It meant something.
It meant everything, and as his fingers trailed up to the collar on my throat and he traced the edges of it, I knew that I was going to have to break myself one more time.
I couldn’t do this.
Not while I wore Phoenix’s collar.
Not while I had Bishop’s tags hanging next to it.
If I wanted this, and fuck, I was running out of ways to tell myself that I didn’t want Phoenix…
I had to learn to finally let go.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
PHOENIX
When I woke,the first thing I noticed was that Aubrey wasn’t in bed. The sheets beside me were cool.
The second thing I noticed was the black metal collar sitting on the table beside the empty bottle of oil we’d used the night before.
Something streaked through me—something violent and a little ugly. He couldn’t have…
He didn’t…
I’d opened myself up to him and he’d what… run?
I was up and moving before I realized what I was doing, prepared to hunt his ass down and drag him back to the room. I’d close the gate behind me and chain him to the fucking bed. I’d twist that collar until it couldn’t come off, until?—
“Calm down, Phoenix. He didn’t run off.” Blythe’s voice caught me off guard, andI turned.
“What the fuck do you know?” I snapped, and instantly recoiled at the expression dropping across her face. Blythe was always soft with me, sweet. Apparently that only extended as far as my respect for her did.
“I know you’ve been head over heels for him since the second you came into camp with him in your arms. And I know, you fucking hothead, that you can’t collar every person you fuck and expect them to stand beside you as an equal. Do you want a dog, or do you want Aubrey?” Her eyes dropped to the collar I had clutched in my fingers, and I frowned.
Fucking Blythe.
“Where did he go?” Because it was obvious by the look on her face that she knew.
“Away from your temper, I’d assume.” When I crossed my arms, she rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure he’s walking the perimeter, waiting for you to cool off.” I turned, but she caught me by the arm. It wasn’t as though Blythe was big—she was a foot shorter than me—but the strength in her fingers where she touched me was enough that I couldn’t resist. “Listen to me, Phoenix. I know you think the world is pain and chains and collars. If you fuck this up with him, that’s all it will ever be. Think about it.”
Her nails dug into my arm pointedly, then she walked off before I had a chance to tell her to go fuck herself.
Or to ask her what the fuck she meant.
Instead, I turned with a growl and headed away from Blythe and her absolutely infuriating wisdom.
I cut across the little area that I was pretty sure had been used as a park once upon a time and headed toward the edgeof the resort. Maybe the drop-off overlooking the lot would give me a vantage point to see him.
I wanted to pretend that I didn’t know what Blythe was talking about, but something in her words echoed true.
I loved Aubrey on his knees for me—I loved him choking and gagging on his collar with my fingers in his mouth.
But I loved the way he looked above me, the way his cheeks flushed and his eyes held an endlessness I’d never known before, a religion I could bow down to and worship. It was the way he looked at me.
It was the person he was when he wasn’t hiding behind the mask that the collar and paint gave him.
