Phoenix (Flames & Ashes Book 1)

by Carolyn Anthony

  I shook my head, uncrossing my arms, and rested my hands on his chest. “No,” I admitted. “I didn’t. But I like doing it with you, or rather to you. I enjoy it. It’s different with you. Everything is different with you.”

  “Alright.” He stroked his thumb over my clit, drawing slow circles around it and I fought like hell to focus on what he was saying. “So how can we make this work for you?”

  “God, Jaxx—” I moaned, as he increased the speed, but not the pressure of his touch. “I—I don’t know. I want to make you feel good. Can you please just let me do it my way?”

  “Sweetness, you don’t need permission. But do you know why I make you look at me when I go down on you, when I’m licking that pussy of yours I love so much?”

  “Jaxx!” His touch with his graphic line of questioning had me so close. “I’m—I’m going to come if you don’t stop,” I panted.

  His soft laugh echoed through the room. “I do it because I love the look on your face when you’re about to come. I get off on the change in your expression, how your coloring and your breathing changes—watching you come gets me off. You don’t want to look at me? Okay, I get it. But sugar, you have no idea of how many fantasies I’ve had with that beautiful mouth wrapped around my cock. And in all of those fantasies, when I look down, all I see are those light green eyes staring back at me.” He rubbed my clit in teasing up and down strokes.

  “Yes . . . no! Jaxx—wait.” I moved my hips in time with his hand, and since I was straddling him, I could feel his cock just under where he was touching me and I teetered on the edge of climax. If he didn’t stop, my body was going to take over. “Stop—you have to stop.” I wanted to make him feel this way, not the other way around.

  “Mmm, I can see it right now, the expression on your perfect face. You dominate my filthiest fantasies, baby. That’s the cold, hard truth.” When I moaned, he chuckled. “Come for me, sugar.”

  As soon as he began circling my clit harder, I jumped off of him. “No. Not yet,” I gasped and moved down his legs, caging both of his between mine. I laid my head on his hip bone, right beside his hard length and looked up at him. “Let me do this. My way.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  If it meant this much to him that I look at him, I’d could try. For him. He wasn’t Rick . . .

  I slid my ass lower and settled over him, as he gathered my hair and held it back.

  Keeping my eyes on him, I gripped his shaft with one hand, stroking him from top to base. When he thrust up, I closed my hand tighter around him. A drop of pre-cum glistened at the opening. I glanced down, then back up at him, paying attention to his reactions, his expressions

  I watched as his eyelids closed halfway, but still he watched me. I almost smiled. Feeling him move against my hand, feeling him grow harder because of the way I was touching him, because I was looking at him, made me wetter because I held a strange sort of power I never realized. And now I wanted to see him to lose that staunch control he always had when we had sex. I wanted to be responsible for it, and now I knew I could.

  Keeping my eyes on his, I licked over the tip, savoring the salty taste of him on my tongue. When he let out a long groan, I gripped his shaft with a gentle hand and ran my tongue up his length.

  “You look goddamned beautiful with my cock in your mouth.”

  With my arms resting over his hips, I could feel the tension in his thighs as he tried to keep from moving. I kissed the top of his mushroom head over and over as if I were kissing his mouth. When he inhaled sharp and tightened his grip in my hair, I took him deep inside my mouth.

  I moved one hand to the base of him and stroked him with both my mouth and my hand. He was way too big to take any deeper, so working him with my hand gave me the confidence to take him as far as I could without gagging. It took me a minute to figure out how far I could go, but once I found a rhythm, I let myself explore him.

  Alternating between sucking him deep and flicking my tongue against the underside of his cock, I couldn’t help but smile at his reaction. With every lick, every time I took him deep into my mouth, he grew harder. He’d been right. Some kind of erotic sort of phenomenon took place when watching someone you care about experience pleasure you control.

  When I took him deep and rubbed my tongue over the space between his head and his shaft, he pulled me off of him by the hair. He exited my mouth with a pop and I sat up.

  “What?” I panted.

