Chapter 17 Poppy
POPPY
I sag onto his bare chest and do everything I can to stay out of my head. As soon as I lean my chest against his, he slides his hands under my hair and just holds me.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, but once the fog lifts and I realize he’s still inside me and he’s still hard, I move my head so my chin is on his chest.
“I think it’s your turn,” I say.
His smile covers his whole face, and I see the hint dimples underneath his beard. I stroke his cheeks and sigh.
“Your turn,” I hum against his chest. “It’s your turn, Phantom. Are you going to…”
I can’t say anything more because, in one swift move, he flips me over onto my back. I’m laughing and not even the least bit shy, even though I’m completely naked and just literally ground myself into his body like he’s my personal plaything.
“You ready for my turn?” he asks. “Because I won’t be fast.”
I swallow and settle myself against the bed. “We have a babysitter,” I remind him.
He grins but curses under his breath, then checks to make sure the condom’s still in place. When he lifts my knees and hooks them over his elbows, then lines his erection up to my entrance, a spark of want blazes through me again.
“Phantom,” I sigh.
“Poppy,” he says. Then in an agonizingly slow thrust, he enters me inch by blessed inch.
I feel every perfect, amazing inch of his body as it enters mine.
The way the head of his cock seems to nudge all the right spots.
The way his shaft drags against my inner walls.
I’m so lost to the sensations of his body inside mine, I don’t even notice when he picks up the pace until my breasts are bouncing back and forth with every thrust of his hips.
“Roll over,” he tells me, yanking himself from inside me.
I hate how cold and empty I feel the minute he’s gone, but I do as he says, rolling onto my stomach.
“Ass up,” he demands, holding on to my hips. I kneel on the bed and keep my face and arms on the mattress while lifting my rear end in the air. I feel a sudden smack of his palm against my bottom, and a rush of pleasure floods every cell of my being.
“Again,” I beg, wriggling my butt against him.
He brings his palm down against my ass again, a soft slap sound echoing in the room. I cannot believe he isn’t hurting me. Cannot believe the smack of his skin against mine sends a torrent of arousal from my bottom to my soul.
I rock back and forth slightly, my core so wet and needy, I feel like I could come again.
It’s been so long since I’ve been touched by anyone, and this is one hell of a way to break that seal.
Phantom is ruining me for anyone else. Anything else.
My fingers in the shower are going to be quite the disappointment after this.
Instead of another spank, I feel him palm my hips and guide me backward, closer to him.
He slides his length inside me, then bends forward and cups my breasts in his hands.
Using some kind of true superhero strength, he rockets his erection inside me, back and forth, in and out, until I see stars behind my closed eyes.
My legs are boneless. My breaths are wild.
My hair is tangled, and even my feet are cramping because I have never, I repeat never, been moved this way.
By the time I finish, Phantom is thrusting wildly into me. I’m spent. Exhausted. And yet somehow, I want more. I want this. Again and again.
How could I have ever been afraid? How could I have stayed away from pleasure, from connection, from touch?
I know how.
As Phantom collapses against my back, he rolls us onto our sides so he can tuck behind me and spoon me close to him. I close my eyes, not caring about my tangled hair, my sweaty back. I remember why I can’t let anyone close to me.
Because when you find something this good, this powerful, losing it is like dying.
And I don’t know that I have the strength to lose any more of myself.
It’s not even ten o’clock when Phantom and I climb back into our clothes. We’re both tired, satisfied, and yet, something feels different between us. Maybe it’s me and my overthinking. I know that we’ve only known each other for a short time, but I know I could fall hard for this man.
What I feel for Phantom is unlike anything I’ve ever dreamed possible. More reason to protect myself. My heart won’t withstand losing what it wants. Not again. Not this time.
We walk hand in hand through the compound, an awkwardness making my palms sweat.
“Poppy!” Stella runs up to me, looking adorable in some frayed black jeans and a sheer black top with a red bra underneath. “Come have drinks with the girls.”
I look at Phantom, but he looks away. “We have to get back for the kids,” I say.
Phantom leans forward and gives Stella a kiss on the cheek. “Happy birthday.” Then he stalks off to talk to Viper.
Stella looks from me to him and back at me. “Uh, you two all right?”
