Chapter 17 – Rafael
RAFAEL
The penthouse door barely clicks shut behind us before Phoenix is shrugging on his jacket again.
"Walk?" he asks.
I glance down the hall toward where Bells just disappeared with Rex still chained to her wrist with fuzzy cuffs. Rex's shoulders were hunched, his head down, and Bells was steering him toward the room they shared last night like a tugboat guiding a freighter into port.
They need space. That much is obvious. Whatever's happening between those two—and it's definitely happening, no matter how much Rex snarls about it—doesn't need an audience.
Especially when they're apparently going to our mask maker tomorrow to work on the bullshit stunt, and going to the mask maker puts Rex in a shit mood even on the best of days.
"Yeah," I sigh. "Walk."
We take the elevator down in silence.
Phoenix shoves his hands into his jacket pockets when we make it outside into the perpetual mist and picks a direction at random.
I fall into step beside him. Our strides match automatically.
They always have, something about being in a rhythm section together for years.
Your body learns another person's tempo whether you want it to or not.
We walk two blocks without talking.
Three.
Four.
Phoenix breaks first. "We should probably talk about it."
"About what?" I mutter, even though I know exactly what.
He gives me a look. Those blue eyes, warm and slightly exasperated, like he can see right through my bullshit deflection and is choosing to be patient about it anyway.
"About—" He gestures vaguely at the space between us. "Whatever this is."
"Right." I kick a pebble off the sidewalk. It skitters into the gutter. "That."
"That."
We turn down a side street that runs behind a row of old brick warehouses. The kind of neighborhood where artists used to squat before tech money ate Seattle alive. Graffiti on the walls, dumpsters, fire escapes. Nobody around.
Good. I don't want an audience for this either.
"Carmine's going to have us doing press," I say, because starting with logistics feels safer than starting with feelings.
"Interviews. Photo ops. Social media shit.
If there's... if we're..." I trail off. Fuck.
Words. Why are words so hard? "We need to know what this is before someone with a camera asks us. "
Phoenix nods slowly. "Yeah. That's fair."
"So." I stop walking and turn to face him. "Was the hotel a one-time thing?"
Phoenix's jaw works. His eyes search my face, doing that thing he does where he feels everything at full volume and takes a second to sort through the noise.
"With Bells?" he asks carefully.
"With any of it."
He knows what I mean. The hotel room. The heat bleeding through the walls. What we did to each other to take the edge off. His cock in my mouth, my hand in his hair, the way neither of us said a word afterward except we should talk about this and then didn't.
His throat bobs. "I don't want it to be."
My chest feels like it's going to rip itself apart and I stare off into the distance, chewing on that. And chewing the inside of my cheek at the same time.
"Say something," Phoenix grits out.
"Okay," I mutter.
"Okay?"
"I'm processing. Give me a second."
Phoenix's mouth twitches. "Take your time."
"Fuck off."
He laughs. It's that big, genuine sound that fills whatever space it's in, and I realize I've been starving for it. For the easy version of us. The version that existed before shit got complicated, before I started noticing things about him I shouldn't have been noticing.
The way his forearms flex when he drums. The way his hair falls like a mane. The way he looked at Nash, and the way he's started looking at me the same way, and the way that should terrify me but mostly just makes me want to—
I grab the front of his jacket and yank him closer.
The kiss is graceless. My mouth finds his at the wrong angle, noses bumping, teeth clicking before we figure out the geometry. Phoenix makes a surprised sound against my lips—half grunt, half laugh—and then his hands are on my waist, hauling me closer, and the angle shifts and suddenly it's right.
He tastes like coffee. His stubble scrapes against my jaw. One of his hands slides up my back, fingers spreading wide between my shoulder blades, and the pressure makes my brain go offline.
I walk him backward until his shoulders hit rain-damp brick. Phoenix's back connects with a thud and he grunts into my mouth but doesn't stop kissing me. If anything, he pulls me closer, one arm banding around my lower back.
His tongue slides against mine and I make a sound I'm sure as fuck I'll deny later. My hand finds the back of his neck, fingers digging into the muscle there, and he shivers.
We break apart long enough to breathe. His eyes are blown dark, blue swallowed by black, his chest heaving under my palm.
"This is a terrible idea," I manage.
"Probably." His voice is wrecked. Low and rough and doing shit to my nervous system. "Wanna stop?"
"No."
"Thank fuck."
Phoenix drops.
Just drops to his knees right there on the wet pavement like gravity made the decision for him, his hands already working my belt, my button, my zipper, and my brain hasn't caught up yet because I'm still processing the kiss.
