Chapter 25 Raphael
RAPHAEL
She slept with my collar around her throat.
I watched her from the pillow beside hers, close enough to count her eyelashes, close enough to see the faint pulse beating beneath her jaw.
The silver chain glinted in the pale morning light filtering through the curtains, the diamond-studded ring resting in the hollow of her throat like it belonged there. Like it had always belonged there.
My cum had dried on that chain hours ago.
I should have cleaned it. Should have wiped away the evidence of what we’d done, restored some semblance of civilized behavior.
Instead I’d pulled her against me and held her while she slept, breathing in the scent of apples and cream layered with leather and sex and something that was purely us.
A new scent. Our scent. The smell of two people tangled together so thoroughly that the separate notes had begun to merge.
Ours, the wolf purred with smug satisfaction. Our mate. Our mark. Our scent on her skin. The world will smell us on her and know.
I didn’t argue with him this time. Didn’t have the energy for the familiar battle. Maybe didn’t have the will.
She’d chosen it. Not because the contract demanded it, not because I’d manipulated her into compliance, but because she wanted it there.
I’d watched her face when I asked, watched the moment she understood what I was really asking.
Watched her weigh the choice, knowing she could refuse, knowing I wouldn’t punish her for it.
And she’d said yes.
Put it on me.
My hands had trembled while I fastened the clasp.
My hands. Trembling. Like some lovesick fool instead of the Vor of the Ivankovskaya Bratva, the man who’d watched business rivals beg for mercy without blinking.
I’d killed for the pack. I’d built an empire from nothing.
And this woman, this fierce stubborn human woman, had reduced me to trembling over a clasp no bigger than my thumbnail.
Not lovesick, the wolf corrected with a rumble of contentment. Mated. There’s a difference. She accepts our claim. She wears our mark. This is how it should be.
I closed my eyes against the word. Against everything it meant. Against the thousand ways this could destroy us both.
She shifted in her sleep, pressing closer, her hand finding my chest like she was searching for my heartbeat even in dreams. Her palm lay flat over my sternum, directly above the organ that had been cold for so long I’d forgotten it could feel anything at all.
The trust in that gesture hollowed my chest. She had no idea what I was.
What I’d done. What I was still doing. She didn’t know about the wolf that lived beneath my skin, about the Bratva that owned my loyalty, about Apex Lending and the grandfather who’d paid to make me disappear.
And she’d given herself to me anyway.
I studied the marks I’d left on her body with the wolf’s possessive attention.
Faint bruises on her hips where I’d gripped too hard, where she’d wrapped her legs around me and demanded more.
Red impressions on her breasts from the clamps, still visible hours later, badges of what she’d endured for me.
The collar. My collar. My claim visible for anyone who looked closely enough.
The wolf wanted to add more. Wanted to mark her so thoroughly that no one could mistake who she belonged to. The claiming bite throbbed in my imagination, the place where her neck met her shoulder, where a wolf’s teeth would sink in and bond them forever.
Mine, the wolf growled with deep satisfaction. Every inch. Every breath. Every heartbeat.
But it wasn’t possession anymore. That was the terrifying part. The thing that made my chest tight and my throat close and every instinct I had scream danger.
I could have called it possession in the beginning, when she was just a means to an end, a pawn in my grandfather’s destruction.
When I’d looked at her and seen only her father’s legacy, the hotel I would take, the family name I would grind to dust. I could have called it obsession when her scent started following me through my days, when I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing her face, when I’d started finding excuses to touch her just to feel her pulse jump beneath my fingers.
I couldn’t call it that now.
The word I’d avoided. The word I’d denied every time the wolf whispered it. The word that meant death and destruction and everyone I’d ever cared about turned to ash.
Love.
I loved her.
Finally, the wolf sighed with something that sounded almost like relief. You finally see what I’ve known from the first breath of her scent. She’s ours. We love her. Stop running from it.
The acknowledgment hit me like a physical blow. Knocked the breath from my lungs. Made my hands shake where they rested against her sleeping body.
My mother had loved my father, and he’d torn out her throat in a shift he couldn’t control.
