And I’m going to let her.
Phoenix pulls back just far enough to breathe, her forehead pressing against mine. Her pupils are blown wide, nearly swallowing the amber. Her chest heaves against mine with each ragged inhale.
“Dom.” My name again, rougher this time. Unsteady. “I need?—”
“What do you need?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, her hands drop to the hem of my shirt, the same shirt she’s been twisting and clutching since I pulled her out of that hellhole, and she tugs upward.
I let her strip it off.
The cold cabin air hits my bare skin and I shiver, but Phoenix doesn’t give me time to adjust. Her palms are already mapping the terrain of my chest, fingers tracing the lines of ink that crawl across my skin. The serpent coiled around my shoulder. The compass rose over my heart. The thorned vines that disappear beneath the waistband of my jeans.
“These are beautiful,” she breathes.
“Got most of them when I was too young and too stupid to know better.”
“I like them.” Her finger traces a particularly intricate piece—an anatomical heart tangled in barbed wire, done during a particularly dark period of my life. “They’re hopelessly romantic and completely without affectation. Just like you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. The assertion is ridiculous and also induces a burning sensation in my chest.
So I kiss her instead of replying.
Phoenix makes that desperate sound again and melts against me. Her arms wind around my neck, pulling me closer, and when I deepen the kiss she matches me eagerly.
My hands find the hem of her shirt. I pause there, fingers resting against the thin fabric, waiting.
“Yes,” she breathes against my mouth. “Please, yes.”
Permission granted.
I peel the fabric up slowly, giving her every opportunity to change her mind. She doesn’t. Just raises her arms to help meand then she’s bare from the waist up, wearing nothing but a simple cotton bra that probably cost more than my rent.
She’s beautiful.
Though the bruise on her cheek is darker now. The raw red around her wrists feels like an indictment of all my failures as an alpha. There is too much evidence of everything she survived tonight, written across her body in purple and blood-red.
“You’re staring,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” My throat is thick. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She reaches behind her back and unhooks her bra with a practiced motion, letting it fall away. “Look at me.”
I look.
Her breasts are small and perfect, nipples already peaked from the cold air. A flush spreads across her chest, deepening the gold of her skin to something almost bronze.
“Phoenix…” Her name comes out strangled.
“I need you, Dom.” Her hands find mine, guiding them to her waist, pressing my palms flat against her bare skin. “I need to feel something good right now. Can you do that for me?”
God.
“Are you sure?” The question costs me something. Every instinct I possess screams at me to take what’s being offered, to claim and protect and possess. But she’s been through hell tonight. She’s running on adrenaline and trauma and I refuse—refuse—to be another person who takes from her without asking.
“I’m sure.” Her amber eyes hold mine, clear and steady despite everything. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
That’s all I need to hear.
