Chapter 27 JULIAN #2
I stop breathing for half a second as heat brands the top of my spine.
My body recognizes the grip before my mind can catch up: rough fingers curling under the hair at my nape, thumb pressing firmly into the side of my throat just under the edge of my helmet.
Rafe. He pulls—not gently. He drags me backward like I’m nothing but unchecked momentum he refuses to let collide with the wrong man.
My blades scrape hard across the ice, the sudden shift in balance forcing my knees to bend reflexively.
I lean back into him instinctively because my body knows the command even if my brain is still locked on Ezio, still hungry for the next swing.
“Easy,” Rafe growls into my ear—quiet, low, deadly—a storm held in human skin.
My breath stutters. He’s not doing this to protect me from Ezio. He’s doing this to protect everyone else from me.
His grip tightens when I instinctively try to take one more step toward Ezio—not much, just enough to test the boundary. Just enough to remind my muscles exactly where the line is drawn and who holds it.
I stare at Ezio over my shoulder, still smiling, still tasting the sharp, metallic high of violence in the back of my throat. He looks pale now, unsteady on his feet, maybe finally realizing that the thing that wants to kill him isn’t the other players on the ice.
It’s me.
But I’m not stupid enough to miss the bigger truth. Ezio is Leonardo’s son—untouchable. And if I rip him apart here, we don’t just die. The entire team dies. Rafe dies. Kai dies. Finn. Misha. Luca. All of them.
Rafe’s thumb presses harder into the side of my neck—a silent warning, a tether, a command pulling me back from a cliff that would drag everyone down with me.
“Look at me,” Rafe murmurs.
I don’t. I can’t. Not yet. I’m still staring at Ezio like I want to carve his name out of my own skin with a blade. My smile lingers—wrong, feral, sharp enough to cut me open from the inside.
Ezio swallows; his jaw clicks painfully. He winces.
I laugh again.
But Rafe’s grip shifts—not tighter, lower. His hand slides from my neck to my collarbone in a slow, controlled descent meant to anchor me. Heat floods where his skin meets mine, and the laughter dies in my throat like someone snuffed a candle.
I inhale.
Rafe’s chest brushes my back.
I exhale.
The rage loosens—just a fraction, just enough for control to slip back into the room instead of spilling out of me in teeth and blood.
Ezio takes another step back. Good. Run.
Rafe’s breath ghosts against the side of my face, his voice a low warning only I get to hear. “Not him,” he murmurs. “Not today.”
My jaw ticks. My smile doesn’t fade, but it shifts—less feral now, more lethal promise.
Fine. Not today.
But soon.
Ezio leaves—backing through the doorway with one hand clutching his jaw, eyes never breaking from mine, as if he’s certain that if he turns his back even once I’ll sprint across the ice and rip his spine out through the tapes on his throat.
Good instinct. He stays gone. But I don’t calm down. Not even a little.
Rafe’s hand stays locked around the side of my neck for a few more seconds—steady, controlling, right where the panic used to live—before he loosens the grip just enough to ease the pressure without ever fully releasing me.
I’m still smiling. Still vibrating. Still half feral.
Ezio is nowhere in sight now.
And all that rage, all that humiliation, all that leftover acid from yesterday’s breakdown, last night’s nightmare, and the morning’s slow burn under my skin—it’s still here, churning, with nowhere to go.
I don’t say a word. I just push off the ice hard.
The force shoots up my calves, snaps into my thighs, sets my ribs buzzing as I cut through center ice like the surface personally offended me.
My blades scream against the frozen sheet; the cold bites deep into my lungs; my heart slams against my sternum fast enough to bruise.
I fly across the rink like I’m trying to outrun myself—like if I don’t move, if I don’t burn every last inch of this adrenaline off, I’ll end up punching through the boards or putting my head through a wall.
Finn sees me coming and grins like a lunatic. He doesn’t grin long. I body-check him so hard he actually skids three feet, slams into the boards, and slides down them like a cartoon character whose legs gave out mid-run. He wheezes. I don’t stop.
Kai lifts a brow from the bench. Misha mutters something in Russian that sounds impressed and terrified. Luca barely has time to blink before I steal the puck right off his blade and rip it past the goal like I’m trying to kill a ghost hiding in the net.
Rafe watches. Eyes tracking every violent turn of my body like he’s storing them somewhere deep, somewhere private, somewhere I’ll pay for later.
I skate until I’m dizzy. Until sweat drips down my spine.
Until my legs feel like I’ve been dragging the weight of the entire fucking compound behind me.
Because I need to put this energy somewhere.
Because if I don’t bleed it out on the ice, I’ll spill it on someone’s face.
Because Rafe told me to breathe—and skating is the only way I know how to do that without steel in my mouth.
And because underneath the rage and the fire and the leftover nightmares…
I’m hungry. For the game. For the violence.
For him. And every lap burns the world a little cleaner.
The second the whistle blows, I don’t wait.
I don’t cool down. I don’t breathe. I skate straight to the boards, throw myself over them like they’re on fire, and rip my helmet off before I even reach the tunnel.
My breath is still ragged. My legs still shake.
My throat burns from cold air and swallowed filth, and none of it matters.
Because I need him. Now.
The locker room is still echoing with the sounds of practice—water bottles slamming shut, skates clacking on concrete, someone yelling for more towels. None of it touches me. None of it registers.
I stalk straight to where he is—near the showers—stripping off his pads like nothing in the world can touch him.
His black undershirt clings damp at the collar, hair slicked back from sweat, jaw tight, mouth red from chewing tension through the entire practice.
