Chapter 17
The storm let up long enough for us to make it back to the safe house, beignets in hand.
I was eating my third beignet when Diego stood up and stretched and said, "Well, Jasper and I are going to get more beignets."
Across the small kitchen table, Rafael's hand tightened on his coffee mug. He hadn't looked at me directly since we'd sat down, just stared at his untouched coffee like it held answers neither of us wanted to hear.
"We just ate beignets," Jasper said without looking up from his laptop.
"Different beignets. Come on, guapo." Diego grabbed Jasper's jacket.
Jasper glanced between us. "Ah. Privacy. Yes." He closed his laptop with a click and stood.
Diego paused at the door. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, which leaves you basically everything. Oh, and Rafael? Try not to overthink it for once in your life."
The door closed behind them. Their footsteps retreated down the porch stairs. Diego's laughter drifted back through the storm, then faded completely.
Then it was just me and Rafael and the sound of rain hammering the roof. Thunder rolled closer, shaking the windows in their frames. The lights flickered once, twice, then steadied, leaving us in the dim amber glow of the single bulb over the table.
I reached for another beignet just to have something to do with my hands. The powdered sugar stuck to my fingers. I brought them to my mouth without thinking, licking the powdered sugar away.
When I glanced up, Rafael was staring. Not at my face. At my mouth. His knuckles had gone white around the coffee mug. His breathing had become faster. Shallower.
Say something.
But my throat had closed up completely. Every word I could think of sounded wrong. Too casual. Too heavy. Too revealing.
"So," Rafael managed finally. "That was subtle."
"Diego means well. Even when he's being obnoxious about it."
Rafael's smile faded. He finally looked up from his coffee, and when his eyes met mine, the air left my lungs in a rush.
His eyes were red-rimmed, carrying too much weight. But underneath the exhaustion was something else, something that made heat race down my spine and my balls feel heavy.
Want. Raw and desperate and barely controlled.
"I've been thinking," he said quietly. His voice had dropped lower. "About what Rhadamanthys said."
I swallowed. "Yeah?"
"We're going into the labyrinth." His hands tightened on the mug again. The ceramic creaked louder this time. "Chained together against Constantine and whatever he brings." He paused. He swallowed hard. "There's a very real chance we don't come out."
I wanted to tell him that wasn't true, that we'd survive, that I'd make sure he survived even if I didn't. But the words stuck in my throat because they might be lies, and I'd never lied to him about anything that mattered.
"I know," I said instead.
Rafael set down his coffee mug and went to the window. Lightning lit him up for a second, and he looked…fierce. Handsome and terrifying and wrecked all at once. He looked like more than I deserved.
My cock stirred despite everything. I wanted him. I'd wanted him since Rome, since the warehouse, since he'd looked at me across a blood-splattered study and promised to make me surrender.
"I was a virgin when I joined the Order," he said to the glass. Rain streaked down the window, distorting his reflection. "I'd never even kissed anyone. Told myself it didn't matter."
He laughed. The sound was hollow. Broken. My chest went tight.
"But when I thought I was going to die in Rome, my first thought was that I'd never know what it was like to be wanted. To be touched by someone who chose me."
I wanted to close the distance and pull him against me and tell him he was wanted.
But I stayed frozen in my chair, palms pressed flat against the table, afraid that if I moved, I'd do something catastrophic.
"The warehouse was grief. Desperation. We were both half-dead and covered in blood, and I don't even remember half of it clearly. Just that it didn’t hurt, and I desperately needed to remember there were sensations other than pain in the world."
My cock went from interested to hard in the space of a heartbeat as I relived the memories we made on that warehouse floor.
"Rafael." My voice came out wrecked.
"I want to know what it's like." He turned from the window. "I want you to show me. Not desperate and grief-soaked. Not because we're running or hiding or about to die."
He crossed the kitchen in three strides to stand in front of me. "I want you to kiss me like you love me. Touch me like I matter. Make me believe it, even if it isn’t true. I just… I want to know what it’s like to have that. Just once.”
My chest suddenly hurt.
I'd seduced people dozens of times before. Hundreds, maybe. Dionysus had trained me for exactly this.
I was good at this. The best.
