Chapter 35 #3
His right fist wrapped around his cock and he began to stroke himself. My knees grew weak. “Phoenix,” I moaned.
“You like what you see?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are you wet for me again, Wildflower?”
I nodded mesmerized by what he was doing.
“Take me, Phoenix. I need you inside me,” I urged.
My words were met with a growl as he guided my legs around his waist. He took me against the wall.
My back chaffed by the drywall a little, but I didn’t care.
All I could focus on was the feel of him moving inside me.
Thrust after hungry thrust, he pumped inside me, guttural groans escaping us both as he drove deeper inside me, filling me, hitting all the right spots.
Colors sparked my vision as I fell over the edge again. Phoenix followed me, grunting and spilling inside me as I bounced on his cock, prolonging my own release. He used the wall for support as he held me up, both of us breathless.
“Shower?” he asked, his cool breath skimming my cheek.
“Bed,” I said, because this, here, with him unguarded and hungry and careful, was everything.
He carried me the last few steps, set me down on the king mattress that smelled like cedar and him, and climbed over me with a patience that almost undid me.
We kissed slowly in his bed, the sheets felt soft against my skin.
Phoenix’s fingers trailed every inch of my naked body, he kissed me as his finger travelled down to my clit, working me over again.
“I don’t think I can come a third time,” I warned, feeling lazy now.
“Oh, you can come,” he assured with determination.
It didn’t take long for me to start building again.
“You’re wet for me again,” Phoenix said victoriously, his dark eyes glowing.
“Don’t be so smug,” I joked, then he rolled my nub more and my eyes rolled to the back of my head as I moaned.
“What did you say?” he asked, his tone mocking the fact that I was building again.
“Phoenix,” I cried out.
“Do you want me inside you?” he asked.
I nodded my head. “Yes.”
His smile grew wider and he rolled on top of me, his arms bracing him so he didn’t put weight on me.
“Roll your clit. Let me watch you touch yourself,” he said. It made me smile that we were at the point in our relationship that we were exploring our wants.
“Pump your cock,” I said in response, and I watched the heat in his eyes turn to flames.
“Does it make you hot to watch me get myself off?” he asked, and I started rubbing my clit faster.
I nodded as my breathing picked up.
“Faster, Phoenix. Pump faster,” I urged him, and I watched his strong hand squeezing the base of his cock while pumping up and down. When I saw a bead of precum on his tip, I almost lost it.
“Come, Elyna, come like this with your fingers between your legs,” he said to me.
“I’m so close. I want you inside me, Phoenix,” I groaned, moving my fingers fast through my damp thighs.
“Fuck yes,” he groaned. In one smooth stroke he was inside me, thrusting hard and fast, driving me over the edge.
I gripped his back as my fingernails dug into his skin.
We were like hungry animals, screwing hard and fast. We fell over the edge together.
Him filling me over and over while I clenched around him.
We were breathless and boneless for a while.
Phoenix moved beside me and wrapped me in his arms. I knew I needed to wash up but sleep beckoned me more.
“Tomorrow, the back deck when the camera’s off,” he muttered.
I swatted him weakly and laughed. “Pervert.”
“Accurate,” he said, completely unbothered. “But only for you.”
We drifted in the kind of afterglow that doesn’t happen by accident; it was the kind you earn.
The house seemed to settle with us, the orchard sighing under a breeze.
Down the hall, the monitor’s soft hum kept pace with Braden’s sleep.
When my eyes finally closed, the fear that had ridden me for months felt small, outmatched by the man whose arms were a wall around me.
Morning came and we made coffee in our underwear, sharing one mug and smirking like thieves, before dressing properly.
While Braden babbled at the high chair, Phoenix mounted the door chime and tested the window sensors.
I tucked toys into a basket by the couch, draped a throw over the armchair, and taped our pumpkin-stand photo to the fridge.
The house absorbed us like it had been waiting.
After breakfast Phoenix and I took turns showering and getting dressed, which was lucky because by 10:00 a.m. Pierre came in through the mudroom door with a gust of cold.