"Phoenix—fuck—"
"Shut up, Raf."
His mouth closes around me and I slam my hand against the brick wall behind me. My other hand finds his hair, fisting into those blond strands, and he groans around my cock and the vibration nearly takes my knees out.
He's not gentle about it. Not careful, not tentative. He sucks me like he's been thinking about this. Practiced the angle in his head. Imagined exactly how to take me apart.
Maybe he has.
Fuck.
My hips twitch forward involuntarily and Phoenix takes it, takes me, one hand gripping my hip to steady himself while the other braces against the wall beside my thigh. The tip of his tongue presses into the slit of my crown and my vision whites out at the edges.
"Fuck—Phoenix—fuck—"
My fingers tighten in his hair. He moans. Actually moans, the sound muffled and obscene, and I can feel it everywhere.
He pulls back enough to breathe, lips swollen and shining, and looks up at me through his lashes with an expression that should be fucking illegal. Then his hands are on my hips and he's pushing me down. I lose my balance and we go down together.
My back hits dirt. Packed earth and scrubby weeds behind the warehouse, hidden from the street by the dumpsters. Phoenix lands on top of me, crushing the air from my lungs, and before I can bitch about it his mouth is back on me.
The ground is cold and damp against my shoulders.
Phoenix's body is a furnace over mine, his broad chest pinning my hips, his hair falling around his face as he works me over.
I can't—my hands scrabble at his back, nails dragging across his jacket, his hard muscle flexing beneath the layer of padding.
He's so fucking big. I've always known that, always registered it in the abstract way you register your bandmates' bodies when you see them every day.
But this is different. This is his weight on top of me, his shoulders filling my entire field of vision, his huge hands pinning me down while his mouth takes me apart.
I arch off the ground. My fingers dig into the thick muscle of his upper back.
His skin is fucking blazing through the fabric.
I pull at his jacket, get my hands under his shirt, claw at his sides, his hips where his pants have ridden down a few inches.
He shivers. I do it again and he groans around me and I'm fucking gone.
"Phoenix—I'm—fuck, I'm gonna—"
He doesn't pull off.
I come so hard my vision goes black. My whole body locks up, spine bowing off the dirt, hands fisting in the back of his shirt hard enough to stretch the fabric. Phoenix swallows around me and the aftershocks rip through my system like seismic tremors.
For a solid thirty seconds, I can't move. Can't speak. Can't do anything except lie in the dirt behind a warehouse and stare at the gray Seattle sky while my nervous system reboots.
Phoenix crawls up my body, his weight settling over me again. He's hard. I can feel it against my thigh, obvious and insistent.
"Your turn," I mutter. My hands are shaking but they find his belt anyway. His zipper. I get him out and wrap my hand around him and his forehead drops against my shoulder with a groan that vibrates through my chest.
His cock is thick and hot in my palm. I stroke him and his hips jerk forward, grinding into my grip.
My other hand roams across his torso—his chest, his stomach, the softness over solid muscle that makes him Phoenix instead of some cut-from-granite gym rat.
I dig my fingers into his side and he shudders, breath coming in ragged pants against my neck.
"Raf…" His voice cracks.
I twist my wrist. Thumb the head and feel him throb in my hand.
"Come for me," I murmur against his ear.
He comes with a bitten-off groan, spilling over my fingers, his whole body going rigid on top of me. His hands clench in the dirt on either side of my head. His hips stutter twice, three times, then still.
We lie there.
In the dirt. Behind a fucking warehouse.
Phoenix is crushing my lungs to the point I have gray spots in my vision and I can't bring myself to care. His breath is hot and uneven against my neck. My hand is still loosely wrapped around him, wet and sticky, and I should probably do something about that but moving seems impossible.
The drizzle mists down on us. Somewhere in the distance, a car horn honks.
"So," I manage between breaths, staring at the sky. "Is it out of your system?"
Phoenix lifts his head. His hair is a disaster, plastered to his face with mist and sweat, and his lips are swollen. There's dirt on his cheekbone. I smudge it away with my thumb.
"Is it out of yours?" he counters, grinning through his hair.
I consider this honestly.
My heart rate, still hammering. The way my hands don't want to leave his body.
The fact that I just came so hard and almost embarrassingly fast from a blowjob behind a fucking building, and the primary emotion I'm feeling isn't regret or confusion but a deep, bone-level satisfaction that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
"No," I admit. "Probably not."
Phoenix's grin widens. Slow, lazy, devastatingly warm.
"Not out of mine either."