14. Raphael #2
The lobby smelled of fresh flowers and expensive perfume and the lingering fear of guests who hadn’t quite forgotten the blood in the fountain. I filtered through all of it, tracking her scent instead, mixed with the faintest trace of me still clinging to her skin despite her morning shower.
Across the lobby, her eyes found mine.
The connection was instant. Memory passed between us, last night and this morning and the tears she had cried in my arms. Neither of us looked away. The distance between us hummed with awareness, with the connection that we had shared and the uncertainty of what came next.
I saw the moment she considered crossing to me. The slight shift in her weight, the parting of her lips. Then professionalism won, and she turned back to the staff member waiting for her attention.
I left without approaching her. The distance was necessary. She needed space to process whatever was shifting between us, and I needed to give it to her without crowding. Without demanding. Without letting the wolf push for more than she was ready to give.
But tonight I would wait. And if she came to me again…
My wolf paced with restless anticipation.
The manor was quiet when I returned that evening.
I sat in my study with reports spread across my desk, not really reading them. Listening instead for her car in the driveway, for her footsteps on the stairs, for any sign that the woman who had fallen asleep in my arms would choose to do it again.
The fire crackled low in the grate. The whiskey in my glass caught the light. I had poured it an hour ago and hadn’t taken a single sip. Couldn’t focus on anything except the silence of the house, the empty space where she should be.
Alice appeared in the doorway with dinner on a tray. She set it on the side table and lingered, watching me with those knowing eyes.
“She came home an hour ago,” Alice said quietly. “Went straight to her room.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Give her time, child.” Alice’s tone was gentle, maternal. She had known me since I was a boy. Knew what Lena meant to me, even if I had never said the words. “Whatever’s happening between you, it can’t be rushed.”
“I know.”
She left me to my waiting.
The minutes crawled past. I ate without tasting, drank whiskey without feeling the burn. My wolf paced beneath my skin, restless, anxious. What if she didn’t come? What if last night had been the exception, not the beginning?
What if I had let myself hope for nothing?
Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
My heart stopped. I set down the glass, held my breath, listened to the soft pad of bare feet descending from the second floor, coming closer, toward my study.
She appeared in the doorway.
She was different tonight, not the vulnerable woman who had sought comfort after Stephanie’s murder. This was the fierce Lena I remembered from our first hate-sex, all fire and demand and hunger burning in her eyes.
She wore a silk robe, loosely belted. Nothing else, if I had to guess. Her hair was damp from the shower, her feet bare, her expression stripped of pretense. The scent of her desire hit me before she spoke, cutting through the smoke and leather and whiskey. My cock stirred against my thigh.
“I need—” She stopped. Swallowed. Started again, her voice rougher. “I need more.”
My wolf howled triumph.
I rose from my chair slowly, letting her see every inch of the predator she had beckoned. Her breath caught as I crossed the room, as I stopped close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin.
“More what?”
Her chin lifted. Defiant even in her wanting. “Make me feel alive. Make me forget.”
I understood what she was asking for. Not the slow, tender intimacy of last night. She needed intensity tonight. Needed the pain and pleasure intertwined until there was no room left for grief or fear or anything except sensation.
And underneath the need, I could see it, she was using me. Using my body to punish herself, to punish me, to burn away the rage she still carried. She thought this was revenge, fucking the man she hated until she felt nothing at all.
Let her. Let her use my body. Let her take her revenge between the sheets. As long as she stayed. As long as she kept coming back. I would give her whatever she needed, and count myself lucky for every moment she chose to spend it on me.
I could give her that.
“Do you remember your safeword?”
Her eyes widened with surprise, then understanding. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
“Paradise.”
“Paradise,” I repeated. “Say it, and everything stops. No questions, no hesitation. Understand?”
She nodded.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“I understand.”
“Come with me.”
I led her through the hallway to my bedroom. The same bed where she had cried in my arms. The same sheets where she had slept curled against my chest. But tonight would be different.
Tonight, she wanted to burn.
I closed the door behind us and turned to face her.
She stood in the center of the room, chin up, shoulders back, waiting.
