Chapter 22
NICOLETTE
I’m not marrying anyone.
That’s exactly what he said to Michael yesterday and all I do is replay those words over and over. Does that include me?
I shake my head at my own stupidity. Of course he’d never want to get married. My sister messed him up so badly, he must not trust anyone. I was foolish to think there was a future waiting for us out there.
“Is something wrong with breakfast?” he asks, sipping his black coffee, watching me intently from across the table.
I wrench my gaze away from his, staring down at the bacon and eggs he picked up from a diner nearby.
“No.” I force a smile, throwing a piece of the bacon into my mouth. “Just got stuff on my mind.”
Picking up my own coffee, I drag in a few long pulls, while his eyes still tether to mine.
“Are we finally going to talk about what’s been bothering you? You’ve barely said a word to me since I spoke to Michael yesterday. I know you must be scared, but I’m here. I’m gonna protect you.”
“I know.” I glance up, playing with the food.
I can’t tell him what’s truly on my mind. And if I’m being honest with myself, I’m terrified too. I won’t feel safe until his father is dead.
Seconds trickle by, and all I hear is his rough breaths colliding with my quiet ones.
He mutters a curse, and suddenly, he rises and comes to stand before me. I register his towering frame, managing not to look at him.
The back of his hand slinks out and brushes sensually down the side of my face, and with a tilt of a finger, he nudges my face up to his. I choke on my own heartbeats from the magnitude of the affection I find gathered within those eyes.
“I need you to believe that I can keep you safe,” he says.
“I’d scorch a thousand armies and scatter their ashes at your feet.
” His thumb strokes my lips with a rough yet feathery touch, igniting a burst of warmth, spreading deep and wide like wildfire.
“I want you to be able to talk to me, about anything. Understand?”
I nod even as indecision battles within my heart. He holds my stare, waiting for me to tell him something. And I want to. I want to ask him if he truly doesn’t ever want to get married, but I refuse to appear desperate and insecure.
I don’t want to say the wrong thing and have him stop talking to me, touching me the way he has been.
But what if he does anyway, years from now when we’re together?
What if he finds out that I kept the affair from him all this time?
He’d never trust me. I have to tell him.
There’s no other option. At least if he stops speaking to me now, it’ll hurt a lot less than when I’m really in love with him.
Except you’re already in love with him.
Knots tighten in my gut.
Before I can convince myself otherwise, I start to tell him everything and pray like hell he forgives me.
“I knew,” I whisper, peering down at my lap.
I can’t look at him right now. Can’t see his eyes staring back at me with disappointment.
“Knew what?” His hand clasps my jaw. “Look at me.”
There’s demand coursing through his voice, something lethal and dark and all-consuming. And I do it. I look at him, and I almost want to die.
He tucks my chin in his palm. “What is it, little one?” His brows crease. “What do you have to tell me?”
I take a deep breath, preparing for the moment he’ll hate me, but how do I prepare for that?
“I’m not a good person, Raph. And after you hear what I’m about to tell you, you won’t want me anymore.”
His chest widens with a rough inhale, and before I know what’s happening, he slips his arms under my thighs and lifts me up against him, cradling me while my arms and legs fasten around him.
My inhale stills in my lungs as he clutches my nape and forces me to look at him.
“What are you doing?” His gaze delves into mine. “Are you trying to push me away?”
He grabs a fistful of my hair and nuzzles his face into the crook of my neck.
“Because no matter what you tell me…” he whispers. “I’ll always want you.”
“Raph…” I swallow the lump in my throat, groaning when his lips mark my skin, teeth grazing softly. “Please just let me say this. Let me get this off my conscience.”
That has him rearing back and pinning me with a hardened look. He walks us to the bed and settles on the edge of it, me straddling his lap. When I try to get off, he clasps his arms tighter around my hips.
“No,” he says sternly. “You stay right here, and you tell me whatever you need to say. There’s no hiding. Not from me.”
I nod, biting into my inner cheek. Here it comes. Here’s the moment that either breaks us or keeps us from breaking together.
“I…”
My eyelids flutter closed to gather some courage, and when I open them, I find his gaze has hardened. My heart swells with nerves flitting within it, pounding at an abnormal pace, the sound filling my ears.
