Chapter 9 Storm
Storm
“Mr. Carrow.” The former HR manager pleads. “Please.”
But it’s too late to save her. Well, save her job at least. I don’t care enough to take anything else from her.
“No.” I’m starting to get pissed. “Now run, little bird. While you still have the wings to carry you on your own.”
She scurries out, and I take a seat at her desk. It only takes me a moment to find her little notebook of passwords and log into the portals.
"Hey, Kathy, I have those reports." A man my age and wearing an ill-fitting suit, walks into the office, stopping short when he sees me. "You are definitely not Kathy."
"No, I'm not." I level him with a bored look. "She is no longer with the company. Who are you?"
"I'm Dave, her intern. She wanted me to get the quarterly report done, but I found some issues I needed to ask her about."
I wave him in and point at the chair.
The ensuing conversation with Dave is... enlightening. The man shakes when speaking to me, but has already, without being asked, identified some areas where we can improve our bottom line.
It appears that Kathy hired her friends, gave them inflated salaries, and then didn’t even expect them to show up for work.
Dave’s revelation means that it’s going to take me days to sort through the growing mountain of work, but I have a feeling it’s going to make this little fucked up ultimatum actually doable.
“I’m keeping you on, and giving you a salaried position with benefits.”
Shocked, he leaves me to the work at hand.
I spend most of the day in my new office, combing through performance reviews and making a list of the immediate fires based on the bullshit that Dave brought to my attention.
All in all, thirteen people were each collecting a ninety thousand dollar dummy salary, plus benefits.
Over a million dollars a year, saved just by cutting the first leeches I found.
"Dave," I call.
He fills the doorway immediately.
"Yes, Sir? Did you need coffee?"
"No... I need you to get our lawyers on the phone for me. Then I need you to draft termination letters for everyone on this list."
He takes the list and scans it, nodding. "When are we—"
"About fifteen seconds after you draft the letters," I say, leaning back in the ridiculously comfortable office chair and pressing my fingers into my temples.
Fuck, this is exhausting.
And it's not just the work. Every time my phone buzzes in my pocket, I think it's another body, or something’s happened to Phoenix and I’m not there to take care of her. It's driving me insane. It's time for a lunch break, and I know exactly what I need to relieve the stress and tension.
When I get back to the suite, Phoenix is sitting alone on the terrace with her dog lounging half under her chair.
She’s still wearing my T-shirt and what looks to be a pair of Maverick's sunglasses.
Her petite, fine-boned body is stretched out on a lounger like a cat in the sun, a book by her side and a half-empty cup of iced coffee sitting on the side table.
She likes the chicory stuff, half milk, half sugar, just a tiny spot of actual coffee.
She looks relaxed, but I know better. That little line of concern is between her brows, and the corners of her lips are pulled ever so slightly down.
Phoenix is tense and lost in concentration.
I sit on the chair next to hers, saying nothing at first. I pick up her coffee and take a pull through the straw, making a face at the vapid sweetness before setting it back down and lacing her fingers with mine and closing my eyes, letting the hot, humid air break through the chill the AC left on my skin.
"That’s disgusting like always. You okay?" I ask, breaking the silence. “I could get you a fresh cup of that swill.”
“I’m fine, and you can leave my coffee alone, thank you very much. What have you been up to all day?”
I ignore her question with a squeeze of her fingers. “Don't lie to me, Angel.”
She scowls and scrambles into a seated position. “You’re going to start acting like my therapist now, Storm?”
"I've been to enough of them, I could probably try," I admit, and she snorts a laugh.
"You’ve been getting more texts."
Her head snaps toward me. Through the dark lenses, I catch the widening of her eyes before a shield slams down. She picks up her coffee and takes a long sip. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
I give her a flat look. "Come on. We're not stupid, Angel. I saw the way your face drained when your phone vibrated the other day. Then you and Mav go on a rescue mission for this little guy." I scratch her dog’s head.
Zeus, such a fucked up name for a runt of a dog. But he’s cute, and he makes her smile, so that’s all that matters.
She goes quiet again. I could push harder. Threaten. Guilt. Hell, tease her to the edge and refuse to let her fall until she talks.
Tempting. But I want something else between us. Something so much more than transactional bullshit.
I want trust.
But not just any trust will do.
