The Phoenix Read online

  In her experience, women who had been abused typically wanted a bath—to wash their abuser away—and a soft, safe place to land for a while. She wasn’t sure what Ms. Aggie would say about taking in the young woman for a few days, but Charlie could certainly provide her with the temporary use of her en-suite bath and a few clothes until decisions were made about her future.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” Charlie said. “And I’ll get you settled.”

  By the time Josie was bathed, newly clothed and moved into her own room, the police had arrived and taken Jay into custody.

  Andrew had pressed charges.

  With any luck, he would get his own time behind bars, because Charlie was going to encourage Josie to press charges, as well. She’d been systematically mentally and physically abused. She was eighteen. A runaway whom Andrew had “saved,” dangling the idea of a modeling career in front of her. Josie wasn’t stupid—she was just a product of her circumstances. A drug-addict mother, a perverted stepfather. She’d fled at seventeen.

  Charlie had heard it so many times before. Too many.

  Even though she knew that Ranger Security was more than likely going to make a phone call and get Jay out of jail, Charlie nonetheless went down to see him. Predictably, bond had been set and paid and, when he walked out, he looked endearingly tired, unbelievably sexy and heart-stoppingly gorgeous.

  He smiled when he saw her, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. Her chest tightened to the point where she couldn’t breathe, and she grew lightheaded. She could feel her pulse thundering in her ears, the steady galug-galug-galug telling her something she didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to acknowledge.

  This man had cold-cocked an abuser, rescued the abused women and forfeited his job in the process. Would Ranger Security fire him? Certainly not. No doubt any one of them would have done the same thing when faced with the same dilemma. But he’d undoubtedly cost them a lot of money, a potential lawsuit and a headache of massive proportions. She was so full of emotion—pride and gratitude and happiness, of all things—she feared she’d burst.

  And he hadn’t cared.

  He smiled down at her, his gaze warm and surprised. “I could have called a cab, Kitty-Cat. What are you doing here?”

  Charlie grabbed his shirt by the lapels and drew him down to her. She slid her nose along one side of his, nuzzling, breathing him in. “Giving you a hero’s welcome,” she murmured, before pressing her lips to his.

  11

  “IF YOU’RE GOING TO do this every time I hit someone, then the general population isn’t safe,” Jay told her, chuckling against her mouth. Like a match to dry tinder, need flamed inside him, singeing his veins, making his scalp prickle, his dick swell.

  Catcalls, whoops and whistles eddied around them, reverberating off the cinder-block walls, but he couldn’t seem to care. As a rule, he’d never been much of a fan of PDAs, but he’d never been kissed like this before, and frankly, much like Rhett Butler, he simply didn’t give a damn.

  In fact, he imagined that any time at all around Charlie Martin would make him permanently indifferent to everyone but her. If he’d had the presence of mind to sincerely consider that thought, no doubt it might have given him pause.

  But his mind didn’t play in any part of this, other than to process feeling and sensation, to send the signals to his brain that would command his muscles to bring her closer to him.

  He needed to be closer. As close as he could possibly get.

  Beneath her skin, the way she’d gotten under his.

  She was hot and warm and soft and he could feel the desire shimmering off her and curling around his own and it was nothing short of magical the way she felt against him. Her skin was silky to the touch, her body curvy but firm and well honed, her fingers strong and insistent as they roamed over his face, his neck and along his shoulders. She mewled and purred in his mouth and he ate those sounds, savored them against his tongue.

  Holy hell, how he wanted her.

  An especially loud “ahem” sounded from directly behind him and they reluctantly drew apart. Jay sent a sheepish look over his shoulder, then twined his fingers through hers and headed toward the door.

  “Where did you park?” Jay asked. Did that hoarse voice belong to him?

  She jerked her head toward a parking space right in the front. “There.”

  That wouldn’t do. Too public. “Do you mind if I drive?”