  In seconds, he’d flipped me under him and had my wrists locked in one of his hands above my head. A ripping sound pierced the quiet room and my boxers flew across the bed.

  “Nothing I’d like more than to come down your throat, but I don’t think you’re there yet,” he growled, letting my hands go and pushing his forehead against mine. “If I thought I was addicted to your mouth before, I’m ten ways to fucked now. Are you good, baby?”

  Looking at his handsome, flushed face, I giggled and nodded my head. “I am.” I collected his damp hair and pulled it back so I could see his eyes.

  He smiled down at me in a wicked way before biting my lip and sucking away the sting. “Like that, did you?”

  I caressed a hand over his cheek. “Yes,” I admitted, running my tongue over my lips. “You taste like almonds, coconuts, and you. You taste good.”

  “Is that so?” He chuckled. “Compliments like that are gonna get you good and laid, sweetheart.” He searched my face with those beautiful, expressive eyes, and wedged his knee between my thighs. “You made me stop before you came, so now I’m gonna make you beg.”

  I opened my legs wide, allowing him room to lie between them. As soon as his hard cock slid up and hit my clit, I threw my head back. I needed him inside me. Right. Fucking. Now. Between him touching me, talking to me, and me getting him so close, I was saturated.

  As he kissed his way to my breasts, taking each nipple between his teeth and pinching the other, I moaned. I loved the feel of his ridiculously skilled tongue on every part of my body. He alternated between long, flat strokes and hard, pointed flicks. “Jaxx . . . ”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He sucked one nipple into his mouth so hard I gasped and wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “Please . . . I need you,” I moaned.

  He wedged his hand between our bodies, slipping two fingers deep inside me. I lifted my hips off the bed, offering myself to him.

  “Shit. You are ready.” He leaned up and in one strong lunge, thrust inside me, watching my face the whole time. “I think you like looking at me when you’re sucking my cock.”

  I cried out from both the pain of the intrusion and the strange pleasure of how much he stretched me. His mouth covered mine, stealing my breath. I slammed my lips against his and pulled his face away by his hair, our lips still touching. “I think you may be right.”

  “Oh, sugar.” He chuckled, shaking his head down at me. “You’re so fucked now.”

  “Get to it then.” I couldn’t believe how bold I felt, how . . . whole. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and unlocked my feet from around his waist. Bracing them on the bed, I pushed against him, trying to get him to move. The pain of him staying still inside me, stretching me, was worse than when he moved. I knew once he moved, that pain would give way to something beautiful.

  “Move, Jaxx. Please. I need to feel you,” I begged.

  “You wanna feel me, huh?” he said, rolling over with me on top of him.

  “Jaxx—”

  “Get up for a second.”

  “What?” I panted. “No.”

  “Trust me.” His deep timbered voice tickled my face. “Lift up.”

  I rose slowly, letting the length of him slide down my swollen walls. Once he was all the way out, an emptiness flooded my core and spread throughout, leaving me feeling cold.

  He grabbed my shoulders, and flipped me around so my back was against his chest. I shuddered as his lips caressed the shell of my ear. “Move down.”

  I leaned my head back and he turned, catching m
y mouth in a series of hard quick kisses. “Move down,” he repeated between frenzied kisses. “Take my cock.” He drove his tongue between my lips before pulling back. “And guide me back inside.”

  After kissing him again, I sat up and moved down to his hips. His dick stood straight up between my legs and I gripped him in one hand.

  “I got you.” He dug hands into the sides of my hips, lifting me as I touched the tip of him to my entrance.

  I looked down and tried to figure out how to do whatever it was he was asking me to do.

  I didn’t have long to consider this awkward new position. As soon as I placed his head against my entrance, he thrust up into me, rewiring my brain. “Oh, God . . . ”

  “Lean back, sugar.” His hands supported my back as I found my balance. “Feet on the bed,” he groaned.

  I moved, trying to get my feet out from under me, and held my breath. With every movement, he pulsed inside me. Once I got settled, he pulled out and slammed back in hard.

  “Jaxxon!” Every muscle in my body tensed at the intrusion. In this position, he stretched me even farther.

