Phoenix

by Danielle James

  “I think I need to be alone,” Jared said as he sulked to the door. “Stay with her, I will call the others.”

  Phoenix watched him leave the room, closing the door behind him. He sat carefully on the edge of the bed beside Kelly. She looked so peaceful. He moved a stray piece of blonde hair away from her face so that he could have an unobstructed view of her perfect beauty. He could feel his entire body warming to her. He itched to touch her. He had given up on finding a woman who could match him in wits and heart. He had given up on ever finding a mate of his own. Phoenix knew he should walk away. He knew that it would be better for Kelly if he never let her know how much she had come to mean to him. But, as the flash burn moved throughout his body, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He had finally had a taste of what it felt like to love; to really love, and there was no going back for him now. He could never be the man he was before he met her. He stared at Kelly and sighed. She would have been everything he would have asked for, if he had known what to ask for. He never imagined his mate would arrive in a petite human. Beautiful, smart, talented, strong, and so trusting. It was as if she was made especially for him.

  But did she feel the same way? He had no idea. He thought that there must be something there. She said she knew him right from the start. He could hear her thoughts. He wondered if she could hear his. What did he have to lose? He decided to try. If she could hear him too, he needed to tell her how he felt. Then she could decide how she felt about that.

  Phoenix mentally prepared himself. Jules wasn’t going to be happy with him, but she would eventually get over it. He winced when he imagined what she might do to him when she found out he actually touched her daughter. And he was going to be touching her. A lot.

  He laid himself along the side of the bed right next to Kelly. He leaned in close to her head and thought in her direction, Wake up Kelly. There is something I need to tell you. Wake up.

  She stirred and then stretched her legs under the cover. She rolled toward him and opened her eyes. “Hi there,” she mumbled sleepily, snuggling her face close to his chest.

  I need to talk to you, he thought, without taking his eyes off her.

  She turned over to face me and propped herself up on one elbow. “What is it?” she asked.

  “What?” Phoenix asked her.

  “You said you needed to talk to me,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

  “You can hear me too,” he told her. Then, without moving his lips even the slightest, You can hear what I’m thinking too.

  “Yeah, I guess I can. I thought maybe that would be the case. When did you figure it out?” she asked around a yawn.

  “Just now. This is strange. Have any theories?”

  “I don’t, but Jared does. But it’s stupid, I mean, things like that just don’t happen.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “No, is that what was so important?” she asked. Just like her mother, she shot right to the point. Phoenix was procrastinating and he knew it. He had never run from anything in his life, but yet he was having trouble saying what was on his mind for fear she would reject him. Wasn’t that a new feeling for him.

  “Not really. I made myself a promise, and now I have to follow through. I thought that if you could hear my head, then I would tell you. So now I have to.”

  “Tell me what?” she said in her perfect voice. She started to go on, but somehow she learned to push her way into his mind and she started listening to all the shit going on in his head. He tried not to think the words but it was too late. She already knew. He could tell because the expression on her lovely face went from sleepy to confused to content. She smiled gently up at him.

  Phoenix tried to return her little Jedi mind trick and listened as well as he could to her head, but her thoughts were all over the place. She was thinking so many things at once that he couldn’t keep up. He sat patiently and waited for a spoken reply.

  “I don’t know what to say, Phoenix. Are you sure?”

  “I know I have never felt this way about anyone else. I’ve been around a long time and there has never been anyone like you,” he told her honestly. “Nick thinks I am in love with you, and I think I agree with that. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, I just thought, with the way people are disappearing around here, I should tell you before I don’t get another chance.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about you, to be honest,” she replied. “I do know that you are the single most beautiful creature I have ever seen. I know that I trust you completely. I know you won’t let me disappear like the others. I know that I have fought the urge to kiss you more than once. I also know that my mother is going to be pissed.” She said, summing it all up.

