Phoenix Burning (4 page)

“I need a break,” Alex grunted, turning abruptly away and escaping to the back room.

A strange sensation settled in Emory’s gut when Alex turned and disappeared from view. She felt suddenly off-kilter. She shouldn’t have given a damn about Alex or anyone else. She was kissing a total stranger in a semi-public place. This was better than she had ever expected. She was finally going to take her destiny into her own hands and move on, put her past behind her. It was a chance to see if she could let herself go where no one would judge her for it.

“So beautiful,” Wade murmured.

Emory sucked in a breath as his hand slid beneath the hem of her camisole and cupped her left breast. The pad of his thumb skated across her nipple, clever fingers twirling it into a tight peak. She wanted to enjoy the sensation, but her brain kept trying to intervene.

He settled her backside on a table near the wall. It was dim and almost private. Half a dozen yards away Emory could hear the pleasurable moans of another couple engaged in the ancient ritual of hot, sweaty sex. She wondered if Alex did that kind of thing after hours.

A flare of heat moistened her pussy, an ache beginning to throb in time with her elevated heart rate. She squirmed on the tabletop. This wasn’t the time to dwell on what Alex did or didn’t do. Wetness seeped from her pussy, coating the insides of her thighs in slick juice. She’d never been this turned on before in her life. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with her partner.

Wade captured her lips, sliding his tongue into her mouth. His taste was spicy Crown Royal and something else unfamiliar. She tried to focus on the desire she wanted to feel. The sensation of knowing there was more to come. Something shattered in the back of her mind and darkness bloomed. The confidence she’d felt around Alex just a few moments before evaporated as if it had never been.

Wade slid his hands down her torso, skimming over her belly to the waistband of her cargos. Emory inhaled deeply, forcing herself to be calm as Wade unfastened her pants. Soon he would slide them down, spread her legs wide, and press his cock deep inside her body. She’d long ago decided that was the only way to get over her past. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

Emory’s breath hitched as though someone had poured ice-cold water down her back. Her body stiffened reflexively. Memories tumbled forth over the barriers she’d so carefully erected against them.

“Everything all right?” Wade rumbled.

“Wonderful, just hurry up and take off your pants.”

The intense anticipation was gone. She’d thought this would be different. No commitments, no promises, no possibility of betrayal. This was supposed to be casual—no strings and no tomorrow. A white-hot stab of anger accompanied the realization that her psyche didn’t care.

Wade didn’t take off his pants. The lust had already drained from his expression. Inwardly, she cringed in humiliation. He would see that something inside her was wrong, that things had changed since the moment she’d agreed to this impromptu liaison.

“You don’t want this, sweetness,” Wade murmured.

Something cracked inside of Emory. Tears stung her eyes, burning hot tracks of embarrassment down her cheeks. Wade was wrong. She
did
want it, more than anything. But her brain and her body couldn’t get over the past. The blackness surged higher, pounding her with a lifetime’s worth of her father’s abusive treatment. It was a litany of angry words and prophetic curses that had permanently damaged her ability to accept physical touch.

“Sweetheart, are you okay?”

The concern in his voice made it worse. “I’m really sorry. It’s me, not you. Could you just leave me alone?”

He said something before turning away, but she’d already shut him out. Sliding off the tabletop, she crouched on the floor with her back to a support pillar. Hiding her face against her knees, Emory began to rock back and forth, humming to herself.

There was a maid, who had two babes

All alone and lone

She killed those babes and buried 'em under a stone

An' prayed to th’ Lord, it would never be known

All down by th’ greenwood side

Eventually her humming pushed back the anxiety. She got slowly to her feet, feeling embarrassed. Any vestiges of her alcohol-induced courage were gone, along with her buzz. Maybe Chris was right. Maybe Emory would spend the rest of her life as a victim, with nothing but her mother’s song and her father’s condemnation to keep her warm at night.

