6. Chapter Six #2
She should look harder. I have never been good at protecting people from the things that make me feel better.
“You don’t have to,” I tell her. It almost sounds responsible until I ruin it. “But you might finally stop mentally correcting every fucking sentence that comes out of my mouth.”
“Most of them need it.”
“Then consider this a night off.”
Willow studies me and those sharp, beautiful eyes search my face as though I have ever kept anything useful there. Then her gaze drops to my open palm.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“By me.”
“Usually before breakfast.”
Her fingers brush my skin as she takes the pill from the bag. The contact lasts less than a second, but it hits harder than Mickey’s mouth around my cock.
I bury that thought before it can turn into something even more fucked up.
Willow tips her head back, swallows, and reaches for my drink. I hand it over. Her lipstick leaves a faint mark on the rim and all I can think about is seeing that same color smeared around my cock.
Heat pulls low and dirty in my stomach.
Fuck.
This is Willow. I shouldn’t be thinking about dragging that dress over her hips and whispering enough filth into her ear to find out how wet her pussy gets for me.
But I want to know what she sounds like when she comes.
Whether she would bite my shoulder to protect her pride or moan my name loud enough to destroy it.
How it would feel to push my cock inside her and fuck every clever argument from her head until the only thing Willow remembers being annoyed about is that I didn’t fuck her sooner.
The thought rips through me and leaves my cock aching with six years of wanting what I have never let myself touch.
That is the part that pisses me off most. I have wanted to fuck Willow since I was seventeen.
Back when I was young enough to pretend a hard cock was just a hard cock and not the beginning of a six-year problem.
I shove the thought down before it gets teeth and take the glass back. I drink from the same spot where her mouth was because apparently I enjoy making the want hurt worse.
The party keeps moving around us.
Cruz laughs as the red-lipped girl whispers something into his ear.
Jax knocks back another shot and tells the woman with her hand down his jeans that he has enough stamina to fuck everyone in the room and still make breakfast. Damon answers a call near the bar, his gaze flicking over to us once before sliding away again.
Jett stays near Jax, chicks hanging off him by the dozen, watching.
The suite blurs by degrees. Not enough to lose myself, but enough to stop giving a fuck about where I end and the music begins.
The bass turns thick and warm beneath my skin.
Hard edges soften. Light spills gold across the room and the knot behind my ribs finally loosens its grip.
Someone laughs too loudly but the sound dissolves before it reaches me.
Willow stays beside me.
Soon, she is the only thing I am tracking.
Her knee brushes mine, accidental at first. Bare skin against the rip in my jeans.
It should mean fuck all. The pressure is barely there, but my body feels every millimetre.
My cock hardens as if she has spread those thighs and invited me between them instead of resting one innocent knee against mine.
I keep my arm stretched along the back of the couch, my fingers close to her hair.
Honey-brown strands spill over her shoulder and one boot rests against the table leg.
Her dress has ridden up, exposing enough thigh to make me wonder whether she is wearing anything beneath it and how quickly I could find out.
Every man in this suite has likely noticed. I want to break their fucking teeth for looking.
Willow tips her head back against the couch and looks at the ceiling. “The chandelier is ugly.”
I tilt my head up to look at it. “It probably cost more than our first paycheck from the label.”
I shift slightly, pretending to get comfortable, and my knee presses more firmly against hers.
She doesn’t move away.
“It’s still ugly,” Willow says.
“Money can’t buy taste. Look at Cruz.”
Across the room, Cruz raises his middle finger without turning around because the annoying idiot can be half-high and halfway into a bad decision and still hear his name from twenty feet away.
The woman on his lap laughs as if he has just said something brilliant. Cruz sits there with pupils blown.
Willow laughs and the sound slides under my skin before I can stop it.
I stare at her mouth for half a second too long. That’s all it would take. I could lean in and catch that laugh against my lips.
The thought hits low and dirty, but the want behind it is worse. This is not some woman from the party. This is Willow and kissing her would not be a kiss. It would be a match dropped into a room full of gasoline.
