Page 39 of Phoenix
As soon as the words leave my mouth, something falls over us and we both start thrusting against one another, chasing that high together. His hands grab hold of my ass and begin to move me back and forth while I reach up high, relinquishing my grip on him completely. I can tell he wants to turn us over so he can take control, but he doesn’t. He lets me stay in charge the whole time; he knows I need this with him.
“I can’t hold on, baby,” he pants, “I have no restraint with you.”
“Touch me,” I beg, and he does. His thumb finds my sweet spot and begins to circle it as his hardness moves inside of me. It’s so intense that it doesn’t take long before I release with him, right here beneath the branches of this tree. And when the high subsides, I fall onto his chest and stay there for so long, the sun is beginning to set by the time we come apart.
“Jess,” he whispers so I turn to look at him, “I love you.”
His words undo me, and tears suddenly begin falling from my eyes. He smiles softly and begins kissing them away from my flushed cheeks.
“Is that ok?” he eventually asks, laughing at me as he rubs away the remaining moisture from my cheeks. To begin with, I simply nod, because it’s more than ok; it’s everything.
“I love you,” I whisper back.
Chapter 16
Phoenix
The first girl I’ve ever loved lies naked in my bed, sleeping peacefully while I sit on the edge, staring at my reflection in the mirror. A tall man of muscle and tattoos acting as a façade for the same little boy who sat quivering with fear after the fire had engulfed his mother. How would I live without her? How would I become anything without my mother to guide me? How am I supposed to protect my sister who needs so much? What will I do if I fail to protect her? Fail to protect Jess?
I sink my face of doubt inside of my hands, unable to look at my fears any longer, even though they are always there. The expectation to always come out the hero, the victor, the pillar of strength is sometimes too much for me to bear. I never escaped those flames; they took me along with her; I am but mere smoke and ashes.
“Warren,” a soft voice calls out to me, forcing my muscles to relent in their tense hold. “I have seen that look in my own reflection. Many times.”
“And what look is that?” I reply, still with my face hidden inside of my hands.
“Abject fear, disappointment, uncertainty, loss,” she says as I feel her hands snake around to rest over my chest. I cannot help but move my own to cover them, to hold them against me for fear I’ll lose them altogether. “To name but a few.”
“Does it not worry you?” I ask. “To have chosen a man who believes himself a fraud?”
She does not answer me straight away, but kisses my back with gentle touches, all the way up to my ear.
“Your self-doubt is what made me trust you in the first place,” she whispers. “Men who wear their confidence and pride and little else are the ones to fear. The man who took me, ‘Daddy’, liked to act the confident man, the proud father, and yet he was neither.”
“And who was…” I begin as I turn to run my hand over her naked skin, gifting her with a genuine smile I do not offer to many others, “…the kind of man who dared to take you?”
My expression turns serious, as does hers, for this is no laughing matter. But if I am to help her, to track down this man if he is still alive, I need to know all I can about him. It is perhaps disturbing how I came to be the assassin I once was; to study human behavior and let the most depraved of men influence my mind in such a way I could almost be accused of thinking in the same way as them. I have killed many, I am no angel, but I like to think I am not quite as bad as those who I have been hired to slaughter. A man who steals children to raise as his own while locking them in a basement for years, where they lay praying for their families that never come, is surely a lower form of being than an assassin of murderers and abusers.
“He was damaged,” she finally tells me, her hand cupping my cheek as I look deep inside of her sad eyes. “I fear I am now just as damaged, though my only victim has been myself.”
“No one will hurt you now, Jess, not even yourself,” I tell her as I lean down to slowly kiss her plump, ruby-red lips. I could kiss her until my own turned just as red, but I need answers to difficult questions, ones I wish I didn’t have to ask her. “I won’t let them.”
“You want to ask me more, don’t you?” she asks sadly, knowing this has been coming for a long time.
“I do,” he replies truthfully, “but I will only ask of you what I am willing to give myself. I will tell you anything you wish to know. An offer I have never made to anyone else before.”
“Really?” she asks with genuine surprise in her voice, and I smile as we both scoot up to sit side by side together on the bed, getting ready to bear all. “Ok, I shall try.”
“First off, and it makes me feel sick to have to ask this of any woman but did…I’m not calling him ‘Daddy’.” I tell her with a grimace for the fact she was forced to when she must have been absolutely terrified of him; the mere thought makes my fists itch to punch somebody. She smiles nervously, and I instantly bring her hand to my lips to kiss it for reassurance. “Did Robert ever touch you?”
“He would touch me like a father might, an overly affectionate one by comparison to my real father, but nothing that would suggest it was sexual. And for that, I am at least grateful.”
“Thank God,” I say through a long breath of relieved air. “What about Jake?”
“When I hit seventeen, Dad…Robert decided I was eighteen, an adult. He came to the decision that we needed another child in the ‘family’. At first, I began to panic that he was planning to snatch someone else, someone like me. I think Jake thought so too; he started insisting on going with him everywhere he went. Every time he went out, I would sit in a state of trembling and panic, fearing he would come home with a small kid. It brought back painful memories.”
She takes a moment to shut her eyes and try to compose herself, so I bring her against me to hold, rubbing her arm while she takes a few deep breaths.
“But…” she finally continues, “a few weeks after his declaration, he made a dinner for us all. We were instructed to come up to his dining room where he announced something that was not worse, per se, but as equally fucked up. Robert decided Jake and I should make a baby together.”