10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Phoenix
The second my hands close around Willow’s hips, I know I’m fucked. Not because I shouldn’t be touching her.
Fuck that. I’ve wanted my hands on her since I was seventeen and dumb enough to think a hard cock wasn’t a warning sign.
No, I’m fucked because as soon as some other asshole gets too close to her, something ugly wakes up inside of me. It’s not jealousy. Jealousy is for men who don’t spend their lives getting exactly what they want. This is irritation.
Habit. Possession. Protection. Boredom. Pick your favorite fucking lie.
Apparently, the sight of Willow laughing at another man makes me stupid enough to cross rooms, ruin conversations, and drag her body against mine in the middle of a fucking nightclub.
Which is ridiculous.
So why the fuck does the idea of some other guy getting too close feel like someone putting fingerprints on my favorite guitar?
Which is exactly why every ugly thought in my head ends with her.
She moves again, and my breath catches in a way that pisses me off.
She has no fucking idea what she’s doing to me. Or perhaps she does.
Maybe that’s why her spine arches a little. Why the back of her head brushes my shoulder as if she can sense exactly how close I am to losing the last shred of common sense God forgot to take away from me years ago.
I lower my mouth to her ear because honesty terrifies the shit out of me and filth has always come easily.
“Jesus Christ, Wills,” I murmur against her. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
She shivers, and my cock gets harder.
I almost laugh at how completely fucked I am.
I’ve had women on their knees. I’ve had women in dressing rooms, hotel rooms, and bathrooms with broken locks and lighting so bad it qualified as a crime scene. None of them ever had the power to make me feel this fucking stupid.
My hand tightens on her hip.
“Fucking look at you,” I whisper close to her ear. “Walking out here dressed like this, moving those hips, making every asshole in the room stare.”
I brush my mouth against the side of her neck. “Let me fuck you, Wills.” The words come out low and filthy, dragged straight from somewhere ugly enough to sound true. “Let me have what we both want.”
She freezes for half a second.
That should be my chance to step back. It should be the moment when I prove there is one decent bone buried somewhere beneath the ego, the applause, the women, the fame, and twenty-three years of making terrible fucking choices.
The second she turns in my arms, I know there isn’t.
Her eyes lock onto mine, wide and bright beneath the strobes. Her mouth is parted. Her cheeks are flushed as hair falls around her face in soft, messy waves, and fuck me, she’s beautiful.
She always has been. She walked into this club in that fucking dress and I forgot half the room existed. Forgot the women throwing themselves at me. Forgot my own goddamn name for a second.
Every asshole in here noticed her and I fucking hated every one of them for having eyes.
Christ, she’s hot. Enough to make smart men do stupid shit. And here I am, my hands on her hips and my common sense left somewhere back at the fucking booth.
I know I should stop this. I should step back. Smile. Make a joke. Ruin the moment before it ruins me.
Then she says my name. “Phoenix.”
I cup the back of her neck and kiss her.
I take her mouth because asking politely is ridiculous after I’ve spent half my fucking life wanting her and the other half pretending I didn’t.
She kisses me back as if she’s been starving too. Her hands clench in my shirt, pulling me closer.
She tastes of gloss, heat, and every bad decision I have tried not to make since I was seventeen.
We kissed once before. One stupid, innocent kiss, back when my biggest problems were shitty grades and trying to make my hair look cool.
This is not that. There is nothing innocent about how I take her mouth. How she kisses me back. Or how one fucking kiss is enough to send my brain and my cock into a fistfight neither of them intends to lose.
This Willow has her tongue in my mouth and her nails digging into my chest. I am so fucking gone I can barely think past the need to get her somewhere private before some asshole with eyes ruins my mood.
I break the kiss just enough to breathe against her mouth.
“Jesus Christ, Willow.” My voice sounds wrecked and it fucking annoys me. I brush my mouth against hers again. “Let me make you feel so fucking good.”
Her lashes flutter and the tiny crack in her control nearly finishes me off.
She doesn’t say yes. She doesn’t need to. Her mouth finds mine again, rougher this time as her tongue slides against mine. That is all the permission I need.
I pull back and take her hand in mine before either of us can find enough common sense to stop it.
I push through the crowd, her fingers locked around mine. My blood is pounding so loudly it drowns out the music.
