His mouthand his hands work in tandem for a long time. I give up trying to track what's happening in any organized way—there's just heat and his breath and his hands and the leather at my wrists reminding me to stay where he put me. He builds it slowly, more slowly than I expect, and every time I think he's going to close the distance he pulls back and starts somewhere else.
By the time he finally moves over me I'm past asking for anything.
He braces above me on both arms and looks at me for a moment.
Then he leans down and kisses me. Slow at first, then deeper, and I pull at the belt and he shakes his head once, barely, just a small motion, and I stop.
He works his way in slowly. Watches my face the whole time. I feel every bit of it—no rushing, no urgency, just Phoenix completely present and paying full attention and knowing exactly what he's doing and taking his time doing it.
I turn my face into his throat. His pulse is fast under my lips. I press my mouth there and feel the vibration when he makes a sound low in his chest that I feel everywhere.
He moves and I stop thinking.
There's just the weight of him and his hands gripping my hips and the leather at my wrists and the dark room and his breath against my ear. He builds it the same way he built everything tonight—slowly, deliberately, using everything he knows—and when it finally breaks it hits me all at once, sharp and total, my whole body pulling tight. I hear myself make a sound that fills the room and I don't try to stop it.
He doesn't stop either. He works me through every last second of it, watching my face, and then when I come back to myself, he lets himself go, three hard controlled strokes and then his hips press into mine and he goes still and I feel him shudder and hear my name in his throat, rough and low.
He stays there. Both of us breathing.
After a whilehe reaches up and unbuckles the belt. He slides it free of my wrists and sets it somewhere in the sheets and then takes both my wrists in his hands and holds them, his thumbs pressing gently against the inside where my pulse is still fast. He looks at me in the dark room.
I look back at him.
He rolls to his back and pulls me against his side. I put my head on his chest and feel his heart under my cheek, still going fast, slowing gradually.
The kitchen light is still on down the hall. Through the curtains the city is lit and continuous, going about its night.
I think about the belt in the sheets and how I kept my hands there the whole time, not because I had to, but because I wanted to because giving him that felt like giving him something real. He took it carefully the way he takes everything from me. He's had all of it. He treats all of it like it's worth having.
That's why it doesn't feel like losing something. It feels like the opposite.
He runs his hand slowly through my hair. His breathing evens out.
"I called my father," he says, after a while. "Before I drove home. From the parking garage."
I wait.
"He said he was proud of me." His voice is quiet. "Of both of us. He said—he said it plain. No preamble."
I lift my head and look at him.
"He's never said it," Phoenix says. "In thirty-two years."
I look at his face in the low light. The slight tension around his eyes. A man sitting with something he's been waiting to hear his whole life and didn't know he was waiting.
I put my head back down on his chest.
I don't say anything. I just hold on, and after a moment his arm tightens around me, and we lie there in the dark bedroom with the city going past the windows until his breathing deepens and evens and the hand in my hair goes still.
29
PHOENIX
Idrive to the Wilshire Division station on a Thursday morning with Donna's documents in a manila envelope on the passenger seat.
Not the Hawaii State Police. Not the regulatory body that's been building its case against the Crawford Group for the last eight months. A different jurisdiction entirely — the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Crimes against Children Unit, a detective named Reyes who Nathan located through a contact at the DA's office and who agreed to a Thursday morning meeting without asking too many questions about why a Crawford Group executive was requesting it personally rather than through counsel.
I didn't tell my lawyers I was doing this. I'll tell them after.
