Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
RAFFAEL
I keep my expression level. Cocky. The kind of smugness that’s served me for years.
She’s too fucking tenacious for her own good. Always has been. It’s a trait I admired before I learned how lethal it could be. She digs, and digs, and doesn’t quit until she finds the truth.
But this time it has to stop.
I lean harder into her. Towel against robe. Deliberate pressure. Heat and threat branding that soft, sweet part of her.
Her inhale is sharp. Shaky.
“Does it feel like I’m afraid?” I grit out.
She swallows and stands taller. “What’s wrong, Raffael? Am I getting too close to the truth?”
My palms itch to tighten around her wrists. To force her to break. “The only thing you’re getting close to is the end of my fucking rope.”
“You’re concerned that Eliseo was in my apartment,” she continues. “Concerned for me.”
“No.” My jaw tightens. “I’m annoyed.”
“Why? Is he the person you spoke to this morning? The one you’re protecting me from?”
“At the moment, you should be more concerned about who’s going to protect you from the threat in front of you, not the one that’s a hundred miles away.”
“I’m not worried about you,” she says while plastered against a window, with her fucking wrists imprisoned by my hands.
“You should be.”
Her smile is a blade—sad, pained, but taunting. “You’re losing your grip.”
I tighten my hold. “My grip is just fine,” I snarl, even though we both know she didn’t mean it literally.
“You think you saw the worst of me downstairs with the deckhand? Piccolina, you have no idea.” My mouth dips to her cheek, voice dropping to a growl.
“Would you like me to demonstrate, again, exactly what happens when I stop pretending to be civilized?”
A tremor rolls through her, slight yet undeniable, her lashes fluttering just once before she pins me with those storm-gray eyes.
She’s not unaffected. Not even close.
Her chest lifts, taut with restraint, the war between instinct and pride crystal clear.
She should look away. Break eye contact. Flinch.
Instead, barely louder than a breath, she whispers, “Go ahead.”
Fuck.
She isn’t merely baiting me—she’s daring me. Drugging me. Offering herself up as a sacrifice. Like she wants me to burn her to ash just to prove I still have the match.
But I’m worse than fire.
I’m a fucking powder keg. And her presence? A lit fuse.
My body remains locked and braced. But inside, I’m a storm of craving and carnage.
She’s too close.
Too fucking beautiful.
No woman has ever held a candle to Isla Cross. She’s all sleek strength wrapped around impossible softness. Barbed wit and unshakable conviction.
She kills me by simply existing.
And the way she looks at me. Jesus. As though she already knows what I’m thinking. As if she sees past the armor. Beyond the cruelty. Straight to the war zone I’ve been barricading her from.
My hunger for her claws at my insides. Feral. Filthy. Starved. “You want me at my worst, Isla?”
She holds my stare. “I want the real you.”
I sneer. Falter.
I’ve spent years convincing myself I could live without her. That I could keep her at arm’s length.
And now she’s here. Willing. Wanting. Whispering my undoing with the weight of a cursed prayer.
“Fuck it.” I crush my mouth to hers, giving her the punishment she craves. Teeth, tongue, breath. None of it gentle. All of it merciless.
I kiss her like a man past saving—like destruction is the only language I have left—while her gasp brands my soul, fueling a hunger I can’t leash.
I drag my palms down her arms, over her shoulders, to the terry-clad curve of her hips, anchoring myself to her.
She tastes of sin. Moans with absolution I’ll never deserve.
Her hands curl around my neck, her fingers threading into my hair, fisting as if she’s afraid I’ll disappear.
There’s no hesitation. She doesn’t yield. She devours, dragging me deeper into the ruin I can’t help craving.
She rocks against me as our tongues collide. No rhythm. No finesse. Just panted breaths that tear strips from my control.
I hate it. Despise how it feels like coming home, like every wall I built was meant to collapse the second our mouths reunited. And yet my body continues to betray me, grinding forward, chasing relief.
She groans louder, needier, her nails biting into skin.
Fucking up has never sounded so good.
It takes everything to tear my mouth from hers. To drag my lips to her throat in an attempt to reel in the insanity.
She arches into the contact, head falling back, robe slipping wider across her chest.
I can’t drag my gaze away from the smoothness of her skin. The generous swell of her breasts. “Cristo, quanto sei fottutamente bella.”
So fucking beautiful.
Her fingers knot in my hair. Tightening. Daring. Begging without words.
“Non sai che cazzo mi fai,” I growl.
“Keep going,” she pleads.
Frustration wars with addiction.
This was meant to be a purge. A calculated exorcism. But how do I stop touching her now that I’ve started? How do I quit wanting more?
“Be sure, principessa. I won’t be gentle.”
She groans in affirmation. “Show me your worst.”
Fuck.
This shouldn’t be happening. But the sick, selfish part of me wants her to survive it. Because if she can handle me at my worst—
No. That’s not a fucking option.
“I’ll use you.” I grip her chin, my voice raw against her lips. “Are you sure you want to be my toy?”
“Yes.” The word is breathy. Beseeching.
Christ.
I rip the towel from my waist, madness taking over as I drop it to the carpet.
Her gaze falls. Widens. Darkens.
