Chapter 26 #2
She gripped Rafael’s shirt as he took the stairs in three strides.
The hum of the elevator felt thunderous, his uneven breathing louder still. He was still holding her, his face granite. His hands, one locked around her upper thigh and the other pressed firmly against her ribcage, felt like iron bars.
When the doors slid open, he stepped out and strode toward her apartment door. Set her down.
She fought the keys into the lock, hands unsteady. He entered behind her without hesitation. No pause. No space. Like her threshold meant nothing to him anymore.
The door clicked shut behind him, trapping them together in muted light. The evening sun was riding the horizon, but it slid through the blinds, striping his face.
“You’re still bleeding,” Bea said softly.
Rafael said nothing.
She dropped her bag and headed to the bathroom, needing a task to calm her frayed nerves. Thank goodness Lillian was going to Adam’s. They didn’t need an audience for this calamity.
She grabbed the first-aid kit and filled a bowl with warm water, carrying it back. Her wrists trembled, unsure if she should be fighting or fleeing.
Rafael stood near the couch, head tipped back, exhaling through his nose like a man trying to keep his demons at bay. The sight rattled and grounded her all at once.
She set the bowl down carefully. “Sit.”
He didn’t move at first, just stared at her for what felt like a long, long time. As though he wasn’t sure if he was ready to be touched, or if he needed it more than anything.
He eased down, big body still intimidating even without the height.
Bea perched on the coffee table, soaked a cloth in the water, wrung it out, and carefully pressed it to the cut at his brow. Rafael didn’t flinch. She methodically cleaned the blood from his face with hands that were mostly steady now, unable to meet the green fire of his eyes.
“Why were you looking for me?” she finally asked.
“Someone saw you get in his car.”
The cloth stilled. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His tone was clipped.
“You didn’t trust me?”
“You didn’t answer my call.”
Her gaze flicked to him. “My phone was on silent.”
His lips flattened.
She dabbed gently at a fresh cut on his cheek. “I would’ve called you back.”
“Would you?”
“Of course.”
“Before or after you figured out what to tell me?”
Her movements faltered. His hand came up, wrapping around her wrist. The cloth dropped to the floor with a splosh.
“Rafael—”
“You got in his car.”
Her throat dried. “Just to talk.”
Rafael’s other hand came up, gripping her thigh. His voice was quiet, controlled. But only just. “He could’ve done anything to you.”
Bea winced. “This is Gage we’re talking about.”
His jaw flexed. “Am I supposed to be comforted by that?”
“He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“No. But all he has to do is ask, and you say yes.”
Her breath caught. “You sound jealous.”
“Jealous doesn’t cover it.” His fingers dragged higher.
Heat unfurled in her belly, confusing, imprudent; this shouldn’t be her response to his anger. Something shifted between them, sharp as a match strike. Words alone wouldn’t fix it. He needed to burn it out of both of them.
There were still parts of him she hadn’t met. She was about to.
His hands rose, framing her face. For a heartbeat his eyes bore into her. Then his mouth devoured hers, leaving her nowhere to go but to him. She kissed him back like oxygen lived in his lungs.
She let it consume her. The fury. The grief. The years.
He hauled her up off the coffee table, then down again onto the couch, the cushions giving way under her spine. Something crashed to the floor. The room seemed to come apart with her.
“I had to watch him drive you home again,” he bit out. “Like you still belong to him.”
She had no response. Nothing that would soothe him.
Her dress was pulled up over her shoulders, bra shoved aside along with her underwear. She was slick already, her body far ahead of her mind.
He stood only long enough to strip from the waist down, then came back to her—checking with his fingers, finding her ready, and then taking the extra seconds to make her desperate.
He pushed into her, like he couldn’t wait any longer to be inside her.
Bea cried out, not from pain but from the shock of being filled all at once. Her body caught him greedily, legs locking around his hips, anchoring herself against the force of him.
He drove deep. “Every time I think of his hands on you, I want to tear something apart.”
Her head dropped back. He didn’t need an answer.
“I hate that you chose him first.”
She held him tighter, as if her body were trying to refund every moment she’d spent in his rival’s car.
“Say something,” he growled. “Push me away. Tell me to stop.”
She should’ve felt overpowered. He was fire and force, muscle and vengeance. But she took him like the shoreline takes a wave: willing, yielding, made for it.
She kissed his throat. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
His hand caught the back of her knee, pulling her wider, changing the angle. She gasped, her whole body flinching as the pressure landed right where she needed it. Over and over, each movement dragged across that perfect spot, working every cell inside her into a frenzy.
Her hands fisted over his back. She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t contain it. The orgasm came and the sound that escaped her was part sob, part surrender. All him.
His pace turned erratic, rougher, hips grinding against hers like he needed to reach someplace deeper. A curse tore half formed from his throat as he came, hips jerking, hands clutching hard enough to bruise.
The silence stretched, dense with the aftermath of the storm. Bea’s mind clawed back toward reality.
Rafael rose onto his forearms, sparing her his weight. She touched his face, brushing gently around the cut on his cheek.
He caught her wrist, gently this time. “You shouldn’t have gotten in his car.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re still soft with him.”
“Because I loved him once,” she said quietly.
The air went taut between them.
“There’s one man I’ll never make peace with. Don’t ask me to.”
That’s when it clicked. From Rafael’s perspective, Gage had been given so much. Her first time, her first love. Even now, he carried a piece of her she could never reclaim.
She didn’t know the stories of the women who came before her. And even if she knew, she hadn’t been forced to watch it unfold, as he had with her.
Bea kissed him tenderly. Not to rewrite history. Just to say she’d heard him. “I choose you.”
Rafael’s stare locked on hers. “Good. Because if you let him come near you like that again…”
“I won’t.”
He shifted, rising off her just enough to pull free. Her body rebelled at the sudden loss, but he didn’t go far.
He dropped back onto the couch, peeled his shirt over his head in one quick sweep, tossing it aside without care. His chest was all hard planes and hot skin. She hadn’t even had a leisurely exploration yet. Every time they touched, it was an explosion.
Then he reached for her.
Bea let him draw her forward until she was straddling him. He slid back inside. Her hands landed on his shoulders to brace.
Rafael’s hands curved around her waist, thumbs dragging, like he was confirming through the fit that she was his and no one else’s.
Then his eyes flicked back to hers. “Show me. Ride me.”
She moved. Uncertain at first. Then bolder, leaning forward, chasing the friction. Until she found a rhythm that made tendrils of need rise again, the tingling sensation reaching to the tips of her toes.
His head tipped back, jaw clenched, every muscle rigid, as though giving her the reins was the exquisite torment he craved.
She couldn’t change the past. But she could give him this. Now. Every shift, every breath, every broken sound her body made in his hands.
Later, in the dark, with Rafael’s warmth pressed to her spine and sleep pulling close, she let herself remember him—Gage.
The man who had offered her everything he was, and never pretended to be anything else. And when she couldn’t meet him there, he’d walked away…because he understood that their love alone wouldn’t carry them.
What remained now wasn’t love, but gratitude. He’d made her believe she could belong anywhere she decided to. She’d learned to stand beside power without shrinking. How to see herself as someone worth choosing.
And now, only now, she could turn toward the fire.
Because once, a man who wore a crown had taught her how to stand tall enough to carry it.
She would never forget that. Not ever.