People move as I cut through the crowd. They always do. Perhaps it’s the fame or maybe it’s the expression on my face telling every poor bastard in my path that tonight is not the night to test me.
Right now, anyone stupid enough to get between Willow and me deserves whatever fucking consequences that decision brings.
We pass by the VIP section and Cruz notices the two of us.
He’s just back from disappearing with some chick who fluttered her lashes at him and laughed at all the bullshit that spilled from his mouth.
He’s sprawled across the booth with a drink in his hand, looking every inch the arrogant bastard he enjoys being, but the second he spots Willow’s hand in mine, his grin slips.
Not completely. Just enough to sharpen his eyes. Enough for the biggest manwhore I know to suddenly appear almost sober.
That lands somewhere behind my ribs. I ignore it anyway.
Jett is on his feet before we even reach the booth. His gaze catches Willow’s swollen lips before dropping to my hand wrapped around hers. It then settles on me.
“Phoenix.”
One word. But Jett has always been annoyingly talented at making a single word seem like a whole conversation.
I keep walking.
Jax is halfway out of the booth, his easy grin gone for the first time all night. “Wills.”
Willow’s fingers tighten around mine.
That should stop me too, because they all know. Not just what I’m about to do.
They know how I fuck. They’re aware I take what I want and let women build castles from things I never promised them. They know there’s a graveyard behind me full of soft voices, angry texts, and names I haven’t thought about in years. Women I wanted to fuck then left behind.
The woman holding my hand right now has never belonged anywhere near that list.
They’ve spent years telling me to stop being an asshole to Willow. To let her go. To let her find somebody who wouldn’t make a mess of her. Who will love her the way she deserves to be loved.
They know the dynamics of what I am about to do.
For one second, I see the future waiting for me, its teeth bared.
Silence where songs used to be. Lyrics that never get finished. Jett, Jax, and Cruz looking at me with the kind of disappointment they don’t bother hiding when you finally fuck up something too important to laugh off.
For one second, I see it all. The band. The songs.
Then Willow’s fingers tighten around mine and every noble thought in my head gets on its knees and dies.
I keep walking.
Tomorrow can choke on the guilt. Tomorrow can clean up the wreckage. Because tonight, I’m fucking her.
The hallway off the main floor is packed with staff, drunk girls gossiping, some asshole yelling into his phone over the music, and two idiots having the least interesting argument in human history outside the bathrooms.
There are too many people. Not enough privacy to fuck her the way I want to.
Willow pulls on my arm, dragging me back to her mouth.
I groan into the kiss and crowd her against the nearest stretch of wall, trapping her in. Her hands disappear beneath my shirt, her fingers dragging over my ribs, and my cock throbs hard enough to make me swear against her mouth.
I have had women under me. Over me. Bent over hotel furniture where I fucked them senseless and somehow one touch from Willow has my cock acting as though it just crawled out of puberty. Frankly, after the miles I have put on this cock, I expected the bastard to show a little professionalism.
My mouth claims hers with all the greed God gave me, and by the time her head tips back against the wall and she breathes my name, something dark and smug rolls through me.
Mine.
Fuck romance. Romance is for men with flowers, clean intentions, and the patience to wait three dates for pussy.
I am not that man.
I am the asshole who has spent years watching other men breathe too close to her, imagining how their faces would look after I introduced them to a wall. And now she is here. Under my hands. Mouth open. Nails in my skin. Saying my fucking name like she has any idea what it does to me.
She doesn’t.
I bite the side of her neck instead, just enough to make her gasp and clutch my shirt tighter.
One little sound from Willow and my cock goes stupid, hard and greedy and ready to embarrass us both.
A staff door opens down the hall and a man steps out carrying a crate of empty bottles.
I pull back because if I keep my mouth on her for one more second, I’m going to forget about doors, people, laws, and every other boring little invention standing between me and getting my cock inside her.
The door swings slowly behind him, but not quite catching.
And there it is. A fucking invitation.
I grab Willow’s hand and pull her down the hall. The guy looks up as we pass, his eyes flicking once toward us before he decides whatever the hell is going on here is none of his business.
I shove the door open and pull us inside, making damn sure it closes behind us.
The room beyond is small, dim, and packed with stacked liquor boxes, spare bar towels, a metal shelf, and a narrow counter shoved under a cracked mirror. It smells of lemons, dust, cleaning spray, and spilled alcohol.