Chapter 5 Confession 5 #6
I winced in pain as I rolled enough to face Thorne.
He was still fast asleep, and I smiled softly to myself, brushing his hair from his eyes.
He stirred slightly, waking when I clasped my hand around the back of his neck.
His grin matched mine, his eyes hooded and heavy with sleep.
As he woke further, his expression eased into something else—a realization—and I was grateful I didn't have to say it allowed.
His eyes glistening in the low light, he took my face between his hands and kissed my forehead before pulling back gently and climbing over me, off the mattress.
He tapped his brother on the shoulder, and Kane stood without an ounce of hesitation.
He picked up my hand and kissed my knuckles before he and Thorne climbed up into their bunks, leaving me alone with Rafe.
Rafe swayed slightly as he watched the bunks creak with Thorne and Kane adjusting their pillows and lying down.
His brows drew together but he still didn't look at me.
He just stayed rooted to the spot, dragging that damn glare back to the door.
I'm pretty sure he had every intention of standing there the rest of the night, right next to my cot, ensuring the guards didn't come back.
I outstretched my hand again, brushing my fingers against his pantleg.
His chin dipped, his dark eyes fierce in the dim light.
The ache in my chest made my hand tremble, but I held steady.
For a heartbeat, he only stared at it. His jaw flexed, his nostrils flared, and his shoulders were so tight it looked painful.
Then, finally, he dropped down to his knees and his huge, calloused hand came up, his palm covered in dried blood.
He set it in mine with a stuttering exhale.
My throat closed, a quiet sob escaping before I could swallow it.
Finally. He was touching me. Not on accident or because I had blood on my lip, but because he wanted to.
His palm was heavy and shaking. The tremors were the only sign of how I was affecting him.
I curled my fingers around him, gentle, showing him I wasn’t afraid.
His dark eyes met mine, and the rage drained, leaving behind something rawer, something closer to grief.
Then he lifted my hand to his mouth, and I held my breath, my heart squeezing.
He pressed his lips to the base of my thumb first, a careful, weightless touch that was more breath than kiss. Then he moved to the next knuckle, and the next. By the third, my eyes burned. By the fourth, his did.
He paused over the split skin where the cuff from The Tank and then the bindings from the bed had chewed me raw.
Then he kissed the torn place as if it were a wound he could take into himself and carry for me.
He didn’t look away while he did it. He needed me to see him do it, and his eyes—God, I couldn't look away either.
I felt utterly paralyzed, my entire being resting on the edge of a cliff.
Looking back now, I know what it was, and I wish I'd appreciated it more in the moment—I was falling in love.
Every inch of my soul was tying itself closer to Rafe each time his mouth neared my skin.
It's so fucking rare to have that, let alone to have both people falling at the same time, but that was exactly what happened.
He looked at me like I was his entire world, and fuck, I believed I could be.
Another kiss. Slower. He pressed the corner of his mouth to the ridge of my ring finger and stayed there, a long, shaking exhale warming my skin.
When he finally drew back, he let his lips ghost over the same places again, a second apology laid directly on top of the first as if repetition could make it hold.
But his brow furrowed, his mouth curled with discomfort, and suddenly, twice wasn’t enough.
He worked his way across a third time and a fourth, a vow in fragments: thumb, pause, inhale; forefinger, pause, press; middle, linger; ring, ache.
Then he turned my hand and kissed the center of my palm, eyes closing as if he were sealing a wound shut, like we'd both been bleeding out until that moment.
I could feel his meaning in the way his breath steadied, in the brief, rhythmic taps of his fingers against my wrist between each kiss—small, private beats that said I’m here, I’m here, I’m here and I’m so sorry.
“Okay?” I mouthed.
He tapped my wrist twice. Yes.
I tightened my fingers around his, a small tug, not enough to pull him onto the bed but enough to draw him closer.
His weight shifted as he leaned in. Then he rose until his face hovered over mine, our hands clasped between us.
His breath stuttered against my lips. He was rigid, his entire body tensed and still, but he let me close the distance.
My chest exploded with warmth as I did, my hands letting go of his, gripping around the back of his head and dragging him closer, I kissed him.
He hovered above, palms braced on either side of my head, but he didn't lean further or try to kiss me back.
I pulled away, my stomach twisting with discomfort.
My eyes searched his face, wetting my lips when I found his softened, tired, yearning expression.
I slowly dropped my hands from his hair, concerned I'd misread the situation.
But then he shook his head, moved down onto his elbows, and finally kissed me back.
It was quiet—so painfully quiet. A kiss like a secret laid over my mouth, soft and reverent, as though he knew it could never belong to either of us.
Not really. His hand framed my cheek, holding me steady, but I felt his desire.
We needed each other, and we needed every choice to be ours, even if it was only for one night.
I shifted forward, chasing him when he pulled back. My lips caught his again, harder, a plea pressed against the seam of his mouth. His breath stilled, his hand tightening at my cheek.
“Rafe,” I whispered against him, my voice trembling.
I poured myself into the kiss, urging him with every press of my mouth, begging him to meet me in it.
For a heartbeat, he resisted—the same way he resisted everything human—but then something in him finally cracked.
His hand fisted in the sheet beside my head, the other cupping my jaw firmer as his mouth opened against mine.
The kiss deepened, rawer, urgent, and fractured, a quiet confession dragged from someone who had never been allowed to speak.
I clung tighter, answering every motion with my own, but underneath the heat I felt it—the resignation threading through him.
It wasn’t a beginning. It was a surrender, a desperate gift given in the dark, and it was all he would let himself offer me.
