Chapter 17 Phoenix
Phoenix
I don’t put on clothes to cross the living room. I like the feel of the warm air against my naked skin.
The house hums with night—vanilla in the vents, marsh air pressed heavy and humid against the glass. Four men track me like a storm system they’ve been mapping for months.
Storm in the corner, unreadable in his attention.
Atticus in an armchair with a tablet he isn’t reading because his eyes are following the sway of my hips.
Maverick, sprawled on the sofa like trouble disguised as comfort while he adjusts the bulge in his pants.
Conrad on the floor, back to the wall, the air around him tight as wire while he stares at my every move.
Zeus lifts his head, thumps his tail once—permission granted—and drops his head back down to the ground with a contented grunt. He’s the only male who could not care less about my nudity.
Stifling a giggle, I make them watch me walk.
Slow and measured steps. Spine tall. No apology on my lips.
Heat blooms along my skin where their eyes land—collarbone, belly, the curve of my hip.
Passing Conrad last is a choice; his gaze hits the hardest, heavy and proprietary, and the pressure changes in the room, like the weather.
I gave them my rules earlier. Tamsin helped me tell them hard things—the truth that while I had not been raped, I had still been assaulted—and explain that I needed them the same way as I always had, but I also needed some control.
For a while, until the sound of a chain no longer clanked in my memory, I would hold the key. I would set the pace.
They were good with that.
I clear the threshold to my bathroom and take in the amenities with a critical eye, pretending my pulse isn’t already in my throat.
The shower is massive—glass, tile, chrome—definitely big enough for a party.
Big enough for every terrible, beautiful thought I’ve had since they brought me here and sat on their hands because I wasn’t ready.
I’m ready now.
Leaving the bathroom door open as an invitation, I twist the dials for the different showerheads—left, right, handheld, rainfall.
Water answers with a low growl through the pipes before it spills out in hard, punishing streams. Steam drifts over the threshold and strokes my shins while I adjust the lever higher, nudging the heat right to the edge of too much.
Then I step in.
The first blast of water slams into my shoulders and knocks the static out of my head.
It pours down my back, turns the hush from the bedroom into a steady heartbeat I can stand in.
I plant my feet shoulder-width apart on slick tile, brace my palms on the wall, and tilt my face up until the spray pelts a hot line across my mouth.
I let it run there, washing away the last ghosts of cold metal and stale air.
My hands move over my body—shoulders, collarbone, breasts, the dip of my waist, the curve of my hips—like I’m re-learning the map with my own fingers. Every place I touch sparks, nerves waking up and reporting for duty.
I slide one hand lower. Not for show. For me. For them. For everything I thought I’d lost on that ship, everything I clawed back with broken nails and stubbornness and the four men standing just out of sight.
“I don’t do it as good as you do,” I say—clear, not loud. This house carries confessions like incense. “But a girl’ll make do if she has to.”
Silence holds for a beat.
Then Maverick’s wrecked laugh cracks the air. Conrad lets out a soft, filthy curse like he just saw something sacred and wrong at the same time. Atticus—always the last to crack—growls low in his chest, rough enough that it curls hot down my spine.
“I’ll be damned if she uses her fingers to make herself come when I’m right here aching for her,” Atticus snarls, and that’s what breaks the dam.
Footsteps. A shift in the air behind me. Four shapes stack in the doorway, big and solid and mine, the hall light behind them, steam curling around wrists and throats and self-control.
No one crosses the lip.
My rules. My pace.
“Rules first,” I say, still facing the wall, water pounding over my shoulders. “Slow. I set the pace, and we go from there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Atticus answers, voice rasped down to something feral and focused.
“Color,” Storm asks, because he refuses to touch what I don’t give.
“Green.” I tip my chin, letting the spray stripe my face. “And if I want more, you’ll hear it.”
“Clear,” Conrad says, quiet and absolute. It sounds like a vow.
There’s the rustle of fabric, the soft thud of shoes kicked aside.
Atticus moves first, yanking his shirt over his head like it offended him, dropping it on the tile.
The others follow, belts unbuckling, pants sliding down, boxers going with them.
They strip with a speed that would scare me if I didn’t want them so bad my teeth ache.
I watch in the blur of glass and steam as skin appears—broad shoulders, ink, cords of muscle I know from the way they feel holding me, scars I’ve traced with my eyes but never like this.