  He suspected that under ordinary circumstances he’d get a lecture about having to be in control and how she was perfectly capable of handling a vehicle, but the slight tremor in her fingers revealed that she was every bit as shaken as he was. “Not at all.”

  She handed him the keys, then looked at him a little funnily when he followed her around to her side of the car and opened the door. “I know you can do it yourself. It’s called courtesy.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything. I’m just not used to it. You’re different,” she said, a strange note in her voice he couldn’t quite decipher. He decided it wasn’t an insult, though, and was rather pleased that she thought he was different.

  He didn’t want to be the same as every other guy she’d met. He wanted to be better. To be the best. To be worthy of her trust and her regard.

  What he really wanted, Jay realized, was her.

  In every sense of the word. Most pressingly at the moment, the biblical sense.

  Jay closed the door, rounded the car and then slid behind the wheel. He adjusted the mirrors and seat, then aimed the little sedan into traffic and looked for a secluded area where they could park and he could make her scream. He mentally snorted. Parking? At his age? This was what she’d done to him. What she’d reduced him to.

  “Do you know where I’m going?” he asked.

  She released a shaky breath. “No, but I wish you’d get there faster.”

  Jay grinned, spotted an abandoned factory and quickly wheeled the car around to the back of the building. Not a person in sight. Brilliant. He shoved the seat back as far as it would go and levered it down. In the time it took to make sure he could get his hands on the condom quickly enough, she’d whipped her shirt over her head and crawled on top of him. She smelled like green apples and fabric softener and something else, something that was distinctly her.

  It lit him up.

  Her lips found his, soft and skilled and insistent, her sweet tongue sliding in and out of his mouth. He mimicked her rhythm with his hips, pushing up against her. His hands mapped her sleek back, following the fluted hollow of her spine, and he was struck again at how petite she was—his hands literally spanned her waist.

  That enflamed him.

  She was small and perfectly made and he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything. She left his mouth, kissed along his jaw and licked a path over the rounded muscle of his shoulder, then up and along his neck. He groped for the clasp on her bra and found it fortuitously at the front. A quick tug of his fingers and her breasts were freed, the lacy cups barely clinging to her pearled nipples.

  His gaze feasted on her, drank her in, and when that wasn’t enough, he bent forward and pulled a tight bud into his mouth. She purred for him, a low sibilant hiss of pleasure that called to his dick like a damned familiar. It hardened to the point of pain, strained against his zipper and then threatened to mutiny and leave his pants altogether.

  And all of this was happening in a car. Like a friggin’ teenager with too many hormones and just enough freedom. He should be doing this in a bed, Jay thought dimly, where he’d have more room to taste and sample, explore and savor. Where he could flip her onto her back and dive dick-first into her welcoming heat.

  As though telegraphing the thought from his brain to hers, she leaned back and up, then shimmied out of her pants. She didn’t bother with the thong.

  He’d died and gone to heaven.

  Her clothes might be serviceable, but her underwear was downright…sinful. It was red and sheer with a single embroidered rose on the front. H
e swallowed. Hard.

  With more speed than he would have imagined himself capable of while being so distracted, Jay shoved his pants out of the way, drew his dick from his boxers and quickly sheathed himself in a condom.

  She moved the thong aside, lifted her hips and slid over him, hissing once more as he nudged her folds. She was wet and hot and heavenly and he’d never seen a more beautiful woman. Smooth skin, pouting breasts, the feminine curve of her hip, the thatch of dark hair nestled over her sex.

  Charlie framed his face with her hands, bent forward and kissed him, plunging her tongue into his mouth as she slowly impaled herself on his body.

  Only by sheer dint of will did he keep from coming right then.

  He was burning up in his own skin, was so hot he thought he was going to burst into flame, much like the fabled phoenix tattooed on his shoulder. She rode him harder, leaning back so that she could take more of him in. Her lips were swollen from his kisses, pink and plump, and her heavily lashed eyes were closed as she enjoyed his body, pleasuring herself in the process.

