d shown up like some hero out of the shadows of the night and slaughtered the entire pack of rabid that were banging down the door.
She never had to know I was the beast that had hunted her entire squad; maybe taking them away from her would be enough retribution.
It would be her penance for leaving me, and I could forgive her.
She only needed to know that I was there now, the son she’d abandoned. Maybe because she’d been scared. Maybe because she wanted the strength the Order could provide.
She’d been young. I could forgive it because she’d be thankful.
Maybe things could change for me. Lynna had died a year earlier, and fuck…
I’d been so alone. That was before I’d found Blythe and Zero, before I’d found my real family. I’d learned that night that family wasn’t blood.
“I’ve never seen someone look at me with so much hate.
” I laughed, and the sound was sharp, something angry clawing out of my throat.
Bitter. This didn’t feel like I thought it would, talking about it.
Not with the way Aubrey was looking at me.
“She told me I was supposed to be dead, that she’d left me to suffer on the streets because it was what I deserved.
.. then she took a knife to my throat.” His eyes widened, his gaze flicking to the scars again.
His hand was still pressed there, and his fingers trembled when he traced them.
He stayed silent, though, caught up in the cadence of my voice as I finished my story.
“I squeezed the fucking life out of her and left her for whatever came to scavenge the meat off her goddamn bones. Though…” My hand drifted to the tags around my throat, Order issued.
A last name I didn’t claim. I’d pulled them from around her neck with blood-soaked fingers. “I did take a souvenir, at least.”
“Phoenix…” Aubrey’s voice was so soft, softer than I’d ever heard when he said my name.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted his sympathy.
It made something in my chest twist, eliciting a memory of the hurt that I’d felt that day, looking at my mother as she spat her venom and tried to kill me.
It was the first time that I’d let myself be vulnerable.
It was the last time.
It was why I couldn’t change for him now.
“I had to crawl my way to the nearest shelter I could find and have some half-assed doctor patch me up. He didn’t do a very good job, though, did he?
They aren’t the prettiest scars.” The grin I forced on my face felt hollow, and it couldn’t quell the warmth that was pooling in my chest at Aubrey’s expression.
He stretched up slowly, his eyes cautious and his touch careful as he did.
I swallowed hard, but stood still as he pressed a kiss to the scars along my throat.
The warmth of his mouth started just below my ear, fluttering a ghost of a touch along the line of it, brushing softly against the tattoo bisected on my neck.
His mouth lingered there, and I knew he could taste that my pulse was thumping just a little faster than it had any reason to. When he kissed my jawline, it was so gentle. So full of… emotion.
My insides jolted again, that warmth in my chest spreading to the point where his lips made contact with my skin.
I didn’t want to feel this.
I grunted in derision as irritation poured through me. This wasn’t about opening me up and finding out what was on my insides. The only reason I’d told him the fucking story was so Aubrey would open up for me.
I was supposed to find out how he worked. I was supposed to show him that I was brutal and demanding.
I wasn’t supposed to be the one feeling vulnerable.
I seized him around the waist and threw him across the room, and he bounced roughly on the bed when he landed.
It didn’t seem to matter, though. His head instantly snapped up, and I knew he could see it—the confusion tearing and warring in my chest, the pain.
Aubrey shoved himself to his feet, and I thought he was going to try to run again.
I was ready to chase him, ready to pin him down and fuck him.
I needed to give him all the brutal parts of me that he seemed to crave.
I could be that raider.
I couldn’t be the boy who’d cried as his mother slit his throat.
And I was neither as Aubrey ran across the room and threw himself at my chest.
It was almost like we were fighting; it felt like we were going to tear each other apart. At that moment, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Maybe he wanted to kill me for taking out a squad of his former crew? Maybe he saw what a monster I really was ?
Instead, there was a shock of heat. Warmth that I didn’t recognize.
Aubrey was kissing me.
Aubrey was kissing me for the first time, and my entire world narrowed down to the heat of his mouth, the way his tongue tasted sweet. Everything inside me shattered and came back together, bursting into flames and the taste of that ash lingering between us.
His mouth was greedy and fervent, kissing me as though he wanted to swallow me down, as though his lips could drink away whatever emotion I’d allowed to slip through the cracks when I’d told him my story.
He was looking at me when he pulled back, looking past me, through me, like he could see someone else… and I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t have to understand it to know that my body was reacting to that kiss, to the way he seemed determined to completely devour me. It was easier to react on instinct, to pick him up and half throw him onto the bed again, crawling in after him.
I couldn’t be vulnerable, but I could do this. I could give him this.
But Aubrey seemed determined to tear my resolve to shreds when he reached for me, threading his fingers through my hair and drawing my mouth down to his again.