  “Yeah, and there’s no point trying to keep it from her. If she wants to know, she will make me tell. I hope it doesn’t hurt too badly,” he laughed.

  When he looked back into Kelly’s eyes, they were staring straight down into him again. They were a brilliant blue, deeper than the sea. He didn’t know who leaned in first, but they were very close all of the sudden. Their noses were nearly touching. Phoenix closed his eyes and breathed in her scent, letting it fill his head. He had never felt more vulnerable in his life. Any of them.

  He felt the lightest of pressure on his lips, just a feathering of skin on skin. He jumped and opened his eyes. Kelly backed up and smiled like the cat who ate the canary. And she didn’t look sorry in the least.

  “Was that a bad idea?” she asked. He better say no. She had been torturing him for weeks to make him see that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  “No, it just surprised me is all. Will you forgive me?”

  I will always forgive you, she thought with a smile. She jerked the cover out from under him and held it up. Get in, she thought again.

  Against his better judgment, Phoenix did it. He slipped his arm under her neck and they together all snuggled up under the blanket. He wanted to kiss her properly, but they were not alone and he knew that if he started it, he wouldn’t be able to stop before pushing her into the mattress and taking her for his own. So instead, he held her close. She laid her head against his shoulder and trailed her fingers along his chest and stomach. His muscles actually quivered. Quivered! What man quivers? He did a mental eye roll at himself. Damn, he had it bad. He kept reminding himself that she needed to rest after her little stunt with the knife. He kissed her lightly on the top of her head and within just a few minutes, she was snoring softly. Phoenix couldn’t help but grin like an idiot. She was adorable when she slept. He soon followed her into sleep, the events of the day washing away to vivid dreams that weren’t fit for company.

  He woke sometime later to the feeling of her hands rubbing over his chest ever so lightly. She would alternate between stroking his skin and curling her fingers in his chest hair. Phoenix enjoyed her touch and he kept his breathing as steady as possible for fear if she knew he was awake, she would stop. He wasn’t ready for her to stop. Man he really was a fucking pansy. The big bad Phoenix had been taken down by a woman. A woman he hadn’t even properly kissed yet. When she started planting little butterfly kisses on his chest, he couldn’t take anymore. He sucked in a sharp breath and heard her voice in his head.

  I know you are awake, she said in his mind. He bent his neck so that he could see her face. She had stopped kissing him and was staring right back at him. Phoenix felt the heat from her stare rush through his body and he felt that familiar feeling that he had come to be accustomed with around her. Home. Her lips were parted ever so slightly and her little pink tongue darted out to wet them. Oh what the hell, he thought as he arched over so that their faces were even. She pushed up on her elbows and Phoenix did what he had been itching to do for weeks. He kissed her. At first, it was just a soft brush of his lips against hers. Then he took it deeper. His tongue brushed her lips and she opened for him with a soft moan. Phoenix snaked his hand around her neck and pushed his tongue inside her. Her flavor exploded on his tongue and he went abou
t exploring her mouth. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she bit at his lower lip. That was it. He was going to come like a schoolboy on his fist kiss. He knew it. Then Kelly jerked back and jumped off the bed. What had he done? Had he scared her?

  “Shit, Mom’s back!” Kelly said, leaping from her bed. She ran to the bathroom and closed the door just in time to miss her mother walking through the door.

  Chicken.

  “Hey Phoenix,” Jules said as she entered Kelly’s room. “Jared told me about what you found, I am so sorry about Heidi. Is there anything I can do?” Kelly hadn’t heard anything about Heidi, and she wondered what could be wrong. Then her mother must have looked around the room. “Where’s Kelly?”

  “Bathroom I think,” Phoenix answered. No way in hell was she coming out just then. She was all flustered from that five alarm kiss he just laid on her and her heart was beating out of control. This is silly, she thought. She was an adult. Who cares if her mother liked it or not?

  Then get your ass out here, Phoenix’s voice said in her head. Umm, how about, No, she thought back. She knew her mom would never really her, but still, she didn’t want to face her either. And she wasn’t above hiding out until she left the room either.

