Page 40 of Double Down

Storm

I don't want her to choose.

Mav

Then that's the bet. We all get to have fun with her, make her want each one of us. If she refuses to choose, then Storm wins…and I guess she wins by extension. Same rules as before. No telling her.

Con

And when she chooses one of us and not all of us?

Atticus

She’s out.

Over my goddamn body. Phoenix isn’t leaving.

“Come along, Phoenix. It’s time to show you the darkness you bring me back from with your very existence.”

I don’t bother moving from my seat on the terrace. Instead, I hold out a hand for Phoenix to take, and tug her gently into my lap when she does.

When I pull the knife out, she doesn’t even flinch.

“I could cut your clothes from your body.” I whisper against her flesh, loving the way her skin rises with goosebumps from the mix of my words and the heat from my breath.

Instead, I raise my sleeve a few inches and let her see the inside line of my arm, where I have a series of small scars. Most of them faded, all of them thin and small enough that I’m sure she hasn’t noticed before now.

“When I was in middle school, I noticed a little girl running around the hotel. I watched her every single day. But I didn’t realize that my parents were watching me watch her. They saw my…attention…as a weakness they had to beat out of me.” I use the blade to cut just deep enough to draw a thin line of blood.

“I didn't stop watching. Wanting what didn’t belong to me. And my parents kept beating me. Every. Single. Day. Until pain was my new normal. So when they stopped, I had to hurt myself to feel anything.”

Another slice into my skin. Another thin trickle of blood.

“I know you saw the scars on my wrists before. It’s the only way I could feel. Other than holding you.”

And Phoenix? She doesn’t say a single thing. Instead, she focuses on my arm until I’m sure that she’s disgusted not just by the cutting, but by the secret I gave her.

Then, she does the damndest thing.

She leans down and licks the fucking blood off my arm.

In a single heartbeat, I’m hard as a rock, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been this close to coming in my pants since I was in middle school.

I’ve got one hand on the blade and one wrapped around Phoenix, and I know I have to put the knife down because there’s no way in hell I’m waiting to be inside this woman.

I don’t have a chance to think about how to get her undressed, because Phoenix takes things into her own hands.

She’s up, pulling her shirt over her head and her bottoms off before turning and straddling my waist.

“Your pants,” she whispers before leaning in and kissing me.

Holy fuck.I taste my blood on her lips, and I’m such a fucking goner for this woman.

My fingers are trembling when I manage to get undressed enough to fuck her, and I couldn’t care less because she’s on my lap with her delectable tits in my face…and my knife in her hand.

“Take what you want, Angel. Hurt me. Make me bleed if you need to.”

While I wait to see what she’s going to do with the knife, I guide my achingly hard cock to her entrance and groan at the wet silk ready to swallow me whole.