Chapter 7 Rafael
RAFAEL
The water hits the back of my neck in a relentless, steaming cascade, scalding-hot—exactly the way I want it.
I angle my forehead against the tile and just breathe, the heat burning my skin until all I can feel is pain and my pulse.
I woke up this morning with Aisling in my arms.
Correction, I woke up with my fake wife in my arms, her back pressed tight to my chest, my hips aligned with the curve of her ass, my arm snug around her waist, my hand cupping her breast like she belongs to me.
And most sinful of all, my cock rigid and unashamed as it nudged against the softness of her body.
I don’t remember initiating it. I don’t remember rolling over or seeking comfort in my sleep.
But I must have, because I was most definitely on her side of the bed.
And I do remember the seconds after—when consciousness bled in, slow and cruel—to reveal it wasn’t Genevieve I was holding.
It was Aisling.
And for a split second—just one traitorous, unguarded, devastating heartbeat—it felt good.
The kind of good that settles into the marrow of your bones.
Familiar.
Automatic.
Like my body has been waiting five years to remember what it feels like to hold her in my arms.
Which makes me a monster.
Because the last woman I held in my bed died with my name on her lips.
My wife. My real wife.
I slam my fist into the tiles of the shower wall—quiet, controlled, because everyone in this godforsaken house is already walking on a razor’s edge—and exhale until the water cools the ache in my knuckles.
I shouldn’t want anyone.
Not now.
Not ever.
Not when the echoes of my last vows haven’t even faded.
But this morning, I woke up hard.
And not from memories of Genevieve. Not because of grief or longing or the phantom weight of her head in the crook of my neck.
But because of Aisling, her scent, her warmth, the sound she made when she shifted in her sleep—soft, breathy, and feminine.
I drag my hands through my hair, and the water sluices down my back, following the ridges of the muscle I’ve turned into armor through a lifetime of trying to rid myself of feelings.
Then my mind is bringing forth fresh torture as it offers up a vision of Aisling—a sultry young redhead moving to the music of my family’s club as she tempts me from the dance floor.
She’s not just beautiful—she’s kinetic, alive, electric.
She laughs like she owns the night.
Drinks whiskey neat as she sways to the beat.
Looks at me like she sees right through my cocky facade, through all the games I like to play to keep people at an arm’s length.
“Do you always think so much?” she asked, leaning into me as I stepped close behind her, wrapping an arm around her trim waist. Her dress skimming bare thighs nearly killed me with distraction.
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
“What occupation?” she teased. “Brooding?”
I remember smiling, actually smiling—not the sharp, predatory smirk I’ve learned to use as a shield, but something real.
And when I kissed her in the penthouse suite—pressing her naked body against the glass windows, fingers tangled in her hair, whiskey on her lips, city lights flickering below—something inside me swore she would matter to me.
I didn’t know how. I just knew.
I force the memory back because it cuts too close.
Cuts into the man I was before the world turned septic.
Before I learned the truth about Aisling.
The water keeps pounding over me as if it could drown out my memories. It can’t.
Because right on its heels comes another one.
This one of Genevieve as she stood at the railing of a hotel balcony in Barcelona on our honeymoon, her curls blowing wildly in the sea air.
Blue dress rippling, barefoot, laughing.
“You’re not as scary as you want people to think,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “You just have a dangerously sharp tongue.”
“I don’t recall your having a problem with how I use it on you,” I growled playfully, savoring the way she blushed.
We’d been married six months when she died. Six months. Just a glimpse of a life that was cut out from under us before it even had time to take shape.
Sometimes, I still wake up thinking she’s beside me.
Other times, I startle awake to the memory of her choking on her own blood.
I tip my head back under the spray, wishing the water could wash away the ghosts. But it can’t because the present is just as brutal.
This morning, my first waking thought was not of my grief.
It was of my want, my desire, my body hardening to the feel of Aisling’s curves molding against me perfectly, my hand unconsciously tightening on her supple breast.
For one heart-stopping second, I thought she might wake up to find the possessive way I held her, the blatant, unconscious craving I have for her body, despite everything that’s happened.
And it was excruciating to extricate myself without rousing her.
I had to sit there afterward, heart pounding, dick throbbing, furious—mourning and aroused at the same time—like some depraved animal.
I stayed in bed only long enough to get my traitorous cock under control.