There’s reverence there. Worship I don’t deserve.
I press her back against the cold glass, kiss her harder to ignore the awe, and lift her off the floor, guiding those gorgeous legs around my waist.
“You’ll regret me, Isla.” My cock presses against her slick entrance as I force myself to wait. Muscles locked. My entire body screaming to claim her.
She writhes against me. Breathless. Sweat beads across her skin. “I’ve waited too long for this, Raffael. Years. I can’t take another second of pretending I don’t want you.” Her body undulates. Her thighs a vise grip. “Please—please—just fuck me.”
Goddamn her.
I thrust, sinking home, only to regret it the instant her body seizes around me.
She turns rigid. Arms locked around my neck. Her breath suspended in her throat, chest straining against mine without release.
Panic carves through my lust.
“Isla?” I press my forehead to hers, my emotions split down the middle—terror on one side, the impossible ecstasy of her clenching pussy on the other.
She’s so tight I can feel every inch of her stretched around my cock, every desperate contraction, every flutter that threatens to milk my release from me before I can stop it.
I grit my teeth, sickened by how close I am to losing it while she trembles against me.
“Are you okay?” I grate.
“I…” Her ragged breaths return to my ears. “I…”
“Want me to stop?”
“Please, no.” The words leave her on a moan, her body softening, melting, as if she’s finally surrendering to my size. “I’m good,” she rasps. “Perfect.”
Relief digs a hole inside my chest, burying deep.
Damn straight she’s perfect.
So goddamn pliable. So fucking warm.
My hips move. Slowly at first. Testing. Then harder. Stronger. Faster.
She scores her nails across my shoulders with a needy whimper, a ragged hymn of lust and damnation.
And fuck me, I love it. Every second. Every sound.
It feels right in a way that makes no sense. Like this was inevitable from the moment we met despite the world doing its best to keep us apart.
I grip her ass, thrusting deeper, meeting her wild eyes.
She doesn’t shy. Doesn’t cower.
She fucking glows. Robe half-off. Lips parted. Chest heaving. A vision of beauty born to enslave me.
I’m close. Too close.
It takes everything I have not to spill inside her like a savage.
“Feel what you do to me.” I increase my pace and glide a hand between us, my thumb finding her clit. “I can’t fucking think when I’m inside you. I need you to come for me. I want to watch you fall apart.”
Her mewl is broken, guttural and raw. “Don’t stop.” She digs her heels into me, her lips crashing back on mine, her tongue wild and untamed.
I become lost in her. Senseless.
“God, you make me feel so good,” she whispers into my mouth, rocking her body, increasing our pace, wrenching me violently toward the edge.
“Wait, mia bellissima rovina.” My voice shreds as I try to slow. To wrestle control back into my grip. But she doesn’t let up. She keeps grinding, insistent, every roll of her hips demanding surrender.
“Isla,” I warn, clinging to the last threads of self-discipline.
She ignores me, her pussy so tight and wet, her breasts grazing my chest, her nails carving ownership into my skin.
I can’t stop it. Cristo. I can’t control it.
I come inside her with a guttural growl, every thrust brutal, each slide home a fix I can’t quit chasing.
The pleasure tears through me in relentless waves dragged from the marrow of my bones, until I’m wrung dry and thrumming from release.
I collapse against her. Bury my face in her neck. Close my eyes.
There’s a beat in time—just one—where I allow myself to bask in the fucking transcendence.
Right before regret sucker punches me in the gut.
She didn’t come.
Out of all the ways I’ve let her down, I never imagined I’d actually use her the way I’d threatened.
I inch back, my cock falling from her heat, the evidence of my lacking restraint coursing down her thighs.
I won’t fail her in this, too.
I slide a hand between her legs, my fingers instantly coated in the mess we’ve made.
“Raffael, stop.” She grabs my wrist. “It’s okay.”
I stiffen, my face remaining buried in her neck while shame crawls up my spine. “I finish what I start, Isla.”
“Then consider your task accomplished,” she whispers.
I pull back, meeting her eyes.
“I enjoyed it.” Heat blooms in her cheeks.
I fight not to sneer at the placation. “Mere enjoyment isn’t the end goal when I fuck someone.”
She flinches. “Then consider your track record intact. I came, embarrassingly fast, the second you were inside me.”
Her admission knocks the air from my lungs, cutting straight through the shame and replacing it with something far more destructive.
Remembrance.
I replay it. The first thrust. The way she stilled. Froze. Pulsed.
I’d thought she was in pain. That she needed time to adjust.
Instead, my gorgeous girl was coming all over my cock.
I step back, raking a hand through my hair as the claws of madness sink deeper.
Knowing she shattered that quickly—that her body welcomed mine so perfectly—it doesn’t soothe me. It fucking wrecks me. It feeds the hunger burning through my veins. Makes me want to take her again. Harder. Longer. Until she’s embedded in my tarnished soul.
And that’s the biggest problem.
Because infatuation is a weakness. Desire is a leash. And I’m the one person Isla Cross can’t afford to be bound to.
Jesus Christ.
If I stay another second I’ll beg for more.
So I take another retreating step, snatch my towel off the floor, and walk away.