11. Storm
Storm
Phoenix has been sitting against the wall beside the elevator for more than an hour, unmoving, exactly where she slid down after the doors opened and spit her out. At first, I thought she’d force herself to stand, to cross the expanse of floor and pick one of us to approach—Maverick, maybe.
Whoever she decided looked least likely to eat her alive.
She doesn’t understand yet. But she will. Soon.
None of us will hurt her—not truly, not in the way people mean when they talk about men hurting women. Not fists for sport. Not cruelty for its own sake. That isn’t our game.
Our games are… more.
And yet she’s right to be wary. Every one of us is a threat, and some deeply buried instinct knows that. None of us are here to be kind. None of us are here to make her smile.
We’ll probably make her cry.
But she’ll probably ask for more of whatever got her to that point.
That thought is still pinging through my skull when Phoenix’s gaze collides with mine. She hesitates, then stirs. One leg unfolds beneath her, her heel planting, her muscles gathering for the rise.
I click my tongue—a thin, sibilant warning. My hand is already on the blade. The motion is a habit so old it feels like breath: draw back, shoulder loose, wrist easy. The knife leaves my fingers in a clean arc, spins once, and lands with a quiet thud in the paneled wall an inch from her temple.
She freezes.
I let my mouth split in something that isn’t quite a smile and bare my teeth. Slowly, as if lowering herself into cold water, she slides back down until her spine meets the wall again. Her eyes stay wide and unblinking on mine.
Defiance lives in the tilt of her chin, though. Stubbornness resides in the line of her mouth. Her right hand tightens and releases against her thigh, a small, futile fist she probably doesn’t even know she’s making.
I catch my bottom lip in my teeth—wariness pricking under my curiosity, because I know better than most that the ones you should be the most cautious of are the quiet ones. They don’t make scenes. They make choices.
What sort of sound would she make if I drew blood? Not many, I don’t think. I think she’d hold her sounds in as long as she could, out of sheer petty willfulness.
Across the room, I study her skin the way I like to study the edge of a blade I’m interested in—impassive, precise. The lighting throws a soft sheen over the paleness, and freckles scatter like copper dust on the bridge of her nose and the sweep of her shoulders.
She doesn’t get much sun .
If I pressed steel there, just so—her stomach would be the best spot to start, the softest give beneath the point—crimson would well in a thin line, a thoughtful bloom that fattens as air meets blood.
Would she whimper?
Would she scream?
Would she moan?
The question hits like a punch to the gut, and I’m suddenly, uncomfortably hard. The second knife leaves my fingers before I’ve finished exhaling. It bites the wall closer to her shoulder. She flinches, the smallest betrayal of fear, but she doesn’t look away.
Something low and old rumbles up from my chest.
What game is she playing? So many girls come here for the adrenaline, for the nearness of danger that makes their blood ring in their ears.
Maybe she’s the same. Why else sign a contract like the one between us?
It can’t be only the money. There are easier ways to earn without staining your soul the way this place can.
Without signing it over to people like us .
Movement ghosts into my periphery. A girl—one of the guests—edges closer, hungry for attention the way some people crave their next hit. She’s wearing a tiny schoolgirl skirt that looks like it’s forgotten its job, silver piercings winking where she wants eyes to settle, and eyeliner laid on thick.
She’s trying too hard. But then, most of the girls that come up here are trying too hard. They don’t understand that’s the one thing guaranteed to get them a ticket to the lobby when we’re finished with them.
I slant Phoenix another glance, then angle my body toward her. Let her think she’s got me, for as long as I can stand her, anyway.
Let Phoenix see me turn away.
The girl purrs at me— hey baby why don’t we …—I don’t bother to listen.
Even from beneath hooded lids, and around a twitching plaid mini-skirt I have to dodge, Phoenix’s eyes are the only ones I’m watching.
When I shift my attention, something incandescent flickers to life in hers—anger, maybe, or a little sting of jealousy, or even a hit to her pride at being ignored .
Whatever it is that’s brought to life in her gaze, it burns, and it reminds me that this thing between us is real.
The flame drags me back to the first time I really saw her.
In the days after her mother died.
I didn’t expect Phoenix to come back to the resort, not with that father of hers orbiting the bars of the casino like a bad planet. He was an asshole on his best day and a gravity suck on his worst.
Her mom had been sweet, though—housekeeping management, I think. I don’t remember the details of her face. I remember Phoenix, flittering around the hotel from the time she was little.
