The Phoenix Project

by Jacquelyn Frank

  He released her shoulder to throw back his head and shout a cadence of onrushing climax. He surged deep and hard, slammed to a hard stop as his body locked…

  …and was gone.

  He left her so fast she nearly fell to her knees, but suddenly his arm was around her and crushing her with thoughtless strength as he shuddered hard against her. He was groaning as if in terrible pain, and then suddenly she felt the full lean of his weight against her as he gasped for breath.

  Stunned that he had been able to pull out of her at such a moment of ultimate need and pleasure, Amara tried to turn around, but he kept her forcefully facing the wall as he tried to get a hold of himself. After a minute or two, she felt him pull her hair back from the sticky side of her neck, making her realize she was bleeding actually quite heavily. He returned to the wound, licking her until the bleeding stopped. Then he touched his forehead to her temple.

  “Never, ever doubt me again,” he whispered.

  Then he was turning and leaving her to walk wordlessly to the bathroom. Amara turned around and watched his back as he went, the amazing flex of his taut muscles along his thighs and buttocks and spine not helping her to clear the dizzy fog in her brain. She heard him enter the shower and then she got really, really…

  Mad.

  “You son of a bitch!” she hissed.

  Amara quickly stomped after him, shedding her stained blouse and skirt so she was naked by the time she opened the shower door and stepped in to confront him.

  “What the hell was that?” she demanded. “Some kind of test? Is that your version of figuring out how much I really love you?”

  “I hope not,” he retorted, “because you would have failed it miserably.” He turned his back on her and picked up some soap as steam clouded between them. The neo-angle shower was very large and had multiple showerheads, something she had insisted on during the remodeling. She recalled how much effort it had taken just to get the supplies delivered to the gates of Dark Manhattan. Now she dodged under one of the sprays to get face to face with him again.

  “You asked me to stop you from making love to me! You and I discussed this entire issue like two rational, mature adults. You admitted to me that you didn’t know if you could keep your head on straight in the heat of the moment. Then suddenly you think it’s an issue of loving you and trusting you?”

  “It became one when you took a joke so seriously you belted me across the face for it! I don’t give a flying fuck how hot I am for you, Amara, I would never force a child on you…on us…under these circumstances! I wanted to make that perfectly clear to you. To both of us.”

  “And what if you had been wrong? What if you couldn’t control it? What if you hadn’t been able to pull out of me in time? Do you realize what that would have done to us? To me? You would risk everything we have just to prove a point?”

  “Yes! Because if we don’t have that much trust and control over ourselves, then we don’t have anything going for us at all, Amara. If you think I could stand there watching you cry and in that much pain and not do the right thing for you, then this is all wrong, babe. I had a choice…walk away and let you think the worst of me, or I could prove what I knew I could do. I knew I could love you right. Not just physically, but knowingly and sympathetically. I’ve always known it, even if you haven’t. What it comes down to is you don’t trust me any more than I trusted myself, and we can’t lead all these people if we work under that kind of doubt, never mind expect us to last long enough to see the day when kids actually become possible.” He reached to hook the back of her neck with a palm and drew her up close, staring hard into her eyes. “All I did was show you I could do what needs to be done. I pushed myself to the utmost, baby. I was inside you, surrounded with the conditions of your heat, and I was drowning in the aphrodisiac of your blood and I still protected you. I will always protect you. No matter what. I need you to believe that. It hurts to think you don’t believe that.”

  Nick cursed when his voice broke and he cleared his throat of the betraying emotion. But Amara was grateful she had heard it because it sent home to her how truly hurt he felt. That it wasn’t just words or even about posturing and one-upmanship, which seemed to plague the instincts of their new breed. She slowly began to understand his perspective, though she still didn’t agree with his high-handed methods.

  “You could have just asked me,” she said quietly.

  “You would have thought I was affected by your heat and trying to get around you. I had to do it right then and exactly that way. Tell me now that you don’t believe we can always control this. Think about it. I’m going to make you trust me, Mara. I won’t have babies with you until I believe you trust me implicitly to provide, protect, and help raise them well. Besides, we can’t spend forty-eight days out of every year screaming with lust for each other and denying it. Do I like climaxing outside of your body? No. I don’t. And in a way it kind of hurts. But I’ll pay that price any day to feel you come around me like you did.” His voice dropped an erotic octave and he closed his eyes briefly as the memory rode over him. “In the future, I’ll plan a little better and pick one of so many other, safer places on your body to come in.” He reached to wrap her up tight to his body, his tongue darting out to lick the water from her lips. “Mmm, shall I count the ways?”

  “Nick,” she scolded, suddenly breathless for him all over again. “I swear, you turn me inside out. What am I supposed to do with you?” She rolled her eyes at his lascivious grin. “Never mind.” Then she grinned in return. “Just how do we go about conditioning me to trust you, do you suppose?”

  “Hmm,” he hummed speculatively. “Now there’s an intriguing proposal. Conditioning. Isn’t that where you do something over and over and over and over again to elicit a desired response?”

  “Oooh, Agent Gregory. You took a psychology course!”

  “Yeah. I got an A, too. Wanna see?”

  “I don’t know…not sure if I trust you…,” she goaded softly.

  “Okay, now you’re just begging for it,” he growled gruffly.

  “About time you noticed. Thought I was going to have to drop to my knees for a minute there.”

  “Don’t rule that out just yet.”