Chapter 7
NICOLETTE
The beast is who I want. I’m not the delicate little flower he remembers. I’ve been on the run, and that has taught me to be strong, to not cower at the devil’s touch. And Raph is every inch the devil that has been my demise.
I promise that by the end of this, I will have him just once, and then I’ll leave him and never think about him or the way he makes me feel again.
Nope. Never.
I roll my eyes at myself.
Who are you fooling? You’re doomed.
Well, at least once I’m gone again, I won’t have to be around him. It’s much harder to be in his presence while drowning in my chaotic emotions.
Gradually, he lets go of my throat, but keeps his body almost flush to mine. My fingertips flutter to where his touch has just been, wanting to have it there again. His gaze bores into mine, a magnetic force that has the butterflies in my stomach bursting into flight.
“I don’t know why staying with you is even necessary,” I struggle to speak, my core tightening with an ache. I’m so turned on, I could come in an instant. “I don’t need you, Raphael Marino.” I clear my throat. “I’ve been fine on my own for the past year.”
He leans into my mouth once more. His warm, intoxicating breaths fan across my lips as I stare at him, unable to do anything but that.
“That bullet in your arm says otherwise, little one.” His lopsided, knowing smirk both irritates me and sets me further into a sinking wave of carnal need.
I hate hearing him call me little now even more than I did then. It’s the same word he used when he told me he didn’t date little girls. I could never forget that and how much pain those words caused.
I draw in a quick breath, my body shivering, betraying me layer by layer.
The hunger for him remains unquenched. Unsatiated. Unmatched.
No one has ever come close to making me want the kinds of things he does, even while he’s doing nothing but standing just close enough.
I back away, a bit at a time, like my mind is trying to run away from his imposing effect, while my heart thumps wildly, wanting to grab his face and kiss him.
“Where are you going, little one?” He matches my steps, a hooded look in his eyes. “One second you’re promising me a view of your bare body, and the next you’re trying to get away?”
I hit the wall behind me with a gasp. And like a predator, he follows me, marching up with gradual strides, his gaze roving down my curves like he’s already picturing me naked.
My chest rises and falls with quick, jerky breaths, and when I make out the bulge through his gray sweats, my insides curl. My nipples grow taut. My mind wanders into dangerous territory, one where he flips me around and takes me up against the wall.
His fists ball at his sides when he’s a few inches away.
His darkened expression is haunting, like he’s fighting his own desire, like he’s on the cusp.
There’s a momentary shift in his eyes and then he’s stalking toward me until his chest is pushed up against mine, my back pressed up across the wall.
“You’re maddening.” His exhales spread across my lips as he deepens his eyes into mine. “Taking me to a place I swore I wouldn’t go. Now look at me,” he grits. “I have you pinned to the wall, and I don’t even regret it.”
My breath quivers when he pushes his hard-on into my stomach, and knowing that his body wants me has me in a state of frenzy. I’ve waited so long for this, yet it’s not enough. I need to hear him say he wants me. Really wants me. That he feels what I do to him in his heart.
The pulsing between my thighs only grows ravenous. I need to feel myself come undone. To feel it with a man for the first time in my life. To feel it with him. Just him.
My virginity was completely unintentional. I’ve had boyfriends, and they’ve tried, but I stopped it before it could go anywhere. Because every time it did, I saw him. Wanted him.
None of them would ever be Raph. None of them would come close to the man I knew. To the one who knew me, took care of me. I wanted that kind of man to be my first.
No, I’m lying to myself. I wanted him to be my first.
So here I am, a twenty-one-year-old virgin, whose only experiences with sex are with her own fingers. But I’ve never gone more than touching my clit. I think I was saving that for him too.
How stupid of me.
Even now, I can sense him pulling away, denying what we could have. Fighting it with every ounce of strength. I don’t need that. I don’t want games. I want the real Raph.
Anger pools in my gut, stamping over the hunger that waits there for a man who was never mine to begin with.
I attempt to push him away with a right palm against his muscular chest, but the man is like a damn statue. All big and hard and sculpted to perfection, right down to those high cheekbones and round glistening eyes that are like two black diamonds, shining brightly at me.
He laughs off my attempt, and even the sound of his voice does things to me. How is everything about him so awfully sexy?
He drags his body even closer until his cock nudges deeper. An unintentional moan slips from my lips and my core pulsates with desire, wondering what it’d feel like, wondering what he’d feel like. My God, he’s huge. It’s no wonder my sister would be screaming when they…
Ugh. No. You’re not going there.
His thumb massages the corner of my mouth, while those eyes stay aligned to mine, and I swear I just had an out-of-body experience.
Could I be dying? Is it possible for one’s heart to stop from overstimulation?
My skin prickles and shivers, sensitive from the barest touch he gives me—like oxygen. I never felt this kind of hunger. Not ever. Only with him.
I snap my gaze away from his, afraid I’m about to cry or beg him to touch me. Just once. So I can finally know what I’ve been missing.
He languidly reaches a hand for my jaw until he’s got it in his rough, masculine grip. He tips my chin up to meet his steely gaze, his fingertips biting into my flesh. My body shudders with a cold current washing over me.
“Nothing to say, little one?”
“I told you, don’t call me that,” I bite back on a whisper.
“I will call you anything I want,” he promises, and I believe him. “In this place, I make the rules, and it’s your job to obey them.”
“And if I don’t?” I challenge through my battering pulse. I’m surprised my mouth still works.
A devilish smirk picks up both sides of his mouth. “Then it’ll be my job to punish you.”
I groan almost to myself, my core a fiery blaze at the image of my ass his to do with what he wants. I’d let him too. I’d let him do anything to me.
He inhales sharply, a muscle in his jaw twitching, the hollows beneath his cheekbones straining as he lowers his hot gaze to my lips.
“Go get cleaned up,” he husks out in a deep-chested baritone. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
But he hasn’t backed off of me at all. Not even a little.
RAPH
Being cold and aloof isn’t working quite as well as it did in my head. But I can’t seem to control myself when I’m this close to her.
Goddamn, I want her. Need her. What we could be together… I know it would be something special. Yet it’s wrong. She’s the forbidden fruit dangling right in front of me, tempting me until I succumb.
But I have to resist. I have to fight it.
Her brows furrow as she stares up at me, and it’s like a hypnotic pull, the way she has a hold on me.
Is this what it’s supposed to feel like? Is this what I’ve been missing all my life? This infuriating sensation in my chest, like my heart is ready to detonate right out of my rib cage just from the mere look into her eyes?
Tesoro mio.
My heart’s wanting things it shouldn’t. Wanting to kiss her so damn bad, I’d die for it, like a hit of a drug I’ve been craving.
I didn’t intend to have her sandwiched between the wall and my body, but it was that challenge in her eyes. She doesn’t know me. Not all of me. And she doesn’t want to. Yet here I am, letting my emotions win instead of logic.
My pounding pulse fills my ears, while hers thrashes beneath my fingertips. I can’t seem to let her go, my thumb running circles around the curve of her jaw.
My cock’s stiff and pulsing, wanting to do the kinds of things to her body she’s never even dreamed of.
I’m playing with fire. I know that well. I can’t show her how much I actually want her. There’s too much standing in our way for anything to come of this. She has to be with someone her own age, someone safe. While all I’ll get to do is watch from a distance.
But unfortunately, the very thought of anyone but me touching her sends me into a homicidal rage.
Fuck.