  Charlie approached sex with the same sort of attention to detail, capability and enthusiasm as she did everything else and the payoff resulted in a confident lover who knew what she wanted and how to get it. She was, hands down, the very best partner he’d ever had.

  Jay met her thrust for thrust, angling up and deep, looking for that magical spot that would ultimately send her over the edge. Her breathing quickened when he found it, a shallow inhalation that signaled he’d located her sweet spot.

  He grinned, took her breast into his mouth and thumbed the other nipple, rolling it lightly between his fingers.

  “Jay—” she said, breathless, focused, so damned hot.

  “Yes?”

  “I think I’m gonna—”

  She grunted, mewled, thrashed above him.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m definitely— It’s— Almosssttt…”

  Then she screamed, long and deep, unreservedly.

  “I told you I’d make you scream,” he said, gratified, self-satisfied and otherwise thrilled.

  “That you did,” she said, her voice hoarse, stuttering out of her in a sated gasp. She gave him a purely wicked look. “Now I’m going to make you do it.”

  AT TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS old, Charlie knew she was too old to go parking and should have had enough self-control to wait to take him until they’d at least had the privilege of a bed.

  But knowing something and keeping herself from acting on it were two entirely different things.

  Her sex still pulsed with the residual climax—the first she hadn’t produced solo for the past two years—and the sensation was nothing short of miraculous. She tingled in parts of her body she wasn’t aware had nerve endings. He pushed into her, drawing every iota of pleasure from her that he could. He was thrillingly big, amazingly hard and very, very well proportioned. Truthfully, the first slide of him into her body had resulted in a near-fainting episode, but she’d clung to him and absorbed the sheer, divine joy of being completely, totally filled.

  It was amazing what sort of difference that made.

  Which made her former lovers sound like they belonged to the Little Dick Club, but in all seriousness it wasn’t so much that they’d been small, but that he’d been much more…substantial, Charlie thought as she settled more firmly against him.

  “You feel so damned good,” he said. “You’ve been driving me crazy.”

  He’d been driving her crazy, as well, and then today, when she’d realized that he’d forfeited his own interests to protect an abused girl…

  Her heart had simply melted like a dollop of butter over a hot biscuit, and steam had practically oozed from her panties, he’d made her so damned hot.

  She hadn’t bothered putting up so much as a token protest when he’d pulled the condom from his pants— What had been the point? She’d wanted him. Desperately. Every female portion of her anatomy sang with recognition—with some indefinable something—when he so much as looked at her.

  And when he kissed her, when his mouth met hers?

  Sheer bliss. Unimaginable glory. Utter perfection.

  Speaking of which… She leaned forward and found his mouth once more, suckling his bottom lip, drawing it into her own and then slipping her tongue along the plum-soft flesh inside. Another shiver eddied through her and she felt him push deeper into her, felt his big hands slide possessively down over her back, onto her rump, where he gave a light squeeze. Delight barbed through her, tightening her feminine muscles.

  She lifted up, dragging his slippery skin with her, then sank slowly back down again, working the long length of him with every bit of her womanly channel. She loved the sleek draw and drag, the delicious friction of their joined bodies. It made her want to go faster and to slow down, left her equally energized and boneless.

  She fed at his mouth, tested the angle of his jaw beneath her hands, skimmed the supersoft skin at his temples and felt a pang of emotion land in her chest. She beat it back, determined to keep her heart out of this. To enjoy him, to appreciate him, to celebrate a man who was more honorable than opportunistic, more generous than selfish.

  Better.

  She rode him harder, upped the rhythm, leaving him no choice but to match her stride, to race for the golden ring of release. Fire licked through her belly and flickered through her sex once more, kindling a powerful, aching throb deep in her womb. He kissed her harder, thrust his tongue into her mouth even as he thrust more thoroughly into her. It was frantic and wild, desperate and dirty, and she liked it, reveled in being out of control, in simply enjoying the basic, fundamental urge to need and be needed.