My chest ached with the truth of it, because even as his teeth caught at my lower lip, even as he breathed me in like I was air, I could feel him pulling away.
I wanted everything with him, needed everything with him. I ran my hands over the bulge of his arms, then down his back, parting my thighs and tugging on his hips. My gunshot wound screamed as I did, but I didn't give a damn. I'd rather pop a stitch than give up a second of our time together.
Rafe pressed against me, exhaling hard through his nose and cupping the back of my head with one hand.
I ground my hips upward, moaning softly when he immediately reacted, driving his hips forward in a motion that showed me how desperate he was, too.
A dam was breaking. He began to kiss like someone starved, and I gasped against him, the sound swallowed instantly by his mouth.
I think the world could've burned and all he would've cared about was how much of me he could take before the fire reached him.
His tongue swept in, pushing past every barrier I thought I had left.
My fingers tangled in his hair, desperate to keep him from pulling away.
Rafe growled low in his chest, an animal sound that vibrated through me.
It shocked me, and I think it shocked him, too.
His face scrunched, pain riddling through the shadows of his lust, before it fell back into hunger.
He kissed me through every inch of hesitation, every shard of pain.
Hard, desperate kisses that left my lips stinging, then softer ones between, almost frantic in their tenderness.
His breath poured into me, each exhale shuddering against my skin, and I clung to him, afraid to let go.
He wouldn’t stop—God, he couldn’t stop—and part of me prayed he never would.
I traced the sharp line of his jaw, the slope of his neck, the solid plane of his chest beneath the thin fabric of his uniform.
A shudder rippled through him like I’d struck a match to dry kindling any time I explored a new patch of scarred, warm skin.
His kiss faltered for half a breath, then returned harder, deeper, mirroring my exploration.
His hand skimmed my hip, careful of the bandages, then flattened against my waist as though to anchor me in place.
Everywhere I touched, he answered. Every invitation I gave, he claimed—hesitant at first, then surer, bolder, as though he’d been waiting for that permission his whole life.
His hand gripped the underside of my thigh hard enough to bruise, dragging me flush against him.
His teeth caught my lower lip, tugging until I gasped.
He pinned one of my wrists above my head, grinding me into the sheets, his weight a cage around me.
My wound was on the verge of tearing open, but any pain was overtaken by the ache he carved everywhere else.
There was only Rafe.
His dark consumed us whole, and I sank without fighting, every shred of restraint tearing loose as I let myself be devoured.
His kiss was fire and violence, his touch a brand on my skin, and I welcomed the burn.
I wasn’t being taken—I was taking back, dragging him into that little flame of Viktor’s lighter, my symbol of longing that I’d flicked on and off for years before the compound took it.
My hand slipped between us, cupping him through the rough fabric of his pants.
He was hard…so hard. And big. Two things I’d never focused on much before but now were impossible to ignore.
His whole body jolted with my touch, a strangled sound tearing from his throat.
He sounded almost wounded, like he never thought anyone would touch him like I was and maybe no one ever had.
Rafe had been sold more than any of us, so I knew he wasn’t a virgin, but being touched by a Buyer wasn’t the same thing.
He was more present for my touch, his forehead pressing into mine and his lips parting with a rough pant.
His mouth crashed down, and I moaned against his lips, his kiss deepening at the feel of my voice’s vibration.
I pressed my palm harder against his cock.
He couldn’t hear me, so I made sure he could feel me—feel that it wasn’t one-sided, that I wasn’t just letting him have me.
I was choosing him. I had chosen him long before, too.
All those years ago, when I watched him in the courtyard with Leah, when I’d looked in his eyes and saw such a dark mirror waiting to claim me—I knew I’d willingly sink into its depths one day.
Not because I was a masochist or too broken to try and put myself back together again, but because I was bright, no matter how hard I tried to dim it, and I loved chasing the dark.
His kiss fractured when I rolled my hips up against him, a growl vibrating against my lips as his hips rocked helplessly into my touch.
I bit at his mouth, dragging him back down, and for the first time I tasted victory in him, a surrender he couldn’t hide.
I fumbled with his waistband, needing my skin against his, to feel his warmth and to be as close as I could be.
And then…
He was gone.
Rafe threw himself off me, stumbled back until his spine hit the cell door, his chest heaving like he’d just come up from drowning. His hand covered his mouth as if to wipe me away, but the tremor in his shoulders betrayed him. In the dim light, his eyes caught mine—wild, burning, and horrified.
The sheets were still twisted under me, my lips raw from the way he’d taken me.
Every nerve screamed to reach for him again, but I knew that was it.
He wouldn’t touch me like that again. Not with that hunger, not with that surrender.
Whatever had cracked in him had slammed shut again, the walls sealing higher, harder.
He’d given me everything he could in those few precious minutes, and the recoil was enough to make my heart break.
I laid back slowly, throat tight, letting the weight of what happened crush into me. Across the room, Rafe folded in on himself, shadows carving his silence into something absolute.
I had no choice but to fall asleep knowing he sat at that door, hands clutched at his temples and his head tucked between his knees.
I let him be because I knew that stance well.
I think we all did. It was what we did when Viktor wouldn’t stop hitting us.
We’d just fold down and breathe. In. Out. In and out.
Only that time, Rafe wasn’t shielding himself from fists. He was shielding himself from me.
I’d been wrong.
We were never going to make it through hell if we let ourselves get further attached. Any kiss was a gun in that fucking place, and we’d all just riddled ourselves with bullets by letting Rafe Creed's heart reach toward mine.
The next day, we were each given separate cells. None of us said a word as we were marched further and further away from each other.