Then I met Phoenix.
She was a glimmer of light in a world shadowed in darkness.
Now, I believed that I finally knew the answer to the question that had been gnawing at my soul for the last five years.
What is the point of life?
With my eyes closed, I exhaled.
It’s this!
The point of life was this moment. The beating of the rain against my skin. The beautiful woman that I’d been inside, who now lay next to me.
The point of life was the sound of her moans. The feel of her warmth. The sensual taste of her mouth. The hugging of her pussy.
And the point of life was the chill of the storm and the brightness of the sun rising in a darkened sky.
This. This moment. This time. This.
It was like the heavens opened up and angels soared out with trumpets to welcome me back. It was like those unblocked holes in my heart were making room in my body for love.
This is why we’re alive.
This was the point.
This.
And the point of life was to love. To grow. To experience. To rise. To fall. To hope. To cry.
To heal. To heal. To heal. . .
I opened my eyes.
A wild smile spread across my face. “To heal.”
If this was not the point of life, then I no longer yearned to live.
What else could it be?
I glanced to my side to see the beautiful woman who had seeped into my heart. I was ready to tell her all the understanding that had just sparked within me.
No!
Phoenix was gone.
No one was there.
The ground was just a muddy puddle with the imprint of her, getting continuously battered with raindrops.
“No.” I sat up and hysterically looked around. “Phoenix!”
The rain continued to fall creating a blurry curtain in front of me.
I jumped up. “Phoenix!”
Which way did she run? Left? Right? Back in the direction of the house? Or deeper into the forest?
“Phoenix!”
Chapter 21
Runaway
Phoenix
A
drenaline buzzed through my veins.
Naked and dripping in mud, I raced away in a blur. So fast, it felt like slow motion. So fast, my brain shifted to the mode of ultra-focused.
My lungs screamed in pain.
Primal fear rushed in, saturating my body in numbness. When I ran on rocks, I barely felt it. Although my legs burned from weariness, I had more energy to run for several days.
Cain roared off in the distance. “Phoenix!”
Keep running.
The storm lightened, yet didn’t give me a clear path forward.
You got this!
Blindly, I raced through the forest, not knowing where I was going, just that I was going. Leaving. Escaping. Getting the fuck out of there. Taking control. Pushing forward.
And I didn’t know the destination.
I just knew that it was ahead of me.
I could have stayed with him.
My body shuddered from the memory of pleasure he’d caused me. For some reason that triggered me to run faster. I pushed my body to go beyond its known limits.
Don’t think about the pleasure. Think about the oncoming pain.
After we orgasmed together and he was exhausted, it was the perfect opportunity to run away.
And I knew about running away, escaping a worse fate.
It would have been foolish to stay.
It would have been crazy for me to continue to lay next to him and let him hold my life—my destiny—in his big hands.
I had to rush away if only to live exactly the way I wanted to.
I was done with surviving.
I was done with hustling to make it another day.
I want to fucking live!!
That was what Cain taught me. He showed me that there were things out there in the world that I still hadn’t experienced—crying white people with the prettiest voices, pleasure from the sharpest knives, the sweet bliss from a strong man with a dark heart, the magic and healing power of the earth.
“Phoenix!” Cain’s voice was an eerie howl that rocked my bones. “Phoenix!”
I almost tripped.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
I splashed through a puddle, my foot sinking with each step.
I’m going to live. And it will be on my terms.
I wasn’t the same person anymore.
The woman who I’d been when I walked into his chapel, was not the person who ran in this forest.
Cain had tinkered and cut at my emotional circuits.
I now spun in overload.
Maybe it was the sex.
Perhaps it was the blood.
I felt broken apart and glued back together. And I didn’t know if I liked the new shape of me, just that I didn’t want to be touched anymore.
Being with him was scary, terrifying, and. . .it felt too damn good.
I had to get out of there.
I was starting to like him.
If he wasn’t going to kill me soon, then I would die another way. I would die from his pleasurable pain. I would die from no control, no sense of who I was.
He was doing something to my head. To my emotions.
It was better to escape.
I can do anything I fucking want to do now! I’m. . .somebody! I’m. . .powerful!