Page 70 of Ripped Lace (Ripped Bratva)
Phoenix dresses quickly. Once he’s ready, he turns to me and offers me his hand. I stare at him in disbelief. Wondering if all the hope I deluded myself into seeing was nothing more than a mirage in the desert.
But that hand is there. That hand is real.
“Come on,” he says impatiently.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Home,” he replies. “We’re going home.”
I know he doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. But I hold on to the words anyway.
Home and hope are funny things.
16
Elyssa
I wake up to the sound of a baby crying.
“Theo?” I cry, darting upright in a bed so comfortable that it takes actual effort to pry my eyes open. The sheets enveloping my body fall away to reveal my nakedness.
I feel sore all over, but especially between my legs. It’s a comforting ache, though. Not unpleasant.
The echo of a crying baby still rings in my ears as I try to get my bearings. Then I feel a hand graze my back and I twitch with shock as I crane my neck to the man lying next to me in bed.
Phoenix’s eyes are hazy with sleep. “Elyssa?” he mumbles. “Everything okay?”
His hand is still on my back, running up and down my spine. His touch is warm, but the tension doesn’t leave my bones.
I spent the night with him.
In his room.
In his bed.
And not because he made me do it. I chose this.
He had led me upstairs after we returned from the beach last night and stopped at the landing. “My room is that way,” he’d said. “But I can take you to yours instead. If that’s what you want.”
I shook my head at once. “Take me with you.”
He didn’t answer. Just nodded once and turned in the darkness. I followed.
We’d showered together in silence with the lights off, just peals of steam rising through the shadows and the harsh slap of our hips meeting as he took me against the slick tile wall.
Once we rinsed the sand from our bodies, he’d carried me to his bed and gone down on me until I came so hard my calves cramped.
My legs tingle at the memory. I feel the blush creeping up my cheeks. The shame I learned as a young girl still hasn’t left me, even as Phoenix has taught me all the things our bodies are capable of.
“Elyssa?”
His voice snaps me back to the present. “I’m fine,” I replies. “I just… I keep hearing Theo.”
“Theo?”
“He’s crying for me. Don’t you hear that?” I ask, my head snapping to the side as I hear another distant cry.
Phoenix sits up straight. “I don’t hear anything.”