“You work fast,” he said, eyeing the flattened cardboard.
He set a small black box on the counter.
“Extra chime and a portable sensor, if it shrieks, call me.”
Phoenix reached for it. “I’ll mount the chime higher,” he said.
“Then he will still find it,” Pierre replied dryly, tipping his chin toward Braden. “He is clever.”
I smiled. “Understatement.”
Pierre’s gaze softened as it landed on me. “And how is your heart?”
It took me a beat to catch his meaning. “Steadier,” I said honestly. “I keep telling myself this is temporary, and I feel relief and… something else.”
“Both can be true,” he said, opening the sensor kit with surgeon’s precision. “Becket will text when he has news from Route 12.”
We fell into quiet work. Pierre adjusted sensors; Phoenix wired the porch light; I handled the softer tasks. By the time Eric swung in with a bag that smelled like butter and sin, the house felt lived in.
“Crullers and cheese buns,” Eric announced. “If you don’t eat them, I’ll assume you’re ungrateful.”
“You don’t have to get to work?” Phoenix asked.
“I’m pretending I don’t, and that’s funny coming from you,” Eric said which made sense, considering Phoenix hadn’t worked a full day in days.
He’d said it was fine, that Cooper and Dominic could run things without him, but I needed to work.
I had to keep making money, even if I was living here now.
Eric’s eyes flicked from the crib in the side room to me.
The teasing softened. “Looks good in here.”
“Feels good,” I said and meant it.
“Then it’s perfect.” He slid the pastries toward me. “Eat before my brother steals them.”
Braden was walking around and holding on to furniture.
I had called the daycare yesterday and today to say he wasn’t coming in.
Pierre and Eric hung out a little longer before leaving.
They said Asher had gone on a trip to the Caribbean on a last-minute deal, which sounded typical for Asher.
He liked to work and travel. The day went by in a lazy blur of us hanging out in our new home.
Phoenix grabbed lunch from the brewery and brought it back to the house, and we settled in and watched a movie. Everything felt so domestic.
By dusk the windows dimmed to pewter. We ate an early dinner, lights low and golden, the house humming with ordinary sounds. When Pierre returned through the mudroom again, without knocking, my heart dropped into my pants. He was in full-on director mode.
“Patrol sighted both vehicles again,” he said. “Same plates. One near the river road, the other by the old sugar shack.”
Phoenix set his cup down, jaw clenching. “They’re testing the perimeter.”
“Yes.” Pierre’s voice was calm steel. “Becket’s team will stay on them. No approach unless provoked. But I want you both alert.”
I glanced to the glass. The motion light blinked once, then steadied. “Are we safe here?” I asked, hating the tremor.
Pierre’s answer didn’t waver. “Yes. You’re surrounded by eyes that do not blink.”
The quiet stretched taut and thin. Phoenix walked over to me and set a hand on my shoulder. “We keep living our life,” he said. “We don’t give them what they want.”
“What do they want?”
“To make you run,” he said. “To scare us.”
I straightened. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”
Pierre’s mouth curved. “Bon. That is the Thorne way. I think it may be money they want from us. We heard Riley told them we were one of the richer families in town. Odd that they aren’t scared to bully the director of the police.
Make sure you have the portable sensor on you at all times,” he said, looking at Phoenix.
Pierre’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, and then hung up.
“They’ve turned back toward town,” he said. “No incidents.”
Relief unspooled slowly. Phoenix locked the door, checked the windows, then came to stand beside me at the counter. Outside, the motion light caught a few early flakes drifting down, each one bright before it disappeared into the dark.
I slid my hand into his. “Do you think this will end?”
He squeezed once. “Yeah. Because we’re going to end it.”
I believed him.
He held me in a way that steadied me in his arms. In his house I felt safe, surrounded by warm wood and soft light, my son asleep down the hall. Even with the bad guys circling the town, for the first time I didn’t feel like prey. I felt like part of something that would not break.