Chapter 33 Julian #2
“That boy on the screen?” he snarls. “He wasn’t yours. He didn’t belong to anyone. But you—” He thrusts against me once, rough and slow. “You’re mine.”
“Yours,” I gasp.
“Not enough.” His hand wraps around my throat.
I press into it like I’m starving for breath. “I’m your halo,” I whisper.
“Louder.”
“I’m your fucking halo.”
“More.”
I shake, gasping, head spinning from the merciless heat, the unrelenting pressure, the raw, clawing need that consumes every inch of me.
I can feel him everywhere—his heat, his weight, his fury pressing in like he’s rewriting my skin.
“I’m your fucktoy,” I breathe against the wall, voice trembling but certain.
“Your player. Your addict. Your problem.”
His hand slides down, catches the waistband of my shorts, and yanks them to my thighs in one brutal motion that rips a whimper from my throat. “All of it,” he growls, already lining himself up, thick and insistent against me.
I flatten my palms to the scorching metal, glance back at him over my shoulder, then forward at the frozen screen still looping my old self, and I don’t hesitate. “I’ll always be yours.”
And then he pushes in—hard, slow, devastating.
I scream.
He fucks me like the world is ending and he wants to be the last god I ever worship.
My hands stay braced against the sun-warmed container wall, skin sticking to metal, knees trembling with every punishing thrust. The phone remains taped in front of me, still playing that cursed tape—the sounds that haunted me for years: Nathan’s voice murmuring praise, my own ruined with want, the hotel-room angle filthy and stupid and unholy.
I should hate it. I should smash the screen or sob or force it off.
But Rafe is buried so deep inside me I can’t think straight, can’t breathe right, can’t even tear my eyes away.
His body crushes mine against the wall, every motion a threat and a promise braided together.
One hand grips my throat again, thumb hooked just under my jaw, possessive and unyielding.
The other claws into my hip like he’s trying to carve his name into the bone.
My spine arches instinctively, head tipping back onto his shoulder as he slams in harder, hips snapping with deliberate, devastating intent.
I sob out a moan and whimper, “Mark me.”
His breath shudders against my neck.
“Do it,” I whisper, voice cracking with want. “Bite me. Ruin me. Leave something I can’t wash off.”
He growls—low, animal, real—and the hesitation vanishes like smoke. His mouth opens, closes, and then his teeth sink in: not a nip, not a tease, but a brutal, claiming, permanent bite that drags a sharp cry from my throat and makes my nails rake the wall.
“Harder,” I gasp. “Rafe, please—”
“You want me to own you?” he snarls, voice nothing but gravel and heat.
“I’m yours,” I breathe, words spilling out like prayer. “I’m always yours. Prove it. Make me forget anyone ever fucking touched me.”
Rafe releases my neck only long enough to shove two fingers into my mouth, hard and demanding. “Suck,” he growls.
I do—instantly, desperately—tongue curling around him like I was trained for it, like my body remembers every command he’s ever given.
Behind me he fucks deeper, rougher, every stroke striking a place inside me I thought had gone quiet forever.
He pulls his fingers free, wipes my spit across my ass, then slams back into me like I’ve said something unforgivable.
“I’ll make you forget,” he pants, voice breaking on the edge of something feral. “I’ll fucking burn the memory out of you.”
I nod—dazed, wrecked, nodding like a pretty little doll caught in his storm. “Yes, Rafe. Just—please—”
He slams me harder into the wall, teeth finding my shoulder now, sinking in with fresh intent.
The phone keeps playing. Nathan keeps moaning. But none of it reaches me anymore.
Because every time Rafe bites, every time he drives deeper, every time he growls mine like it’s gospel—I remember what love feels like when it comes from the mouth of a monster.
And I’d choose this over everything else a thousand times again.
“Rafe! Rafe!” I moan—loud, wrecked, begging like my spine is made of fire.
My body’s shaking, pressed so tight to the container wall I can feel the bolts in the steel, my chest slick, my hips bruised, and still—still—I push back against him like I need to crawl inside his ribs and claw my name onto his heart.
