Chapter 4
RAFE
I’d just lied through my fucking teeth. She did mean something, which was why she was down in that prison.
If she meant nothing, I wouldn’t have wanted her in the first place.
The musky scent of her sex lingered on my skin, and I sucked a finger into my mouth, unable to resist tasting her.
I couldn’t wait to spread those thighs, thumbs biting into soft skin, and bury my tongue in her heat.
Before she sent me away, I’d done my damnedest to do the honorable thing by keeping my distance, though there’d been times I’d slipped up.
Like the time she baited me into a game of pool by implying she was unbeatable.
We’d played a fiercely competitive game, all the while bantering about horror movies and alternative rock music.
She loved the horror and loathed the rock.
Not surprising, since she adored the piano.
I’d smoked her the first game. During the second, she conceded and asked for my help in positioning her for the end shot.
That was the first time I acknowledged the familiar tingle rushing through me as I bent over her, my hand sliding along hers and guiding her to set up the shot that would win her the game.
I’d also realized, too late, how she’d used the game as a ploy to get close to me.
We’d both jumped a foot apart when Zach’s boots thumped down the stairs, and our faces must have given us away because he was furious.
The protective thumb he held over her wasn’t new.
Guys couldn’t go near her without him losing it, but he should have known better when it came to me.
Beyond helping her with a game of pool, I would have never crossed that line. Twenty-one and fifteen didn’t mix.
I didn’t touch her again, until the day, a few weeks later, when she had a total meltdown after her mom’s funeral. I’d needed her in my arms, needed to absorb some of her pain.
Leaning my head against the cellar door, I let my breath even out as a tremor seized my body, and the memory of our history together vanished.
I fought the urge to go back down there and finish what I’d started.
My dick throbbed with the need, though I held back.
I was still too fucking raw, and I didn’t want to make the kind of mistake that proved fatal.
With the visual I had going through my mind—hands wrapped around her delicate throat as I emptied eight years of pent-up rage and desire into her—I knew I couldn’t rush this. Control was imperative.
But shit, I wanted to fuck her.
I waited, listening for a while, but she didn’t make a sound, and I had to give her credit. I’d left her in total darkness, naked, and no doubt, freezing. These next few days were going to be hell compared to her pampered princess life.
I’d scared the utter crap out of her, and some sick part of me rejoiced in reducing her to nothing. She didn’t even have a bucket to piss in. Watching her cower had been the biggest rush of my life, and that was saying a lot, considering I used to live for pummeling bodies inside the cage.
Maybe it was because I’d fixated on her in prison.
At first, nothing but hatred consumed me, but then as my incarceration started playing with my mind, I’d let my imagination run wild.
I’d fucked her every way possible, and in each scenario, she’d sobbed and pleaded for me to stop.
I’d envisioned sexually torturing her in ways no sane, normal man should be able put into words.
Those fantasies kept me on the brink of sanity, especially during the endless weeks I’d spent in the hole, bereft of interaction with humans and confined to a dark cell smaller than most bathrooms for twenty-three hours a day.
When I looked in the mirror these days, I didn’t recognize the man staring back.
The guy who’d wiped the sorrow from her face the day she buried her mother, absorbing liquid grief that dripped from her eyes in torrents of despair, was gone, replaced by a man who thrilled in eliciting her tears.
Darkness turned at the core of my being, a turbulent need that had simmered for years.
No one knew of my fucked up nature better than my old cellmate Jax. As I entered the kitchen, her clothes weighing heavily in my hands, he watched me carefully from the kitchen table as I disposed of them.
“Did you fuck her yet?” That was the thing I liked most about him—he didn’t beat around the bush. He put everything out there without reservation.
As I prepared dinner, I didn’t answer, and he didn’t speak at first. His silence wasn’t uncomfortable. We’d spent hours upon hours in the same cell with nothing but silence and each other.
We’d forged an alliance after I’d beaten the shit out of his would-be killer in prison.
He owed me, or so he insisted, and when they paroled him two years ago, he’d set out to repay the debt by keeping tabs on Alex.
He’d also taken care of the island since the deed transferred to my name.
In exchange, I gave him a place to live.
