Chapter 27 Raphael #2
If this was borrowed time, then I would take every second. Every touch. Every night. Until the Pakhan called my bluff and everything fell apart. Until the talk he’d promised came and forced me to choose between the pack that had saved my life and the woman who’d given it meaning.
Parsons pulled up to the front entrance and I was out of the car before he’d fully stopped, my feet hitting the stone driveway while the engine was still running.
Through the front door, the familiar scent of my home rushing over me.
Into the foyer, where the grandfather clock ticked away borrowed seconds.
Alice appeared from the direction of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her knowing eyes taking in the blood and the tension radiating off me in waves.
“You look like you’ve had a rough night.”
“Where is she?”
Alice didn’t pretend to misunderstand. She never did. She’d been with me too long, knew too much, loved me despite it all. “Your room. She’s been waiting.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to know she’s staying.”
My throat tightened at that. At the simple certainty in Alice’s voice. At the image of Lena curled up in my space, breathing my scent, counting the minutes until I returned like I was something worth waiting for.
She doesn’t know what you are. What you’ve done. What you’re capable of becoming.
I should shower. Should scrub the blood from my skin and compose myself before I faced her.
Should give her the version of me that was clean and controlled, the version that hadn’t just beaten a man half to death and enjoyed the sound of bones breaking.
Not this raw, bloody thing with violence still singing in its blood.
My feet carried me up the stairs anyway.
The hallway stretched before me, familiar and foreign at once.
Every step brought her scent closer. That particular sweetness that was just her, threading through the leather and woodsmoke that permeated my home, cutting through the lingering copper that clung to my clothes.
Sweetness pushing back the darkness. Light invading shadows accumulated over a lifetime.
I stopped outside my bedroom door. The wolf inside me was pacing, urgent and hungry, clawing at my control with a desperation I’d never felt before.
Not for sex. Not for violence. For her. Just her.
The sight of her. The sound of her voice.
The simple, impossible comfort of her presence in my space.
Mate, the wolf whispered. Ours. Home. Need.
I opened the door.
She was curled in the chair by the window, exactly as Alice had described.
Soft clothes that looked like something she’d borrowed from my closet, hair falling in waves around her shoulders, her legs pulled up to her chest as she watched the driveway.
The firelight painted her in gold and shadow.
When she heard the door, she turned, and the relief that flooded her face at the sight of me was almost more than I could bear.
“You’re home.”
Two words. Just that simple statement of fact, spoken like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I stood frozen in the doorway, suddenly aware of everything wrong with this picture.
The blood drying on my hands. The violence still thrumming through my veins like a second heartbeat.
The monster I’d been all night, the monster I was every night, standing in the same room as this woman who smelled like innocence and looked at me like I was something worth waiting for.
“I shouldn’t touch you right now.”
Lena unfolded from the chair with a grace that made my chest ache. She crossed the room to me, bare feet silent on the carpet, her eyes never leaving mine. No hesitation. No fear. Just that steady, impossible certainty that she knew exactly what she was walking toward.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m—” I held up my hands, showing her the dried blood, the split knuckles, the evidence of what I’d done. “I’ve done things tonight. Bad things. And if I touch you before I wash this off, before I calm down, I might—”
“Might what?” She stopped in front of me, close enough that I could count the faint freckles across her nose. Close enough that her scent wrapped around me like a lifeline, drowning out the copper and the death and the darkness. “Hurt me?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” She reached out and took my ruined hand in both of hers.
Her fingers were cool and soft against my bloody knuckles, pale against the blood staining my skin.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. Just held me like the violence meant nothing.
Like she could see past it to whatever broken thing lived underneath.
“I know you’d cut off your own hands before you’d use them against me. ”
She’s right, the wolf growled, satisfaction rumbling through my chest. We would. We will. Whatever it takes to keep her safe. Even from ourselves.
“Lena.” Her name came out rough. Wrecked. Scraped raw by everything I couldn’t say. “You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Then show me.” She turned my hand over and pressed her lips to my palm, to the one place the blood hadn’t reached.
The gesture was so tender, so impossibly gentle, that I felt my resistance finally give way.
Thirty years of control, undone by the softness of her mouth against the unmarked center of my violence-stained hand.
“I want you, Raphael. All of you. Tonight. The blood and the darkness and whatever else you think you need to hide. I want all of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking for you.” She released my hand and reached up to cup my face, her palms warm against my jaw, her eyes holding mine with a certainty that stole my breath.
“I’m asking for the man who holds me when I shake.
The man who gave me something to hold onto when my whole world was falling apart. The man I—”
She stopped. Swallowed. And I watched the flush creep up her neck, watched her gather her courage like it was something she could hold in her hands.
“The man I love. That’s what I’m asking for. Is that so impossible?”
The word hit me like a physical blow. Love. She loved me. This woman who should hate me, who should run screaming from everything I represented, who had every reason in the world to see me as the monster I was, loved me.
And God help me, I loved her too. Had loved her from the moment I’d caught her scent across a crowded lobby, my wolf howling recognition while my human mind tried to deny what it knew.
“You shouldn’t.” The words scraped out of my throat, each one a surrender. “I can’t be what you need. What you deserve. I’ve done things, Lena. Things you can’t imagine. Things that would make you look at me differently if you knew.”
“Then tell me.” She stroked her thumb across my cheekbone, her touch impossibly gentle against skin that had known nothing but violence. “Tell me everything. And let me decide for myself what I can live with.”
I couldn’t. The truth would destroy us. The wolf, the revenge, the web of lies I’d built our entire relationship on.
If she knew I was the one holding her father’s debt, that I’d orchestrated her downfall from the very beginning, that I wasn’t even fully human.
That the man she was touching was also the beast that haunted her nightmares.
But she was looking at me with those eyes. Those impossible, trusting eyes that saw something in me I’d never seen in myself. And the wolf was howling inside my chest, drowning out every rational thought with a single, primal demand.
Claim. Take. Keep. Ours forever.
“I can’t tell you everything.” My voice came out raw. Wrecked. “Not yet. But I can give you this. Tonight. Me.”
I pulled her into my arms, crushing her against my chest, burying my face in her hair and breathing her in like I was drowning and she was air. Her scent surrounded me, that sweetness that had been driving me slowly insane since the first moment it hit me.
“Is that enough?”
Her answer was to kiss me.
Not gentle. Not controlled. Not the careful, calculated seductions I’d deployed to break down her walls.
This was desperate and hungry and raw. Every ugly thing I’d ever felt or done or wanted burned away by the heat of her mouth.
She tasted like chamomile tea and honey and home, and I couldn’t get enough.
She kissed me back with equal ferocity, her fingers tangling in my hair, nails scraping against my scalp.
Her body arched against mine, all that softness pressed against my hardness, and when I lifted her, when I carried her toward the bed, she wrapped her legs around my waist and whispered my name against my lips like it was a prayer.
Claim her. Mark her. Make her ours forever.
The wolf’s voice was thunder in my blood, drowning out reason, drowning out caution, drowning out everything except the woman in my arms and the need clawing at my chest. I fought against the instinct to bite, to claim, to complete the bond that had been screaming for completion since the first moment I’d caught her scent.
My teeth ached with the need. My jaw hurt from clenching against it.
Not yet. Not like this. She didn’t know what she’d be binding herself to. What it would mean to bear my mark, to carry my scent, to be mine in every way that mattered to my kind.
But I could have this. Tonight, I could have this. Her body beneath mine. Her breath in my lungs. Her heart beating against my chest like it belonged there.
Tomorrow, the Pakhan’s words would still be waiting. The borrowed time would still be running out.
But tonight, she was mine.
And I was hers.