His voice rolls molten behind me, low and dark and utterly fucking mine. “Yes, little halo.”
“Destroy it,” I rasp, the words scraping raw from my throat. “Destroy the fucking thing. Now.”
There’s no hesitation. I feel him shift—one hand leaving my waist—and the next second there’s a click, the cold whisper of steel as he draws the knife from behind his jeans like he’s been waiting for this permission, like he’s wanted to kill this ghost as long as I have.
In one clean, vicious motion, he drives the blade straight through the phone still taped to the container wall.
The screen splits with a sickening crunch—sparks flare, static hisses, the light flickers once, twice—then dies completely.
The tape goes black. The moans vanish. Nathan’s ghost is executed mid-whimper, silenced forever.
Rafe doesn’t pull the knife out. He leaves it buried like a gravestone, the hilt jutting from the shattered screen like a marker over something long dead.
And I watch it die.
My whole chest convulses—not from grief, not from guilt, but from the shattering relief of a thousand nights of weight finally breaking apart under the hands of the man holding me up.
A strangled sound escapes me—half sob, half laugh, somewhere raw in between—and I push back into Rafe like the devil himself is chasing me.
“Fuck,” I whimper, voice wrecked. “You’re insane—”
“And you’re mine,” he growls.
He slams into me again—brutal, unforgiving—the dead phone rattling against the wall, knife still lodged through its skull like a trophy. The force rips through me, and I come so hard the world dissolves into nothing but red.
Rafe doesn’t let me go. Not even close.
He pulls out—just for a second, just long enough for me to gasp, shattered and stunned, the world still spinning in violent loops. Then he spins me—fast, dizzying—grabs the backs of my thighs, lifts me like I weigh nothing at all, and slams my back against the nearest tree.
Bark bites sharp and rough into my skin, real and grounding.
I gasp loud, air punched out of my lungs as my legs wrap around his waist on pure instinct.
And then he’s inside me again—no warning, no mercy—just the full, devastating length of him driving back in like the only thing that matters is owning every ruined inch of me until the only name I can remember is his.
“RAFE—”
My fingers claw into his shoulders, spine arching off the tree, bark scraping fresh lines across my back as pain and pleasure twist together so tightly I can’t tell if I’m crying or simply alive.
He growls—feral, brutal—mouth at my throat, teeth grazing the spot where the tape once marked me.
His hips pound up into me with a force that would break lesser men, but I don’t want gentle.
I don’t want safe. I want this. I want him.
“Say it again,” he snarls. “Say who it belongs to.”
“Yours.”
He thrusts harder, deeper. “Again.”
“Yours—fuck, Rafe, it’s yours, always yours—”
The tree creaks behind me. My breath fractures into broken moans.
He leans in close—nose brushing mine, voice rough and shaking with something almost reverent. “You don’t need the tape anymore, little halo. You need me.”
And I sob it out, wrecked and certain. “I know.”
Because it’s true.
He’s carved me clean.
There’s no Nathan. No past. Just Rafe and bark and blood and the kind of holy, goddamn fire that makes my bones feel like scripture.
He’s slamming into me so hard I swear the tree’s cracking.
Bark digging into my back, my thighs clamped around his waist, sweat dripping down my chest in rivulets that stick to his shirt—if he’s even wearing one, I don’t know, I don’t care, because I can’t fucking think.
Not with Rafe like this. Not with his hands fisted in my hips, holding me there like if I fall, the world ends.
Not with his mouth bruising mine between growls, curses, promises.
It’s no longer just sex. It’s grief and fury and worship poured into every brutal thrust, all of him slamming into me as though he’s trying to fuck the poison out of my body, to rewrite every cell Ezio ever touched, to claim me so deeply that not even death could tear me away from him again.
I’m shaking. I’m burning. And fuck, I’m smiling—because I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now, pinned against rough bark with his body driving into mine like it’s the only truth left in the world.
Then it slips out.
