Chapter 33 Julian
JULIAN
It’s been a few days. Long enough for the color to crawl back into my skin, for my legs to stop shaking every time I sit up too fast, for Kai to stop hovering with a scalpel and a death threat every time I so much as breathe funny.
I’m fine now. More or less. My head’s clearer, my lungs work again, and my heart, that little traitorous bastard, remembered how to beat in rhythm.
But Rafe hasn’t looked away from me once. Since I opened my eyes and called him pretty through a poisoned haze, he’s been watching—not just protective, but possessive, like if I flicker wrong or vanish even a fraction, he’ll burn the entire compound down to find where I slipped through the cracks.
And I’m using it. Oh, I’m using it.
A naked shoulder when I walk past him. A slow stretch mid-conversation, shirt riding up just enough to bare the bruises he left like signatures on my skin.
A shower in broad daylight with the door wide open and the water turned cold so every inch of me puckers and glistens when I step out and lean in the doorway like sin made flesh.
He falls for it every time. His jaw tightens. His pupils drag across me slow and heavy like a bullet wound. His hands flex as though he’s weighing whether to fuck me senseless or lock me in a room for my own safety. It’s perfect.
But right now, I’m not teasing.
Right now I’m outside, barefoot on the cracked concrete of the courtyard because it’s too hot inside and Kai banned fans for “kicking up allergens,” whatever the fuck that means.
The heat hums off the metal walls in waves.
My skin is slick. My shirt is off. I’m stretched out under the half-shadow of a hanging tarp, phone in hand.
And I’m watching it.
The video.
The one that ruined my fucking life.
It starts the same way it always does—my laugh, loud and raw and a little breathless. Then a hand in my hair. The camera angle shifts. His voice. My moan. Skin against skin.
I should turn it off. I always say I will.
But I don’t.
I watch—not because I miss it, not because I want to relive it, but because I need to look that ghost in the face and not flinch.
I need to see what they used against me.
What he let happen. The man I thought I loved.
The captain I thought would save me. The man who said I’ll protect you with one hand while he filmed us with the other.
I’m not crying. I’m not shaking. I’m just sweating under the sun, mouth tight, teeth gritted, breathing slow while I watch myself be used like a secret someone never planned to keep.
The worst part isn’t the way I look at him. It’s the way I reach for him—trusting, open, mine.
And now? He’s a smear of blood under someone’s boot.
I don’t hear him coming. I never hear him coming. But I feel it—that shift in the air, that hush of gravity. The heat itself starts to coil inward when he gets close, like the ground forgets it’s allowed to stay stable. I don’t even need to look up to know it’s him.
Still, I do.
Rafe stands over me, eyes locked on the screen in my hand, expression carved from something older and darker than violence. He doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t growl. Doesn’t demand I shut it off. He just moves.
And then I’m off the ground.
“Hey—!” I bark, laughing mid-word as he yanks me off the tarp and throws me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing. The phone nearly slips from my hand—nearly—but I clamp down fast, clutching it with a breathless wheeze. “You maniac, warn a guy!”
Rafe doesn’t answer. He doesn’t carry me inside or drag me into the dark.
Instead, he walks beside the container, stepping under the narrow patch of shadow cast by the outer wall—the only sliver of cool air in this heat-slick hell—before he stops and lowers me gently to the ground.
Then he twists me, one hand firm on my waist, the other curled around the back of my neck, turning me until we’re chest to chest, heartbeat slamming against heartbeat.
And he kisses me.
Fucking hell.
It isn’t soft or sweet or even kind. It’s teeth and heat and raw, sharpened need—his mouth crashing into mine like a storm front, like punishment and promise and threat all fused into one filthy collision.
I gasp into it, moan against his tongue, and the phone slips from my fingers to clatter on the concrete.
I don’t care. I grab his jaw with both hands, fingers clawing at the rough stubble, nails dragging down his throat as though I could peel the last of his restraint away with my bare hands.
But then the bastard twists me again—fast, rough, spinning me like a top until my palms slam against the scorching metal of the container wall, chest heaving, breath ragged.
I blink, voice cracking. “What the hell—”
He bends, picks the phone up off the ground.
I glance back over my shoulder and watch him press it to the wall in front of me, securing it with black tape—two perfect, deliberate strips that lock the screen right at my eye level.
