Chapter 18 RAFE
RAFE
The motel stinks like mold and piss and something dead that tried real hard not to be found.
One bed, one flickering light, and a mini fridge that groans every time the compressor kicks in like it’s got opinions about our presence.
I sit on the edge of the mattress, scrolling through grainy traffic cam footage on my burner, while Misha paces shirtless across the room, bitching like a Russian housewife whose husband forgot the groceries.
“Fucking Corso,” he growls, jabbing a half-eaten protein bar at the ceiling. “He stares like statue. Never speaks. But then—then—I find three bodies dumped in alley, all with same wound patterns. Same blade. Same timing.”
I grunt. “And?”
“And!” Misha throws the bar at the wall. “He tells me it’s coincidence. Coincidence! Like he’s not carving his name into corpses and leaving them for me like flowers.”
“You like it,” I mutter as I drag the timeline forward two seconds, the grainy footage skipping before a blurry car rolls through the edge of the frame—a black sedan with tinted windows and plates scrubbed clean.
Misha stops pacing just long enough to look personally offended. “I hate it.”
I lift an eyebrow without looking up from the screen. “You fucked him yet?”
“Not yet,” he mutters, folding his arms. “He’s slow like glacier. I give it another week.”
I smirk—barely.
The screen glitches and jumps to the next clip.
And there he is.
Nathan fucking Grant.
He’s wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses, and a cap pulled low, but he isn’t quite fast enough.
The camera angle catches his jawline just long enough to confirm it’s him—the same smug mouth I’ve seen freeze-framed a thousand times now, the same face that haunts Julian’s eyes when he thinks I’m not watching, the same bastard who ruined everything and still walked away clean.
“Got him,” I say, leaning forward.
Misha is at my side in two seconds, crouched over my shoulder and radiating heat and murder. “Where?”
“Two towns over. Middle of nowhere,” I say, flicking the screen over to the GPS coordinates. “Gas station on the edge of a place called Florence Grove. Population barely cracks four digits, and the locals look like they wouldn’t notice a body unless it was on fire in their yard.”
Misha is already moving by the time I finish speaking, yanking on his boots like he’s been waiting for an excuse. “Then let’s light something.”
“No.” I stand slowly and crack my neck, feeling the tension shift into something colder and sharper. “We don’t grab him yet. We watch first, confirm the pattern, make sure he doesn’t see us coming.”
Misha scowls. “Why wait?”
“Because when I take him,” I growl, sliding the phone back into my jacket, “he’s not walking out, and I want him to know exactly why.”
Misha grins at that, wide and brutal. “You going to tell Jules?”
“No.”
He arches a brow. “Even if you bring him a present?”
I pause, just for a second, before answering.
“Especially if I bring him a present.” Because if I tell him now, he’ll spiral, and if I give him hope too early he’ll start to need it.
And if something goes wrong—if Nathan slips through my fingers again—it will kill him.
And I’ve already promised that Julian only dies if I do.
So I say nothing.
I load the guns, pack the blade, fold the tape, and then we get back in the car.
Misha drives like the road personally offended him, one hand on the wheel while the other flicks through radio stations that seem determined to alternate between static, death metal, and country—his own private version of torture, I assume.
The sky hangs low and gray above us while the trees blur past the windows like they’re all watching and choosing not to say a word.
I sit in the passenger seat with my legs stretched wide and one boot propped on the dash, trying to ignore the way Misha keeps muttering about Corso under his breath like the man might actually be in the trunk.
After a while I pull out my phone and check it, scrolling through the screen and finding exactly what I expected—no alerts from the compound, no texts, no calls.
Julian hasn’t checked in.
Not that he’s supposed to.
But still.
I open the surveillance feed and let the four camera windows fill the screen.
The rink is empty except for Kai and Luca pacing around like they’re choreographing a ballet of poor decisions, and Julian isn’t there.
He’s not in his container either—his bed is made, the lights are off.
I check the med bay next. Empty. Finn’s container is loud, chaotic, and mercifully Julian-free.
I frown.
I switch to the feed from my own container, fully expecting nothing.
Instead I freeze.
There he is—sprawled across my bed like sin carved into flesh just to see how far my control can stretch.
Shirtless, sweat-slick, hair wrecked, one thigh cocked out like a whore.
One hand shoved under my hoodie—my fucking hoodie—pressed so hard to his face like he’s trying to drown in the scent.
