Phoenix Burning(14)
He gave her a double helping of his middle fingers. “Good, because I’ve already got two rings that remind me to tell people to fuck off and stay out of my business.”
“Watch it,” Connor growled.
Jessa seemed utterly unperturbed by the insult he’d just paid her. “I worry about you, Alex.”
“Well don’t.”
“How many times can you give away little pieces of yourself before there’s nothing left? You play the shiftless womanizer pretty well, but don’t turn your back on something that could be better just because it isn’t wrapped up in the usual package.”
Alex felt his mouth pop open as she turned her back, twined her arms about Connor’s neck, and let him sweep her off her feet into his arms. He carried her out the front door, their foreheads pressed together and exchanging whispered words. The cage slammed shut, and Alex was alone with his thoughts.
* * *
Emory should have hated Alex. She should’ve called Donovan MacIntyre to tell him she’d happily sign a petition to close the Phoenix Rising down for good. Except that wasn’t how she felt at all.
It was dark in the tiny apartment above her shop. Emory rolled to her back, staring at the ceiling above her bed. The sheer drapes were down, the orange light from the street lamps casting long slivers of light across the bedroom.
Her night at the infamous bar had been an emotional roller-coaster ride, but she hadn’t expected anything less. Her sexual issues went back decades. They weren’t going to be fixed in one night. She’d just hoped to make progress. Having actual sex would’ve been wonderful. Her current dry spell had lasted years. Even before that she’d only managed a handful of encounters, all awkward and ending in tears.
She thought of the song, the one her mother had sung to her and Chris as children. It was an old folk song from the hills where they’d grown up, but Emory had always known it had deeper meaning to her mother. Liza Banks had been sorry she had to raise her twins with Reverend Jonathan Banks for a father. It had just taken Emory a while to realize her mother had actually wondered if her children wouldn’t have been better off dead.
The familiar tread of her brother’s feet on the stairs warned her she was about to have company.
“There you are. You weren’t answering your phone.” Chris plopped down on the bed to lie on his back beside her.
There was no point trying to hide what she’d done. “I went to the Phoenix Rising.”
Her twin was silent, turning his head to see her face.
“It’s not what you think.”
“You’re a grown woman, Em. It doesn’t matter what I think. Did you find what you were looking for?”
She thought of her miserable failed attempt to screw around with a stranger named Wade. “Not exactly.”
“Maybe you should give therapy another try.”
Emory had hated her last therapist with a passion. Maybe the right person could help her put the past to rest and move on, but she’d yet to meet someone qualified to do it. “I’m tired of them treating me like a victim of sexual abuse.”
“You are.”
“No, I’m not. Our father never molested me or tried to force himself on me.”
His hand found hers, their fingers lacing together. “He still abused you, Em. He abused both of us, and Mom, too.”
“I can’t get him out of my head. I keep hearing him tell me that no one would ever want me, how dirty I was, how shameful and sinful I’d always be.” She whispered. “I thought if the relationship was casual it wouldn’t matter. I’ve always gotten hung up on the idea of committing myself to someone permanently. I can’t stand the idea of being tied to some asshole like Mom is.”
“And now?”
“It’s like our father is sitting on my shoulder, giving me a sermon on the evils of fornication. He’s still damning me to the eternal fires of hell from hundreds of miles away.” She made light of the suffocating darkness that dogged her physical encounters, not wanting Chris to see how deeply affected she was by the memory of her father’s condemnations.
Chris sighed. “So no more trips to Phoenix Rising for you?”
“I don’t know.” She thought of Alex, his brilliant blue eyes and magnificent body, of his hand wrapped around his cock and the pure arousal he’d inspired in her. “I met someone who was different.”
He rolled to his side, propping his head on his elbow. “How so?”
“Watching him made me burn. And while I was burning, there was nothing else. No past, and no future, just that one moment when I was on fire. I think if I could just capture that feeling, the past would turn to ashes.”