Alex braced his bent elbow against the wall and stabbed his free hand through his hair. He idly wondered how long it would take for Wade to finish fucking Emory. It couldn’t be that long. The guy had never been the marathon type. Not like Alex, who could go all night and then some if the woman was sweet enough. And nothing like Connor, who’d been known to go all night and half the day with Jessa.

Whatever the answer, how ever long it would take, Alex didn’t want to be present to find out. That alone was enough to make him consider impending insanity. But he couldn’t get the picture of Emory’s intense brown gaze out of his head.

Sucking in a deep breath, he pulled away from the wall and rolled his neck, shaking his shoulders and trying to get back to normal. If normal were possible any longer. What was normal anyway?

Jessa peered around the corner. “There you are, Alex. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” Alex said with a forced smile. “I’m great.”

She stepped into full view, cocking her head to one side and giving him a probing look that missed nothing. Alex couldn’t help but be amazed once again at the total transformation of the woman before him. Less than a year ago she’d been a timid mouse dressed to the nines in uncomfortable, country-club-approved designer clothes. Now she looked like a goddess on the prowl.

She gave him a dramatic eye roll. “Now what?”

“Just appreciating my best friend’s handiwork.”

“You are such a pig.”

Alex felt a measure of his charm returning at the familiar banter. “And yet you’re still hot for me. Hmm…”

“Oh, you wish!” She propped one hand on the soft flare of her hip.

“You know, Jessa”—Alex deliberately leered at her—“whenever you get bored with Connor, I’d be happy to pleasure you any way you want.”

“Connor doesn’t do boring, Alex.”

“So I hear. In fact, I hear that regularly from both of you.”

A pretty blush colored her cheeks.

“You’re especially loud on the topic, Jessa.”

“Cut it out. Embarrassing me doesn’t get beers for all those people waiting out at the bar.”

There was no way he was going to tell her why he’d felt the need to take a break. “So that’s why you came looking for me. And to think I assumed it was because you missed looking at my hot self.”

“You’re impossible,” she said over her shoulder as she turned and headed back out to the bar.

Alex sighed, knowing he had no choice but to follow. If he were lucky, Wade was done and Alex wouldn’t have to think about either of them anymore.

Business had picked up. Several people waited at the bar for drinks, and Jessa swooped in and out of the full tables on the floor. Even in all the activity, Alex couldn’t stop himself from looking for a pair of liquid brown eyes. Damn it to hell and back.

He sank into the haze of repetition, mixing and serving drinks without conscious thought. Instead, all his internal musings were reserved for round after round of self-recrimination. It wasn’t like him to fixate on something, especially not a woman.

Just as he was sure she must be gone, Emory climbed onto a stool at the far edge of the bar. “I think I need another drink.”

Damn. Where the hell did she come from and where has she been?

He reached for a shaker and layered sour apple schnapps, sweet and sour mix, and Stolichnaya inside. A few rattles and he poured the mixture into a martini glass. Alex stabbed a neon green plastic sword through an apple wedge with more violence than necessary and dumped it into the drink.

He slid the drink to her without ceremony. “One appletini.”

She didn’t even look up, reaching out tentatively to pull the glass toward her.

No matter how hard he tried, Alex couldn’t rip his eyes from the sight of her throat as she tipped her head back and took a long swallow of the sweet-and-sour concoction. He’d been bartending for nearly twelve years. He’d started in Great Britain during his stint in the army and then continued at Phoenix Rising after helping his longtime friend Connor open the bar. In all that time he’d learned that the drinks people ordered said a lot about them as individuals. Anything could be said via the medium of a cocktail choice. At that moment, Alex had a lot of thoughts and no words.

“It’s the best apple martini I’ve ever tasted,” Emory remarked. “But is that really what you think of me?”

The perceptive quality of her question startled him. Alex opened his mouth to offer a flippant, sarcastic answer, but something very different emerged instead. “Not at first.”

She lifted her gaze for the first time since coming back to the bar. Her eyes were rimmed in red. A jolt of adrenaline forced his hands into fists at his sides. Had Wade hurt her? So help him, if Wade had done something to the pixie, Alex was going to rip Wade apart with his bare hands.

