I hated him and I needed him.
“Phoenix.” I moaned his name, nearly choking on the way I sounded so wrecked. “Phoenix, please?” I didn’t have the strength to ask him. Fuck, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted.
That didn’t seem to matter. He was looking past the mask that had fallen to the ground last night, past the one he’d painted on… and he was seeingme. He nodded slowly, sliding his arm beneath my hip so he could roll me over. I squirmed, half hoping he’d crawl on top of me and fuck me fast, find his pleasure without mercy so I could stop thinking this was something more. I would have welcomed the way it broke me—I wasusedto being broken.
I wasn’t used to this.
His lips pressed against the marks he’d left on my neck, teasing me with warm kisses and gentle licks until I was squirming again. My need for whateverthisPhoenix was fueled my arousal, even though I should have been completely spent.
When I moaned, he moved to another scar on my shoulder.
Knife, bullet, claw… I wasn’t sure. I was so covered in them that I couldn’t keep track. He touched his lips to it, and his tongue ran a slow line along the pain of my past. Phoenix worked that spot until I whimpered and shivered before he moved.
He followed the dotting of scars along my back with the same thorough exploration; his lips would find it, his tongue would play, and he would make me moan as though the action could somehow feed him the story that they’d left behind. He was taking them without even asking, and I realized I was willing to give them all.
“Phoenix.” I groaned his name against the pillow, but I didn’t move to stop him. I just writhed and fisted my hands in the sheets as he pulled back long enough to grab the pants I’d left on the edge of the bed when I’d taken his paint. I didn’t have to ask what he was doing. The sound of him opening the bottle of oil he kept was a whisper, and the feel of his cool fingers pressing against my already worked hole was heaven.
“Shhh…” He murmured the soft demand again, rocking his fingers inside me in slow, shallow thrusts that pegged my prostate and made me writhe while he fucked me open. I wasn’t even sure if I had anything left to give, but this wasn’t about that.
I needed to feel him.
I needed to feelwhole.
“Please?”
I felt him smile as he drew his tongue up the column of my spine and his body draped over me. His hand slipped beneath my chest and he propped himself up, dragging his lips to my ear.
“Do you want this?” His voice was still so soft, so achingly sweet. It played havoc with my mind, made me slipback and forth between the horrific present and a past I was trying so hard to escape, because there’d only been one person ever who had treated me like this.
Only one.
Only him.
And now Phoenix.
Tenderness.
He was giving me tenderness.
His hips gently teased me, flexing so his cock slid against my saliva-and-oil-slicked ass.
I couldn’t catch my breath to answer his question—I wasn’t sure I could make my tongue work to form words. All I could do was nod and hope it would be enough.
It had to be enough.
He shifted, and slowly—so slowly I felt like I was tearing apart from the inside out with need—Phoenix rocked his hips, sliding inside me like he was coming home.
His hand wrapped around my chest to pull me closer, and it felt like that iron grip was the only thing stopping me from flying apart. That, and the beat of his heart that I could feel against my back. Hard… thundering. He was playing this like it was just a game to him, but his heartbeat betrayed him.
This meant something to him too.
Maybe too much.
I lost myself to the feel of it as his hips bucked and he finally bottomed out inside me. He stayed that way for a moment, buried deep, with his head pressed against the crook of my neck and my name spilling hotly from his lips. I was shivering, my entire body and nervous system goingwild—I couldn’t keep myself whole. I couldn’t do anything but realize how fucking good he felt when he pressed me close like this, and how much I wanted to be in his arms.
How much it felt like I belonged there.
I moaned and shifted back, matching his slow, steady rhythm as he started to move. His breath was already coming fast, and his fingers on my chest were shaking where he held me—had it turned him on that much, making me come earlier? Or was it just this… the way he was holding me?