My own face stares back at me from the frozen frame: mid-laugh, mid-trust, mid-everything I used to give without question.
“If you wanna watch it,” Rafe mutters behind me, voice low and wrapped in fire, “then watch it.”
I freeze. Heat curls low and vicious in my spine. My breath snags in my throat. “Rafe,” I whisper.
But he’s already stepping closer, body crowding mine against the wall, and I know—bone-deep, pulse-racing certainty—that I am not getting out of this standing up.
One of Rafe’s hands slams against the container wall right beside my own, the sharp crack of it slicing through the heavy heat like a gunshot.
His chest presses flush to my back—solid, scorching, a wall of muscle and fury and iron control that wraps around me like war itself.
Then his other hand snakes low around my waist, palm flattening over my stomach and dragging me back against him until there’s no space left between my spine and his ribs, until I’m pinned exactly where he wants me.
My breath catches hard in my throat.
He’s hard. Of course he is. Of fucking course.
The heat of him burns through the thin fabric between us, searing and unyielding.
His nose brushes the side of my neck, lips parting as though he’s about to speak, but he holds the words back, letting the silence stretch taut and dangerous.
He keeps me there—face to the wall, body caged, the flickering past still playing inches from my eyes on the taped screen—and waits.
For me to flinch. For me to break.
But I don’t.
Instead I lean back—just enough, just so his cock presses harder against my ass and my palms flatten against the burning metal like I’m bracing to beg. The phone keeps looping the sound of me moaning for another man, but all I can feel is this one. Rafe.
He doesn’t move much, not really—just breathes against the side of my neck, each exhale tasting like the last thread of his restraint.
His hand stays braced flat against the wall beside mine, pinning me without needing to touch me further, because his body is already a fucking cage: chest locked to my spine, hips aligned with mine like a warning carved into skin.
The video plays on—my laugh again, that hated sound I want to strangle, the laugh of a boy who trusted too easily—and Rafe leans in closer, nose dragging slow and deliberate up the back of my neck, a breath shy of teeth.
“Watching him again?” he murmurs, voice low and gravel-dark, wrapped in smoke.
I don’t answer. My throat is too tight.
His free hand moves—slides up my stomach, slips under the hem of my shorts, not touching anything yet, just hovering there, heavy with promise. His lips brush the shell of my ear.
“Funny,” he says softly. “You don’t sound like that anymore.”
My breath stutters. My fingers curl against the wall.
“You know what I hear when I play you back?” he asks, voice silk-wrapped violence, each word deliberate. “I hear begging. I hear mine. I hear you sobbing when I don’t let you come.”
I gasp—quiet, filthy, true.
He grinds into me slow and hard, the motion like punctuation between sins. His teeth drag across the shell of my ear, a promise of more.
“Bet he never made you cry,” Rafe growls, low and rough. “Not like I do. Not when you’re cock-drunk and writhing.”
The screen in front of me flashes again—Nathan’s voice, his fucking fingers, my smile.
Rafe’s hand drops lower. Just a little. Just enough to make my hips twitch. “You miss that?” he asks, voice gone sharp. “Or do you like the way I ruin you better?”
My hips twitch without permission. My hands flatten tighter to the wall.
And I can’t hold it back anymore—not the need, not the ache, not the answer.
I reach back blindly, fingers fumbling until they curl into the front of Rafe’s jeans, dragging him closer, forcing him to press flush against my ass.
And I whisper, voice wrecked and breathless—“Then fucking show me.”
Rafe slams his hand over mine, pinning it to the wall, and shoves his hips against me like he’s about to rewire my memory.
He slams his hips into mine, hard enough that my breath punches out against the container wall.
His hand slides between my thighs with precision born of obsession, gripping me so tight I moan on contact.
The phone’s still playing in front of me, Nathan’s voice still echoing across hot metal and bloodstained concrete, but it’s nothing now.
Background noise. Faded ghosts. Because this?
This is real. Rafe’s cock grinding against the curve of my ass, Rafe’s breath on the back of my neck, Rafe’s voice about to rip me wide open.
His mouth brushes my ear.“Say it,” he growls. “Tell me what you are.”
I moan, half-choked, body trembling against the wall. “Rafe—”
He tightens his grip. “Say it.”
My knees almost give. My mouth falls open. “I’m—”