“What kind of woman orders an appletini?” Her voice was hoarse with emotion.

Alex whisked a clean towel across the bar to give his hands something to do. Running Wade down without a good reason wasn’t the right choice at the moment. “A woman who’s uncomfortable in her own skin.”

With careful, deliberate motions, Emory set the martini glass aside and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m trying to put that person behind me, you know.”

Done trading verbal innuendos that didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, Alex placed both hands on the bar and leaned forward. “Then who are you, and why are you here?”

“I came here for a little bit of real, just like everyone else.”

“But you aren’t like everyone else.” He guessed suddenly.

The startled wariness that swept her pixie face told Alex that he’d hit it on the head.

“So what is it you’re looking for?”

Emory fought the urge to turn and flee the bar. What could he possibly mean by demanding such things from her? She’d come here to see if she could accept the feel of a man’s touch against her skin, to fight another battle in the war that constantly raged in her psyche. She craved the physical contact like a drug, yet couldn’t deal with the emotional backlash it triggered. She’d come for a little satisfaction and a chance to move on. She wanted to leave her past behind, find something to sustain her future, find a way to get past the expectations that had been dogging her every step since childhood. She’d failed, but that didn’t give Alex the right to torture her for it.

“Someone told me this was the place to come for a drink and a quick fuck,” Emory said with forced bravado, leaning back in her seat and doing her level best to appear unaffected.

“You’ve had a few drinks, but I’m getting the feeling things didn’t work out like you’d hoped with Wade,” Alex mused. “Why hang around when this really isn’t your scene?”

Pain lanced through Emory’s midsection. She scraped together what was left of her threadbare self-esteem. “Judge much?”

His gaze skittered around the bar. The clock had reached one o’clock, and the crowd was winding down. Several knots of men and women were laughing and trying to outdrink each other at some of the larger tables. The bar itself was almost empty.

Alex’s eyes left the immediate room for the shadowy recesses. Emory watched his gaze linger over the near corner less than half a dozen yards away. She was drawn there despite her desire to seem cool and unaffected.

Two women embraced, their full lips melded together in a passionate kiss. Emory was instantly riveted as the more buxom of the two drew her top over her head and discarded it to the floor. Her companion slid her hand upward and cupped one full breast. Emory watched the woman’s nipple bead into a diamond-hard point before her lover took it gently in her mouth and suckled. In a chair beside them, a man half reclined, a long neck bottle of beer in one hand and his erection in the other. His gaze was focused on the women before him as he slowly pumped his shaft.

Blood rushed from Emory’s extremities and culminated at a point between her legs. Her vision swam, and her heart raced until her own nipples were taut and painful against the fabric of her camisole, begging to be touched, to be pleasured by a skilled tongue. She waited for the black haze to bubble up inside of her, but the passion thrumming through her veins held it at bay.

“Sometimes watching can be as arousing as participating,” Alex murmured in a gravelly voice. “Though it isn’t nearly as satisfying as being watched.”

Something in the wryness of his tone pulled Emory’s eyes away from the scene playing out in the shadows to stare at the sexy bartender standing only a few feet away.

Alex leaned against the opposite counter. His pinstriped button-down shirt was open over the snug green cotton tee covering his muscular chest. Faded blue jeans dipped low across his belly, pulled lower by the thumbs he’d shoved through his belt loops. His button down fly bulged over a magnificent erection. It swelled larger beneath Emory’s frank appraisal until the fabric was straining to burst open.

His low chuckle raised the hairs on the back of her neck and released a gush of creamy fluid from her pussy. One tanned hand left his belt to rest on the bulge in his crotch. The black carbide ring adorning his middle finger gleamed in the overhead lights as he stroked himself, lightly teasing the area where the head of his cock was outlined against the worn fabric.

“Do you like to be watched?” She knew when the words passed her lips that she was insane for voicing them.

“That all depends on who’s enjoying the show.”