After her mother died and the funeral was over, she stretched out on a chaise near the pool, head tipped back and eyes closed for all the world like she was sunbathing. It didn’t matter that the sky was a slate bruise and the air had that taste you get right before rain.
The staff whispered as they moved around her—how strong she was, how well she was handling it—and I remember thinking how people loved to praise composure because it let them keep walking.
I watched the fractures in her facade instead. Watched the seams pulling apart at the stress points. Saw pain sitting under her skin like static.
I wanted to numb it for her.
Numb is my specialty.
I thought about bringing her a drink. A rum and Coke, maybe, or something strong folded into something fruity.
Then I pictured her father at the casino bar after the funeral—one drink, then the next, then the next—and the idea tasted like rotten in my mouth.
I thought about the easier chemicals, how quickly they can reroute a nervous system, and discarded that, too.
She was too clean for that. Too bright.
So I did the only thing I really could. The only thing that might have mattered. I went and sat beside her. Didn’t say a word. Just—was there. With her.
It’s a small thing, to take that time. To take the time to inhale and exhale slowly with someone, repeating the movement until their breathing evens out.
It’s a small thing that can mean everything.
When her shoulders finally lowered a fraction, when her throat worked like she’d taught herself to swallow again, I knew I’d made the right choice.
I liked her. Holy fuck, did I like her.
But liking isn’t an excuse to take. Time is the only gift that doesn’t come with strings, so I gave her that. Time to grieve. Time to process. Time to remember there was ground under her feet.
Conrad didn’t give her time, though. He looked at her like he was a drowning man and she was the rope above a well—when she was the one fraying at the edges.
I couldn’t pull her away from him.
We’ve all got our demons, and Con’s don’t live in the dark like mine do. He wanted saving. Needed saving.
I only know how to drown.
Maybe she could’ve saved him. Maybe that was the point.
Hands on my shoulders, party girl leans closer, her perfume thick and sugary as she whispers something in my ear. It’s still Phoenix’s eyes that have me by the throat, though, lit from inside with heat, narrowed with irritation. She could set this whole floor on fire without lifting a finger.
It isn’t a concern anymore—what Con needs. Phoenix broke his heart. And with the bet on the table, the lines are clear.
Fair game.
I still see that light in her, but it’s tempered now, the way gold looks darker after it’s taken heat. I think they call it tempered.
She’s still an angel, only her wings are singed where they used to be clean.
She’s going to keep falling. That’s what gravity does when you step off something high—it pulls you down, and pulls you down hard —and when she falls far enough, when the noise of the world fades and the dark gets thick, that’s where I’ll be.
Waiting.
There to hold her where no one else can touch her.
To claim her the way I’ve wanted to for more time than I care to admit .
I brush the party girl off of me and stand up, then walk slowly across the floor. When I’m a pace away from Phoenix, my knives still humming in the wall like tuning forks, I crouch so I’m level with her eyes, palms loose over my knees, the blade-callus at my index finger dragging slow across denim.
“You catch on fast,” I say, voice even. “Good.”
Her mouth tightens. She tips her chin up that fraction that says no , even when her body has already chosen yes . Brave girl. Stupid girl.
Behind me, someone laughs—Maverick, probably—low and incredulous, the kind of sound that means what the hell are you doing, Storm , but he already knows the answer.
I lift my hand, and for a second she thinks I’ll touch her face.
I don’t. I grip the buried knife, instead, and draw it free with a whisper of wood, then the other, and step back.
“Stay,” I tell her, my voice quiet but filled with authority.
She doesn’t move. Not a muscle.
I should want her to plead. Isn’t that the point of the game?
I should want her on her knees. That’s the trajectory we agreed to.
But as I roll the knives into my palm and feel the familiar weight settle, what I want is simpler and so much worse.
I want to hear that first new sound she makes when she realizes falling can feel like flying if you do it right.
And I want to be the one she makes it for.
She draws a breath. Holds it. Lets it out. The freckles along her cheekbone look like a constellation I haven’t learned the name of yet.
And then the very faintest of nods.
“Good girl,” I say, and I don’t bother with the ghost of a smile this time.
The world outside our floor can keep its kindness. It never did anything for either of us. In here, there are only rules, and sharp edges, and the promise of a plunge. She’s already at the ledge.
All she has to do is lean.