26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Phoenix
I’m not nervous.
I don’t get nervous. I’ve fucked women who scream my name in stadiums, hotel rooms, green rooms, bathrooms, tour buses, hallways, and against walls in cities I can’t remember the names of.
I know what wanting looks like. I know what lust smells like when it hits the air.
I know how to make a woman forget her own name if she’s stupid enough to give me the chance.
I know exactly what my cock is doing and why.
But this is Willow and that changes everything.
Willow stands there without her shirt on, her beautiful tits out, in the dim light of her bedroom. Her hair is a mess, her mouth swollen from mine, and her eyes are full of want.
It makes every cheap, easy fuck I have ever walked away from feel exactly like that. Cheap and easy. Nothing at all like this.
She watches me watching her, and I’m pretty sure she has no fucking idea about the power she has over me.
My cock is hard and my chest feels too tight.
For once in my life, I want to tell her I fucking love her. Not the way I love a good whiskey, a sold-out show, or the sound of my own name in a crowd. The other kind.
The kind that has been sitting in my chest since we were seventeen and I have been drinking, fucking, and performing on top of it ever since because it scared the shit out of me.
My eyes move over her, and I take my time because I’m an asshole, not an idiot. Bare shoulders. Beautiful tits begging for my fucking mouth. Soft skin. The rise and fall of her chest telling me she is not as steady as she pretends to be.
My hands clench at my sides. If I touch her right now, I’m going to tell her everything. And she deserves better than a confession that comes with my hands on her tits.
She notices. Of course she fucking notices.
Willow has always noticed the things I try to bury beneath a smirk. That’s what makes her dangerous. That’s what makes her the only person alive I have never been able to bullshit properly.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, stepping closer—slow enough that she can move if she wants. “But I’m trying really hard not to be the same prick who treats this like I deserve it.”
Her throat moves.
Fuck. I want to put my mouth there. I want to put my mouth everywhere and take my time with every inch of her until she stops waiting for me to fuck it up.
I also want to go back in time and punch myself bloody for every second I ever made her think her body were easy to take and hard to keep.
I reach for her, and when my hands settle at her waist, she inhales.
I bend and kiss her. Not softly, because I don’t know how to want her that way. My mouth fits over hers with heat, hunger, and every fucked-up thing I’ve been carrying since she walked through those rehab doors and left me outside, learning the difference between staying and standing still.
She lets out a small moan.
My hands clench before I force them to relax.
Slow down, asshole. For once in your fucking life, learn the word.
I walk her backward to the bed, my mouth never leaving hers. Her fingers dig into my shirt. When the backs of her knees hit the mattress, I catch her before she can fall. One hand at her back, pulling her into me instead of letting her go down.
The movement draws a breath from her that does things to my cock I know I won’t survive.
“Fuck,” I swear against her lips. “You have no fucking idea what that sound does to me.”
“I have an idea,” she whispers, smiling.
“Not even close, Wills.” I retreat slightly to observe her. “Not even fucking close to understanding.”
I lower her onto the bed.
Not drop. Not throw her down the way the old me would have, so drunk on heat and ego that I would have mistaken urgency for proof. I lower her as if she matters.
She lies back, hair spread across the pillow, chest rising hard, eyes locked on me.
That sight should come with a fucking warning.
Willow on her bed, half-naked, wearing nothing but black panties, looking up at me like she wants me and knows exactly how much damage wanting me can do.
My cock throbs so hard it hurts.
Good. Let it fucking hurt.
I’ve spent years taking what I wanted the second I wanted it and calling it living. Now I’m standing at the edge of this bed, trying not to fuck up the only thing that has ever actually mattered.
“You going to stand there all night?” she says.
I grab the back of my shirt and pull it over my head. Her eyes drop immediately, skimming over my chest, my stomach, the ink, the body the world keeps photographing and posting online like it belongs to anyone with a screen and an opinion.
But the way Willow looks at me is not the same. It never has been. Willow looks and sees every scar under the performance.
Her fingers lift before she even thinks about it and I move close enough for her to reach me.
Her palms glide over my stomach, my ribs, slow enough to make every muscle in my body lock down hard.
I go still under her hands because fuck me, her touch hurts.
Because there was a night in a hospital when her hand lay limp in mine and I sat there bargaining with whoever the fuck would listen, promising to be better.
