Phoenix crawls up my body, his weight settling over me again. He's hard. I can feel it against my thigh, obvious and insistent.
"Your turn," I mutter. My hands are shaking but they find his belt anyway. His zipper. I get him out and wrap my hand around him and his forehead drops against my shoulder with a groan that vibrates through my chest.
His cock is thick and hot in my palm. I stroke him and his hips jerk forward, grinding into my grip. My other hand roams across his torso—his chest, his stomach, the softness over solid muscle that makes him Phoenix instead of some cut-from-granite gym rat. I dig my fingers into his side and he shudders, breath coming in ragged pants against my neck.
"Raf…" His voice cracks.
I twist my wrist. Thumb the head and feel him throb in my hand.
"Come for me," I murmur against his ear.
He comes with a bitten-off groan, spilling over my fingers, his whole body going rigid on top of me. His hands clench in the dirt on either side of my head. His hips stutter twice, three times, then still.
We lie there.
In the dirt. Behind a fuckingwarehouse.
Phoenix is crushing my lungs to the point I have gray spots in my vision and I can't bring myself to care. His breath is hot and uneven against my neck. My hand is still loosely wrapped around him, wet and sticky, and I should probably do something about that but moving seems impossible.
The drizzle mists down on us. Somewhere in the distance, a car horn honks.
"So," I manage between breaths, staring at the sky. "Is it out of your system?"
Phoenix lifts his head. His hair is a disaster, plastered to his face with mist and sweat, and his lips are swollen. There's dirt on his cheekbone. I smudge it away with my thumb.
"Is it out ofyours?" he counters, grinning through his hair.
I consider this honestly.
My heart rate, still hammering. The way my hands don't want to leave his body. The fact that I just came so hard and almost embarrassingly fast from a blowjob behind a fucking building, and the primary emotion I'm feeling isn't regret or confusion but a deep, bone-level satisfaction that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.
"No," I admit. "Probably not."
Phoenix's grin widens. Slow, lazy, devastatingly warm.
"Not out of mine either."
CHAPTER 18
BELLS
I'd kill for an insult right now.
Anythingbut this complete silence punctuated only by the squeak and scrape of the windshield wipers.
Rex hasn't said a word since we got in the car.
That was forty minutes ago.
Forty minutes of rain on the windshield and his hands at ten and two and absolutely fuckingnothingcoming out of his mouth. The fuzzy handcuff chain droops between us over the center console, black faux fur slightly damp.
He drives the way he always drives. Carefully. And I'm starting to piece together the reasons why he is the way he is. You would think an alpha with Rex's personality would be a psycho 24/7, but no. Rex is cautious on the road. Sometimes shit even makes him flinch.
I find myself wondering if he'd care as much if I weren't in the car.
"You missed the turn," I say mildly.
"Must have been spacing out," he mutters under his breath, pulling over and reversing in the breakdown lane. He takes the correct fork into an even foggier section of forest.