I want every ounce of Phoenix’s trust. I want her to trust me.
I want her to trust in my feelings for her.
She’s been the only person, other than the Titans, who could pull me from the void.
I see the darkness in her, and I refuse to shrink from it, like she refuses to shrink from mine. I need all of her.
"I thought we were past the secrets. Whatever it is," I say, "You don't have to deal with it alone."
She doesn't answer, but her bottom lip trembles a tiny bit before she firms it, and she doesn't pull away.
That’s something. I stroke my thumb over her wrist, pausing against the jump of her pulse.
"You'll tell me when you're ready?" I ask.
She nods once, the movement jerky. She’s not going to give her secrets up easily. I can respect that. But it does give me an idea…
I open the group chat—the one without her.
Storm
She’s hiding something.
Con
Honestly, do we not have enough fucking going on?
Storm
It’s gotta be bad. She won’t talk about it at all.
Mav
How do we get it out of her then?
Con
We need another bet.
Mav
Another Phoenix bet.
Atticus
Okay, color me intrigued.
Mav
What are you thinking?
Con
I think we should send her packing tbh. We can't afford the distraction.
I type out about a thousand ways to tell Con to go fuck himself, and even more threats of violence, deleting each one of them because I’m the one who started the conversation. Finally I settle on the simple truth.
Storm
don't want her to go.
Mav
It has to be a group consensus.
Atticus
That's the bet. First one to make her run again.
Con
That’s too easy. She’s a runner. We all know it.
Atticus
How about something more interesting? Storm wants us to share her, and it seems like she wants that, too... but that doesn't work if she chooses one of us over the others.
I roll my eyes. Atticus always has a fucking loophole or a goddamned workaround or an alternative way .
Storm
So you want it to be about what, exactly?
Atticus
Whoever she chooses wins.
That’s not…if she chooses one of us, we all lose. And so does she. Because we don’t stay whole if she chooses one.
Atticus knows this, the fucker.
Storm
I don't want her to choose.
Mav
Then that's the bet. We all get to have fun with her, make her want each one of us. If she refuses to choose, then Storm wins…and I guess she wins by extension. Same rules as before. No telling her.
Con
And when she chooses one of us and not all of us?
Atticus
She’s out.
Over my goddamn body. Phoenix isn’t leaving.
“Come along, Phoenix. It’s time to show you the darkness you bring me back from with your very existence.”
I don’t bother moving from my seat on the terrace. Instead, I hold out a hand for Phoenix to take, and tug her gently into my lap when she does.
When I pull the knife out, she doesn’t even flinch.
“I could cut your clothes from your body.” I whisper against her flesh, loving the way her skin rises with goosebumps from the mix of my words and the heat from my breath.
Instead, I raise my sleeve a few inches and let her see the inside line of my arm, where I have a series of small scars. Most of them faded, all of them thin and small enough that I’m sure she hasn’t noticed before now.
“When I was in middle school, I noticed a little girl running around the hotel. I watched her every single day. But I didn’t realize that my parents were watching me watch her.
They saw my…attention…as a weakness they had to beat out of me.
” I use the blade to cut just deep enough to draw a thin line of blood.
“I didn't stop watching. Wanting what didn’t belong to me. And my parents kept beating me. Every. Single. Day. Until pain was my new normal. So when they stopped, I had to hurt myself to feel anything.”
Another slice into my skin. Another thin trickle of blood.
“I know you saw the scars on my wrists before. It’s the only way I could feel. Other than holding you.”
And Phoenix? She doesn’t say a single thing. Instead, she focuses on my arm until I’m sure that she’s disgusted not just by the cutting, but by the secret I gave her.
Then, she does the damndest thing.
She leans down and licks the fucking blood off my arm.
In a single heartbeat, I’m hard as a rock, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been this close to coming in my pants since I was in middle school.
I’ve got one hand on the blade and one wrapped around Phoenix, and I know I have to put the knife down because there’s no way in hell I’m waiting to be inside this woman.
I don’t have a chance to think about how to get her undressed, because Phoenix takes things into her own hands.
She’s up, pulling her shirt over her head and her bottoms off before turning and straddling my waist.
“Your pants,” she whispers before leaning in and kissing me.
Holy fuck. I taste my blood on her lips, and I’m such a fucking goner for this woman.