Chapter 16
Shannen
We’re drenched. My clothes are plastered to my skin.
My hair drips into my eyes, and every breath fogs the space between us.
But he still hasn’t let me go, not since he stood up on that rooftop with me wrapped around him.
He carried me all the way here, and I know exactly which apartment is his now.
When he pushes the door open, I don’t look around. There’s no point. I can’t concentrate on anything when his hands are already on me, sliding over rain-soaked fabric like he’s memorizing what I feel like when I’m wet and wanting.
My mouth finds his neck, and I kiss him hard enough to mark, pressing my lips to his skin, needing to leave proof that I was here.
He hisses—not in pain but in approval.
“Fuck,” he growls against my hair. “Do that again. Mark me. Make me bleed—I don’t care. Just don’t stop touching me.”
I bite down, sucking his skin between my teeth until I taste salt and rain and him.
We reach his bedroom, and he lowers me carefully until my feet touch the floor beside his bed.
“Tell me. I need you to say it.” Wet hands cradle my face, his eyes scanning mine like he’ll find the truth there or die trying. “Please, baby, I need you to… I can’t—”
“I’ve always belonged to you in one way or another, Phoenix.” The words come out breathless as I step forward and press my hand over his heart, right where it’s been beating my name for years. “And this never stopped being mine, did it?”
“Never,” he rasps.
“This isn’t just sex. It could never be just sex with you.” I force myself to stay steady when all I want is to fold into him. “While we figure this out, while I’m learning how to process it and how to be with you—because I know you get it, you know this is a lot—I promise it’ll only be us.”
“Just don’t leave,” he pleads, and it tears through me.
I rest my forehead against his chest, curling my fingers into the front of his soaked shirt.
“I’m not leaving. I need you to know I’m not running.” I tip my head back to look up at him, and for the first time, he looks terrified of wanting me. “I’m yours, Phoenix. Not just in the dark but in the light too.”
I step out of his arms, letting my coat slide from my shoulders and pool at my feet in a wet heap.
My fingers hook into the hem of my shirt, and I tug it up and over my head, the fabric clinging to my damp skin.
I shiver when the air hits, raising goose bumps along my arms, but it barely registers, not when Phoenix is looking at me like that.
My shoes come off next, then my jeans, and I’m left standing in front of him in nothing but a dark-purple lace set I chose for him, matching the flowers he sent me, because I wanted him to know I’ve been thinking about this.
His chest heaves as he takes me in, and I step toward him. I peel away his clothes—his shirt first, dragging it up and over his head, revealing ink-marked skin I want to trace with my tongue.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.
My hands run across his body, and I press a kiss to his chest before lacing my fingers with his.
“You’re beautiful, Phoenix.”
I lift his arm so I can run my lips over the dark lines he inked on himself when he wanted me from a distance, sealing them to his skin with gentle kisses so he knows he never has to do this to himself again.
I move into his body, and his fingertips trail down my spine until they reach my bra clasp.
He fumbles with it for a second, and I feel him exhale shakily against my hair when it finally comes undone.
The straps fall down my shoulders so slowly it’s almost torture, and his eyes hold mine, searching my face like he’s looking for any sign that I’ll change my mind.
“You feel—” He groans, his hands sliding up to cup my breasts, his thumbs circling my nipples before pinching them between his fingers. “Tell me you’re real, baby. I’ve had you in my head like this for so long.”
“I’m right here, Phoenix.”
We stare at each other for long seconds before he hoists me into his arms, my legs wrapping around him again just so he can lay me down on his bed. His mouth crashes into mine, kissing me breathless while he kicks off whatever clothes are still clinging to him. Then—holy hell—I feel him.
He rolls his hips and drags his tongue from my mouth down my jaw, my throat, and along my collarbone until he reaches the valley between my breasts.
He pauses there for a moment, his mouth hovering over my racing heart as if he’s listening for his name in every frantic beat, refusing to move until he finds it.
Soft kisses trail down my body until he finds the dip of my navel, his tongue swirling slow circles before his teeth scrape over my hip bone.
He bites down hard enough that I’m already obsessing over the bruise it’ll leave, and I can’t wait to press my fingers into it tomorrow just to remember the way he’s finally marked me after years of marking himself.
When he reaches the purple lace clinging to me, he goes completely still. He just stares, and even though I’m practically floating off the bed, my hips tilting toward him, begging him to touch me—I force myself to give him this moment because I know how much this matters to him.
“Baby…” he says breathlessly, staring at me after slipping my panties off. I know I’m wet, and I know that’s what has him captivated.
“Phoenix, please… I need you close.”
