Chapter 2
RAFE
Engaging the deadbolt, I leaned against the door and stared at her with a nonchalance I didn’t feel.
God help me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off all those dark curls cascading over her tiny shoulders.
The slender slope of her neck drew my attention, and I imagined closing my hands around her throat and squeezing the essence from her, imagined the panic in her eyes as she neared loss of consciousness.
“Miss me?” I asked.
Her eyes, already wide at the sight of me, grew even rounder. “What?”
I crossed my arms, aware of how my biceps bulged. “I didn’t stutter, sweetheart. It’s been a long time. Did you miss me?”
“Did I…?” She shook her head, as if I’d uttered the most ridiculous question she’d ever heard. “What do you want, Rafe?” Her words fell from her lips in a nervous whisper.
“I think you already know.” You couldn’t send an innocent man to prison without expecting some sort of consequences. Except Alex didn’t know two fucks about me. The real Rafe Mason was about to do reprehensible things to her, like toss her deceitful naked ass into a cage.
Her gaze veered to the floor, and I barked at her to look at me.
“If I could change things, I would,” she said, inching back, a fist rising to her mouth to hide her trembling lips.
“Would you now?” I tilted my head. “What would you do differently? Would you take it back, what, a week later? A month? Maybe after I’d been in there a couple of years? Eight fucking years, Alex. That’s what you took from me.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.” Two more steps back.
I pushed away from the door and followed, hand sliding into my coat pocket to finger the syringe.
“I want to know why you lied.” I’d waited so long to ask that question, and the set of her jaw told me she wasn’t going to answer.
“You didn’t even have the guts to face me at the trial.
” She’d refused to make eye contact, even once.
That hadn’t surprised me nearly as much as Zach’s cold shoulder treatment.
How he believed I’d do something so vile, to Alex of all people, was beyond comprehension.
She must have put on quite the performance for her family, because her testimony in court had been mechanical, as if she’d read from a script.
She’d stripped everything from me in that courtroom. My career, friends, freedom, and she’d displayed no emotion while doing it.
“I-I can’t do this now,” she said, a tremor stringing her words together. “I have to go.” Darting past me, she made a run for the door and managed to fling it open by the time I whirled around. That’s when the duffle swinging on her shoulder caught my attention, and it dawned on me she was running.
Because of the note I’d left on her door?
Guess my mind-fuckery had done the trick, only I never expected her to take off.
There was no way she could know what I had planned for her.
Before she escaped the house, I shot an arm out and slammed the door shut, then pressed into her soft curves that fit perfectly against me.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Even in that heady moment, as adrenaline pumped through my veins, I hesitated. What I was about to do changed everything. I was about to become the criminal they’d accused me of being.
But no one deserved comeuppance more than Alex.
The duffle slid from her shoulder, landing with a thump on the mud mat.
She flattened both palms against the door, and I covered her hands with mine, sliding cool leather over warm skin.
I wondered if the gloves worried her, if she sensed the danger I posed.
I wedged a leg between hers, thigh nudging her ass, and electricity spiked, a current so hot my whole body sizzled.
Was she aware of it too? Did she feel my cock prodding her backside?
“You need to leave,” she ground out, but even as the words left her mouth, she relaxed in submission. She turned her head and peered at me through lashes slightly lowered, disguising what I might find in her jade depths. “Please, you’ve gotta go.”
I wanted to take her then, fuck her right against the door. “Not a chance. I’ve waited too long for this.” I latched the deadbolt again, satisfied with the decisive click that echoed off the walls, and pulled her further into the house.
“What are you doing?” she cried, tugging against the fingers I’d clamped around her arm.
I stopped once we reached the hall. “Where’s the note I left?” I couldn’t leave behind any evidence. “Did you show it to Zach?”
She yanked her arm from my grasp. “No, why?”
“Doesn’t matter. I want it back.”
“It’s in my bedroom.” She opened the first door on the right. Going by the clothing piled in haphazard fashion on the bed and the floor, she’d packed in a hurry. She crossed to her nightstand and withdrew the note from the drawer.
I snatched it from her fingers, making her flinch, and pocketed the last piece of evidence.
“C’mon.” I dragged her into the kitchen, my pulse rocketing, and my jeans grew uncomfortably tight as I shoved her into a chair.
She gazed up at me, mouth open, messy curls partially obscuring her eyes, and I was so close to bending her over the table.
Patience.
I couldn’t rush this, no matter how much I wanted to. “Don’t move,” I warned, pressing on her shoulders to make my point. I rummaged through the room, found a pen and paper, and slammed them on the table in front of her. “Write down what I say, word for word.”
“Why?”
“Quit asking so many fucking questions.” I forced the pen into her fingers, and she clutched it tight, hand hovering above the paper. The fury in her eyes wavered, replaced by confusion. She wasn’t scared of me yet, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
“Rafe, what are you do—”
“Write ‘I need some time. Don’t worry or try to find me.’”
Short and to the point. The less written, the less the authorities could dissect.
I expected them to look at me as a person of interest in her disappearance, but I was prepared for that inevitability.
Besides, they’d need probable cause and a warrant to search the island, and they wouldn’t have either.
Lower lip tucked between her teeth, she wrote out the words and paid careful attention to each letter, her hand trembling every so often.
Once finished, she set the pen down, angled her head, and met my eyes.
She didn’t have to voice her alarm. Her expression was unmasked. Naively, she let me see everything.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
She must have sensed the darkness in me, but what she failed to understand was how it had always lurked, entrapped by a code I no longer lived by. She’d blown the padlock on that cage when she’d uttered three little words that ruined me.
He raped me.
The accusation rang through my mind, as loud as the clank of the prison cell doors when they slammed shut. I grabbed the syringe from my pocket.
“What are you doing?” she cried, wide eyes locking onto the syringe.
She jumped into motion and reached the foyer before I caught up to her.
I wound an arm around her shoulders and pinned her against me.
She bucked, kicked, and clawed, all the while letting loose a scream that made me so fucking hard I almost lost it.
I uncapped the needle with my teeth and stabbed it into the side of her neck.
An instant later, she went limp in my arms.