Strangers of the Night

by Megan Hart

  She didn’t want to distract him with talk while he navigated the few miles toward home, but it wasn’t like they were barreling down the street, and the silence felt strained. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek for a second at that. “I mean, for everything.”

  “Again, my pleasure.” He shot her a look. “No ulterior motives, despite what you seem to think.”

  Willa’s chin went up. “You don’t know what I think.”

  “I know that you don’t like to rely on someone,” he said.

  She frowned. “That’s not true.”

  Phoenix didn’t answer. In another minute or so he was pulling in front of the house next to hers. He turned off the truck and turned to her on the seat.

  “If that guy bothers you again...”

  “You don’t know me, and you don’t know him,” she said crisply, cutting him off before he could say more.

  “I don’t need to know him to see he was a major asshole.”

  Again, her chin lifted. “Yeah, he is that. But I can handle him.”

  “I take it you’ve done it before?”

  She hesitated. To deny it would be stupid, but there was no way she was going to start in on that story. “It’s cold. I need to get inside. Thanks again for the ride.”

  He waited until she was on her front porch before he called her name. He was still standing on the sidewalk, the tote slung over his shoulder and his hands in his pockets. “Are you hungry?”

  “It’s only the middle of the afternoon.”

  “That’s not what I asked you,” Phoenix said with a smile she imagined he’d used many times on many women.

  “Are you offering to cook for me or something?” She fit her key into the lock and turned it, opened the door but didn’t go inside.

  “Cook? Me? Oh, no.” He laughed and tipped his face up to the sky to let the fluffy white flakes catch in his eyelashes before he looked at her again. Melting snow glistened on his lips, and he licked it away. “I was thinking maybe you would cook for me.”

  There was a small desire there for her to invite him in, to make some pasta with the tomatoes and basil sitting on her counter. A little olive oil. She was hungry, Willa thought. But cook for him?

  “You’re crazy,” she called down to him.

  Phoenix grinned. “I’ve heard that a time or two.”

  There’d been a time when any man who’d approached her had been shut down immediately. Even fiercely. There’d been a time when she’d allowed fear and rage to consume her. To keep her a prisoner of her emotions. Time had muted that response, but it had not entirely gone away. She was cautious, not coy.

  “I have no reason to invite you in,” she told him. “Other than because you want me to.”

  His expression became serious. He nodded. “True.”

  “Thanks again for the ride.” She kicked her boots on the door frame to clear them of snow but paused to look back at him before she went inside. “Maybe I’ll make you dinner another time.”

  Phoenix took a hand from his pocket and pressed it to his heart as he made a little bow. “Another time.”

  Chapter 3

  The storm they’d predicted to end within a few hours had continued through the night. The power had stayed on, at least. Phoenix didn’t have a job to go to. He had a fully stocked fridge and thanks to the library trip the day before, plenty to keep him occupied for the next few days while Penn’s Grove dug itself out. He also had a laptop and the internet and a curiosity about his prickly next-door neighbor.

  When he searched Willa’s name, dozens of entries came up at once. The benefit of having a unique name. If he’d searched his own name, there would also be plenty of hits under his various aliases, he was sure, but nothing that could be tied directly to him. Willa had several social media accounts, both her own and the ones for the library. Her posts avoided religion, politics and sex, and told him nothing about who she was. He dug deeper.

  A yearbook photo. “Best Smile.” Beside her in the picture was a younger but no less douchey-looking version of the man from the library. Brady Singer, read the caption. His arm slung casually around her shoulders told Phoenix a lot, though far from everything. Phoenix sat back in the uncomfortable desk chair that had come with the house the way all the furniture had. He typed again after a moment or so, but he wasn’t getting quite the results he wanted, so he picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number. He hadn’t called his sister in months, but she answered the way he knew she would.

  “So you’re not dead.”

  Phoenix laughed. “Not yet.”

  “Neither am I, thanks very much for being worried about me.”

  His laughter softened as he propped his feet on the desk and closed his eyes. “I knew you were fine. How’s Officer Friendly?”

  “Kane is fine. He’s great. We’re great together.” She sounded defensive, and he couldn’t blame her. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere safe. Somewhere nobody would think to look for me.”

  Persephone sighed. “Come back to me, Phoenix. Come work for the Crew. They’re not the enemy.”

  “I don’t want to work for anyone, not ever again.” The words bit out of him, harsh and bitter on his tongue. “Maybe they wouldn’t have me working the streets, but I guarantee you, I’d end up getting fucked again.”

  “Oh, Phoenix.” His sister sighed.

  “I’m not calling to chitchat, sister mine. I have a favor to ask.” He opened his eyes, knowing his voice had gone a little harsher, so he added, “Please.”

  “What do you want?”

  He told her quickly, outlining the searches he needed and spelling Willa’s full name for her. Persephone’s voice was muffled again. He heard the sound of typing.