  She felt him tense beneath her, his muscles tighten and strain as the climax built within him. Charlie squeezed around him, rode him with all the strength she possessed, kissed him, licked, nipped and scored his masculine flesh. He bucked wildly beneath her, made guttural masculine sounds that slid like an aphrodisiac into her veins and, though she wouldn’t have thought it was possible, made her want him even more.

  “Are…you ready?” she breathed.

  “Ready for…what?” Harder, faster, then harder still.

  “To scream,” she told him.

  “Sweetheart, I don’t scream,” he said, his chuckle low and confident.

  Charlie reached around and slipped a determined finger over the tautened skin of his balls. The laugh died in his throat as though an off-switch had been thrown, his eyes widened in a instant of shock, and then, gratifyingly…

  He screamed.

  It was long and primal, more howl, in truth, but the noise she’d been waiting for all the same.

  She smiled, gratified, and tightened around him, milking the climax from him one determined squeeze at a time.

  Chest heaving, he sagged against the back of the car seat and slung an arm over his forehead. His eyes sparkled with masculine satisfaction and admiration.

  “I stand corrected,” he said, shooting her an impressed look. “I don’t know what you did just then, but… Damn.”

  Charlie knew the grin on her lips was more than a little self-satisfied, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his mouth, then carefully withdrew and settled back into her own seat. She snagged some tissue from the glove box and handed it to him, then made quick work of righting herself.

  She felt immensely better. Nothing like a good orgasm to improve one’s disposition, Charlie thought, a droll smile curling her lips.

  Jay glanced at her, his gaze turning suspicious. “Should I be nervous?”

  She laughed at his dubious expression. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t trust that grin. It’s…a little wicked.”

  “That’s because I’m thinking wicked thoughts.”

  “You should never keep those sorts of thought to yourself, you know,” Jay told her, as though imparting a bit of sacred wisdom. “They’re better shared.”

  She grinned. “You mean like worries?”

&n
bsp; He shot her a look. “Are worries better shared?”

  “They’re halved,” she said, pulling a one-shouldered shrug. “I guess that would make them better shared. Grief, too.”

  He frowned, his expression sobering a bit. “Or else it would only make two people depressed as opposed to just the one.”

  Charlie chuckled softly under her breath, watched as he tucked his shirt back into his pants, then started the car. That sounded personal, but after seeing what he’d done today, she’d be damned before she’d pry. “That’s another way of looking at it, Eeyore,” she teased.

  “Eeyore?” he scoffed, blinking innocently. “What happened to my hero’s welcome?”

  She smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You just got it.”

  His grin was pure sin and he sent her a sidelong glance. “I did, didn’t I? Have I thanked you yet?”

  “Not in the traditional sense, no,” Charlie told him. “But I don’t feel the least bit slighted.” A little sore and sated, primed, aching and strangely terrified, but thoroughly pleasured all the same.

  He poked his tongue in his cheek, his eyes twinkling with more masculine satisfaction than was strictly warranted. “I’m glad to hear it.” He paused, negotiated a turn and aimed the car toward the Betterworth estate. “I gotta admit I wasn’t expecting…that.”

  Charlie heaved a sigh. “Then that makes two of us.” She turned to look at him, drinking him in. “What will you do now?”

  He shot her a confused look. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m assuming that you’re no longer working for Andrew Betterworth,” she said. Her lips twitched. “You know, considering that you punched him and he put you in jail.”

  His jaw tightened and a thundercloud of displeasure suddenly raced across his brow. “It was worth it,” he said.

  And she knew he meant every word. Charlie swallowed, struck again at how different Jay Weatherford was from any man she’d ever known. Not that she hadn’t known good men—she had—but, in her experience, they were a bit thin on the ground. Most of the men she’d known had been so afraid that she was going to outperform them in some way that they hadn’t adhered to any sort of principle or code of honor. Her gaze slid to Jay and a peculiar pang tightened in her chest.