I smile. “I’m tired. Sorry to be the party pooper. My mom is with the kids, and we promised we wouldn’t keep her out late.”
Stella cups my face in her hands and gives me the happiest smile. “You are going to be great with him, okay?” She pulls me into a hug and whispers in my ear. “He’s got it bad for you, Poppy. Sometimes he goes to dark places. Don’t let him go alone.”
She releases me and then turns and dances off toward the bar.
I look for Phantom in the crowd. He’s leaning against a wall, his arms crossed while he listens to Viper.
He looks like he could beat the stuffing out of someone, not like a man who just came apart inside me.
As if he feels me looking at him, he flicks a look at me.
His nostrils flare, and unless I’m seeing things, his eyes sparkle.
He claps Viper on the shoulder, nods, then finds me in the crowd. “You ready?” he asks, taking me by the hand.
I’m so ready. Ready to find out how things went weird so fast and what I can do to bring us back to an hour ago, when he was my everything and I felt like, together, we were just right.
We walk through the parking lot to his truck, hand in hand. He opens the door, like he always does, and helps me in.
Once he gets inside, I turn to him. “Did I suck?” I ask him. “Was the sex bad?”
He blows air through his lips and rakes a hand through his hair. “Fuck no. I’d take you again right now in this truck if…”
“Then can you please tell me why you suddenly seem like you don’t want me around anymore?”
Phantom pinches his eyebrows with two fingers and sighs deeply. He starts the truck but doesn’t even put it in drive. He turns to face me, then turns away and stares out into the darkness of the sticky Florida night. “Poppy, I… Fuck,” he hisses the last word.
He drops his hands roughly on the steering wheel, then grips it till his knuckles go white. He turns back to me.
“There’s no easy way to say this.” He looks wrecked.
“What is it?” My mind immediately starts doomscrolling, every horrible possibility I can imagine running wild inside my brain. “Do you regret having sex with me? I can go back home, Phantom. You don’t have to—”
“I know your mother, Poppy, and she knows me.”
I’m so surprised, I’m not sure how to react. “What does that mean? How do you know my mom?”
I try to think back to when I told Phantom my mom’s name. He had seemed like he recognized it, but I assumed it was because a lot of people in our county know Mom’s name.
“Phantom?” I press, the fears and anxiety starting to ramp into high gear. “How do you know my mother?”
He sighs. “She was on the parole board. The one that heard my case when I was incarcerated.”
Oh. Whoa.
I have hardly told my mom anything, and yet she already knows the ins and outs of Phantom’s criminal past. Shit.
“Did she remember you?” I ask, trying to stay calm. “How long ago was it?”
“Years,” he says. “And I’m pretty damn sure she remembers me.”
“Why didn’t she say something?” I ask. “When I met her at the mall with the girls, she didn’t so much as flinch when I said your name. Did she put it together that you’re the same guy?”
He nods. “I’m pretty sure.”
I wring my hands, trying to stop the spiraling thoughts, but I can’t stop the flood of words that come spilling out of my mouth.
“Okay, so tell me, Phantom. What does this mean? You went to prison, I know about that. So freaking what. My mom’s going to say what about it?
She came over to babysit tonight, so she can’t be too against you.
Maybe she’s over it. Maybe she doesn’t care what you did then and is worried about who you are now.
What happened at your parole hearing? What did she say when she voted against you?
Are you going to hold it against her forever? ”
“Poppy.” He turns in his seat and looks at me, his dark-blue eyes ringed with sadness. “Your mother didn’t vote against my release. She voted for it.”
That, of all the things he’s said, shocks me to my core. My law-and-order, by-the-book, politician mother voted for the early release of this man. “Okay,” I say. “So again, I need you to dumb this down for me. What does this mean?”
He turns off the truck, and we sit in silence.
“Poppy, I was denied parole the first time I tried. The second time, your mom was on the review board. I was asked to explain why I felt I wouldn’t be a risk to the community.
What I’d learned about myself while I was inside.
What I could possibly offer the board as proof that I wouldn’t eventually end up right back behind bars, wasting the taxpayers’ money. ”
I swallow the lump in my throat as I listen. I can imagine my mother, with her perfect razor pixie cut, her sharp eyes, and her stern frown, looking over Phantom at his most powerless. I can imagine Mom demanding answers.
“What happened?” My question comes out in a whisper.