Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
AUbrEY
I was tearing myself apart, telling him about Bishop. I knew I was doing damage that I couldn’t undo—I hadn’t told anyone.
It was so much more than what I’d told Phoenix, of course.
I could still remember every fucking detail of it—the way Morris had looked like a wild, crazed thing.
The way he took such savage pleasure in holding me down, thrusting inside me, dragging his knife down the line of my back like he could peel away my skin and wear it to be the man Bishop wanted.
Bishop…
When Phoenix’s mouth pressed against mine, I half expected him to tear me apart like he usually did after I gave him a story. Instead, the warmth of his lips was so soft that it nearly tore a sob from my chest. Fuck, I’d kissed him .
I’d finally broken down and kissed him, but looking at the pain on his face, seeing the way he spoke about his mother… I finally understood the paint.
The mask.
I understood Phoenix, and I had to do something to show him that I was there with him .
When he pulled back, there was a depth to his oceanic eyes that I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know what he was trying to do, what he was trying to show me.
He was deliberate when he flipped me over and pressed my stomach to the mattress, and the low groan that tore out of me was a mixture of pain and relief.
This… this was the Phoenix I expected. My body tensed, so ready for him to do what he always did.
I craved the pain, if only to fill in all the ragged, broken edges of myself that I’d just exposed.
Instead, I felt his lips brush faintly along the bottom of the scar, catching at the top of my ass in a whispering, tender touch.
“What are you doing?” I half whimpered the question, more panicked now than if he’d tried to fuck me hard.
Phoenix’s hands smoothed along my sides like a balm, and his lips continued to trail the length of the scar until I was shivering in a puddle of sensation and emotion beneath him. He didn’t know what he was doing.
He couldn’t know what he was doing.
It seemed like he never did, though. Phoenix was a fucking ghost of my past, haunting me in all the hallways.
He was Morris, pinning me down and taking what he wanted .
He was Bishop, saving me, putting my broken pieces back together.
He was the everything and the nothing inside me all at once, so much that my head was spinning. I couldn’t figure out how to breathe around it or demand that he stop. I didn’t know how to fight to get his roughness back.
I didn’t know if I wanted it anymore.
“I would have killed him for you, Aubrey. I would have torn his throat out with my teeth.” Phoenix gently bit against the curve of my back, and I squirmed, my breath hitching in my chest. “Our first kiss would have tasted like his blood, and you would have known that he was dead. I…” He paused and pressed a kiss where his teeth had just been.
“I would never let someone hurt you and live.”
Fuck, he was so different. He’d opened himself up to me when he’d told me about his mother, when I’d felt my heart breaking for everything he could have been and how cruel she was to him. He didn’t say it, but I’d seen the agony painted across his features.
And I was open, because no one alive today knew what Cain Bishop had meant to me. He was the first sign of hope I’d ever had. The first time I’d ever let myself really open up to another person.
And now I was doing it again.
There was no turning back. I was lost in the moment, swept up in a reeling picture of who I used to be and a future I could never dream of again. It was at my feet in ashes, burned to the ground by Phoenix’s confession, ready to be born as something new.
“Phoenix.” I moaned his name when he came to the top of the scar and finished his soft trail of claiming with a slow swipe of his tongue. Just like every other mark on my body, that scar belonged to him now. He owned me—all of me.
He didn’t try to stop me when I rolled over so I could look at him—I needed the anchor of his eyes before I completely flew apart.
Words burned unbidden at the back of my tongue.
I was so full of thoughts and feelings that I couldn’t understand.
No, I understood them, I just didn’t want them.
I couldn’t have them with him. I couldn’t have them again, even though they were already blossoming in my chest whether I wanted them to or not . I couldn’t fight it anymore.
With a low groan, I moved, pressing my hands to his chest.
I think I was trying to push him away.
Instead, he rolled onto his back and pulled me atop him until I straddled his hips… I only realized then that he’d worked his way out of his clothes while he’d had me on my stomach, and I’d been too caught up in his tender kisses and my own pain to realize he was bare beneath me. Open. Soft .
His hands rose, and he laced his fingers behind his head. Phoenix’s eyes told me the words that I think his lips couldn’t say.
Your move. Your control. Go on, Aubrey. Take what you need.
I needed to run.
Phoenix still looked so vulnerable beneath me.
I shifted my hips instead, only moving off him long enough to rifle in his pants and find the bottle of oil.
My eyes slipped shut, and my fingers were shaking so hard that I barely managed to pull the cap open to slick them.
I didn’t know what I was doing—I didn’t know why I was doing this.
We were both so raw, and maybe that was all it was.
I couldn’t imagine turning away from him after he’d laid himself so bare to me, and I honestly didn’t know if I could live with the broken edges of everything that I was exposed to the air outside this room.
I needed Phoenix to make me feel whole.
My fingers slid between my legs, and I worked myself open in sharp, quick thrusts that left my body clenching and my thighs shaking around his hips.
It was easy enough to upend the bottle and slick his cock after I was done, smoothing the oil along his hard length and drawing a soft sound of pleasure from his lips.
Even then, he didn’t try to take control. He just looked up at me with patient eyes, as though he had all the time in the world to let me do what I needed, to let me find the little pieces of me that were broken in the feel of his body.
My oil-slicked fingers stroked the ridges of his abdomen, slipped up his chest. They found those scars on his throat again. Phoenix’s eyes fluttered shut at the softness of my touch. He was so… open.
So trusting.
I let out another small sound as I shifted to reposition myself until I felt the head of his cock pressing against my ass.