  “Who is she?” his sister asked after a minute or so. “What do you want with her?”

  Phoenix thought before answering. “She’s my neighbor. That’s all. And I’m curious. I looked her up online, but I feel like there’s more to her.”

  “Yeah. There’s more.”

  “Like what?” He put his feet down with a thump and leaned to look at his laptop, as though magically whatever Persephone was finding would show up on the screen.

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Persephone,” Phoenix said like a warning.

  His sister, however, wasn’t intimidated. “It’s not any of your business. Why do you want to get into her secrets? Are you trying to get something out of her?”

  “No. I just...”

  “You have the hots for her,” Persephone said flatly. “Well, maybe trying talking to her instead of creeping on her. I’m sure you could pull everything right out of her, whatever you want. Isn’t that how you do it?”

  Okay, so she was still pissed off about what he’d done to her before. “It doesn’t work on her.”

  Persephone’s scalding laugh burned his ear through the phone. “Oh, for sure. Right. You want me to believe that?”

  “It doesn’t,” he repeated, “work on her. I don’t know why. I tried to nudge her, but she won’t do what I want her to do.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re screwed, brother mine.” Persephone’s laughter cycled up, sounding less bitter and more delighted. “Get ready for it. You’re about to fall in love.”

  “You shut your mouth,” Phoenix shot back without a second’s hesitation.

  Persephone guffawed, then went quiet. “If you want to know about her, you really need to get to know her. You could make me tell you, of course. We both know that. But it won’t be any good for you to know if she’s not the one to share it.”

  “It’s bad?”

  “It’s hers,” Persephone said fiercely. Harsh. “You don’t understand what
it’s like, Phoenix, when you nudge someone. How it can feel after. You ought to know, since—”

  “Shut your mouth,” he told her, already knowing what it was she meant to say. “Stop.”

  “Get out of there, wherever you are. Come home.”

  “I don’t have a home,” Phoenix said.

  “Your home is wherever I am. That’s all we need.” She sounded as though she might be on the verge of tears.

  Phoenix shook his head, even though she couldn’t see him. “I am not all you need. Not anymore.”

  And she could not be all he needed, either. They weren’t kids anymore. They were adults, and she was starting on her own, real life with Kane. She didn’t have to say it for Phoenix to know it was true.

  “Come here, anyway, to us. We have a place for you. You don’t have to take the job—”

  “I’m good where I am. Thanks.” He held the phone away from his ear for a second or so before putting it back. “It all ended up okay, you know. For you.”

  She didn’t answer him for a bit. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “Nothing is ever okay,” Phoenix said and disconnected the call before she could say something more.

  Chapter 4

  Willa had exhausted her patience for bingeing on streaming television shows, a feat she might have thought impossible if not for the past day and half of official road closings and a governor-mandated state of emergency that meant the library had remained closed. She’d run through everything she had an interest in watching alone, and without someone to watch with, she didn’t feel like starting something else. That left books, of course, and the internet, but something about the steady, softly falling snow was making her restless.

  It was because it made everything so quiet.

  Snow made silence in the world. No cars passing outside. No voices from the sidewalk beneath her window. The occasional rumble of the passing plows was loud, but infrequent. The quiet was getting to her, making her pace and run her hands through her hair over and over again until it tangled around her fingers.

  She needed...something. There was an aching in her chest, an emptiness that echoed throughout her body. Lower. She could pace and stare at the walls and eat cookies until she thought she might explode, but none of that was going to help her. It had been a long time since she’d felt this urge, this desire, and back in the days when she had sought the comfort of a stranger’s touch to help her get past everything that had been happening, she’d always made sure to go away. Out of town, at least two or three hours’ distance. She didn’t have that option now.

  “Breathe through it,” Willa said to herself, muttering although there wasn’t anyone here to overhear her talking to herself like some kind of deranged lunatic.

  They used to put people in asylums for this, she thought as she ran her hands over her arms, and then across her belly. One moving between her thighs even as she walked, cupping herself briefly. Sexual hysteria. Masturbation. They’d have tossed her in a cell and thrown away the key.

  She didn’t want to admit it was because of the man in the house next door. She didn’t want to think about the waves of red-gold hair, the green eyes, the strong jaw with that delicious stubble. Not the jeans or the work boots or the way he went out in the cold without wearing a winter coat, not about his crooked smile or the fact he liked to read so much he’d checked out fifteen library books. Certainly not how he’d insisted, several times over, that he wanted to help her.

  She didn’t have his phone number, thank whoever looked out for horny women who really ought to know better. She did, however, share a wall with him. He was right next door. Which was exactly why she wasn’t going to take a shower and shave everything that needed to be presentable, she told herself. He was within literal shouting distance, which was why she was absolutely not going to twist her hair into a tangled braid with sexy tendrils hanging down around her face. Why she wasn’t going to dress in fresh, matching panties and bra, the kind that showed off her curves, why she wasn’t going to line her eyes and mouth and dip a finger into her slick heat to tuck a bit of her own scent at each pulse point. Pheromones. No perfume had ever smelled as good on her as her own arousal.