He lowers himself slowly, bracing his arms on either side of my head, caging me in. My whole body is wound tight, but his is shaking, and all I want is to pull him close and hold him there.
“Are you sure?” I ask because this is the moment he’s built entire years around, and I need to know that this is enough. That it’s everything he’d imagined. That he’s ready.
“You’re mine?”
“Only yours.”
“Then I’m sure.”
He leans in, his forehead pressing against mine, and I feel the weight of his cock at my entrance.
We don’t talk about protection because the thought of anything separating us feels wrong. I want him bare, raw, and filling me so deep I forget there was ever a before this. If this is happening, I need all of him.
He reaches down, and I feel the tremor run through him, his muscles tight and shaking as he wraps his hand around himself.
“Hey,” I whisper, threading my fingers into his hair, pulling his mouth back to mine. “Breathe, I’ve got you.”
His breath punches out against my lips like I just let the air back into his lungs, and the second I kiss him again, I feel the tension drain from his body as he settles into us.
When he nudges forward, the head of his cock presses against my entrance. We both go still, and his eyes squeeze shut like he needs a second to catch his breath.
“Look at me, Phoenix.” I reach up and grip his jaw, forcing his eyes open. “I want you to remember every second of this. I want you to see me seeing you. I need you to feel me feeling you.”
Those silver eyes sparkle like stars, his lips parted as pleasure ripples through him every time he sinks another inch into me.
“You feel… You feel… fuck.”
He shakes his head, unable to find words, and his lips lower to mine. He kisses me and kisses me while he pulls back and starts to move, groaning through every thrust.
“Oh god, Phoenix. Keep going, baby.”
“Never stop doing that,” he growls against my lips, his cock driving into me harder now, faster, hitting the spot inside me he found so easily with his fingers. “Never stop calling me baby.”
He picks up speed, wrapping an arm around my body to lift me slightly, and angling me so he can get deeper.
“I’m—oh god, you feel so fucking good. You’re gonna make me come, baby.”
I chant his name, over and over, as wave after wave of pleasure crashes through me in an orgasm so intense it leaves me shaking beneath him.
Phoenix drives into me one final time before he stills, slamming his mouth to mine as he pulses inside me.
We’re both gasping for air, our faces inches apart, his forehead damp with sweat. Our eyes lock, and in that split second, we both feel that soul-deep shift that says you can’t unfuck someone who just rewired your entire existence.
My time of wondering whether I can do this or not is over, because the thought of him ever directing all this love, all this need and desire, at anyone other than me is something I could never survive.
And for a moment, I get lost in what could’ve been.
What if I’d said no?
What if he’d given all of this to someone else?
The thought alone is poison in my veins.
Because the idea of him touching someone else the way he just touched me—or loving someone with this kind of violent, all-consuming devotion—destroys me.
There’s no surviving that alternate universe. And that’s when it hits me that I’m not the balance to his madness. I’m not the light to his dark or the calm to his storm, or any of those lies people tell themselves about toxic love.
I’m his mirror image.
I'm exactly what he is.
Just as unhinged.
Just as obsessed.
So I kiss him again, harder this time, just to make sure he remembers, down to his bones, who he belongs to. Because this isn’t infatuation. It devoured infatuation, spat it out without a second thought, and kept going.
“You’re mine,” I whisper against his mouth. “Tell me.”
“Yours,” he breathes out, and his hands tighten on me. “Always fucking yours, Shannen.”
“Mine,” I murmur, dragging my nails down his back.
“There she is, my beautiful, possessive girl. Took you long enough to come back to me.”
“I’m sorry we lost so much time.”
His head drops against my chest. I wrap my arms around him, my fingers threading through his hair, hoping that if I hold him tighter, I can erase everything we never got to have before this moment—the silence, the distance, the pain we buried instead of facing, the torture he put himself through alone.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and he tilts his face toward mine, chin resting on my chest, silver eyes hazy like he hasn’t quite come back to his body yet. “Was that…?”
“It was everything. It was more than everything, and fuck… when can we do it again because that was over way too fast?”
I brush his hair back from his forehead, and the smile that crosses his face nearly stops my heart. It’s entirely too beautiful for this world—boyish in a way I haven’t seen since we were kids.
I laugh under my breath, but the sound dies as he lifts himself and looks down between my thighs at the mess we made.
“You’re covered in me,” he says, and the pride and possession in his voice send heat flooding through me all over again.
His eyes suddenly snap up to mine, darker now with renewed hunger, and I squeal, because in the next breath, he flips us until I’m straddling him.
“Phoenix!” I laugh, bracing my palms on his chest.
“Do you remember everything I said to you that night in the hotel room? When you had me tied to the bed? I want it all. I want everything.”
So I give it to him.