I teetered there on the edge, my thighs burning and my hips tense.
I didn’t know what I wanted, but when Phoenix’s eyes opened and he fixed me with that soft, steady gaze, my body seemed to take over.
I sank down on him and felt him split me open one slow inch at a time, watching in fascination as his pupils dilated and his breath caught in his chest on a moan.
He looked up at me like he was seeing the entire world above him—the universe, the stars… and I felt my heart catch in my throat.
This was different.
This was another side of Phoenix that I hadn’t seen before. He didn’t move until I moved—I rose slowly and dropped down to take him inside me, one burning inch at a time. It drew another shuddery breath from my chest, a soft exhalation that broke me apart.
“Phoenix. Look at you.”
At the sound of his name on my lips, he let out a low moan.
His hands behind his head clenched and unclenched, tugging at his hair in time with the way I started to move on top of him.
Still, he watched me with soft, aching patience that felt so foreign in the wake of who he’d been before—it was that what-if come to life in a way I hadn’t seen, that I couldn’t have known.
In a way that had all the power to remake me into my own what-if .
I whimpered and fell forward, my slick fingers trailing up his chest so I could use it for leverage, drinking down the feel of his heart thundering beneath them.
His hands tugged in his hair again, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Touch me. Please… I… fuck, Phoenix. Please?”
Fingers moved instantly, greedy where they found my hips, gripping me hard enough I knew it was going to leave bruises. It was the only proof of how hard this was on him—how hard it was for him to let someone else take the reins .
I…
Fuck. I wasn’t sure I could ever tell him how much it meant that he was giving me this—this side of him, these broken parts that fit perfectly along the edges of my own.
I couldn’t tell him, but I wanted to show him.
I panted, my hips working a little faster now, my thighs burning as I rocked on top of him, lifting and slamming down, writhing around the feel of him splitting me open again and again, diving deeper than anything I’d ever felt.
“More.” It came out on a whimper, a demand, but I couldn’t help it. I was aching for him—I wanted his hands all over me. I wanted him to find every part of me that he could touch and hold it together.
Instead, his fingers wrapped around my cock, and he squeezed. The sensation made my back bow, made me thrust down hard to take him as deep as I could.
When I stilled, so did he. My lashes fluttered, and I watched in fascination as he mirrored my movements, drifting his hand up the length of my cock as I lifted my hips and sank back onto him again.
This… fuck, this was a gift. Phoenix had fucked me in the rain and made me scream out every agony I’d felt, made me let go of a past that held me so tight I couldn’t breathe. He’d put me back together with gentle touches, with praise and pleasure.
And now, after he’d finally forced the last bit of poison out of my veins, he was giving me the one thing Morris had taken—the one thing the world had taken.
Control.
Complete control .
“Phoenix.” His name tore from my throat like a prayer, a litany to whatever it was that we were doing.
His eyes never left my face; they were so wide, achingly vulnerable, even though I wasn’t sure he realized it.
We’d opened ourselves up to each other, cut our scars until they bled, and now we were slowly putting ourselves back together as something different.
Something that was only whole because we were here.
Together.
This wasn’t just fucking. It was intimacy. It was…
Shit… it was everything .
I didn’t realize what was happening until I started doing it—Phoenix’s hand worked in time with the motion of my thrusts, and my hips followed the thrumming, aching beat of his heart.
I didn’t know if he noticed, but his breath hitched, and a low growl tore from him as he finally started to move in time with my body.
His hand on my hip bit into my skin until I could feel my sweat stinging the shallow cuts as it dripped down my sides.
It was too much. Too fucking much. And I could see it building behind his eyes until it looked like Phoenix was going to fall apart, until it seemed like he couldn’t breathe around it, couldn’t keep himself together for all the feelings that were burning inside him.
Changed. I’d changed him just as much as he’d changed me, hadn’t I?
“A-Aubrey?” He gasped my name out. Desperate. Aching. Pleading. And I couldn’t stop myself. I fell forward and pressed my mouth to his, taking him deeper and swallowing down the scream of his orgasm with a hungry kiss .
I felt pleasure surge through my body in response to the burning pulse of his cock throbbing inside me, filling me up and stripping away the last of whatever had been holding me together.
I cried out against his mouth, and he fed on the sound, drinking down my screams as my body jerked and I completely flew apart above him.
I gave him everything.
My pleasure.
My pain.
My past.
Every broken piece that was a man named Aubrey.
I couldn’t guard any of it, and I knew I couldn’t take it back now that I’d done it.
I rocked myself through my release in jerky, almost frantic movements, and collapsed against his chest, moaning as his mouth fed on mine.
The aftershocks of our orgasms slowly faded away until we were nothing more than sticky, sweaty, heaving chests and thundering hearts joined in a kiss that felt like it was the first one to ever exist.
Everything came back to me in soft waves, in the gentle touch of his fingers as they ran the length of my scar again.
That touch tore through me, because for the first time…
Fuck, for the first time, it didn’t hurt . It made me shiver and tuck my head against the curve of his throat, so my lips could find the soft ridges of his scar in turn, and I wondered… Did it feel the same for him?
Fuck. This was…
It meant something.
It meant everything, and as his fingers trailed up to the collar on my throat and he traced the edges of it, I knew that I was going to have to break myself one more time .
I couldn’t do this.
Not while I wore Phoenix’s collar.
Not while I had Bishop’s tags hanging next to it.
If I wanted this, and fuck, I was running out of ways to tell myself that I didn’t want Phoenix…
I had to learn to finally let go.