  Phoenix was a stranger, but not one she picked up in club or on the internet and met in a cheesy hotel hours away. He was her neighbor. Which was why she was not going to put this casserole in a thermal carrier along with a loaf of bread she’d baked in the machine while she blew through two dozen episodes of an obscure ’90s teen comedy she barely remembered minutes after finishing.

  He lived. Next. Door.

  Which was why she had not added a bottle of red wine and some glasses, and why she was not knocking on his door.

  “Hi,” she said when he answered. “I thought you might be hungry.”

  * * *

  It had been a while since Willa had done any kind of seduction. The men she’d gone with had been found on the internet, screened ahead of time, the parameters of their arrangement laid out well in advance of any meeting. Watching Phoenix look her up and down now, though, she thought how easy it could be to make a man want a woman.

  “Thanks for dinner.” He’d polished off two big plates of the casserole she’d brought over, along with half the loaf of bread and most of the bottle of wine.

  She’d limited herself to one glass, craving the warmth of being tipsy but not drunk. “You’re welcome. I thought it was the least I could do.”

  “Neighborly,” Phoenix said with a smile.

  She smiled, too. “Yes. Neighborly.”

  “So,” he said, “you’re not going home.”

  “No.”

  Phoenix stood and held out a hand. She took it, although he hung back when she headed for the stairs so she could lead the way. This house was the mirror of her own, and she found her way without problem to the biggest bedroom, the one she assumed he’d taken as his. The rest of the house had been decorated in a style she could only figure was early American rental home, but here in the bedroom, at least, Phoenix had asserted his own taste.

  “Wow,” Willa said. “This is...amazing.”

  Phoenix closed the door behind them and locked it, something she noticed at once was strange, since they were likely to be the only ones in the house. Strange and yet oddly comforting, to her surprise, because she also locked her own bedroom door as a matter of habit. She watched him look around the room as though trying to determine what, exactly, she’d found so amazing.

  “You like?”

  She nodded. “It’s not what I expected.”

  “You put some thought into what you might find in my bedroom, Willa?” Phoenix laughed, low, and came up behind her to put his hands lightly on her hips. His breath tickled the exposed nape of her neck, making her shiver.

  She didn’t answer that, but stepped out of the embrace to move toward the king-size bed. Covered in white sheets with a solid black comforter and black-and-white-striped pillowcases, it was also draped with a skein of netting that could be drawn around it to curtain the entire thing. No headboard, but the wall behind it had been painted with briars and roses. Small white lights were strung around the ceiling.

  “Did you paint that?”

  Phoenix didn’t reply at first, not until she glanced at him. “Yes.”

  “You’re very talented.”

  “I have good hands,” he said. “Good with my fingers.”

  It was a totally cheesy line, but it made her laugh. “Uh-huh.”

  She turned slowly and found a seat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t beckon him closer. She waited, each breath rising and falling and her heart starting to thump a little faster in her chest when he stood and stared.

  She wasn’t expecting him to tug his shirt off over his head and toss it to the floor, or to open his belt buckle and push his jeans down over his hips, to
step out of them and leave him entirely naked. Willa’s breath caught at the sight of him, long legs and lean muscle. Around one hip curved a lick of red and orange and gold, a ribbon of flames. She gestured, a crook of her fingers.

  “Come here.”

  He did, standing in front of her. She studied the tattoo, very aware of his nakedness. She drew a fingertip over the inked skin, over his hip and around to his back.

  “Turn.”

  He did that, too, without protest. A scar feathered out from the edges of the flames, pale against his golden skin. Fine golden hairs glistened. He shivered when she touched him on the scar, then on the twin dimples at the base of his spine. He shifted, moving his feet apart so she could glimpse a hint of his sac between his thighs.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone cut me,” Phoenix said without turning.

  Willa ran her hands up the backs of his strong thighs, covered in more of that same red-gold hair. She traced the curves of his ass, hearing his low, soft groan. He shifted again, widening his stance even further. Granting her access to his body. Heat rushed through her as she slipped a hand between his thighs to run her thumb along the seam below his balls. She cupped them for a second.

  “Turn around,” she whispered.

  He was already hard when he did, and she drank in the sight of his erection. Greedy for him, she put her hands on his hips and pulled him closer so that she could drag her tongue along his length. He shuddered. How gratifying to have such a reaction, she thought as the tip of her tongue teased the small divot beneath the head of his cock. She didn’t take him inside her mouth, but she licked him again as her hand cupped him.

  “Who?” She breathed the question against his inner thigh as she nuzzled him.

  “It doesn’t...matter...”

  She licked the soft skin there, bare of fuzz. When she nipped, his hips jutted forward. She pressed her face to his skin, her eyes closed as she drank in his scent.