Borrowed Time
The house feels too big without Kate’s chatter bouncing off the walls. Dean disappeared upstairs on a call, and I told myself I’d make tea in the quiet, that the normal act of pouring hot water over leaves would stitch the edges of my nerves back together.
It doesn’t.
The silence thickens instead, stretching, holding its breath. And then… “Pretty little thing.”
The voice is velvet laced with razors, sliding through the kitchen before I can even spin. He’s leaning in the doorway like he’s been there forever, shadows clinging to him as if they know his skin better than the light ever could. Rafe.
My stomach plummets, hot and heavy, as though it already knows he isn’t supposed to be here.
“How—” My voice breaks, comes back a whisper. “How did you get in?”
He smirks, tilting his head, dark hair falling across one brow. “Doors are for men who knock. I’m not one of them.”
I take a step back, spine brushing the counter. My heart’s pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it. “Dean—”
“Dean won’t save you.” Rafe’s words are a low hum, threaded with heat, with threat. “Not from me. Not from what’s coming.”
The tea kettle shrieks, steam curling between us, but neither of us looks away. His eyes pin me, dark and bottomless, gleaming with something I can’t name.
Something dangerous enough to make my body tremble even as my pulse screams to run.
“What do you want?” I whisper, fists tight at my sides.
He moves in slowly, predator-sure, every line of him deliberate. Close enough now that I can smell smoke and leather on his skin. His finger drags lazily down the counter, pausing an inch from my hip.
“I want you to understand.” His voice is a warning wrapped in seduction, the kind that steals the air from my lungs. “You’re living on borrowed time, Brooklyn. Club Z doesn’t forgive. And neither do I.”
I swallow hard, my breath catching as his knuckles graze the edge of my thigh, feather-light, like he’s daring me to move, daring me to call out.
“You don’t belong in his world,” he whispers, eyes dipping to my mouth. “But you’re in it now. Which means you’re mine, too, whether or not he likes it.”
The kettle clicks off. Silence slams back in.
And all I can hear is his last word, echoing like a brand.
Mine.
The steam hasn’t even thinned when he leans closer, his shadow spilling over mine like a trap snapping shut.
“Funny thing about Dean,” Rafe murmurs, voice coiling low in my ear. “He thinks he owns the board. Thinks he can play his little games at Club Z and still keep his sweet little assistant tucked away, untouched. Safe.”
My chest aches, tight and trembling, like he can see right through the skin to where my heart pounds out the truth.
“You’re not safe.” He says it so softly, it’s almost kind. Almost. “Not from him. Not from me. Not from the world he dragged you into the moment you opened his door.”
I shake my head, forcing a whisper past the fear clawing at my throat. “You don’t know me.”
His mouth curves, slow and sharply. “Oh, I know you. I watch what he watches. I hear what he whispers. And I see the way you burn for him even when it terrifies you.” His finger brushes the air between us, so close it feels like heat without touch.
“That makes you dangerous. That makes you a target.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. My body feels pinned, but he never actually touches me—just hovers, deliberate, like he knows the tension will hurt worse than contact.
“What do you want from me?” The words scrape out, raw, almost a plea.
Rafe tilts his head, eyes glinting. “Want? I don’t need to want, sweetheart. I take. That’s the difference between me and him. Dean builds cages dressed up as choices. I rip the cage apart.”
His smile widens, wolf-sharp. “But maybe I’ll let you decide which is worse.”
The kettle clicks again as the last of the steam dies off. The silence it leaves is suffocating. I’m gripping the counter so tight my knuckles burn, nails biting into the edge like it’s the only thing keeping me standing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I manage, my voice so thin it barely exists.
“I should be everywhere he is.” He finally lets his gaze travel down my body, slow enough that I feel stripped bare, his smirk deepening when I shift under the weight of it.
“Because sooner or later, Brooklyn, you’ll see it—” His eyes cut back to mine, sudden, piercing.
“—he can’t keep you from me. Not forever. Not when the clock’s already running.”
He leans in just enough that I feel the heat of his breath on my cheek, the softest brush of a promise meant to unsettle.
“Borrowed time, sweetheart.”
And then he’s gone—straightening, retreating like he was never here, slipping back into the shadows with a predator’s ease, leaving me pressed against the counter, trembling, throat tight with the scream I never let out.
The creak of floorboards upstairs. Dean’s voice carried faintly down the hall. He does not know what just walked through his house.