He doesn’t look surprised when I approach, but this time I don’t chirp, don’t tease, don’t flirt.
I drop to my knees in front of him—hard.
The sound echoes across the tile—sharp, filthy, final.
Rafe’s hands freeze mid-movement. His breath stops. His eyes drop to mine—those storm-gray eyes that see through every layer, every lie, every scar.
I don’t let him speak. “If I suck you off with the same mouth you taped,” I whisper, voice cracked and shaking, “does that make it mine again?”
Rafe growls—low, primal, wrecked.
I’m already reaching for him. My palms slide up his thighs, fingers trembling as I press my forehead to the fly of his pants and breathe him in through denim like I’m starving, like I’ve forgotten how to live without the taste of him flooding my mouth.
He’s hard already—half-hard and thickening fast—and the sound he makes when I nuzzle against him is barely human, a ragged, guttural thing that vibrates straight down my spine.
“Please,” I whisper, kissing along the seam. “Let me. Let me take it. Let me feel it again. Let me replace everything.”
His hands fist in my hair—dragging my face harder against him—and for a second, I think he’s going to say no. I think he’s going to grab me by the throat and slam me against the wall for trying to take what’s already his.
But then he rasps, “Open.”
And I do. Immediately. Mouth wide, tongue out, eyes on him like a prayer.
His zipper’s down in a second. His cock hits my tongue in the next.
Heavy. Thick. My throat opens on instinct, taking him deeper than I ever have.
He doesn’t ease in. He doesn’t warn. He shoves forward like he’s claiming it again—this mouth, this moment, this fucking world.
His voice is a snarl above me. “That’s it, halo. Worship it. You want it to be yours? Earn it.”
And I do. I suck like I’m being exorcised.
Like the tape still playing in my skull will finally shut up if I just take him deep enough.
I moan around his cock, hands gripping his thighs so tight I know he’ll bruise.
He rocks into me once, twice, then fucks my mouth in earnest—deep, punishing strokes that make my eyes water and my cock twitch against the inside of my shorts.
I choke.
He groans.
And then I whimper—high and broken—“More…”
“Greedy fucking brat,” Rafe growls, both hands fisting in my hair now, forcing my head still while he thrusts. “Choke on it. Replace it. Come undone for me.”
I do.
My spit runs down my chin; my jaw aches; my vision blurs at the edges.
But I don’t stop. I swallow every inch like it might save me, like it might anchor me, like the ragged sound of him losing control will be the only thing loud enough to drown out the ghosts still whispering in my head.
And then it happens—his breath catches, hips slamming forward.
“Fuck—fuck, Jules—just like that—fucking perfect—” He comes with a growl so guttural it shakes my ribs—hot, deep, endless.
I swallow all of it. I don’t flinch. I don’t pull away.
I take it like devotion, like destruction, like the only truth that ever mattered.
He pulls out slow, panting, staring down at me like I just offered him something sacred.
I lick my lips, smile, and whisper, “Mine.”
He nods once. Like it’s already law.
My knees are bruised. My throat’s raw. My jaw aches in that perfect, ruined way that makes me want to do it all over again. The taste of him lingers—hot, sharp, mine—while he’s still breathing like I knocked something loose in his chest. His hand stays tangled in my hair.
I look up at him from the floor—still on my knees, lips swollen, spit drying on my chin—and I say it without blinking. “Let me humiliate him.”
Rafe doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. He just watches me like he’s waiting to see which version of me is speaking now—the broken boy, the addict, the ghost with a tape still playing in his head.
But I’m none of those right now. I’m the blade. So I say it again—louder, clearer, more dangerous. “Let me humiliate him.”
His brow lifts slowly. “How?”
I rise—slow, deliberate, still trembling with the aftershocks of what just happened—and press one palm flat to his chest. My heart is hammering; my breath stings on the way in. “Make me captain.”
Rafe’s eyes darken instantly, pupils swallowing the storm-gray until they’re almost black. His jaw clenches so tight I can see the muscle jump under the skin, a slow, deliberate flex of restraint.
I don’t back down. I lean in closer, close enough that my forehead nearly brushes his chin, voice dropping to a cracked, urgent whisper that still carries every ounce of the fire still burning in my veins.
“For the game,” I say. “Let me walk out there wearing it. Let me take the puck drop. Let me lead your monsters—Finn, Kai, Misha, Luca, all of them. Let me own the ice the way Ezio tried to own me, the way he tried to break me open and leave me bleeding on the boards for everyone to see.”
I don’t back down. “For the game,” I whisper. “Let me walk out there wearing it. Let me take the puck. Let me lead your monsters. Let me own the ice the way he tried to own me.”
Silence crashes into the locker room like a blade dropped point-first.
I stare up at him, unblinking, daring him to say no.
Daring him to tell me I’m still too fragile, too cracked, too haunted to carry the weight of it.
My palm stays pressed to his chest; I can feel the subtle hitch in his breathing, the way his pulse kicks harder under my fingers like he’s fighting the same war inside that I am.
And Rafe?
Rafe smiles.
Not the feral, dangerous curl of lips I’ve seen before.
Not the slow, predatory thing that promises violence.
This is quieter—sharper—something almost proud, almost tender, edged with the same dark amusement that lives in the back of his eyes when he watches me burn and rise again.
It’s the smile of a man who’s already decided, who’s already picturing me on that ice with the C on my chest, stick in hand, staring down every ghost and every enemy who ever thought they could take me apart.