Chapter Thirty-Six
THIRTY-SIX
Rocky
The Badger Game (Continued)
It’s almost midnight when Trent goes to bed and I’m able to sneak into Phoebe’s guest room. She hasn’t changed out of the blue dress. She has her temple to the window frame, gazing out into the night.
“Watching the waves?” I ask, locking the door behind me.
She doesn’t turn. “The grounds. Gardeners are still pruning the hedges.”
Her room is smaller than mine. The ornate four-poster bed is twin-sized. With its ugly ruffled bedding in a Pepto-Bismol pink and a collection of old porcelain dolls on a shelf, I wonder if this room belonged to a child.
At least there’s a chair. While I grab it, Phoebe gradually rotates and watches me jam the wooden frame underneath the doorknob.
She leans her shoulders on the wall. “You know how messed up it is that we’re worried Trent might break into my room tonight?”
“This family is fucked up.” I comb a hand through my hair, pushing the longer pieces back, then bend down and untie my leather shoes. “You want to talk about it?” I still have no clue what happened when Phoebe was with Claudia, but I can make some great educated guesses.
“Tonight was…” She takes a deep breath and a hundred-watt smile lights her face. “Exhilarating.”
“Yeah?” I ask, coming closer to wrap my arms around her waist. “You get off on it?”
She sways in my arms like we’re slow dancing, and her brown eyes sparkle with infectious energy that pools into me. “I did. I forgot…I really forgot how this feels.” She frowns. “Or maybe it’s because this is different than all the other times. She won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”
My gaze darkens, and I tuck a strand of her blue hair behind her ear. “Did she hurt you?”
Phoebe slowly removes her silk glove. “She slapped me,” she says. “And this…” She overturns her hand, palm up, and I see the bright red skin. A blister already forms in the center.
Caged darkness threatens to unleash in a round of violent anger. I want to lash out. I want to rip apart. I want to destroy. My lungs are charred when I ask, “Is that a burn?”
“With a candle.” Phoebe’s brows draw together. “It might be first-degree.”
“We’ll have Nova take a look at it tonight,” I say, since he’s the only one of us with any kind of formal medical training.
She shakes her head. “Tomorrow. I can wait until tomorrow. I don’t want anything to ruin tonight.”
“Until then…” I carefully take her hand and kiss around the redness.
Her eyes dance over me. “Oh so tender for someone so lethal.”
“Believe me,” I tell her. “I’m restraining myself from doing very bad things in the name of vengeance.”
She glows brighter. “My favorite name.”
“Hmm,” I muse. “I thought that was Rocky.”
“Are you sure?” She feigns confusion. “I don’t recall that being on my favorites list.”
“Let me fucking remind you then.” I explode forward, clutching her face with a feral ferocity. She grabs on to my belt loops and hangs on as our lips collide in hunger. Cupping her skull, I lead her back toward the twin bed.
Her ass hits the mattress first, and I pull off my belt. My suit. I strip in front of her, letting her watch me with aroused eyes.
“Let me tell you my favorite word, mikrí fráoula.”
Her face radiates with newfound heat. “Rocky.” She says my name in a shallow breath.
I’m naked before her, and I slowly crawl on top of her body, hauling her farther onto the small bed. “What’s wrong, petite fraise?” I tease in French instead of Greek as I fist the blue tulle of her gown in my hands, bringing the puffy material up to her waist.
“Stop.” She fights a smile.
“Morango pequeno.” I switch to Portuguese, calling her little strawberry over and over again in all the languages I’ve picked up.
“Rocky…” She sounds out of breath as I slip her panties off her legs.
“Still not my favorite word,” I tell her and tease her opening, circling my thumb over her clit. “Try again.”
“I-I…” Her eyes flutter, and her fingers claw at my back. I war with the tulle. Such an annoying, obtrusive—I rip the fucking thing. All of it. A flurry of tulle cascades to the floor as I tear it off the bodice of the dress. A shocked gasp leaves her lips. She’s completely bare from the waist down, and I descend back to her lips. Tasting her. Having her. Mine.
I break away to let her catch her breath, a groan rumbling in my throat. My cock screams to be inside her. “Phoebe,” I say slowly, sensually. “My favorite word. My Phoebe.”
Her eyes well with a surge of emotion. “Rocky,” she rasps out, her voice sultry.
“ Phoebe ,” I whisper against her lips, slipping a condom along my length.
“Rocky.” Her voice is an ache, on the precipice of a moan. She spreads her legs wider open.
I reach between them to feel her cunt, wetness against my fingers. “Phoebe.” I make dirty love to her name, dragging my slick finger down her leg.
She’s arching her hips into my cock. “ Rocky ,” she moans.
Fuck. “Phoebe.” Kneeling between her legs, I bring my finger to her mouth. The same one that was inside her. Her breath is ragged as she closes her lips around me.
She can’t say it, but her eyes scream my name. Rocky.
I lower to press my lips against her ear. “Phoebe.” I seize her hip and whisper, “You want to know how deep I’m going to fuck you? It’s going to be worse than our wedding night. You won’t be able to walk for three fucking weeks straight.” I remove my finger from her mouth so she can speak.
She squirms beneath me. “Rocky.” It’s a heady, drunk-in-love Rocky . I capture her wrists and pull her hands above her head.
“Phoebe.” Our eyes cling.
With one hand, I hold her wrists together, and with my other, I lift her pelvis to align with me. My cock sinks inside her tight warmth, and I watch her face break into pleasure. Fuck yes.
“Oh my God,” she cries and shakes beneath me. I haven’t even moved yet, but I’m buried deep. Almost all of me inside her.