  “You want to feel me? You will like this.”

  He helped guide my hips. Up and down, he moved me, keeping the pace slow, until the pain was no longer acute. My body bathed his in a fresh coat of arousal. I moaned his name and quickened my pace, urging him to move.

  “You okay like this, baby?”

  “Yes!” I cried out. “Move, Jaxx.” His thick head slid along my upper wall, hitting my G-spot with every wicked thrust. I let my head fall back and supported my weight with my hands on the mattress on either side of him.

  He reached a hand around my hip and began stroking my wet clit. Tight, fast circles around my swollen bud built my pleasure higher. I pushed down on him harder. When he squeezed my clit between his index and middle fingers, my body ignited. An explosion of color flashed before me. Little traces of light flashed against the darkness behind my eyes.

  “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop,” I begged.

  He pressed down on my clit hard with one finger, and the ripples of the orgasm shimmied throughout my entire body. As soon as I cried out his name, he took over.

  He lifted his knees, giving himself more leverage and thrust harder finding his own release. The thickness of him inside me pushing against my G-spot kept the small tremors pulsing through me. When the warmth of him burst inside me, I squeezed around him, our bodies pulsing around and inside the other.

  I couldn’t hold my weight any longer and I collapsed backwards. As soon as my back hit his chest, he closed his arms around me, pulled out of me, and rolled to the side, laying me down on the bed. His warm lips slid up and down my neck, and I reached a hand up to tangle in his long hair.

  “I think being balls deep inside you might be my new favorite place in the entire fucking world,” he mumbled.

  I smiled into the dark room, hearing the exhaustion in his voice. “That was—different,” I muttered, because I didn’t have the energy to put any real sound behind my voice.

  “Good different, or bad different?” He took my earlobe between his teeth.

  “Good different.”

  He chuckled. Hovering above me, he pulled up the straps of my tank top and the bottom hem down so they were back in place. Wrapping the discarded towel around his hips, he scooted to sit on the side of the bed while I rolled up in the comforter. His long hair fell around his face, framing it.

  “Jaxxon,” I mumbled, pulling the comforter tighter around me.

  “Yeah.” He looked down at me, running a fingertip down my cheek.

  “Are you leaving?”

  He grinned. “You kicking me out already?”

  I shook my head. “No, not at all. I was—if you want to stay . . . you can. If you want.”

  Moving off the bed, he knelt beside it, and I rolled closer to him so we were face to face. “You said that wasn’t an option.” He focused on my lips, running a finger over them.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been okay lately. I do need Chris and Kyle with us. They have beds in here too.” I nodded to the corner of the room.

  “Don’t they usually sleep on the bed with you?”

  “Kyle does, but I know you hate dog hair on the blankets.”

  He laughed and kissed my forehead. “Baby, I’ve been on these blankets quite a few times now, and Ari sleeps with me when Jessa’s not there. I have no control.”

  “I know, but I wash them when I know you’re coming over. Twice sometimes.”

  “Devious. You planned to get me in bed all along. I see how you work.”

  I bolted up, which was the wrong move, because the entire room spun before me. “I did not! I just know you have a thing about dog hair.”

  “I’m messing with you. Thank you for thinking of me. I can man up, though. Let Kyle sleep where he’s used to sleeping.” He stood and secured the towel around his hips.

  I wouldn’t know if I could sleep with him unless I gave it a shot. I wouldn’t know if I could do ‘general progression’ unless I tried. As long as the boys were with me, I should be fine. Even if I had an episode, and I hadn’t had one in a while, but the last few I’d had hadn’t been as brutal. So if I was ever going to see if he could sleep over, now was the time.

  Leaning over me, Jaxxon kissed my lips, my nose, and my forehead. “Then yeah, baby. I’ll stay with you.”

  I pushed myself up and flung my legs over the side of the bed with the comforter wrapped around me. “I’m gonna take a shower. I’m all oily.”

  “You look like a burrito,” he commented as he locked me in his embrace.

