The newness of it.
Had he ever fucked like this before?
Like he wanted to answer the questions I couldn’t ask, his fingers found mine, and he brought our joined hands to the center of my chest. My heart was pounding just as hard as his—an echo of the honesty we couldn’t say aloud.
“Phoenix, fuck…” The soft whimper of his name on my tongue usually made him fuck me faster, but not this time. He kept up a slow, achingly tender pace until we were both sweating and panting, until my world narrowed down to the feel of his breath on the back of my neck and the thundering of my heartbeat singing silent confessions in tandem with his.
I couldn’t think around the sensation of him working so deep inside me, his strong arms flexing as he started to tremble.
He wastremblingfor me.
The hand holding mine suddenly jerked loose and spiked into claws. He drew blunt nails along the length of my chest and grabbed my waist. Phoenix pulled me closer, until our bodies were completely flush against one anotherand I wasn’t sure where he stopped and I began. When he finally let go, it was on one breath—one word.
My name.
“Aubrey.”
Phoenix rocked himself through his orgasm and I could feel it—his cock pulsing inside me, his fingers biting gently into my skin to punctuate each throb. His breath on my neck, my name on his lips.
I wasn’t sure if I was coming with him or just flying on the cloud of the pleasure he’d found.
His hips pumped until I was dizzy from the feel of it, and I didn’t realize he was lowering us to the bed. I barely felt it when he pulled the cover over us, but I couldn’t ignore the soft way his fingers ran along my side, my hips, my jawline as he trembled and shook through the aftershocks of orgasm.
My body was shaking too when I realized Ihadn’tcome again. But his pleasure, the heat of him, the thundering of his heart? Fuck, it was better than an orgasm as he pulled me against him and ran his lips along the seam of the collar at my throat.
“You were so good for me. You’re so fuckinggood,Aubrey.” He murmured the praise in a low, husky voice. The feel of that whispered confession fed against my skin in a tone so wrecked only spiked my confusion. Phoenix followed the praise with his fingers, stroking my ribcage, my stomach, every part of me he could touch until I was boneless against him.
I wasn’t sure if I could move, even if I wanted to… and I didn’t know if there was a fucking thing I could do to stop the aftershocks of trembling pleasure that rippled through meas his cock went soft and slipped out of my ass. He stayed pressed there, though, the heat of him enveloping me so I felt… safe.
Safe. Fuck, that word was such a lie. I’d never been safe, had I?
My life was colliding the present with the past, and I wasn’t sure anymore if I could keep looking back. Not when Phoenix was standing in front of me and demanding I follow him into a burning unknown.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
PHOENIX
Aubrey was still sleepingwhen I got up. I’d been so distracted with everything before that I hadn’t really had a chance to look around the place. My eyes flicked to the skull on the ground, to the sharp crack that ran through it, splitting it into three pieces.
The temptation I had to stomp on it until it was dust was very hard to resist. I picked it up instead, carefully slipping the pieces back together as best I could and sitting it on the bedside table with a frown.
I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t really know how to fix anything. All I could think about was the way Aubrey had looked at me when I was fucking him in the rain—wild-eyed and desperate, broken and begging me to break him more so the wounds could finally heal clean.
All I could think about was the way he’d stared at mewhen he put on my paint, like he was seeing something I’d never seen, someone I could never be.
Fuck.
Aubrey was confusing.
I pushed the thoughts aside and made my way to the back of the house. It was bigger than anyone needed—multiple bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms. At the top of a set of stairs, there was a door that looked like it led onto a balcony. You could probably see the whole resort from there, and the thought made me grin.
A king observing his kingdom. I wanted it. When I opened the door, though, I realized I wasn’t alone.
Leaned up against the wall were two skeletons holding onto each other like they were the only things left in the world.
They were together on the balcony overlooking the water, like they’d wanted to die with the sunset.
