Chapter 13 Phoenix
Phoenix
“Can I touch you?”
I swear to god, I’ll never forget those words. Not the way she said them, so soft and unsure, like she didn’t know she was speaking to a man who’s been starved his entire life for her hands.
Of course the answer was yes.
It was always going to be a fuck yes.
And now I’m ruined.
It was phenomenal, life-altering.
The second I started coming in her hand, I knew nothing else would ever come close.
“Do you have anything here so I can clean us up?” I manage to ask, barely.
“Not in here, but there are bathrooms.”
Bathrooms.
Away from her.
Absolutely the fuck not.
I’m not leaving her, not yet.
Her bottom lip is red and swollen from where she caught it between her teeth, her legs are still trembling, and my cum is wet and glistening on her fingers. And in the quiet that follows, realization hits me that my girl just let me have another piece of her.
I pull off my hoodie first, dragging it over my head, then strip away the T-shirt beneath it until I’m left in just my gray sweats.
The material clings to the tip of my still semi-hard cock that’s pressing up past the waistband, but I don’t look down.
I don’t adjust myself because, right now, the only thing I care about is the way her eyes are moving over me.
She’s not looking at my cock. She’s looking at the ink covering my chest and the way it cuts across a body she’s never seen this bare before.
I bunch up the T-shirt in my hands, and her gaze finally lifts to meet mine. “Can I?”
She nods, and that single dip of her chin has me sinking to my knees in front of her without a second thought. I start at her ankles and work my way up slowly. She’s letting me take care of her, and fuck if that isn’t more dangerous than anything else we’ve done tonight.
I reach the inside of her thighs, and her bare cunt is right there.
Pink.
Wet.
Mine.
Still swollen from what I did to her.
My mouth waters, my pulse goes ballistic, and temptation slams into me. I want to press my tongue into her and lick up every drop of the orgasm I wrung from her. But the moment has passed, and I have no idea what the rules are for pussy-eating immediately after causing a god-tier explosion.
Screw the rules.
You don’t take, you don’t get.
If she wants me off, she can shove me away.
I drag the shirt down the front of her thighs before running my tongue along the seam of her pussy. Her whole body shudders, knees nearly buckling as she clings to me for balance, and I indulge her by doing it one more time.
Eventually, I stand, wiping myself off with my shirt. It’s soaked in her scent, her skin, and the evidence of what we just did.
I want to wear it.
“Phoenix…” Her eyes find mine, and suddenly we’re seventeen again. Just two terrified kids pretending we weren’t already everything to each other. “I… I don’t know how to do this with you.”
My hands come up to cradle her face, my thumbs skimming the edges of her cheekbones, knowing this is the most open her heart's been with me, and I won't mishandle it.
“You don’t have to know anything. We can figure it out as we go. But, baby, this ends with us together, like it was always meant to.” Her breath falters, and I press my forehead to hers. “I love you, and I’m not leaving. You know that.”
“I don’t even know what this is going to look like when I work it out in my head.”
“I do.”
“Phoenix—” She’s frustrated because she cracked the door open an inch, and I’m already forcing my entire body through it.
“It’s you and me. That’s it. It’s fucking, it’s fighting.
It’s setting the whole world on fire if that’s what it takes to keep you beside me, because none of this means shit without you in it.
We were never built to survive apart, pretty girl.
In every version of us, in every life and every timeline, you always find me.
And when you do, I sink my fucking teeth in and hold on like hell itself is trying to tear you away from me, because we don’t move on, Shannen. We don’t let go.”
“Jesus,” she breathes out, but not in disbelief. She’s not mocking me. There’s no sarcasm in her voice. She’s just realizing how deep this runs through me. “You really believe this, don’t you?”
“I should’ve never let you go, not the first time or the second, and I won’t make that mistake again.” I press my lips to her forehead, hoping the words sink in.
“Maybe we can just start sl—”
“Baby, no.” I shake my head gently. “You know me. We don’t need to do slow.”
“I need to familiarize myself with how I felt about you once. I need to know if my best friend is still in there.”
I don’t answer right away. I just look at her because my girl used to know every part of me, and the truth is, she still does.
“You already know the answer to that, and I know you feel him every time you look at me.”
“Maybe, but I need to see if I can let him back in fully.” I nod. Not because I like it, because I don’t. I fucking hate it. But I get it.