It was softer. Sweet.
Aching.
It made my head spin and tried to unravel me at the seams.
My hands were rough in response, yanking his tank top over his head and tearing his pants off with a low growl.
But for every ounce of viciousness that I poured into what I was doing, he gave the complete contrast in return.
Something soft. Something that demanded I see what he was seeing, if only for that moment.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t know what he was looking at. I didn’t know how to be whatever was in his eyes.
Soft.
Soft like his mouth. Soft like his expression. Soft like his kisses.
“Fuck,” I growled, dipping my head to that place on his neck that I’d bitten so many times. For some reason, I couldn’t break the skin. I just sucked, drawing the taste of him between my lips while his fingers carded through my hair again and he pressed his body into mine.
Everywhere he touched me, my skin felt like it was on fire, like it was about to split open to give birth to some emotion that I’d never been made to feel.
“Fuck,” I groaned again, softer this time. This wasn’t what I’d wanted to happen at all. Aubrey had a way of always fucking things up, didn’t he? I needed to get control of this. I had to get control of this.
I shifted forward, my knee slipping between his legs so I could push him down against the mattress.
Instead of looking away like he usually did, Aubrey stared up at me.
His green eyes were so bright . They were burning with that same fucking emotion that I couldn’t understand, that I didn’t have a word for.
My hands looped around him to draw him against me, and I felt the slickness of the scar on his back .
Maybe I could find his resistance there? I’d wanted Aubrey, and this was him, at least a part of him. But it was more than that. He was trying to get more from me than the raider I was, the person I’d always been. I didn’t know how to open up. Not like this.
Never like this.
“Tell me.” I murmured those two words I’d said so many times, but it came out different. I sounded like I was in pain.
What was wrong with me?
Aubrey’s expression broke beneath my touch, my question. His eyes focused on mine, and it felt like he was really looking at me for the first time.
And then he spoke.
“When I got captured by the scientists that I told you about before… I didn’t get out on my own.
I met a man… an Order soldier.” He swallowed, as though the words were panicking him, making his chest fly apart in a thousand directions.
I watched him fight to take a breath, and his eyes searched my face like he was trying to find an escape.
They landed on my throat, on the scar there.
He spoke faster, closing his eyes as though that could somehow alleviate the pain in his words.
“His name was… it was…” I could feel him trembling, could feel the lines of panic threatening to overwhelm him.
“Tell me.” When I said it again, the insistence in my voice was warm and strong.
Demanding. I could see every bit of hurt lingering on the tip of his tongue, and I realized I needed it—he had to give it to me.
He had to let it go. My fingers dug into the line on his back, and he gasped as his lids fluttered open to meet my gaze.
“His name was Bishop, and he was the stars.” Aubrey’s eyes were bright with tears that he wouldn’t let fall.
“We weren’t supposed to talk, but he kept visiting me in the little cage they had me in.
I guess one of the soldiers under his command noticed.
Bishop told me later that Morris was obsessed with him, so it made sense that he targeted me.
He came in and he took a knife to my back while he…
while he…” Aubrey’s fingers flexed, grabbing me tighter, though I didn’t think he realized he was drawing me closer.
“Bishop saved me, though. Fuck, he helped me burn the building down while Morris was still alive.” His eyes cut away.
“I really fucking hope he burned. Bishop was good , though. Better than me. He couldn’t just kill him. ”
The thought of some asshole who’d had his hands on Aubrey still breathing made my chest burn, my body scream with rage, but I couldn’t interrupt him. Not now. Not when he was still telling me.
“We ran away together, and he patched me up. That was the first night we spent together. It was the first time he kissed me.” His eyes had gone soft, faraway. “It’s a fucked-up story, but it’s not a scar I regret. I can’t. It brought us together.”
He was swimming in emotions. Suddenly everything I’d been trying to pry from him was there at the surface, and I could see it.
There was an entire world in the depths of his words—an entire world he’d lost .
Aubrey shuddered against me, and every fiber of his being seemed to be lit up with it, with that vast ocean of feeling I’d never seen before.
It was a love that I honestly didn’t believe existed.
But it was there on his face, and he was vulnerable with it. In that moment, I could have broken him. I could have fucked him senseless until he was screaming my name on the tide of the soft Bishop that he’d whispered so reverently.
But he was looking at me, and I was looking at Aubrey. The real Aubrey.
For the first time.
I leaned in and pressed my mouth to his again, almost surprised that he let me. He let me kiss him, and his lips were trembling as I swiped my tongue between them and tasted the sorrow on his tongue.
It was a sweet, languid play at pretending that I could be the man he was seeing behind his eyes, that I could be the person he seemed to glimpse behind my paint.
Maybe I could be soft for him… just for tonight.