I don’t mean to say it. I don’t even think it first. The words simply rise, tangled in my throat with the moans and breathless, broken laughter, spilling free before I can stop them. “Fuck, I love you.”
I gasp it—like a confession I didn’t know I was carrying, like a secret my body had been holding hostage until this exact moment.
And Rafe snaps.
His whole body jolts as though the words struck him harder than any hit he’s ever taken on the ice or in a fight.
His grip tightens—bruising now—his mouth tearing away from mine so he can stare at me, wide-eyed and utterly wrecked.
I swear to God, he looks more destroyed by that single sentence than he did the day I flatlined in his arms, foam at my lips and his screams echoing through the compound.
He groans—low, full-body, a sound that vibrates deep in his chest like it physically hurts him—and I feel it inside me, furious and raw.
Then he grabs my throat enough to pin me there, to force my eyes to meet his. And I see it—something unraveling behind the storm-grey of his gaze, something vast and unguarded and terrifyingly real.
“Say it again,” he growls, voice cracked open, shattering him from the inside out.
I blink, bite my lip and whisper, “I love you, Rafe.”
His hips snap forward—hard, punishing, perfect.
My back slams into the bark again, fresh splinters biting skin, and I think he might actually fuck me into legend: into myth, into something no video, no ghost, no past could ever touch.
The second I say it again—softer this time, not a gasp or a curse but a truth, something that means something—Rafe fucking loses it.
Not like before. Not just rough or frantic or desperate.
This time, he goes still. Still in that terrifying way he does when something in him fractures.
One hand tightens on my waist. The other stays curled around my throat.
His forehead drops to mine, and he breathes me in like he’s trying to inhale the moment and lock it behind his ribs forever.
And for a second—just a second—I think he might say it back.
That one broken phrase again. That jagged, violent, sacred thing. But he doesn’t. He acts.
His hips thrust deeper—slower now, brutal in their intent.
It’s not about pace. It’s about possession.
About burying himself so deep inside me that the whole fucking world disappears.
I feel it in my chest, my spine, the burn between my thighs where he’s stretching me open like a goddamn fault line.
He pushes harder, like he’s trying to fuse us.
Like if he fucks me hard enough, deep enough, he’ll never have to say it again—because this, this, is what he means when he says he loves me.
A worship that tastes like violence. A promise carved in bark and bruises and bone.
My thighs tighten around his waist. My nails dig into his shoulders. I pant his name over and over like a mantra, trying to hold on, trying not to fall apart too soon, because I want to feel it when he gives in. When he stops holding back.
Rafe snaps his hips forward, growling low into my throat as he fucks into me so deep and hard that the scream rips out of me before I can catch it.
He doesn’t let up, doesn’t stop—his rhythm relentless, punishing, reverent.
One hand clutches the nape of my neck like he’s anchoring me to the earth, the other fists my hip like a lifeline he refuses to release.
His whole body bows over mine, curved and taut, as though he’s praying through every thrust, and then I feel it: the sudden heat, the brutal pressure, the full-body jolt of him coming inside me with a violence that borders on religious ecstasy.
He holds me pinned there—cock pulsing deep, face buried in the crook of my neck like he’s trying to hide the raw vulnerability of what he just gave me.
But I know.
He gave me everything.
And I fucking take it.
I arch into him, grind back against him, ride out every shuddering wave of his orgasm like my body was carved specifically for this—for him, for the way he unravels inside me.
When he finally stills—still buried to the hilt, still breathing ragged and uneven like a man who just handed over his soul—I smile, slow and wrecked and utterly satisfied.
My voice comes out raw, scraped thin from screaming and gasping and everything in between. My body is a ruin of sweat and bark-scratches and bruising fingerprints. But I still say it again, quiet and certain, like a vow pressed into skin. “I love you, Rafe.”
This time, he doesn’t groan. He doesn’t snap or growl or break. He simply whispers it back—right against my mouth, lips brushing mine like a secret too sacred to speak any louder. “I love you.”