Atticus steps into the shower without waiting for an engraved invitation. Water sheets over him, plastering his hair to his forehead, sliding down the lines of his chest. Heat rolls off him, thick as the steam.
He brackets me without crowding, arms caging me against the tile because I put myself here.
His chest is a furnace at my back. His mouth finds my shoulder, a hot brand where neck meets muscle.
His touch is deliberate—mapping pressure points, adjusting angle and pace until my breath catches in exactly the right places.
“Look at you,” he murmurs against my skin. “Driving us insane and doing it on purpose.”
His hands skate down my sides, grip my hips, then ease, waiting for the smallest flinch. I don’t give him one. I press back instead.
Storm comes in next, sliding into the shower behind Atticus. One big palm finds the small of my back, warm weight and quiet claim. He’s close enough that I feel the heat from his body even before he touches me.
“Here,” he says softly, like the word is a hand on my heart, and some knot I’ve been guarding loosens like it just heard its name.
Maverick stays just outside the main spray, stepping up onto the dry tile. He drops to his knees, water spotting his shoulders, hair damp and messy. He settles back on his heels, altar-boy posture, blasphemous eyes.
“Let us,” he says, voice gone hoarse. “Worshiping you should be an entire fucking religion, Phoenix.”
Conrad lingers in the doorway, one shoulder against the jamb, arms loose, hands open. Steam curls around him, blurring everything but his gaze. He’s naked and still like a storm waiting on the horizon, eyes fixed on my face.
He doesn’t move. That’s how I know he’s hanging on by threads.
Touches stack like chords—Atticus at my shoulder and hips, Storm’s fingers drawing small circles at my spine, Maverick’s hands skimming my calves and knees, thumbs stroking the sensitive notch behind them. Each contact is a question. Every answer is mine.
“Eyes on me,” Storm says when my lids start to drift, voice like velvet over steel. “If it gets to be too much, I want to see it coming.”
I twist my head, find him through the steam. His eyes are pinned on mine, the blue gone dark, the corner of his mouth hitched like he’s proud and ruined all at once.
Atticus rewards me with low, filthy praise that tastes like power. “Good girl. Stay with us. Take what you want.”
Maverick drops a string of absolutely obscene endearments that makes a laugh break free from my chest—half humor, half need. The sound shudders through me and tips me over a clean, hot edge.
Water, heat, hands—everything narrows. Fingers learn the map of me like they plan to write an atlas. I gasp, curse, demand, and they obey like kings on their knees for their queen.
When I say, “Enough,” they ease back.
When I pant out, “More,” they give it to me.
When old ghosts try to creep in at the edges, Storm’s palm pins steady warmth to my ribs, Atticus’s voice grinds out praise, Maverick makes some stupid joke that slices fear off at the knees, and Conrad’s gaze stays right on me—solid, grounding, a tether I didn’t know I needed.
The shower becomes a crucible, heat and water and want burning everything else away. Time stretches, bends, turns strange.
At some point, I’m panting, muscles trembling, head tipped back against tile. Atticus’s lips brush my ear as someone touches my clit.
“Bed,” he rasps. “You’re gonna wreck your knees in here.”
It makes me laugh, remembering. “You like me wrecking my knees, though.”
He laughs, too, and slaps my ass.
Storm answers with a grunt of agreement. Conrad straightens. Maverick looks vaguely offended at the idea of stopping—and then his eyes flick to my legs and he nods like fine, okay, he loves my joints too.
Atticus shuts off the main spray, leaving only the rainfall trickling warm and gentle. Storm is all practical efficiency for a minute—hands finding towels, wrapping one around my shoulders, another around my waist, like he’s reassembling something precious and breakable.
I let them move me because I chose this. Chose them.
Atticus lifts me easily, one arm under my thighs, one around my back. My towel gapes; I don’t bother fixing it. Maverick pads ahead, yanking the bedcovers back with a flourish. Conrad hangs close, fingers brushing my ankle like he needs to feel me breathing.
They carry me through the doorway in a tangle of damp skin and low curses, into the soft dark of my bedroom.
The lights are low, just the bedside lamp on, throwing honey-colored pools over the big bed. Sheets turned down. Pillows fluffed. The kind of setup that would’ve made me lock up before.
Now it looks like a landing pad.
Atticus sets me down in the center of the mattress with ridiculous care, like I’m made of glass and on fire at the same time. The towels fall open. Cool air kisses damp skin.
I don’t cover myself. In fact, I pluck my nipples until I’m sure they’re about to snap.