  We stood there for a long time, staring at each other. The more intimate thing to do would be to shower together, but that wasn’t an option . . . and from the silence, we both knew it.

  Jaxxon slapped me on the ass and fell back on my bed, towel and all, killing any awkwardness I’d been feeling. Grabbing the remote, he turned on the TV and nodded to the bathroom. “I’ll take one after you. Go.”

  I stared at him for a few seconds longer, loving the way he looked taking up a very large part of my California king-sized bed, before turning to the bathroom.

  “Valentina,” he called to me.

  I spun around with a hand on the doorframe. “What, hon?”

  “You’ll be fine, baby.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t wanted you to stay before.”

  “I know, sugar. You hungry?” He sat up on the bed.

  How he found the energy to even move was beyond me. I was going to be lucky to get through a shower, and he’d had a much longer and harder day than I had. “No, I’m not, help yourself. Just don’t feed the boys.”

  “I’ll make you something anyway. You’re gonna be hungry later.” He walked to my bedroom door. When he opened it, he immediately dropped down to greet the dogs, who as always were lying right outside.

  I shook my head at all three of them and closed the bathroom door. I turned on the hot water and took off my tank top. I was a different person with Jaxxon. He made me want to try. Maybe there was hope . . .

  37

  Valentina

  It had been over four years since I’d had slept with a man. The nightmares hadn’t started until after my divorce. Burrowing under the covers, I flipped through the channels, waiting for Jaxxon. I breathed through the dull ache in what seemed like every muscle in my body, trying to stop the trembling. Nerves? Soreness? Fear? Or D—all of the above.

  A cool breeze through the open windows chilled the room, but my guess, an unlikely catalyst for why I couldn’t get warm. I readjusted under the covers, shoving my body pillow under my left side and pulling the covers up to my chin.

  “Nowhere to hide in there, baby,” he chuckled as he entered the bedroom wearing pair of warm-up pants and no shirt.

  The bed dipped behind me. The heat of Jaxx’s warm, showered body acted like a heater up against me. He trailed his cool lips down my cheek as he wedged an arm under my head, pulling me tight ag
ainst him. “You need sleep,” he murmured in my ear. “If you can’t because I’m here, I’m out.”

  “No . . . ” I sighed. “Sleep is a toss-up whether you’re here or not. Are you comfortable?”

  “More than I should be.” He locked me in his arms and rested his head above mine on my pillow. “You’re so warm. Might have trouble kicking me out in the morning.”

  Warm? I’d been freezing. Twisting my head, I kissed him and snuggled closer, more content than I’d ever been before. My eyelids grew heavy as my brain shifted into low gear.

  “You can stay as long as you want,” I managed to get out before the lethargy spreading over me became too strong to fight.

  Click . . . click . . . click . . . click.

  The clank of metal against metal blares through my head and a rush of blood flows back into my limbs, rousing me from the sluggish, confused state I’ve been reduced to. I have no concept of time, but I know I’m free. Tiny prickles of sensation rush back into my fingers, my toes, my legs, and my arms as I wiggle and try to move.

  I crack my goopy eyelids open to a dark room. The silhouette of the monster looms at the left side of the table, towering above me.

  I try to pull my arms together, but I’m so weak—chained so long, sliding my arm closer to my body takes every ounce of energy.

  Callused fingers dig into my freed wrist, yanking my arm straight.

  “No,” I rasp, my throat burning from dryness.

  “Shut your mouth or I’ll gag you again.”

  I try to turn my body away from the harsh voice. A thin, sharp needle stabs deep into the damp skin of my arm.

  “Stop . . . plea—”

  Seconds pass, giving way to what feels like a slow moving river throughout my body. Like old oil, thick and dark and unhurried, the drug seeps into every muscle, leaving me even more immobile than before.

  I watch the blurry shape of the monster move back to the end of the table. Adrenaline floods my system, but is no match for whatever he injected me with.

  Fingernails scratch my hips under the sides of my underwear. I shriek as the monster rips them down my legs. Sweaty hands shackle my calves and haul me to the end of the table, forcing my naked core up against hard and hairy thighs.