A Knock From The Past: (The Phoenix Series Book 1)

by Emma Vikes

  “Stay with me, Lily,” he murmured, his breath tickling my ear. I closed my eyes because our position triggered my burning sexual desire again and it was the last thing I needed to think about. But Art had his hands wrapped around my waist and I could feel his thumb drawing lazy circles on my back, adding more wood to the flames.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes and his right hand touched my face again. “I need you right here with me, Lily.”

  I could see the lust dancing in his brown eyes, which were illuminated by the setting sun, making them look even brighter. His fingers curled at my neck, his thumb gently caressing my skin and sending shockwaves of desire into my core. Had the situation been different, had it been just the two of us getting drunk without any reason, I would’ve allowed myself the satisfaction of satiating the sexual craving that I’d felt for Art Waters since the day that I met him.

  Slowly, his hand crept to the base of my neck and gently pulled me closer. Our mouths pressed against each other in a tender and unhurried way. This wasn’t anything like the first night I’d met him, there wasn’t anything hurried about this kiss. It was like he was savoring the taste of me, in the most sensual and romantic way possible.

  Art changed our position so I was beneath him. His kisses made their way from my lips to the other areas of my bodies that he had access to. It wasn’t long before he took off my shirt, my breasts on full display for him. He still continued his slow pace and I wasn’t sure if this was going to lead to sex. I wasn’t sure if fucking each other in such a raw and vulnerable moment was the right thing to do.

  But I didn’t do anything to stop him.

  He continued to pleasure me with kisses until he stopped. He was holding himself above me, his brown eyes filled with desire. I wasn’t sure if he was silently asking for permission, but I did not nod my head nor did I tell him to stop. Instead, I inched myself forward and planted a soft kiss on his lips, tender and fleeting, one that would let him to decide if we should go further or not.

  And then Art closed his eyes and lowered himself next to me, wrapping his arms around me instead. He kissed my shoulder and sighed, not saying anything else. I wasn’t sure what made him reconsider but, at that moment, I felt like Art was stripping himself of the mask he showed in public and he was letting me see who he truly was, the one before the emancipation, the broken boy that lay beneath the hardened and playful exterior.

  “Stay with me, Lily,” he whispered behind me.

  I nodded and turned around to face him. I wasn’t sure what this meant for us or why he wanted me around him. All I knew was that he needed me and I was there.

  Because I wanted to be.

  CHAPTER 5

  Arthur

  “Lily!” I woke up, gasping.

  Eyebrows furrowing, I looked at where I was. I was in my living room and I was safe. The hangover began to kick in after a moment and I groaned in pain. It took me a few minutes before I remembered what had happened yesterday. Immediately I began to look for her because I sure as hell didn’t just imagine that she’d stayed with me. It’s then that I saw the note on the coffee table.

  She’d left just an hour ago. I glanced at the clock and realized that it was 2:59 and before I looked away, the numbers switched to 3:00am. The devil’s hour.

  With a sigh, I changed into casual clothes, popped an Advil in my mouth and headed to the café. I wanted to head over to Lily’s like I had yesterday but I was afraid that I was crossing boundaries. We started off with teasing each other and turning it into a game, but going over to her apartment yesterday and simply just asking her to have a conversation with me changed the course of our game.

  Begging her to stay last night had changed it even more and now I wasn’t sure which course we were taking.

  When I was near the café, I decided against it and instead chose to go back to my apartment. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do there and there was a chance that the person threatening me might have walked into the room and killed me and ended all of this, but I just wanted to stay at home tonight even though I couldn’t sleep.

  I paced around my apartment, trying to find something to do and distract myself until morning. I sifted through every novel I had in my bookshelf until I finally decided to sift through the documents I had brought along with me. It was then that I realized that I’d had Lily’s file with me all along.

  Maybe I could read more about her through her resume?

  Calvin Stone.

  That was her father’s name. Wait, why does his name sound familiar? Hadn’t Julian mentioned him to me before? Taking out my phone from my pocket, I began to type her father’s name in Google and waited for the results. My eyebrows shot up as I scrolled through the articles. So that’s why his name sounded familiar to me: he was the famous Australian detective that had solved the huge Brisbane case back in 2016.

  But if Lily’s father was a detective, maybe she could have helped me with my case?

  I mean, I had a feeling that my family was behind it but I needed to know the reason why they were doing it. As far as I knew, Julian had settled things with my family. He gave them the money they demanded in exchange for my signing the emancipation documents along with the promise that they wouldn’t harm and bother me once the documents had been approved by the court and I wouldn’t tattle on their illegal activities.

  But they were obviously threatening me now and, whatever the reason, I needed to find out why. If Lily had managed to learn a thing or two from her father, then maybe she could have helped me out?

  I suddenly wanted to rush out of my apartment and run to her and beg for her help. But I knew that wouldn’t really get me anywhere and I would probably only scare her with my desperation. I guess waiting for the morning to come and the sun to shine would probably have been the next best move for me.

