Page 167 of Before You Fell

I kiss him back because I love him. God help me, I do. I have always loved him, in every form he has taken. I even loved the asshole who made me cry in bathrooms and then sang my words to thousands of people as if he hadn’t ripped them out of me first. I even loved him when I hated him.

Phoenix groans into my mouth and the sound is so rough it moves through my whole body.

“Fuck,” he says, dragging his lips along my jaw. “You make me lose my fucking mind, Wills.”

His mouth moves down my throat, hot and open, and my head falls back before I can stop it. The scrape of his teeth against my skin makes my thighs press together and he notices immediately.

His hand slides under my shirt, palm flat against my stomach, and my breath catches.

“Wills.” His forehead drops to my shoulder. “The sounds you make go straight to my cock every single time.”

His hand slides down my stomach and slips beneath the waistband of my underwear. His fingers find my pussy and we both go still.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “You’re already wet.”

“Shut up.”

“Not a chance.” His fingers move, sliding through me. One fingertip plays with my clit with the certainty of a man who spent last night learning exactly what destroys me. “I could make you come right here on this fucking floor.”

Heat rushes through me so violently that I forget how to breathe.

“Phoenix.”

“Yeah. I bet that is exactly what you fucking want.” He lifts his head and there is the fuckboy smile, the arrogant curve of his mouth. “What? You want me to be sweet, Wills? I can fucking try. I’ll be awful at it, but I can try.”

His hand slips higher under my shirt, thumb brushing over my nipple. “I want you to take this off so I can put my mouth on every inch of you and make you come so hard you forget there was ever a version of me stupid enough to walk away after.”

My whole body trembles and his mouth curves.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough and certain. “That’s what I thought.”

He slowly pulls my shirt up and I lift my arms because pretending I don’t want this would be an insult to both of us. The fabric slides over my head and lands somewhere on the floor. His eyes drop immediately to my tits and he sucks my nipple into his mouth.

My head drops back and a moan tears from me before I can catch it.

“Fuck,” he says against my skin. “Your tits are going to be the death of me, Wills. Best fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

He releases my nipple with a loud pop.

“These need to go,” he says, tugging at my panties.

He rolls me onto my back and slowly slides them down. His mouth follows the path, pressing open kisses to my hip, the inside of my knee, and then my inner thigh, until the fabric clears my ankles and he tosses it somewhere behind him.

Phoenix sits back on his heels and looks at me on the living room floor in the morning light, with nowhere to hide.

His cock thick and hard and straining against his sweatpants.

“Jesus,” he breathes, his voice almost gone. “Look at you.”

My first instinct is to make a joke. To shield myself with something sharp before the softness gets too close. But he leans forward and presses his mouth against my breasts, and the thought dissolves completely.

His lips glide over my skin—his breath warming every inch before his mouth follows. His hands slide around my back, holding me steady, and when his mouth closes around my nipple, the sensation shoots straight down my spine and lands between my thighs with devastating accuracy.

I gasp.

He groans as if my sound does something filthy to him, the vibration of it brushing against my skin.

His tongue circles the hard peak slowly, wet and unhurried, before he sucks, pulling me deeper into his mouth. He uses enough pressure to make my hips roll forward chasing something he has not given me yet. Heat pools low in my stomach and in my pussy. My fingers slide into his hair because I need somewhere to put the ache building under my ribs.