I flex forward, and her pussy clenches around me. Fucking Christ. I stare into her and start thrusting at a rhythmic, hard pace. It jerks her body upward—and each time, her breath catches. The noise is lighting a fire in my nerve endings.
“ Phoebe ,” I growl into her ear while I pound her. “You always wished I’d fuck you on this ugly ruffled bedding in front of those dolls. Admit it, as soon as you saw this haunted-looking room, you’ve been dreaming of me fucking you here. That I’d hold you down and take you long and hard. You imagined this.” I slam harder. “Fucking. Here.” Faster. “Huh, how long did you want my cock this deep inside you?”
Words catch in her throat.
I slam.
“Uhhh-uh…ahhh, fuck.” Her pussy pulses and tightens.
Jesus. I grit through the desire to shoot a load inside her. A groan is knotted up in my lungs. She’s trying to glare, but it’s smothered in pleasure as I thrust and thrust and thrust and fuck. As she jerks up. As our hot breaths and sweat meld. I can’t even kiss her without stealing necessary oxygen. She’s barely breathing.
“ Rocky ,” she moans, her wrists pulling against my grip.
“You’re not going anywhere until I’ve come inside you, little nightmare.” The animalistic fucking need to fill Phoebe with my seed consumes half my brain. Penetrate. Fuck. Fill. Her.
No one else can have her.
No one.
She stretches her legs, giving herself to me.
As I fuck harder, our eyes stay latched, and I hold her face with one protective, forceful hand. The intimacy detonates everything I’ve ever known about sex. I see nothing but her. I feel nothing but her. I love nothing but her.
When she comes, her tightness wraps so hard around me, but it’s her eyes rolling back and her limbs spasming that destroy me. “ Fuck ,” I grit out, releasing deep, deep in Phoebe.
I wish I wasn’t wearing a condom.
Not to get her pregnant—but I want my cum to seep out of her. I want to leave some of me inside Phoebe.
Once she comes off the peak and catches her breath, I pull out and toss the used condom in the wastebasket on the floor. Her half-lidded eyes fight to stay open. She’s as exhausted as someone like Phebs can be.
“Signs of life?” I ask, leaning over her and combing sweaty hair off her forehead.
“Fuck you,” she murmurs, her lips lifting.
I smile back. “Fuck me for fucking you so good, you mean?”
“Maybe.” Her eyes flash with slight worry. “You’re not going, are you?”
“No,” I breathe. “Have I ever really left you?”
Phoebe shakes her head, then sits up to check on the status of the door. Chair still intact and propped beneath the knob. The reminder that it exists jolts her, and she wrangles the corset off her chest.
“He’s not coming in here,” I assure her.
She climbs off the bed, completely nude. Then unzips her suitcase, picking out a T-shirt and sweats. “You can’t be that certain, Rocky.”
“I put an Ambien in his whiskey.”
She freezes, then twists her head back to me. “No.” She’s grinning. Drugging someone shouldn’t delight us so damn much, but we’re not out here delivering fruit baskets to people.
“Happy early birthday to me.” I raise and lower my brows.
Phoebe is ten times more content with the knowledge that Trent is likely in a sleeping-pill-induced haze, counting sheep. Except, she’s awake now, like she drank a 5-hour Energy.
“These are cool.” Phoebe plucks a porcelain, blonde baby doll off the display shelf.
“Says the horror freak.” I lounge against the headboard. Buck naked. It’s too hot in the room to dive under the sheets.
“You love this horror freak,” she slings back.
I grin, then I reach over and search the nightstand drawer. “No loose baby heads in here.”
“Shucks.” She climbs onto the bed with the doll.
“Really?” I ask her, finding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“She’s precious.”
“She’s not sleeping with us.”
“She’s not real ,” Phoebe combats. “What weird superstition do you have against baby dolls?”
“It’s creepy,” I mumble, the cigarette between my lips. I light it, suck, and blow smoke away from Phoebe. “You’re lucky I fucked you in front of it.”
She smiles a little wider and then she eyes the cigarette. “You want me to crack a window?” she asks, snuggling beside me with the doll.
“If the walls smell like smoke, are you going to care?”
“Definitely not.”
“Me either.” The nicotine buzz vibrates my head, and I feel her body loosen against my chest. I wrap an arm around her shoulders and kiss her temple.
“You like smoking?” she wonders. “I thought you always just did it to assimilate.”
“I do, but I like a cigarette after sex.”
“Why?”
“Sex makes me relax, and cigarettes don’t.” While we’re in this house, the last thing I want to do is lower my guard. I’m just happy to have Phoebe snuggled contentedly in my arms. One less worry gnawing at my brain.
My phone rings. On the other side of the room, at the dresser. I groan. There goes having her in my arms. Naked, I untangle from her.
“It might be Jake,” Phoebe guesses. “He was really concerned before dinner.”
“Yeah.” I breathe out more smoke. Jake’s been stressing about his mom’s buttons being pushed. He knows Phoebe can “take it,” but he still doesn’t want to see her get hurt.
When I pick up my phone, my muscles tighten. No caller ID, and I don’t recognize the number. I put it on speaker immediately. “Who is this?” I question, half expecting Varrick to have somehow tracked down my number.
“It’s me.” Oliver sounds out of breath, like he’s moving a mile a minute somewhere—like he’s running. I hear the howling wind. I hear his fear as the words pull from his soul: “?‘We loved with a love that was more than love.’?”
It’s our SOS phrase.
“Where?” I ask.
“Koning storm shelter. Hailey.”
I hear a feminine blood-curdling scream before the line cuts out. My brain is lit up in panic. Phoebe is already jumping off the bed.
The last time any of us used that phrase, my brother had been stabbed. And he was bleeding to death.