“I’m sorry, Raph…but I knew.”
He grinds his teeth.
“I—I…” I swallow down the lump jammed in my throat. “I knew about your father and my sister for a while.”
“You what?” His voice grows ice cold.
I nod, tears trapped behind my eyes once I see the hurt in his. His hands ball into fists around my hips.
I knew it. I knew he’d hate me. I deserve it too.
“I saw them kissing in the car that day you chased me down the street and asked me to come back. I confronted her about it, and she threatened to ruin me if I told you and…”
His nostrils flare. “And what?”
“And…and I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.” The words tremble from my lips. “I was afraid my parents wouldn’t either. That everyone would hate me more than they already did.”
I clasp a hand around his cheek, and he doesn’t push it away. Instead, emotions pull at his face. Tender emotions.
His eyes soften. “I never hated you, Nicolette. Not ever… Fuck…” He forces his head back and shuts his eyes.
It breaks my heart to see him hurting, and it’s all my fault.
His attention returns to me, and he sighs deflatedly. “If I had known, I would’ve left her, Nicolette.”
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” My brows furrow, my heart slicing in my chest. “I’d never do anything to hurt you. Not intentionally.”
“I know,” he says softly.
I should tell him about Bianca’s baby too. I should get it all out in the open. But I told Michael I wouldn’t. Yet how can I continue to carry another secret? How fair is that to him?
But at the same time, does it matter anymore? She’s dead. His father will be soon. All it will do is cause him unnecessary pain. Michael was right about that. I pray like hell Raph never finds out.
He sighs and looks back at me. “I’m not mad at you. I’m more mad at myself for being blind.”
A hand slides up my back, fingers cutting through my hair, and he pulls me toward him, his lips landing on my forehead.
“Is that all you needed to tell me?”
“Yes.”
The lie slips easily from my lips. Yet it weighs heavy, causing my body to drown.
“Are you still sore?” His guttural tone has my toes curling and my breaths coming in gasps.
The water cascades down in between my breasts, the weight of his body pressed up against my back, his voice rough and warm, fanning against my neck.
“A little.” A lot.
But I can’t tell him that. I don’t want him to stop what we’ve been doing.
“Well, I’m about to change all that,” he rasps, sliding a hand down my stomach, two fingers brushing over my slit.
I groan at the anticipation of him fucking me again. My head falls against his chest and I find the hungered depravation snaking in his gaze.
He works me faster, curling his fingers inside me, while his other hand wraps around my throat. His large grip imprisons me with ease.
The more he stares at me while touching me, the more I need to fall, again and again, until I can’t anymore.
“You feel so good,” he growls in pleasure, thrusting so roughly that I beg for things I once only begged in the privacy of my room, when I was alone, fantasizing about him.
His growing erection pushes into my back just as he flips my body until I’m flush against him. His hand grabs my jaw, fingers tightening, eyes searching my heavy-lidded gaze before he slams his lips to mine.
I let him kiss me. Slowly. Madly. I let him throw me up against the wall and bite and suck down my neck, in between my breasts.
He drops to the floor, kneeling before me, throwing my leg over his shoulder as he gazes up with wonder. And I let his mouth make me feel things I once only thought would remain in my dreams.
I clutch on to his hair, pulling harder as the tantalizing sounds he makes shoot through my core and down my legs.
This is where I belong. With Raph. I don’t want to think of anything else but his mouth on me, his fingers playing with my pussy as he slides one inside me. Then another.
I whisper his name, my body shuddering, and when my legs start to close around him, he parts them roughly and sucks my clit into his mouth, grazing his teeth around it.
“Yes!” I shout without a hint of shame, causing him to look up and drag his lips into a seductive smirk.
“You keep that pretty pussy open for me. I like looking at it.” The bossy, demanding tone from each one of those words triggers the pulsing tempo between my thighs to hasten.
His steely gaze remains on me while the tip of his tongue snakes out and licks me from entrance to clit. I don’t even hear the sounds coming out of me, it’s like they’re set in the distance, belonging to another. All I can feel is him and what he’s doing to me.
I slip toward the edge, close to falling, close to feeling the power he wields over my body. But just as soon as it comes, he stops. I jerk in protest, fists roughing his hair.