The silk robe gaped at her throat, revealing the shadow of her collarbone, the rapid flutter of her pulse.
The room smelled of her desire already, that heady sweetness cutting through the leather and woodsmoke and whiskey I had carried from the study.
My wolf stirred, scenting the air. She wants us. She came to us. She chose this.
“Take it off.”
She reached for the belt. Let the silk slide from her shoulders, pool at her feet. Stood before me naked and unashamed, and my wolf snarled approval at the sight of her.
I pulled my tie loose from my collar. Walked toward her slowly, letting her see the hunger I wasn’t bothering to hide.
“Hands.”
She held them out. I wrapped the silk around her wrists, once, twice, tight enough to hold but not to hurt. Her breath quickened as I tested the knot, as the reality of her vulnerability sank in.
“Good girl.”
Her eyes flared with equal parts offense and arousal.
I guided her toward the bed, bent her over the foot of it with her bound hands stretched above her head. The position left her exposed, her ass raised, her spine a perfect curve of surrender.
This was what she needed. Not gentleness, not comfort.
She needed someone to take the weight of control from her shoulders, to strip away the decisions and the responsibilities and the grief until there was nothing left but sensation.
She carried so much. The hotel, the murder, a marriage she hadn’t chosen. Tonight, I would carry it for her.
My belt slid free from my trousers with a whisper of leather.
“You want to forget?” I doubled the leather in my hand. “I’ll make you forget everything except my name.”
The first strike landed across her ass with a crack that echoed through the room. She gasped, her body jerking against the restraint, but she didn’t tell me to stop. Didn’t use the word that would end everything.
The second strike landed harder, and pink bloomed across pale skin. Her fingers curled into the bedding, her back arching as pain transformed into heat.
“More,” she breathed.
I gave her more.
The third strike landed harder than the first two. The fourth harder still. I found a rhythm, the crack of leather against flesh filling the room like a heartbeat. She gasped with each blow, her body jerking, but she didn’t use her word. Didn’t tell me to stop.
“Count them,” I ordered. “Out loud.”
“F-five,” she managed as the next strike landed.
“Good girl. Keep counting.”
Six. Seven. Eight. Each number torn from her throat, each strike painting another stripe of heat across her flesh.
By ten, she was shaking. By twelve, tears were sliding down her temples into the bedding.
Not from pain alone. From release. From the permission to finally let go of everything she had been holding.
“Fourteen.” Her voice broke on the word. “Please. Please.”
“Please what?” I paused, letting her feel the heat radiating from her punished skin. “Please stop? Or please more?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.” She was sobbing now, her whole body trembling. “I don’t know anything. I can’t think. I can’t—”
“Good.” I leaned over her, my mouth against her ear. “That’s exactly what you asked for. You wanted to forget. So forget. There’s nothing but this room. Nothing but my belt and your skin and the sounds you make when I mark you.”
The next strike made her scream.
I didn’t stop. Each blow drove her deeper into that space where the thinking stopped, where the grief and the fear and the weight of her world couldn’t reach her.
Her ass was crimson now, welts overlapping, and still she pushed back into each strike instead of flinching away.
Chasing the edge. Needing to fall over it.
Mine, the wolf growled. Ours to protect. Ours to break apart and put back together.
“Look at you.” I ran my palm over the abused flesh, feeling the heat sear into my skin.
“Crying. Shaking. Dripping down your thighs from this.” I slid my fingers between her legs, finding her soaked.
“Your body knows who owns it.” I thrust two fingers inside her.
“Even when your mind fights me, this knows the truth.”
She clenched around my fingers instantly, her body desperate for something to grip, something to anchor her. I fucked her with my hand, rough and unrelenting, while my other hand came down on her ass in sharp slaps that made her jolt with each impact.
“You’re going to come like this,” I told her. “From pain. From being used. From letting me do whatever I want to this body that belongs to me.”
“I can’t—” she gasped.
“You will.” Another slap. Another thrust of my fingers. “Because I told you to. Because your body knows it’s mine even when your pride won’t let you admit it.”