Chapter Five #2
"That's how it starts!" Azar insisted fiercely, stepping closer to the older man desperate for him to understand the romantic narrative she had constructed in her head.
"Men like Raphael, they don't just write poetry and bring flowers.
They are closed off. It starts with the physical.
It starts with lust. I have read it, I have seen it.
He cannot stay away from me, Ewan. He is addicted to me.
The emotional connection will follow. It just takes time for him to understand it. "
"You are living in a delusion," Ewan warned, his voice hardening with a protective fear.
"I love him," Azar said, her voice dropping into a fierce certainty.
She pressed her hand against her chest. "I love him enough for both of us, Ewan.
He will see it one day. Everything is going to work out.
I know that. So I don't need to be jealous of some weeping porcelain doll. I wasn't trying to hurt her."
Ewan looked at the beautiful, brilliant, profoundly naive woman standing before him, realizing with a sinking heart that no amount of logic could penetrate the armor of her romantic delusions.
"Stay away from her, Azar," Ewan said finally, his tone with defeat. "Regardless of your intentions, regardless of the truth, nobody in that house is going to take your side against an allied family. Keep your head down. Do your job. And stay away from Laila Ferro."
Azar let out a short, dismissive breath. "Fine. It doesn't bother me anyway. She's going to run away crying back to the south before the month is over. She's too weak for this place."
As the weeks bled on, the Ferros showed no signs of leaving. Laila remained a quiet, skittish fixture in the main house, perpetually flanked by her mother or Contessa Vittoria.
Azar kept her distance, burying herself in the data feeds and the silent, thrilling anticipation of the nights she spent in Don Raphael’s quarters.
It was near midnight when Azar slipped through the biometric-locked doors of Raphael’s master suite.
The room was bathed in the warm, dim light of a single bedside lamp.
Raphael stood by a mahogany dresser, his back to her as he methodically stripped off his suit jacket and unbuckled the leather shoulder holster that housed his sidearm.
The sprawling ink of his syndicate tattoos rippled across the musculature of his back as he moved.
Azar walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around his solid waist and pressing her cheek against the warm skin of his back.
"You were in the war room late tonight," Azar murmured, her hands tracing the rigid lines of his stomach.
Raphael let out a low, exhausted breath, turning within her embrace and looking down at her. His eyes were heavy with the weight of the empire, but as they swept over her, a familiar, predatory heat began to chase away the exhaustion.
"The northern territories are restless," Raphael said, his voice a gravelly rasp. He reached up, his rough fingers tangling into the waves of her hair. "But I am done with business for the night."
He pulled her closer, his mouth descending toward hers, but Azar gently put a hand against his chest to stop him. She needed to warn him. She was his analyst, his protector in the shadows, and she could not ignore the data.
"Raphael, wait. Listen to me," Azar said, her tone shifting into something serious and professional.
"You need to be careful with the Ferros.
They have been here for weeks, and they gossip constantly.
Giovanni was on an unsecured line today talking about the zoning permits for the docks.
They leak information like a sieve. They are a security risk. "
Raphael’s jaw tightened. The lustful heat in his eyes instantly cooled, replaced by a familiar irritation. He stepped back, dropping his hand from her hair.
"Are we doing this again, Azar?" Raphael asked, his tone dropping into a cold, dangerous register.
Azar frowned, her brow furrowing. "Doing what? I am giving you a threat assessment. The Ferros cannot keep their mouths shut."
"You are obsessed with this family," Raphael gritted out, stalking toward the edge of the bed.
"My mother told me what you did to the girl in the corridor.
You purposefully cornered her and terrified her with talk of snipers and armor-piercing rounds.
And now you are standing in my bedroom, attempting to undermine her father. "
"I was explaining the protocols!" Azar cried, her frustration boiling over. "Why does no one believe me? I am not jealous of Laila! She is a terrified child! I am trying to tell you that her parents are a liability to your operations!"
"You are a liability to my patience tonight," Raphael snapped, turning back to face her, his frame radiating a coiled tension.
"Giovanni Ferro commands the largest lobbying block in the southern hemisphere.
If he wishes to boast on the phone, I will manage the fallout.
But I will not stand here and listen to you fabricate security risks simply because you cannot handle the presence of another woman on my estate. "
The accusation hit her like a physical blow. He wasn't listening to the data. He was looking at her exactly the way the rest of the family did—as a petty, jealous girl driven by emotion.
"I am not fabricating anything!" Azar yelled, stepping toward him, her hands balling into fists. "I am trying to protect your empire! If you would just look at the audio transcripts—"
Raphael didn't let her finish.
He moved with that unnatural speed, crossing the space between them in a single stride. His large hands clamped onto her waist, lifting her off the floor. Azar gasped in shock as he hauled her forward and slammed her down onto the silk-covered bed.
Before she could scramble back or utter another word of protest, Raphael was over her. His hard body pinned her to the mattress trapping her beneath him. His face was inches from hers, his eyes blazing with a feral, monstrous fury that consumed the air in the room.
"I did not bring you in here to listen to you whine about the Ferros," Raphael snarled, his voice a guttural, demonic whisper that sent a violent shiver down her spine. "I do not care about Giovanni’s phone calls. And I do not care about your jealousy. Do you understand me?"
Azar opened her mouth to fight back, to demand that he respect her mind, but Raphael crashed his mouth down onto hers, swallowing her words in a brutal, bruising kiss.
It was a total, violent sensory overload.
There was no tenderness, no romance. It was an assault of pure, dominating lust. He kissed her with an angry, punishing force, his teeth scraping against her lower lip until he tasted the faint metallic tang of her blood.
One of his hands tangled violently into her hair, holding her head in place, while his other hand ruthlessly tore the fabric of her blouse down the center, popping the buttons in a cascade of sound that echoed in the quiet room.
Azar’s rational mind, her data, her warnings—they all shattered like glass.
The annoyance she felt just seconds ago was instantly incinerated by the feral, all-consuming heat of his touch.
She gasped against his mouth, her back arching off the mattress as his rough, calloused hands roamed over her bare skin, claiming her with a possessive brutality that hijacked her nervous system.
"Raphael," she moaned, the sound fractured and desperate. Her hands, which had been balled into angry fists, now opened, her nails digging fiercely into the muscles of his back, pulling him closer, demanding more of the violence he offered.
He did not speak again. He did not need to. He communicated his dominance through every deep, punishing thrust, stripping away her intellect, her pride, and her logic, reducing her to nothing but a creature of pure, desperate instinct beneath him.
The rhythmic creak of the bedframe and the sound of their ragged breathing filled the suite. He consumed her breaking her down until she could not remember why she was angry, until the name Ferro evaporated from her consciousness.
As the explosive, blinding climax finally tore through her, Azar clung to his broad shoulders, sobbing his name into the shadowed air of the room. She was bruised, she was breathless, and her mind was blank.
When Raphael finally collapsed against her, his chest heaving, his face buried in the crook of her neck, Azar closed her eyes. Her fingers weakly stroked his hair.
He is just overwhelmed, she thought, the delusion seamlessly repairing itself in the aftermath of the physical high. He’s stressed. He just needs me to ground him.
She lay there battered and possessed, absolutely convinced that the monster pinning her to the bed was a man falling deeply, irretrievably in love with her.