Then I dragged myself in here, hoping the shower would strip the weakness out of me.
Instead, it’s making things worse.
Because now I’m seeing her every time I close my eyes—Aisling, five years ago, sliding into my lap at the bar, whispering in my ear that she’s ready for me to show her God once more. Aisling, yesterday, eyes defiant, lips trembling when I kissed her at the altar.
Aisling, this morning, warm and soft and damningly perfect in my arms.
And beneath all of it—lurking like a graveside oath—is Genevieve’s face.
Her smile.
Her voice.
Her blood on my hands.
I press the heel of my palm hard against my sternum because the ache there is spreading outward, anger and grief and something uglier, something I don’t want to name consuming me—lust tangled with memory.
Cazzo.
I brace a hand on the tile and wrap the other around my cock—already stiff and aching from the intrusive thoughts.
For a moment, I shut my eyes and picture Genevieve.
She’s familiar, safe, honest.
She gave herself to me willingly—every part of her, without question. She was simple and sweet and understanding.
And though my father hated that I chose to marry one of the girls who worked at our family’s club, she never hid her profession from me.
She never tried to be anything other than exactly what she was.
She gave all of herself to me, then she chose me over the income she had so desperately relied upon.
She was the one thing that was truly mine, the only decision I made just for me.
And she was stolen from me.
I stroke myself, trying to conjure her face, her body beneath mine, that kind smile that used to settle the restless rebelliousness inside me.
But the second my pulse kicks—my brain betrays me.
It’s not Genevieve beneath me.
It’s Aisling, hair wild, azure eyes molten, pouting red lips parted in sensual bliss, her nails dragging down my back, pulling me closer, demanding more. Her voice, breathless as she moans, “Raf—harder—”
I growl and pump faster, furious with myself as I try to wrench the memory back to Genevieve, but it slips, replaced by another vision of Aisling five years ago, her back arching as I fucked her against the cold glass wall of Portentia’s penthouse suite, her teeth sinking into my shoulder to keep from screaming.
My whole body shudders as I come dangerously close to losing myself to the memory.
“No,” I mutter, gritting my teeth, forcing the stroke into something controlled, punishing.
Genevieve. Barcelona. Her fingers tangled in mine.
Not Aisling.
Not the girl I sent away.
Not the girl who returned to me wrapped in silk and venom to marry me for politics.
But the harder I try to focus on Genevieve, the more insistent my brain becomes until I can’t recall the sound of my wife’s soft moans—but my ears are flooded with Aisling’s desperate gasps.
I can’t feel my wife’s gentle, submissive touch—but rather Aisling’s fingers tangled in my hair, crushing my lips against her sweet, silky folds as I eat her out.
What Aisling and I had wasn’t tender.
It wasn’t safe but rather raw, wild, feral, and entirely driven by passion.
A passion I’d never known before her.
Or since.
I’m breathing hard now, water pounding, my grip brutal, hips jerking into my fist, and I slam my palm against the wall again because this isn’t grief, it’s hunger.
And it’s wrong.
Because every time I try to think of the woman I married, the one I buried, my grief slides sideways and turns into desire for someone else entirely.
Someone I shouldn’t want.
Someone I never should have wanted.
I stop moving, hand frozen mid-stroke, chest heaving.
I can’t do this. I can’t finish to the image of Aisling Murray.
I can’t come thinking about the woman I haven’t touched in five years when the one I married for love is freshly buried underground.
Ten months.
Genevieve has been gone ten months, and already, I feel her memory slipping through my fingers.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting to breathe through the humiliation burning in my throat.
What kind of man does that make me?
What kind of husband—widower, lover—jerks off in a shower because his wife’s ghost can’t compete with a memory of sex from five years ago?
The water starts to cool, the mist turning sharp, fogging my breath, and I force my hand away from my cock.
Planting both palms against the tile, I shudder violently.
I won’t let myself finish. I don’t get relief. Because I haven’t earned forgiveness.
So, instead, I just stand there—hard, frustrated, hungry, guilty, and pathetically alive.
My thoughts drifts back to Aisling in my bed, to the scent of her hair on my pillow, how her body fit against mine like no time passed at all.
I hate it. I crave it, and I resent every second of it.
Because the truth is cruel and merciless. How can I say I’m still in love with my wife when I can’t get the image of Aisling out of my head?