And I have always been a selfish bastard around fire.
Instead, I take another drink, hoping the alcohol might find some sense buried in my head before I lean in and do something fucking stupid to her mouth.
“You know,” I say, because apparently getting high has loosened all the bullshit I usually keep locked behind my teeth, “you were scary pretty back when we were kids.”
Willow rests her head against the cushions and looks at me. Her pupils are blown wide, deepening the brown of her eyes. The high has softened her edges without stealing them. That mouth still belongs to the woman who will call me a dick the second I earn it.
Which should take less than a minute.
The sight of her hits me hard enough to make the room shrink.
One second, bodies crowd every surface, music punches through the windows, and some groupie is dry-humping Jax within regrettable view. The next, all that noise pulls back until there is only Willow’s knee pressed against mine and those dark, beautiful eyes holding me still.
“Yeah,” I say, dragging a smirk across the truth. “Terrifying. A little honey-haired nightmare under a tree.”
There she is. The girl beneath the tree, with skinny knees and tangled hair. I remember thinking she looked as if someone had made her from sunlight and secrets.
Her mouth softens at the mention of the tree.
“What?” she asks.
“When we were kids.” The admission keeps spilling out before I can choke it back. “You were scary pretty, with all that hair and those big eyes.”
Her gaze drops, but her smile lingers—soft and private enough to make the suite tilt beneath me. Maybe it’s the drugs. Maybe it’s the week. Or maybe Willow in a black dress, with tired eyes and that mouth, is a dangerous fucking combination for a man who only wants women he never has to keep.
Her knee remains pressed against mine.
The heat from that small touch crawls higher, dragging through my veins with a lazy want. I should get up and flirt with someone else. Call Cruz over. Find another Mickey with a willing mouth and a wet pussy.
Instead, I stay.
“Did you…” She stops, biting her lip, trapping the rest of the question behind her teeth.
Fuck me. She has no idea what that does to her mouth. That little bite makes her look soft for half a second, which is dangerous because nothing about what it does to my cock is soft.
“Did I what?” I ask.
She glances at me through her lashes. “Did you ever have a crush on me?”
The words hit harder than they should. My smirk stays in place because it’s well trained. But for one suspended second, the hotel suite disappears.
I am thirteen again, gripping a guitar with aching fingers as Willow leans over my shoulder, showing me where the next line should land.
Then I’m fifteen and furious because some asshole at school made her laugh harder than I could.
And finally seventeen and drunk on cheap beer behind a venue, pretending I don’t notice how good her hair smells when she steals my jacket.
I am every version of myself who wanted her before I learnt to bury wanting inside women whose names I never planned to remember.
The answer should be easy. I could tell her that every boy had a crush on her. Make a joke about always preferring women who know better than to bring notebooks to parties.
Instead, the truth slips out.
“Yeah,” I say. “Once.”
Her eyes stay locked on mine, and for one terrifying second, I see the real question behind them. Not the one she asked, but the one trying to figure out when I stopped wanting her and whether I ever fucking did.
My chest pulls tight.
Fuck this and the stupid ache blooming beneath my ribs as though it has any right to live there.
I am Phoenix fucking Stone. I don’t sit on couches, confessing childhood crushes to the woman who writes my best songs while the room spins into a scandal.
I don’t hand anyone a blade and show them exactly where to push it.
Especially not Willow.
So I do what I do best.
My mouth curves into the smirk I have used to escape every feeling worth fearing. It’s cruel enough to pass as confidence.
“Then you got bossy and ruined it.”
Willow laughs. It’s quick. A neat little exit she offers both of us because she knows me and knowing me has always meant learning to step around the wreckage.
But I see the hurt flash through her eyes before she lowers her gaze.
It’s small enough for anyone else to miss and sharp enough to cut straight through the high.
She hides it beneath a laugh and that careless tilt of her mouth, because Willow Hart has always known how to take whatever I do to her and make the bleeding look like boredom.
Relief eases the pressure beneath my ribs.
And that’s the ugliest fucking thing.