Page 97 of Phoenix

Another step.

The end of her arm.

That’s when I notice the water is up to my chest, and she is neck-deep right in front of me.

“Fuck. Fuck,” I say, the prickly stabs of panic begin to form in my chest. My legs get heavier and weaker.

“It’s okay. I’m right here. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.” She comes closer to me and places my hands on her chest so I can feel it rising and falling. “Breathe with me.”

She gently places her hands on my shoulders and we breathe together, matching rhythms until we almost become one person.

“Are you all right?” she asks, and I slide my hands from her chest, around to her back and down to her ass, pulling her up against me, chest to chest.

“I’m perfect.”

She wraps her legs and arms around me, clinging to me. “Keep going then.”

I take another step, and another; the water is at my neck now, and my lips are dancing over her pulse. She drops her head back and releases a long sigh of pleasure and rocks her lower half in response. The position of her body on mine allows her to grind perfectly against my cock.

“Fuck, Nora,” I hiss, biting down on the skin of her neck.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, but what you were doing felt so good.” She looks at me with a hand to my cheek. “That’s not what this is about and I’m sorry.”

“You’re apologizing for grinding yourself against me because I turned you on?”

“Well... yes,” she says, with a giggle.

Without thinking, I take another step forward and the pool bottom disappears.

“Whoa. Shit. Shit.” I begin to panic, kicking my feet and clutching onto her for dear life when her voice cuts through my fear.

“Case, look at me.” She removes her legs from around my waist and begins to kick them slowly back and forth.

I take a breath and meet her gaze, as my hands instinctually leave her body and my arms spread out, helping us tread water.

I’m doing it.

I’m swimming again.

I took the first step to beating this—to overcoming.

I will win.

Nora

The pride I feel is indescribable.

The look on his face is exactly what I was wanting to come from this.

“Thank you, Phoenix. I can’t even begin...thank you.”

We’ve kept moving slowly backward the entire time we’ve been in the pool, and now I feel the cool, hard concrete of the pool side at my back.

“Don’t thank me,” I say, sliding my arms around his neck. “Just kiss me.”

And he does. He kisses me with an intensity I’ve not felt from him. A fire I want to throw myself into until I’m nothing but ash, only so I can be reborn for him as the Phoenix he so lovingly calls me. And I would—for him.

He grips the ledge on the left side of my head and with his right hand, he grips the hair at the nape of my neck, tugging back to tip my face up to him for a better angle.

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