28. Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“No.” His voice comes out rough and fractured.
“I made it easy, Wills. I made it look fun, like another thing you and I could do together, because I wanted you on that couch with me, wanted you close. I put something in your hand that night and watched you take it because I said you could trust me.”
“I chose to take it.”
“Because I talked you into it. I was high and selfish. I put it in your hand like I was handing you a fucking cigarette.” His voice cracks on the last word and he looks furious at himself. “That was the start of it. I know it was the start of it.”
He pauses. “I fucking got you addicted, Wills.”
The notebook slides off my lap as I go to him. I gently take the guitar from his hands before he crushes its neck under the weight of everything he is carrying. I set it aside and kneel in front of him.
His eyes refuse to meet mine.
“Look at me,” I say.
His eyes lift.
“You did not start it, Phoenix,” I say. “I had been getting high long before that night.”
His jaw clenches beneath my palms.
“I was already spiraling,” I say. “I was using before you ever handed me anything. I was drinking too much. Taking things when I wanted the noise to stop. That was all my decision. Every stupid, ugly thing I did was my decision.”
I smooth my thumb along his cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry for regarding that pill. I was already addicted.”
His eyes close as one tear slips down his cheek.
I wipe it away with my thumb. He catches my wrist, his hand wrapping around it as his eyes search mine.
“Yes, you did hurt me,” I say. “Badly. But you were not the reason for every bad choice I made.”
Phoenix looks at me as if the words have hit too deep. His face is still beautiful in that brutal way that makes women think bad decisions are worth the scar. But his eyes are red around the edges.
“I should have protected you from me,” he says.
“Maybe,” I whisper. “But I should have protected myself, too.”
His hand glides to the back of my neck, fingers trembling slightly as they thread through my hair.
That tremor nearly breaks me. Phoenix Stone doesn’t shake. He smirks through pain, stumbles out of scandals with his mouth sharp and his collar open. He makes the whole world think nothing can touch him because he has spent years making untouchable look like sex.
But his hand trembles in my hair.
“I’m sorry, Wills. For every fucked-up thing I did to hurt you.
For every time I made you feel easy to use and hard to keep.
The thought of you not being in my world fucked something up in me.
Or fixed it. I don’t know.” His fingers tighten gently in my hair.
“I just know I almost lost you and suddenly all the shit I thought mattered looked fucking pathetic.”
It hurts because I know that is as close as Phoenix can get without tearing himself open. But it’s there in his eyes and pressed into the way his fingers hold my hair, like he is scared I will vanish if he lets go.
His eyes drop to my mouth and the room changes.
All of it folds into heat so fast I lose my breath. He pulls me toward him. His mouth finds mine in an instant, and this kiss is not soft at all. This one has teeth, need, and regret. His other hand grips my hip, dragging me closer until my knees slide against the rug and my body presses into his.
I kiss him back because I love him. God help me, I do. I have always loved him, in every form he has taken. I even loved the asshole who made me cry in bathrooms and then sang my words to thousands of people as if he hadn’t ripped them out of me first. I even loved him when I hated him.
Phoenix groans into my mouth and the sound is so rough it moves through my whole body.
“Fuck,” he says, dragging his lips along my jaw. “You make me lose my fucking mind, Wills.”
His mouth moves down my throat, hot and open, and my head falls back before I can stop it. The scrape of his teeth against my skin makes my thighs press together and he notices immediately.
His hand slides under my shirt, palm flat against my stomach, and my breath catches.
“Wills.” His forehead drops to my shoulder. “The sounds you make go straight to my cock every single time.”
His hand slides down my stomach and slips beneath the waistband of my underwear. His fingers find my pussy and we both go still.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You’re already wet.”
“Shut up.”
“Not a chance.” His fingers move, sliding through me. One fingertip plays with my clit with the certainty of a man who spent last night learning exactly what destroys me. “I could make you come right here on this fucking floor.”
Heat rushes through me so violently that I forget how to breathe.
“Phoenix.”
“Yeah. I bet that is exactly what you fucking want.” He lifts his head and there is the fuckboy smile, the arrogant curve of his mouth. “What? You want me to be sweet, Wills? I can fucking try. I’ll be awful at it, but I can try.”
