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I stand up, frustration and anger swirling in my veins. How? How the hell was I so close to all this madness and had no idea what was happening? How did I not know Guido and Vanessa were…fuck. Fuck.
“Alice,” he says quietly, and I still.
Turning away from him, I fixate on a table near the window. There’s a vase sitting in the center, the ceramic covered in waves and bumps, and in the center, a bouquet of fresh roses. Familiar fresh roses.
I cross the room and immediately take one of the petals between my fingers. It’s bloodred and velvet soft, and I know it better than I’d know any other flower. “The rose was yours. The one on my birthday.”
Phoenix sighs out a quiet breath. “You didn’t know that?”
I feel a growl rise in my chest, and I fight it back. “Was I supposed to? Or was I supposed to be clueless about that just like I was about the fact that you rigged my dorm with cameras and watched me masturbate.”
He huffs a quiet laugh, and when I look over at him, his face is full of amusement. I want to hit him, and I storm over with my arm raised, but he catches me like he can fucking see me.
“How—”
“Because I would have slapped me too,” he says. His grip on me softens. “It’s not magic powers, princess. It’s the fact that I’ve known you for years.”
“And yet you’re strangers to me,” I spit.
His thumb rubs a circle on my wrist before he lets go. “I’m not going to pretend like we had good intentions, sweetheart. I’m not going to pretend that you should be happy about it or forgive us for it. We did what we did, and none of us are sorry. But the gifts were because your piece-of-shit family never did anything right by you, and we wanted you to have something.”
I look down at the book, then sit heavily on the sofa, pulling it onto my lap. Phoenix’s eyebrows dip, and carefully, he reaches out. His fingers hit my thighs, searching, and then they find the book.
“I kept it,” I tell him. I flip open the back pages, then guide his hand to the flower. “Did you know?”
“Yes,” he says softly.
Licking my lips, I shut the cover, then set it back on the table. “I found it in Ari’s room. In his bed.”
Phoenix says nothing to that for a long, long moment. “If I could go back…” His voice is a low rumble in the back of his throat, and he shifts just slightly closer to me. “I’d at least make sure you had joy in your life. More than this sorry little thing we gave you.”
I stare down at the cover, and my lips twitch. “I don’t know. I mean, a woman fucks a wasp alien, and it gave me some pretty amazing orgasms, even after reading it for two years.”
Phoenix scoffs. “You’d think I’d stop being surprised by you.”
I square my shoulders and find some courage to ask, “Do you want that to stop?”
He cracks. “Not on your fucking life.”
His hands reach for me, and it’s not long before I’m straddling his lap and kissing him because I desperately need the distraction. His tongue is hot, and his teeth are sharp, and I’m sore all over because none of these men know what it is to be soft or kind.
It’s like having echoes of them all over my skin, and I crave more and more.
I rub my pussy down against his thickening cock, and I smile at the way he grunts and digs his fingers harder into my hips. “I don’t want to distract you from watching the guys,” I manage to say, though I regret it because I feel like I might die if he decides to stop.
Phoenix chuckles, the sound low and dark as he runs a thumb over my ear. “I’m always watching. I can definitely do both.”
I shudder against his chest as he drags his fingers up my sides. “Why does this feel familiar?”
“It’s yours,” I say, a little breathless. “I found it in Ari’s bed, along with the book.”
He makes a sharp grunting sound, then fists the sweater in one hand and tips my chin up with the other. “You’re wearing my clothes?”
“Yes. Sorry I—” I don’t get a chance to finish that apology. He kisses the words right off my tongue as his hard cock digs into my leggings like it wants to tear through the fabric and shove deep inside me. His hand releases my chin, only to set a bruising grip against my ribs, and I hiss in pain. He pulls back, but I quickly shove myself against him. “More.”
Phoenix bares his teeth in a grimace as his fingers trace the collar of the sweater, lingering where it’s fallen over my shoulder. He grazes a touch over my bare skin, then up my throat. “If I had my way, you’d wear nothing but my clothes. Just my shirts and nothing else. I’d leave you bare here.” His hand drags down to my core, where I’m wet and hot and throbbing. His thumb traces a line, and I try to push into it, which only makes him laugh. “Such a greedy little thing now that you’ve had me inside you.”
I don’t tell him how greedy I’ve been once the fear wore off. And hell, maybe even before then when I was torn between wanting to die and also wanting James to pin me to the mattress in that cell and fuck me until I couldn’t see straight.