  I wasn’t sure how I managed to wait for as long as I did but once I realized that it was time for me to get dressed for work, I quickly did. I was in the basement waiting for my driver to start the car and drive me to Interzone when I realized that I told him yesterday to come only if I asked him to. I wasn’t entirely sure what made me say that but I had been scared and confused shitless yesterday.

  “Hey, Mr. Waters,” Lily greeted me the moment the elevator doors opened and a small smile made its way to my lips, remembering the way she was pressed up against me last night and the tenderness of her lips. “How’s the hangover?”

  “It was a bitch,” I replied and then exhaled loudly. “I have something I have to discuss with you in the office, Lily.”

  With furrowed eyebrows, she followed me inside and then waited for me to say something. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to phrase my words, especially knowing how weird it would sound to say that I had read her files earlier to pass the time. But I had to try to ask for her help because I desperately needed it.

  “I woke up from a nightmare earlier to find you gone,” I began to say as I walked to the farthest edge of my office, to the part that gave me the view of Seattle, “and I didn’t want to head to the café earlier and thought I should stay inside and try to pass the time until I could start getting ready for work. While doing so, I found your resume.”

  Lily looked at me, the confusion clear in her eyes. “I’m not sure where you’re heading with this, Art.”

  I sighed. “Your father is Calvin Stone and his name sounded so familiar to me that I did some digging. He’s a known detective in Australia.”

  I didn’t seem to need to say anymore because I could see the gears in her head turning as she looked at me. “Do you want my father’s help with your case?”

  Shaking my head, I turned to face her fully. “No. I need yours.”

  Lily’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’m not a detective, Art.”

  “I know. But you must’ve learned a thing or two from your father. We just need to figure out the reason why my family is threatening me after…after Julian made sure that they wouldn’t. I want to know what made them decide to
come after me, Lily.”

  “How sure are you that this was done by your family?”

  I ran a hand through my hair. Her question was the hole in my theory. I had rivals and enemies. It could simply be one of them.

  “Because no one knows how to threaten me and scare me the way they do, Lily,” I answered her after a moment.

  Lily exhaled loudly and then tucked in a stray hair behind her ear. “Okay, Art. I’ll try to help you figure this out but I need to know more about your family’s story.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to tell her everything about my family but, if it was something I had to do, then I didn’t have much of a choice. “Alright. I will. I’ll tell you everything and continue where I left off yesterday. But can we do it at my apartment? I don’t want to risk anyone hearing.”

  Lily nodded and she told me that she needed a few minutes to cancel all of my meetings for the day. As soon as she was done with that, we headed to the basement to get my car. I was aware of the looks everyone else in the company was giving us and I momentarily wondered how Lily felt under their judgmental gaze.

  But they didn’t know the situation at hand and their opinion was irrelevant at the moment.

  I drove Lily and me back to my apartment. When we arrived inside, I tried to look for clues to see if anything was out of order. I remembered the note that had been neatly placed on my bed, the one that I almost disregarded because the handwriting had not been familiar to me. Lily took a seat on the couch and I wondered if she remembered last night.

  I fetched two glasses and a bottle of scotch. I placed it on the coffee table and then sat beside Lily, pouring the bronze drink into both glasses. I knew I was stalling but I needed to gather my thoughts and the courage to tell Lily the kind of life I used to have. Only one person knew my story and that person was buried six feet below ground.

  “Remember how I told you yesterday that my father started doing his clients’ dirty work?” I asked after I’d taken a huge gulp of my drink. I turned to Lily and she was casually sipping hers and she nodded. “Yeah, he was murdering the people his clients told him to kill.”

  “It didn’t take long for my father to figure out that he earned more murdering someone than through the drugs.” I swirled the bronze fluid in the glass and watched as it sloshed against the side. “He was a man greedy for money, Lily, he would do anything just to have more of it. He wasn’t afraid to kill for money.”

  At some point, he came to the realization that we should focus more on murdering people for his clients and make the drugs a side business.”

  I could remember the day that my father gathered us at the house. Me and my brothers, my mother, my uncles and cousins, all huddled together to hear my father's big announcement. "He taught my brothers and me how to kill. At first, it was just shooting small birds and animals, and then he started to teach us how to murder with a knife. He wanted to make sure that we found pleasure in killing animals and told us that killing people would just be the same as that.

  Since I was the eldest son, he brought me along on one of his ‘missions’.” I closed my eyes as I relived that night, the one that changed everything. The night that I wanted to forget. The night that continued to give me nightmares. If there was anything on this earth invented to make a person forget a certain memory, I would have given all my money for it just so I could have had that memory erased from every recess of my brain.

  “He wanted me to kill someone that night,” I finally whispered and I felt Lily’s hand on mine. She wrapped her hand around mine and squeezed it, giving me the support I needed to continue my story. “I couldn’t do it and he got so angry. He made sure I saw the way he killed that man and when we got home that night, he was furious. My mother…”

  I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down my face as I remembered how my crack-whore of a mother tried her best to save me from the wrath of my father. It was the only time I felt that I actually had a mother.