My grandparents should have loved me, blood of their blood, their daughter’s only child, and they’d paid to make me disappear into a school where children were forgotten and broken and sometimes died.
Everyone I’d ever loved had been destroyed or had destroyed me.
Love was a death sentence. Love was a promise of loss.
Love was the moment before the wolf emerged and everything turned to blood.
And now this woman. This fierce, stubborn, beautiful woman who handled crises at her hotel and stood up to me and melted in my arms like she’d been made for them. This woman who looked at me like I was something more than a monster in an expensive suit.
I loved her.
Which meant I would destroy her.
No. The wolf’s denial was immediate and vicious. We protect what’s ours. We don’t destroy. That was him. The father. We are not him.
But I was my father’s son. I carried his wolf, his blood, his capacity for violence. And when the claiming instinct rose during intimacy, when the wolf demanded the bite that would bond us forever, I didn’t know if I could stop myself. Didn’t know if I would become exactly what I feared.
Somewhere distant, the phone buzzed again. It had been buzzing for hours, ignored on the nightstand while I held her. Viktor. The scandal. The world demanding attention while I pretended it didn’t exist.
I didn’t move. Didn’t want to break this moment, this fragile bubble where she was mine and the consequences hadn’t arrived yet. Where I could pretend that loving her wouldn’t end in fire.
But they would. The consequences always did.
The phone buzzed again, insistent, and Lena stirred against my chest. Her breathing changed. Her eyelashes fluttered. Still asleep, but lighter now, rising toward waking.
Protect her, the wolf demanded, suddenly alert. The world can wait. Stay. Hold her. Keep the threats away.
The world couldn’t wait. And protecting her meant dealing with everything that threatened her. Including myself. Including the secrets I was keeping. Including the Bratva that was watching us both.
I eased out from under her carefully, inch by inch, holding my breath each time she stirred.
The bed was warm from our combined heat, the sheets tangled around her body in ways that made me want to climb back in and forget about everything else.
She murmured something soft and reached for the warm space I’d left, her fingers curling in the sheets where my body had been.
I almost climbed back in.
Instead I grabbed my phone and padded barefoot to the study, closing the door behind me before checking the screen. The numbers glowed in the dim room. Fourteen missed calls. Twenty-seven messages. Viktor’s name repeated like a warning.
I called him back.
“Vor.” His voice was cold, professional. The voice of the Bratva, not the man who’d trained me to fight when I was eighteen and feral with grief and rage. “You didn’t answer.”
“I was occupied.”
A pause. Viktor knew better than to comment on what occupied meant.
He’d seen me with women before, had covered for my indiscretions when necessary, had never questioned the appetites that came with being a wolf in a world of humans.
But this was different. He knew it. I knew it.
The silence between us acknowledged what neither of us would say.
“The Senator is done.” Viktor’s voice shifted to business, the comfortable territory of destruction and power.
“The network investment evidence alone would have destroyed him, but the personal file sealed it. His own party is abandoning him. The other investors are scrambling to distance themselves. He’s already losing committee seats, and there’s talk of resignation before the inevitable subpoena. ”
Good. The word should have tasted like victory. Should have been vindication after thirty years of planning and patience. Instead it sat heavy on my tongue, bitter and insufficient.
“And Andrew?”
“Distancing himself publicly. Gave a statement condemning his grandfather’s actions, expressing shock and disappointment. The usual political theater.” Viktor’s tone carried a note of contempt. “He’s clinging to his office, but the taint will spread. Give it time.”
Give it time. I’d waited thirty years. I could wait a little longer for the complete destruction of the Prescott name.
Another pause, longer this time. Heavy with something Viktor wasn’t saying. “Raphael, there’s something else.”
I waited. Let the silence stretch. Viktor would get there in his own time, and pushing him would only make him more cautious.
“The Bratva is watching how you handle your attachment.” Viktor’s tone dropped, became careful in a way that raised the wolf’s hackles. “Sentiment is weakness. Max has noticed your distraction. The other Vory are talking. They’re wondering if the legendary ice has finally cracked.”
My grip tightened on the phone until I heard the case creak. “She’s an asset. Nothing more.”