To be different. To stop being the selfish asshole I had always been if she would just open her eyes.
Her fingers trace the tattoo over my ribs.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
I gaze down at her and the grin that comes is filthy because I need something to stand behind. “That’s your fault.”
“My fault?”
“Yeah, I had a perfect ego before you got your hands on me.”
“You still have it.”
“Barely. It’s wounded.”
“Poor thing.”
“Don’t mock the ego, baby. It’s the only thing keeping me from crawling into this bed and embarrassing both of us.”
Her eyes flare at the word “baby.”
I bend down over her, placing one hand by her hip, so she is compelled to tilt her head up to me.
“I’ve been thinking about your hands on me since the first time you told me my bridge was shit.”
“It was shit and we were eighteen.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you were fucking hot when you said that.”
“Phoenix.”
“What?” I lower my mouth to the center of her chest, my lips barely touching her skin. “I’m telling you the truth now. Apparently, that’s my new annoying hobby.”
“Since when?”
“Since you.” I press my mouth there, open and hot between her tits, and sense her breath catch. “Since I realized that lying to myself about you was costing us more than I could afford.”
I kiss her ribs. The soft skin above her stomach. I work my way down, as if I have nowhere else to be. My hands slide to her hips, thumbs tracing slow circles against her skin.
She trembles beneath me.
I take a breath and remind myself that slow is the whole fucking point tonight. She deserves someone who takes his time with her for once, instead of taking what he wants and calling it connection.
I press my mouth just above the waistband of her underwear and her stomach contracts under my lips.
“Phoenix.” My name in her mouth like that should be illegal.
“Still here, Wills,” I murmur against her skin. “Not going anywhere.”
Her lips part when I hook my fingers into the waistband of her black panties and slowly slide them down. Intentionally slow because I’m an asshole and want her to experience every fucking second of it.
And then I stop halfway down her thighs. Because fuck me, the sight of her bare pussy has short-circuited every functioning part of my brain and my mouth is already moving before I have made a conscious decision about anything.
Pink, wet, and already swollen for me. Soaked through her underwear before I even got them off her. The sight of it makes my cock throb so hard I have to breathe through my teeth.
I press my mouth there.
Just once. Open and hot, like I’m tasting something I have been thinking about since the last time I had her and spent every day since pretending I hadn’t.
She gasps so hard that her whole body lifts off the bed.
“Phoenix—”
“I know.” My voice comes out completely wrecked. “Fuck, Wills.”
I press my nose against her and breathe her in, like a man who has been starved for so long and needs a second before he destroys himself on the first real thing he’s been handed. Warm and sweet and so fucking her that it does something to my chest I am not going to examine right now.
“You smell so fucking good.” I drag my lips against her pussy once more. “Going to taste even better.”
I slide her underwear the rest of the way down her legs. Taking my time. Feeling them drag over her thighs, her knees, her ankles.
I toss them onto the floor and I push her thighs apart with both my hands.
I look at her and really fucking observe. Bare, wet, and perfect. Her pussy is slick and swollen and so obviously ready for me that my mouth actually waters.
My cock is so hard it hurts, straining against my sweatpants like it has opinions about the distance between us and every single one of them is valid.
I want to fuck her so badly that my hands are shaking against her thighs.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
My mouth brushes the inside of her knee. I drag my lips along the soft skin of her inner thigh, taking my fucking time so she’s out of her mind before I give her what she wants.
I direct my eyes toward her.
Her face is flushed. Her mouth is open. One hand is white-knuckling the sheet while the other is buried in my hair like she grabbed me before she could stop herself.
Her tits are rising and falling with every ragged breath and her pussy is right there waiting.
Every animal part of me wants to just bury my face in her and not come up for air.
I don’t. At least not yet.
“That’s it,” I murmur against her thigh. “Hold on to me.”
Her fingers tighten in my hair, hard enough to sting.
My cock throbs in response.
My eyes drop between her thighs and she is even wetter than before.
“Fuck,” I say, not even trying to hide the effect she has on me. “Look at you.”
She lets out a small, broken sound and tries to turn her face away.
I nip the inside of her thigh. Sharp enough to make her gasp.
“Don’t hide from me.”
“I’m not.”