So why did my pulse hammer against my ribs like it was trying to escape?
"I can give you that," I said.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Show me."
I stood and reached for his face with shaky hands.
Rafael froze. His breath caught, and for a heartbeat his eyes dropped to my trembling hands before meeting mine again.
Then I gripped him by the hair, pulled him down, and kissed him.
I was slow at first. Careful. I pressed my lips to his, held for three seconds, pulled back just enough that our mouths barely touched.
Let him feel the absence. Rafael's breath hitched.
I returned, deeper this time, my lips parting his with gentle pressure.
His mouth opened for me immediately, too eager, and I pulled back again. Made him wait. Made him want it.
But Rafael didn't wait.
His hand shot up to cup the back of my neck, grip bruising, and he yanked me back to him. His mouth crashed against mine, all hunger and desperation and need. No finesse. No technique. Just raw want that punched through my carefully constructed control like a fist through glass.
I tried to slow him down, to guide the kiss back to something I could manage, but Rafael's other hand fisted in my hair and pulled.
Pain sparked across my scalp, and I gasped.
He used the opening to sweep his tongue into my mouth, claiming it, taking what he wanted without asking permission or forgiveness.
My training screamed at me to regain control, but my body had other ideas. My fingers were already fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer when I should have been pulling away.
Rafael tasted like chicory coffee and burnt sugar and desperation, and when he bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, I nearly came.
"No," he growled, walking me backwards until my back hit the wall. "Don't run. Don't hide." His hands went to my shirt and yanked. Buttons scattered across the floor, pinging off the walls. "I want to see you."
He shoved the ruined fabric off my shoulders, and his teeth found my neck. When I let out an involuntary little squeak, he just bit down harder, shaking his head slightly like a predator with prey.
After he finally released me, he stared at the mark he'd left, licking his lips.
He licked the blood from my shoulder, and my knees nearly gave out. "I don't know why I need to mark you like this, but I can't stop."
"Then don't stop." I didn't care anymore about maintaining control or keeping walls up or pretending this was just another seduction. "Don't think. Just take what you want from me."
Rafael's hands went to my jeans, popping the button and shoving them down with my boxers in one violent motion. My cock sprang free, already leaking, and he stared at it like a starving man looking at food.
Then he grabbed my hips and spun me around, pressing my chest against the wall. I barely had time to get my hands up before his body covered mine from behind. His clothed erection ground against my bare ass, and I couldn't stop the sound that escaped me.
"Rafael, wait." I needed to slow this down, to think, to regain some control before I lost myself completely.
His teeth found my shoulder blade and bit down hard. "I’ve waited long enough."
He stepped back just enough to shed his own clothes, and I heard fabric tearing. Then his naked body pressed against mine, skin to skin, and the heat of him made my knees weak.
One hand fisted in my hair, pulling my head back to expose my throat. The other wrapped around my cock from behind, and the angle was wrong, but the grip was perfect, and nothing existed past the sensation of being held, claimed, owned.
"Bedroom." I managed to gasp out. "If Jasper and Diego come back…"
Rafael hauled me away from the wall and practically dragged me toward the small bedroom. We crashed through the doorway together. I grabbed the doorframe to steady us, but Rafael used the momentum to push me forward onto the bed.
I landed on my stomach and tried to roll over, but Rafael's weight came down on top of me. He pressed one hand between my shoulder blades, holding me in place, while his other hand gripped my hip hard enough to bruise.
"Stay."
The single word punched through me. My body went liquid, muscles melting into the mattress. Every instinct that screamed to fight died under that command. I'd never obeyed anyone like this. Never wanted to.
His teeth found the back of my neck, my shoulders, the curve of my spine, working his way down my back like he was mapping every inch of me with his mouth.
I'd never been held down like this. Never been the one pinned and helpless. Every target, every seduction, I'd been the one in control.
But Rafael was dismantling me piece by piece, and I was letting him. Wanted him to. My cock throbbed harder against the sheets, and I couldn't even pretend terror lived anywhere in my body.
His cock pressed against my ass, hot and hard and huge, and panic cut through the haze of arousal.
"Rafael, wait." I tried to twist under him, but his weight kept me pinned. "You can't just... we need lube, prep."