  “My father was lashing out. He had a gun with him and he was threatening to shoot me because I almost lost us the job by being such a pussy. My mother tried to take the gun away from him but he pulled the trigger and killed her and then he blamed it all on me.”

  I could still hear the gunshot, my mother gasping and falling down onto her knees while a pool of blood flowed from her wound. I remembered how the rest of our family rushed inside our house, my brothers’ wailing at the sight of our dying mother and my father…

  My fucking father, crying beside her and putting all the blame on me when he had been the one who had pulled the trigger.

  “I ran away after that and that’s when Julian found me. I wanted to kill myself because I knew they were gonna kill me. An eye for an eye.” I angrily wiped away the tears that were running down my face. I hated how I was crying for the death of a woman who not once had looked at me the way a mother should look at her son.

  “Julian, he took me in and promised me that he was going to find a solution. It just happened to be that emancipation was his solution, along with money.”

  Lily looked at me, perplexed. “So Julian paid your family to stay away from you?”

  I nodded slowly. “It was a huge amount, Lily, and I promised Julian I’d pay him back but he told me I didn’t need to. He was always looking for the one person he should help and then he found me.”

  “So Julian bought their agreement. Do you have any idea of the terms set?”

  I shook my head. “No. But whatever agreement they had, it’s useless now because they’re coming after me like hungry wolves and I know they won’t stop until I’m dead, Lily.”

  “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to help you, Art, but whatever evidence you have, if there are any other notes sent to you aside from the one last night, we could give them to the police.”

  "No. We can't do that, Lily. Not right now. If we do that, they're going to quicken their pace. They're taking things slow right now because they think it'll hurt me more. Trust me, as much as I tried to forget them, I know how their brains work.”

  Lily looked at me with worried blue eyes. “Then what do you wanna do?”

  I moistened my lips and then sighed. “I don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Lily

  It was weird not seeing any trace of confidence within Art. He looked so drained and tired and sad, like the traumatized teenage boy that he had once been had just made a comeback and he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with himself.

  But I what I found weird was the fact that my heart ached for him. I didn’t like seeing him in that kind of state. I would much rather have had him teasing and taunting me and delivering sexual comments than seeing him like that. I haven’t really had the chance to get to know him as much as I would have liked, but I would not deny the fact that I felt comfortable around him and it felt like he was someone I had been meant to meet.

  And I will not deny that even after the confession, even after the light we had turned on his past, I was still attracted to him.

  His vulnerability made him all the sexier in my eyes but I was sure that the last thing I was supposed to be thinking right then was him screwing me.

  “Lily?”

  I turned to look at him. We were both sprawled on the floor right now. I think his confession drained him and he just sank down onto the floor, curling into himself. I followed suit after a while, not knowing how I was supposed to comfort him.

  He began to pull himself into a sitting position and I did the same thing. “Yeah?”

  “I don’t want my confession to make you think that I’m anything like them. My father’s blood may run in my veins but I swear to you I am nothing like him.”

  I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this. “What are you talking about?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it even more. I noticed that he had a habit of doing that when he was stressed or frustrated. He did it a lot when he was buried in work. “Because I like what we have. I know it start
ed as a game of sexual teasing but I like having someone to talk to and I’m afraid that my past scares you.”

  “Your past is your past, Art, it doesn’t define who you are now. I like the Art that I met at the café, he may be an ass and he may have tried to seduce me to get laid, and he may have ruined my dreams for me - but you’ve grown on me.”

  He chuckled slightly. “I’ll get you back on the creative team first thing in the morning.”

  I shook my head. “Nah. I like being your assistant. I don’t mind being one for a while. Also, it gives me the chance to look at you as much as I like. When you’re blessed with a sexy CEO, you need to take advantage of some things.”

  I reached out and placed a hand on his knee. His confession was still fresh in my mind and I knew I probably should have been comforting him but there was one kind of comfort that I knew how to do, and it’s one that would make him – hopefully - forget all the worries plaguing his mind at that moment.

  “You didn’t deserve that kind of life, Art,” I murmured quietly, and he looked at me with his fiery brown eyes. The pain that he’d felt as a teenager was clearly painted in swirls of brown and my heart ached for him. My heart ached for the boy that existed inside the man in front of me.

  Slowly, Art’s hand reached to touch my face. His thumb was gentle on my cheek, a soft caress and I found myself leaning into his touch, the burning desire for him gradually igniting again. When he began to lean closer, his eyes flickered to mine, waiting for an outburst on my part, waiting for a rejection.

  But I didn’t want to fight myself anymore. Despite how insulting his words were yesterday, I could no longer deny that he wasn’t the only one that felt the sexual attraction, the tension that needed to be dealt with.

  “This probably isn’t the best time for sex,” Art murmured quietly, leaning closer to me. “Say no and I’ll stop, Lily.”