After last night, I considered the debt more than paid. He’d helped drag Alex’s limp body from her car to mine, then we’d shared a minute of silence as we watched her Volvo sink into the river.
“Well, did ya?” he pressed, breaking into my recollection of how satisfying it’d been to follow through with my plan.
I gave him a single glance, and he laughed.
“Man, you’re whipped. I can’t believe you didn’t fuck her yet.”
“I didn’t say a word, so how do you know if I fucked her or not?”
“I know you,” he said, pushing his dark blond hair back from his forehead. “You go all quiet and shit when you don’t wanna talk. Alex De Luca has been our topic of choice for years. What the fuck is the holdup, man?”
“I don’t know. I can’t go there yet.” I dropped my head with a sigh. Going where I wanted to go would probably turn what was left of me to stone.
“‘Cause you’re not a rapist. I told you so. No way can you do that to her. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“No, believe me—I want to go there.” I returned my attention to the oven and slid the chicken onto the rack. “She wanted it too much.”
“You want her to put up a fight?”
Blood rushed to my cock, confirming his theory. “I’m fucking whacked.”
“No, you just want payback. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
Thanks to Alex, I knew firsthand what it was like to be helpless, though I hadn’t made a single sound of defeat once in the last eight years.
Not when they closed the bars on me for something I didn’t do, not when other inmates jumped me, held me down, and took turns ramming into my ass.
Not even when my father died and I’d been denied the chance to go to his funeral.
I hated to consider what he’d think of me now, how much shame calling me his son would bring him. I’d taken the island he’d willed to me, the one place I equated with happy summertime memories during my childhood, and had turned it into my own personal Alcatraz.
No amount of guilt or shame would change what I wanted most—to unleash the same torment I’d experienced on my single prisoner.
The way she looked at me though, the way she responded, really pissed me off.
I wanted a fight. I wanted her fingernails digging into me.
I wanted her kicking and screaming and begging for mercy.
I wanted her tears and her fucking pain.
“Payback is one thing, but the things I want to do to her…”
Jax settled his chin in his hand, and a wide grin split his face. “Have you forgotten we used to jack off in the same cell? You also talk in your sleep. I know what you want to do to that girl. I just never thought you’d have the balls to go through with it.”
“Trust me, my balls aren’t the problem. And she’s not a girl anymore.”
“All the better. What are you waiting for? Go fuck her rough-like. Find the right buttons and push the fuck outta them. Hell, if you don’t want her, I’ll take her.”
He only said it to goad me, and it worked. “Stay away from her,” I said with a growl.
Jax held up his hands. “‘Nough said. I’m a firm believer in the code.”
“What code?”
“The leave-my-woman-the-fuck-alone code. You want her? She’s all yours.” He pushed up from the table. “I’ve gotta be back in town.” He paused with a wicked grin. “Got plans tonight.”
“Seriously?” I arched a brow, surprised because Jax had issues when it came to women. Being with a woman usually involved physical contact, and he couldn’t stand to be touched.
“Plans as in a date?”
“Uh-huh.”
“With a woman?”
He leveled me with a stare. “Yes, with a woman.”
“Hey, I’m just surprised, is all. Whatever gets you out there, man.”
“Goes both ways. You need to get down there and fuck her senseless. Eight years is a long time to wait.”
Shit. He was good at turning a conversation on its head.
He lifted his jacket off the back of the chair. “Gotta work tomorrow, so I won’t be too late.”
My brother Adam had given Jax a job when no one else in the area would touch a felon.
I also put in hours at Mason Vineyards, but it was mostly to uphold the illusion I was a positive contributing citizen.
I didn’t need to work, thanks to my inheritance.
However, idleness drove me nuts, made me want to rip into something, and Alex had ruined my career as a fighter, so working off steam the way I used to wasn’t an option.
A punching bag didn’t deliver the same gratifying release as pounding flesh.
Since I’d taken her though, my presence at the winery was about to become nonexistent, at least for a while.
“Seriously, Rafe. Fuck the shit outta her.”
“Is that an order?”
“Damn right. You’ve earned a piece of that.”
I was one sick SOB because I felt he was right.