He chuckles, peering up, his lips wet, coated with my arousal. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.
“You’re fucking beautiful. You know that, tesoro mio?” Leisurely, he fondles me with a finger, teasing the orgasm once more.
My heart races and breaths shoot out in gasps.
“I should probably tell you how many times I’ve fucked you in my head back then.” He pushes two fingers deeper, curling them, and my head slams against the wall with a heady moan.
“Tell me,” I beg. “Tell me what you did to me.”
My attention finds him once more.
“I want to know,” I pant. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Oh…” He kisses my inner thigh, his other hand curving under my legs, grasping a handful of my ass. “If I’m being honest with myself, the first time I realized how beautiful you were, was when I took you to that dance.”
I gasp from the confession, from his expert fingers making me climb higher. “Oh, God.”
His thumb rolls lazily around my clit. “That’s right. I’m a sinner, a goddamn animal because that was the first time I fucked you in my head. First time I wondered why it wasn’t you I was with, and I hated myself for even thinking about you that way.”
He grunts when I yank his hair.
“Do you still want me knowing that? Knowing the depth of my depravity for you?”
“Yes…” The word drowns out with a strangled sigh. “I want you even more.”
He groans. “That’s a good thing.” His mouth returns to my pussy, pressing a kiss to my most sensitive place. “Because I’m never letting you go.”
And that’s the last thing he says before he finally gives it to me, sucking and flicking until I’m lost to the flaming desire, to the fire that burns through me with ferocious intensity.
I ebb and flow through the countless ripples of pleasure he gives me, while he takes and he takes everything my body gives, until there’s nothing left but my beating heart.
He climbs back up, two palms cradling my face as he stares into me like he sees inside my very soul, like he’s the one who put it there.
“Fuck, I’ve never wanted a single person the way I want you.” His hot breath coasts against my lips while I slowly climb down from the high.
The pads of his fingers return to my center, and he makes my body soar all over again. I thrash and protest, but he pins me to the wall by my throat and doesn’t stop. His eyes are searing, monstrous, as he uses his palm and forces me to ride it.
“I can’t…” I groan even as my body betrays me, like he’s the drug that feeds my own depravity.
“You can.” His lips slide down my neck, teeth scoring down my shoulder. “Give me one more before you come around my cock.”
And those words are all it takes. I’m rising again, and this time, the need is stronger, more intense.
“Oh, God, this is so good.” The gasping thunders from my chest, my nails clawing up and down his back.
His growl is guttural, the vibrations from his chest only pushing me further to the edge.
“The things I want to do to you. Things we haven’t done yet,” he promises. “There’s so much I’m going to teach you.”
“Like what?” I breathe.
“Like how good it’ll feel when I take your ass too.” His touch drops from my throat, and he grabs a fistful of my behind right before he strikes a heavy palm across my flesh.
I yelp…or moan. God, I’m not even sure. Pain morphs with pleasure while a finger eases into my puckered hole.
I instantly tense when one finger plays with me there.
“It’s okay,” he reassures with a tense sway of his tone. “Relax that tight hole and let me finger-fuck it while I thrust inside that sweet pussy.”
And that does it. I instantly obey, my body opening up for him.
“That’s my good girl.” He slides his forefinger inside with ease while his palm continues to ride my core, sending a jolt shooting down the length of me.
I let out a scream of pure undulated pleasure while he takes me from both ends. I’ve never felt more full, more alive in my entire life.
“Oh, baby,” he hisses on a groan. “If you could see yourself right now…”
He goes faster, his tempo beastly, the noises escaping through his lungs animalistic and untamable. I never thought I’d like something like this. Never even imagined it. And now, all I want is to find out how it’d feel if he were fucking my ass.
I pop my behind, pushing it into him while he swallows me up into his hungered gaze.
“Greedy thing, aren’t you?”
“Yes… Harder…” I can’t even recognize the woman talking. She’s someone I once wished I could be.
“You never have to beg me for that, tesoro mio.”
With those words, his thrusts turn rough, and I shatter, screaming out his name, wanting this feeling to never end.
And while my body still revels in pleasure, he lifts me up against the wall, positions his cock at my center, and slams home.
By the end of it, I can’t quite count how many times I’ve actually come.