  “Phoenix, is there something I should know about?” Jules asked with a stern voice. It was her “mother” voice. Kelly knew it well. It meant that she would take no nonsense and expected the truth. Jules knew they were hiding something.

  “Not that you don’t already know,” he said.

  “Phoenix,” she said in her no nonsense tone, drawing out his name for emphasis.

  “Jules, I’m in love with Kelly. I hope she feels that way about me, but I can’t be sure. Nothing happened, I just kissed her, once.” He just blurted it out! Before Kelly could get angry with him, she remembered that her mother could force people to tell her things. Kelly decided that she had better not leave him to deal with her alone.

  Kelly opened the bathroom door and stepped out just in time to wish she hadn’t. The look on her mother’s face was pure anger. If looks could kill! Kelly was waiting for lightning bolts to shoot from her eyes and fry Phoenix where he sat.

  “Mom,” Kelly said quickly, “I think I love him too.”

  She turned her murderous glare on her daughter, and for the first time in her life, Kelly was truly afraid of her own mother. “I will deal with you later,” she spat at her. Then she turned back to Phoenix. “My daughter! What were you thinking! She is just a baby! I ought to rip you apart!”

  Phoenix had his eyebrows scrunched up in a knot and looked like he was waiting for the ripping to begin. Kelly didn’t think he would have tried to stop her. Luckily, Nick appeared out of nowhere and restrained Jules at the last second. He was yanking her back out of the room. He turned before closing the door to wink at Kelly. It was then that she knew she had an ally in her step father.

  “Well, that was tense,” Phoenix said.

  “Understatement.”

  “Did you mean that? You love me too?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” she admitted. Kelly was not familiar with the feelings she had for Phoenix, but love was the only explanation that fit. He crossed the room in three strides, picking her up with one arm.

  “You don’t know how happy that makes me,” he said before bringing his lips crushing down on hers. It felt right, to be kissing him. His lips were warm and soft. She grabbed two fistfuls of his long hair, holding his face securely to her own. Kelly knew that she had found her own personal angel, and she gave herself to him. She would never let him go, not ever. When he broke the kiss, his lips did not leave her skin. He kissed a fiery path across her jaw and down her neck and then back again to her lips. When he finally pulled away they looked into each other’s eyes for a long time.

  “We better go do some damage control,” Kelly said without making a move to so.

  “Speak for yourself, she’s not going to rip you to shreds!” Phoenix laughed.

  The pair reluctantly walked hand in hand down the hall to Nick and Jules’s room. They took a deep breath together and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Nick said. “If you’re feeling really lucky,” Jules added under her breath, but not so quietly.

  They walked into the lion’s den.

  Nick was smiling. Jared was stone faced. Victor and Rachel were smiling, but Kelly could still see the worry in their eyes. Jules was still furious. Might as well get it all out in the open.

  “I bet Mom has already told you, so there’s no sense in beating around the bush. Phoenix loves me and I love him,” Kelly began. “So I guess we are seeing each other now,” she said as she turned to him for confirmation.

  “Yes, I would like that very much,” he answered.

  “So if any of you disapprove,” Kelly looked at her mother, “then I am sorry, but I just don’t care. I am an adult, and I am perfectly able to make my own decisions.”

  “I would like to add that there is nothing I want more than for Kelly to be happy and safe.” Phoenix said.

  “Eight billion people on the planet, and you have to pick my child. You do realize that she is still very young,” Jules pointed out.

  “I am roughly twenty,” he reminded her.

  “But you will live forever! What happens when she is thirty and you get killed and look twenty again? Or when she is fifty? What if she changes her mind? People change a lot from nineteen to thirty.” Jules did present a good argument. Kelly hadn’t considered the live forever angle.

