Just as unhinged.
Just as obsessed.
So I kiss him again, harder this time, just to make sure he remembers, down to his bones, who he belongs to. Because this isn’t infatuation. Itdevouredinfatuation, spat it out without a second thought, and kept going.
“You’re mine,” I whisper against his mouth. “Tell me.”
“Yours,” he breathes out, and his hands tighten on me. “Always fucking yours, Shannen.”
“Mine,” I murmur, dragging my nails down his back.
“There she is, my beautiful, possessive girl. Took you long enough to come back to me.”
“I’m sorry we lost so much time.”
His head drops against my chest. I wrap my arms around him, my fingers threading through his hair, hoping that if I hold him tighter, I can erase everything we never got to have before this moment—the silence, the distance, the pain we buried instead of facing, the torture he put himself through alone.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and he tilts his face toward mine, chin resting on my chest, silver eyes hazy like he hasn’t quite come back to his body yet. “Was that…?”
“It was everything. It was more than everything, and fuck… when can we do it again because that was over way too fast?”
I brush his hair back from his forehead, and the smile that crosses his face nearly stops my heart. It’s entirely too beautiful for this world—boyish in a way I haven’t seen since we were kids.
I laugh under my breath, but the sound dies as he lifts himself and looks down between my thighs at the mess we made.
“You’re covered in me,” he says, and the pride and possession in his voice send heat flooding through me all over again.
His eyes suddenly snap up to mine, darker now with renewed hunger, and I squeal, because in the next breath, he flips us until I’m straddling him.
“Phoenix!” I laugh, bracing my palms on his chest.
“Do you remember everything I said to you that night in the hotel room? When you had me tied to the bed? I want it all. I want everything.”
So I give it to him.
Chapter 17
Phoenix
So much warmth.
I slept with my girl all night. And I’m not talking about the sex. Though god, the sex—every single time she let me push inside her, her body welcomed me as if she’d been waiting just as long as I had.
Sex is a weird thing though.
People turn it into a milestone or a chore—something to give away or get out of the way.
Not me.
Mine was always hers.
I didn’t save it for a moment.
I saved it for my soulmate—the only woman I was ever going to be inside, no matter how long it took us to get here.
But what I mean is that we slept in the same bed.
She let me hold her as she drifted under, like it was the most natural thing in the world to trust me with her unconsciousbody.Something I had only ever imagined in my most desperate dreams.
