25. Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“You should go back to bed,” he says.
I almost laugh and open my eyes. “You came in here to tell me that?”
“I came in here because I heard you.”
“And now?”
His eyes move down to my mouth and then back up to my eyes. “Now I’m trying to be smart.”
“You hate being smart.”
“I fucking despise it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re standing there in my shirt, bare-legged, with a mouth I’ve spent all day trying not to stare at.”
Heat rushes through me so fast that my fingers go loose around the glass. I set it down before I drop it.
“It’s not your shirt.”
“It has my band on it.”
“A band that plays my songs.”
His gaze darkens. “Well, I guess it’s definitely yours.”
A beat.
“I keep wanting to touch you,” he says, his voice rough enough to scrape.
He brushes a strand of hair back from my face. His fingers barely touch my cheek and my eyes close before I give them permission to.
His thumb grazes my jaw like he knows he has all night and wants me to know it too.
“Wills,” he says.
My name in his mouth has always been a problem I don’t have a clean word for.
“Fuck,” he says, dragging it out of him like it costs something. “You have no fucking idea how badly I want you.”
My stomach clenches hard because the last time he touched me, I let myself believe it meant something. That maybe this time was different. That I wasn’t just the girl he came back to when everything else went quiet.
His lips brush mine.
Not a kiss. Not yet. Just his mouth touching mine like a question he isn’t sure he should ask. There is so much restraint and it’s so much more dangerous than urgency because it means he is choosing this. One breath at a time.
His breath catches against my lips, and the sound goes straight through me. Heat spreads from the center of my chest and moves south fast, and I know I’m completely screwed.
His forehead drops to mine and neither of us moves.
“Tell me to fucking stop,” he says, rough and quiet. “And I will.”
I close my eyes. “Phoenix.”
“Wills.”
His mouth comes back to mine.
This time, I meet him. Every sensible thought I have dissolves on contact.
Logic just… leaves. And the part of me that knows better, the part that sat in group sessions and talked about patterns, self-destruction, and the difference between what we want and what we need, is no match for Phoenix’s mouth at three in the morning.
I know I shouldn’t kiss him, but I do it anyway.
The kiss deepens slowly, as if both of us are afraid that one wrong move will bring the whole ugly past crashing into the room.
His hand tightens on my waist, then immediately loosens as he checks himself.
My fingers curl into his shirt, and I drag him closer because if he wants to be careful, that’s fine, but I’m done pretending my body doesn’t know exactly where it wants him.
He groans against my mouth. The sound is rough, hungry, and barely controlled. It goes through me like a live wire.
Phoenix’s mouth moves over mine with heat and want. His tongue slides against mine, and my body wakes up so fast it’s embarrassing.
His fingers thread through my hair. He pulls my head back and I gasp.
He smirks against my lips. “God, I love that sound. I want to hear every filthy version of it before this night is done.”
Heat detonates in my pussy, dragging a pulse through me that makes my thighs press together before I can stop them.
He pulls back enough to speak against my mouth. “Tell me to stop if this isn’t what you want.”
I open my eyes. “I’m tired of telling myself I don’t want you.”
“That’s not an answer.” His jaw clenches.
“It is.”
“No.” His thumb moves at my waist—a small stroke that is somehow more obscene than a hand between my thighs. “Not tonight. Not with this. I need the words, Wills.”
This man who has wrecked me, carried me, sung my damage to stadiums, and slept on my shitty couch, is now asking me for the words as if they matter.
“I want you,” I say, my voice shaking enough to make me hate myself. “I just need you not to make me hate myself for it after.”
Phoenix goes still and his hand tightens at my waist. “You were never the mistake. I was a coward and I made you pay for it because wanting you scared the shit out of me.”
My breathing stalls in my chest and stays there.
He leans in, his mouth closer to mine but not taking it yet. “I’m not running from you tonight.”
He kisses me again. Slow. Deep. Like a promise that he means this time.
His hands slide down my sides, unhurried, as if he has decided tonight to take his time with me, whether I can handle it or not.
They stop at the hem of my shirt.
He pulls back to look at me.
I nod before he can ask.
“Words, Wills.”
Damn him for making me say it. Damn me for how my body clenches when he does.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I want this.”
“Good,” he says, his voice rough and filthy. “Because I am hanging on by a fucking thread.”
He pulls the shirt up over my head and drops it to the floor.
His eyes drop to my tits and they stay there.
“Christ.” The word comes out wrecked. “You’re fucking beautiful.”
His hands come up and cup me, thumbs dragging slowly over my nipples. The sensation shoots straight down my spine and lands between my thighs.
I gasp which causes him to smirk.
His mouth drops to the side of my neck, teeth dragging over my skin with enough pressure to make my pussy clench.
He is not kissing me. He is leaving evidence.
His thumbs keep rolling over my nipples and I hate how easily he plays with my body.
As if every nerve belongs to him. As if my pussy did not learn a single goddamn lesson the last time he had me this desperate.
“Phoenix,” I say, already halfway to begging, which is exactly the sort of shit his ego doesn’t need.
“Yeah?” His mouth moves up my throat toward my jaw. “What do you need, Wills?”
Cocky fucker knows exactly what I need.
“Take me to my room,” I breathe.
He pulls back and looks at me. Dark eyes. Smirked mouth. His cock hard against his sweatpants, making no attempt to hide what I have done to him.
He kisses me again—dirty and deep—and walks me backward out of the kitchen, his hands locked around my waist and his mouth owning mine.
He steers me down the hallway as if we have always known how to do this. As if every fucked-up version of us was only killing time until we finally ended up here.
My back hits the wall. Phoenix doesn’t apologize. He uses it to his advantage.
His body crowds mine, hips pinning me to the plaster while his hard cock grinds between my thighs through his sweats. One slow drag. Before another. Filthy pressure exactly where my pussy is already aching for him.
A rough sound tears from his throat. “Fuck, Wills.”
His forehead presses against mine for half a second before he rolls his hips again, practically fucking me through our clothes.
My nails dig into his shoulders.
His mouth moves to my throat, biting, sucking, breathing hard against my skin as one hand slides up my ribs and closes over my tit.
“Feel what you do to me?” he mutters, dragging his cock against me again. “Fucking impossible to hide this shit around you.”
He pulls back before I can come apart against the wall and walks me the rest of the way down the hallway to my bedroom.
Before we step inside, he pauses. His eyes hold mine, dark and hungry, cocky enough to know I am already halfway gone.
“Last chance,” he says.
For one second, I actually try to make the smart decision.
The one where I remember how unpredictable Phoenix gets once he has what he wants. How easily he can fuck me senseless and walk away, leaving me to sort through the damage with shaking hands, no dignity, and three new songs I never asked to write.
I know exactly what he is capable of doing.
That is the fucking problem.
I know how his cock feels inside me. How hard he fucks when he stops pretending he has control. How good he is at turning every warning in my head into useless noise until there is nothing left but him, the dark, and the sound of my own voice saying things I will think about for months afterward.
Every single warning alarm I have is going off. And every single part of my body wants him more than it wants to protect itself from what comes after this.
I step in front of him and tilt my face up toward his. “Shut the fuck up, Phoenix.”
His mouth curves into a satisfied grin as he walks me inside and kicks the door shut behind him.