The other hand wrapped tight around his cock, jerking it like he’s punishing it for wanting me.
The feed’s black and white, but I don’t need color to read the shame rolling off him, the shaking need, the hunger tearing him open.
He’s rutting against my sheets like they’re my body, grinding into the mattress like it might actually fuck him back, teeth sunk into the sleeve of my hoodie so deep I swear I see the fabric give.
Then he drags it across his lips, tongue lapping at the cuff, mouth slack and desperate, trying to taste my skin through the thread.
Fucking hell.
He tongue-fucks the sleeve like he’s giving a slow, filthy blowjob to the memory of my wrist, hips stuttering as he moans—soft at first, then louder, slurring something hot and broken into the cotton, my name or worse, mouth hanging open, hoodie clutched tight, face buried so deep in it he’s praying, the only thing tethering him to sanity the smell of me soaked into the threads and the desperate taste of cloth on his tongue.
Then he fucks it—he actually drags the sleeve under his cock, wraps the fabric tight like a grip, and rocks his hips hard into it once, twice, over and over, like it’s my hand, my mouth, my throat closing around him, thighs trembling, panting ragged breaths straight into the cotton, fucking it like it’s the only thing that can save his goddamn life.
And I grip my phone so hard I might crush it in half.
Because this isn’t just desperate anymore, isn’t just filthy—it’s worship, the kind that breaks men open and leaves them bleeding.
He jerks harder, faster, tongue dragging up the soaked edge of the sleeve while his moans climb into something breathless and wrecked, wrapping the hoodie tighter around his face, humping into the cuff like he’s trying to erase me with nothing but fabric and failure and the ghost of my scent.
And then he says it—“Please…”—please what? please touch me, please ruin me, please come back—his hips jerk once more, he gasps choked and ruined, and then he comes all over my hoodie, moaning into it like he’s thanking me with every shuddering, spasming inch of his body, wrecked, mine, mine.
His mouth falls slack, hand trembling, and I don’t blink, don’t move—I just watch him collapse against my sheets, breathing hard, my name still smeared across his lips in spit and sound and shame.
That’s the crack, right there.
He didn’t fuck himself with the thought of Nathan—he fucked my hoodie like it was my cock shoved deep in his mouth, my hands bruising his hips, my voice low in his ear telling him to beg louder.
And I saw every fucking second of it.
“Jesus,” Misha mutters from the driver’s seat, glancing over with that shit-eating look he gets when he knows he’s onto something. “You watching porn?”
“Shut the fuck up and drive.”
He snorts, low and knowing. “Was that yours?”
I say nothing, jaw locked so tight my molars ache.
He whistles through his teeth anyway. “He looked loud.”
I grind my teeth harder, because he was—because he is—because right now all I can fucking hear is that broken moan spilling into the cotton, that ragged breath hitching against my hoodie, the wet drag of his tongue, the desperate grind of his hips, every filthy second burned into my skull like a brand.
And I am going to destroy Nathan Grant with a hard-on throbbing behind my zipper and a promise already sharpening in my teeth.
I sit there in the passenger seat, staring out at the blur of trees and half-dead towns, pretending my pulse isn’t still hammering in my throat from the image burned into the back of my eyes—Julian, sprawled in my bed like he owns the fucking place, hand wrapped around his cock, mouth buried in my hoodie like it’s the only thing keeping him from unraveling.
He looked wrecked. Worshipful. Dangerous.
He looked mine.
And I could’ve let it go—could’ve tucked the phone away, locked the feed, buried the memory under layers of cold focus and turned back to the hunt like a good little predator.
But restraint has never been my fucking virtue when it comes to him, so I pull the phone out again, open his thread, fingers moving before my brain can talk itself out of it.
No emojis. No punctuation. No explanation. Just three words: Do it again.
Then I hit send—no hesitation, no regret—watching the text fire off like a bullet I’ve already chambered for his chest.
Misha glances over again, eyes slicing to the screen just as I lock it. “You’re smiling.”
“I’m not.”
But maybe I am, the corner of my mouth twitching like it knows something the rest of me is still pretending not to feel.
He scoffs, low and amused. “Fuck me. You really got it bad.”
I lean my head back against the seat, close my eyes, and let the image flood back in perfect, obscene detail—Julian gasping into my scent, hips stuttering against the sheets, whispering something I can’t hear but feel bone-deep, like a prayer only I’m allowed to answer.