And I don’t know if I should run to him or keep this secret buried before it breaks everything.
He doesn’t leave.
Not yet.
Rafe shifts his weight against the counter opposite me, crossing his arms over his chest like he’s settling in, like this is his kitchen, his ground, his game.
The overhead light catches in his dark hair, pulling bronze through black, the sharp cut of his jaw shadowed like a blade.
His shirt clings in places it shouldn’t—across his chest, down the thick lines of his arms, sleeves pushed up just enough to reveal forearms carved in muscle, veins raised like a map of sin.
I hate the way my eyes flicker lower, betraying me. The way heat curls in my belly even as my skin prickles with warning.
Rafe notices. His mouth lifts in that slow, wicked half-smile that makes him look both cruel and devastating, the kind of man who doesn’t need to chase because gravity does it for him.
“You feel it too,” he says, quiet, almost amused. “It doesn’t matter how much you tell yourself you’re his good girl. You know what happens when I walk into a room. You can’t breathe.”
He leans forward, bracing his palms on the counter, arms caging me in without even touching. The scent of smoke and leather cuts into the steam of the kitchen—sharp, intoxicating, too much.
My body tenses, back pressing into the counter edge, but my knees weaken all the same.
Rafe’s eyes drag over me—languid, merciless—pausing at the thin line of my throat, the rise of my chest where my breaths come too shallow, too quick. He takes me in like I’m prey that already gave up running.
“I could ruin you right here.” His voice drops lower, a rumble, a threat that tastes like temptation. “And he’d never forgive you for wanting it.”
I shake my head; the denial weak, useless. “I don’t want—”
His laugh cuts me off, dark and husky, his lips curving just enough to show the edge of teeth. “Sweetheart, I can smell want. And you reek of it.”
Heat licks through me like betrayal, because he’s right—he’s right and I hate it, hate the way his presence claws at every part of me Dean already awakened.
He shifts closer, close enough that the warmth of his body steals into mine. Close enough that I can feel the steady pull of his breath, see the flecks of gold buried in his dark irises. He’s beautiful in a way that makes me sick—too sharp, too carved, too dangerous to look at for long.
“You think Dean’s your danger?” he whispers. “You haven’t even scratched the surface, sweetheart.”
The pet name on his tongue doesn’t sound like Dean’s—it sounds like mockery, like possession without permission, and it sears through me all the same.
Rafe lowers his voice to a bare breath, mouth hovering at the shell of my ear. “Tick, tick, tick… borrowed time.”
The words burn against my skin, leaving me trembling, breath caught somewhere between fear and something I can’t name.
And as he retreats, casually pushing away from the counter as if it meant nothing, leaving me torn apart, I find myself pinned against the cabinets, gasping, tears burning my eyes—not out of fear, but because a part of me yearned to move closer instead of pulling away.
The slam of the front door makes me jolt as if a gun went off.
But when I spin, the kitchen is empty.
Rafe is gone.
No trace of him, no shadow in the doorway, no curl of smoke left behind. Just silence, too sharp, like the world is holding its breath with me.
My hands are trembling when I press them to the counter, trying to steady myself, trying to convince my body that it didn’t just betray me—that I didn’t just let him inside, that I didn’t listen, that I didn’t feel.
“Brooklyn?”
His voice. Dean’s. Low, threaded with suspicion already, like he knows.
I blink hard, dragging the wet heat from my lashes before it spills over, forcing air back into my lungs. When I turn, he’s in the doorway—still in the tailored shirt from work, tie loose, sleeves rolled to his elbows. His jaw is tight, eyes cutting through the room like he’s looking for ghosts.
If he’d come thirty seconds earlier, he would’ve found one.
“You’re pale,” he says, taking a step in, scanning me. “What happened?”
The words catch in my throat. If I tell him, it’ll explode everything—Kate, us, this fragile thread of a secret we’re barely holding together. If I stay silent, it feels like lying, like sin layered on sin.
I force my lips to curve. “Nothing. Just… dizzy. Haven’t eaten.”
Dean’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t buy it. He never buys it.
He crosses the room slowly, predator-sure, like he’s waiting for me to crack.
His fingers brush my jaw, tilt my face up, making me meet his stare.
His touch should calm me—it always does—but tonight it only makes the guilt roar louder, because I can still feel Rafe’s heat in the air where Dean stands now.
“You’re lying,” he murmurs. Not a question. A truth.
I flinch, lips parting, but nothing comes out.