  “If she outgrows me, then I will not hold her back. I will not do anything to make her unhappy. Besides, I age. As long as I don’t die, we will be the same age, more or less.” Phoenix retorted.

  “What if you don’t? What if she lives to be an old woman and dies happy. What happens to you then? Are you prepared to go on living forever without her?”

  “I will deal with that when we get there,” Phoenix said, his eyes on the floor.

  “We’ll see,” Jules said. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Don’t worry Phoenix, she won’t hurt you in this place. Too many witnesses,” Nick offered playfully. Jules did not think he was funny. Phoenix didn’t look convinced. If she were perfectly honest, neither was Kelly.

  “I love Kelly, and I wish you would just see that I would never hurt her. She is my mate, just as Nick is yours. I don’t know what we will do when or even if the time comes where age becomes a problem. I do know that whatever life throws at us, we will handle it. I have spent an eternity alone and I have finally found the woman who was made for me. I am fully aware of your concerns, but you know as well as I do that this kind of thing doesn’t come along every day. How can you, as a mated vampire, even consider denying me my mate?” Phoenix shouted. The temperature in the room was rising and it was obvious that Phoenix would protect their relationship from anyone, including Jules.

  Before things could get any further out of control, Kelly offered her opinion on a different, more pressing subject. “We aren’t the real issue here,” she said loudly. “The real issue is that three people in our family are missing. The police have nothing and neither do we. It can’t be a coincidence. Has anyone even considered that maybe the same people are behind the disappearances? You guys made some pretty powerful enemies.”

  “Yes, we have,” Nick answered. “I think it’s Harwin. I think he’s been watching us. Following us. I think he is trying to make us distracted so they can make their move.”

  Kelly breathed a sigh of relief to have effectively changed the subject. This was what they really needed to concentrate on at the time anyway.

  “If that’s the case, then we have to go on without them,” Phoenix said solemnly.

  “We can’t just let them go,” Jules said. “That evil bastard will kill them. Are you willing to sacrifice four of the people you love?”

  “At the expense of the world, let me think, yes. As you said, there are eight billion people on the planet. We cannot risk them all for four people,”
he reminded her.

  “How can you be so cold?” she asked.

  “It’s not cold, Mom, he’s being practical. If you weren’t so blinded by your involvement in my love life, you would see that. Would Michael want you to risk everything to save him? Would he do the same for you, or would he agree with Phoenix?” Kelly interjected. She had her there and Jules knew it. She had no argument. Kelly wouldn’t want them coming after her either. Jules glowered at her and opened her mouth to argue anyway, but was interrupted by Phoenix’s phone ringing.

  “Hello?” He nodded, “I see,.....when?......ok, yeah, ..no wait for my call,.....yes do that. Call me when you land. Bye.”

  He looked at his family. “That was Michelle. She said she got a text message on her phone, Heidi is in New Mexico. They told her that our humans were there too. If we want them back alive, we need to cooperate. They want all of us to be there in three weeks. They will call again to give us a more specific meeting place. Michelle is taking the first flight to the States as soon as she can get ready.”

  “I think we already know where to meet,” Victor said.

  “Yeah,” Nick agreed.

  “I’m going. You guys do whatever you feel is right, but I’m going. I can’t just leave Andrew to die,” Jared declared.

  “They won’t kill them, not yet,” Victor said. “They will keep our family alive. They know we won’t come if we think they are already dead.”

  “We will need to get more information, we need to spy on them, like they’ve been doing to us,” Jules said.

  “How do we know they’ve been watching us?” Rachel asked. She was so sweet, it was hard to believe she was a vampire.

  “Why else would they have taken Heidi? We just met the sisters, and why not Michelle? They had to know that Phoenix and she were close friends. There is no other explanation,” Kelly suggested.

  I put her in danger, Phoenix thought. I put all of us in danger.

  No, you didn’t. The demons did. Kelly thought right back to him.

  “Do you think this is merely a distraction? Or is there some other reason for this?” Victor continued.