His hand slips higher under my shirt, thumb brushing over my nipple. “I want you to take this off so I can put my mouth on every inch of you and make you come so hard you forget there was ever a version of me stupid enough to walk away after.”
My whole body trembles and his mouth curves.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough and certain. “That’s what I thought.”
He slowly pulls my shirt up and I lift my arms because pretending I don’t want this would be an insult to both of us. The fabric slides over my head and lands somewhere on the floor. His eyes drop immediately to my tits and he sucks my nipple into his mouth.
My head drops back and a moan tears from me before I can catch it.
“Fuck,” he says against my skin. “Your tits are going to be the death of me, Wills. Best fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
He releases my nipple with a loud pop.
“These need to go,” he says, tugging at my panties.
He rolls me onto my back and slowly slides them down. His mouth follows the path, pressing open kisses to my hip, the inside of my knee, and then my inner thigh, until the fabric clears my ankles and he tosses it somewhere behind him.
Phoenix sits back on his heels and looks at me on the living room floor in the morning light, with nowhere to hide.
His cock thick and hard and straining against his sweatpants.
“Jesus,” he breathes, his voice almost gone. “Look at you.”
My first instinct is to make a joke. To shield myself with something sharp before the softness gets too close. But he leans forward and presses his mouth against my breasts, and the thought dissolves completely.
His lips glide over my skin—his breath warming every inch before his mouth follows. His hands slide around my back, holding me steady, and when his mouth closes around my nipple, the sensation shoots straight down my spine and lands between my thighs with devastating accuracy.
I gasp.
He groans as if my sound does something filthy to him, the vibration of it brushing against my skin.
His tongue circles the hard peak slowly, wet and unhurried, before he sucks, pulling me deeper into his mouth.
He uses enough pressure to make my hips roll forward chasing something he has not given me yet.
Heat pools low in my stomach and in my pussy.
My fingers slide into his hair because I need somewhere to put the ache building under my ribs.
He moves to the other breast and gives it the same attention. His tongue traces circles, his teeth graze just enough to make me jerk, and his mouth sucks until I am pulling his hair without meaning to and making sounds I have no dignity left to be embarrassed by.
“Fuck, Wills,” he mutters against my skin. “You have no idea how you sound.”
I pull his hair more forcefully causing him to smile against my breast.
“Careful. You keep doing that and I’m going to start thinking you like hurting me.”
“I do,” I tell him.
His teeth gently scrape over my nipple and I jerk hard against him.
“Good,” he says, voice rough, low, and completely wrecked. “Because I deserve it.”
His mouth moves lower, down my ribs and stomach. Each kiss is open and wet. His stubble drags roughly against my skin. His breath is warm against every inch of me before his lips follow, leaving a trail my body tracks with embarrassing desperation.
I look down at him and see him watching me from between my thighs. He looks like sin on his knees, somehow more dangerous for being there.
“You are beautiful,” he says and his mouth twists as if the truth annoys him for coming too close to tenderness. “Always have been. Even when you were glaring at me across rehearsal rooms. Even when you were breaking my fucking heart and I was too stupid to realize that was what the pain was.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe.
“Open,” he says, his voice dropping low and sexy. “Show me that pussy.”
“Phoenix.”
“Open for me, Wills.” His hands slide along my inner thighs, spreading them slowly, thumbs tracing against my skin inches from where I’m already slick and aching. “I want to see how wet you are for me. Want to see that pretty pussy before I put my mouth on it.”
I obey his command and his eyes grow dark.
“Wider.”
My breath shakes but I do it. I let him see all of me. Bare, wet, and swollen. I let him see my pussy glistening in the morning light.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs, his breath hitting me right where I need his mouth. “I’m going to make you come so fucking hard and then I’m going to do it again, because I have a lot of bad behavior to make up for and your pussy is my favorite apology.”
His lips brush over my clit, barely there, a whisper of contact that makes my whole body jolt. Then his tongue slides through me.
A sharp cry tears out of my throat causing Phoenix to groan against my pussy.
The vibration of it moves through me and then his tongue circles around my clit.
Not fast. Not giving me what I want yet.
Just slow, wet circles that drag every nerve ending awake until my hand reaches out and fists his hair as my thighs try to close around his head.