Swallowing down the urge to demand everything from her all at once, I ask, “How about we go on a date?”
She lifts an eyebrow, smirking. “I didn’t think stalkers dated.”
“Yeah, well… I’ve never been on a date in my life. So how about you be my first?”
Her smirk slips, but it’s replaced by something much softer. “What would we do?”
“Well, I’m not wining and dining you like some pretentious asshole.”
“You know most women enjoy all that wine-and-dine stuff, right?”
“You’re not most women, Shannen. You hate fancy restaurants because they charge triple what the food is worth, and you can’t stand small talk unless you’re getting paid to suffer it.
” Her jaw falls open, just a little, and it’s still cute as hell how surprised she is that I’m still living in her head after all these years.
“I’ll plan something real, something that matters, and we’ll do it tomorrow, yeah? ”
“Fine, one date, but I’m not having sex with you.” She laughs, and fuck, I feel it right in the middle of my chest.
“I know, baby.”
I take a step back, staring at her the way a man stares at the woman who just gave him fucking everything.
The world tilted on its axis, reality buckled, and the stars aligned—or whatever cosmic, predestined bullshit people like to pretend isn’t real until it grabs you by the throat and forces you to see heaven staring back at you from someone else’s eyes.
“You wanna see where I live?” Her eyes snap up to mine. “I mean, I know you know where, but maybe it’ll help if you see I’m not just holed up somewhere, trying to ruin your life.”
“Just my relationships.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Yeah. Actually, I can.” I laugh, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “But I’d like that. I need to know where you are for my own sanity because, right now, it feels like you’re in the fucking walls.”
She takes a step closer, tilting her chin as if she’s bracing for a fight she already knows I won’t back down from.
“I need you to remove the cameras.”
“Not yet.”
Her expression hardens. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not living there with you yet, and I need to be able to see you.”
“You can call me.”
“It’s not enough.”
“You know I can’t live like that, Phoenix.”
“And I can’t live in the dark,” I fire back. “You know that. So what do we do?”
“If you want me to trust you and let you in, then you have to let me breathe.”
“It’s not about controlling you. I don’t want that.
” I turn away from her and stare out at the city—lights are scattered like fire below us, so far beneath us that it feels like we’re the only two people up here in the clouds.
“I don’t want to take anything from you.
I just need to know you’re okay. I need to have eyes on you when I start to—”
She gasps behind me, cutting off whatever the hell I was just saying, and I freeze mid-sentence before whirling around to face her.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I know exactly what she’s seen—the physical proof of how far gone I’ve always been for her. I’d hoped she wouldn’t see it yet, not when she was finally letting those walls crack open for me.
But here we fucking are.
I don’t flinch. If anything, I stand a little taller because there’s no shame in loving her the way I do. This is who I am, and I’ll own it with my full chest.
“Turn around, Phoenix,” she demands.
I move slowly, my arms falling slightly away from my sides as I turn, allowing the shirtless expanse of my back to be laid bare before her.
The wings stretch wide across my shoulder blades, bold black lines that are darker near my spine and fade as they reach outward, the feathers curling and twisting at the edges like they're caught mid-burn.
I feel Shannen before she touches me, but when she does, when her fingertips finally make contact with my skin, my entire body tenses.
“Phoenix wings…” she breathes out. “My phoenix wings.”
Of course she recognizes them, considering they came from her hand first.
“Yeah. Yours.”
“When?”
“When we were in Indiana.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Of course I still have it,” I answer, turning just enough to catch her eyes over my shoulder. “I know how much you love it.”
“Then why did you steal it?” Her jaw goes tight, and I can see the hurt flaring in her eyes.
“Because those wings were always meant for me, and I wanted them on my skin.”
I refuse to apologize because when it comes to her, I don’t do halfway, and I sure as hell won’t ask for permission to love her the way I need to.
“Jesus, Phoenix. When the hell did you take it?”
“Baby…” I reach for her, and the glare she throws me could peel the flesh from my bones.
She looks one second away from digging her nails into my skin and ripping the entire tattoo off my back.
“Fine.” I lift both palms in the universal sign of bullshit surrender, even though we both know I don’t surrender shit. “It was when I drove you to the hotel.”
Confusion flickers through her anger, just long enough to make her pause. “What?”