Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
RAFE
The lights were low in the warehouse, like when we’d raided homes at dawn and dusk to ferret out people building explosives. Those houses always stank of sulfur, smoke, metal, and chemicals—the combination harsh and lingering. Here, however, smelled of leather, oil, and sex, with just a little of the lingering beefy smell from dinner.
The odors in the MC’s warehouse were warm and enticing. And the scene we’d walked into sent all my blood rushing straight to my cock.
Adelina.
Naked and bound.
And biting her lower lip like she was in the throes of pleasure.
Sas had taken a step back from Adelina and his handy work, and Graff touched the curve of her waist. “Her skin’s like silk.”
The artist’s eyes roamed over her arms to the ropes binding her wrists and then across her back. Reverently, the tips of his fingers traced the lines of her belladonna tattoo.
Graff seemed awestruck when he said, “I could draw her like this—vulnerable and needy.”
Even I could tell she needed this by the small noises she made in her throat and the way she squirmed toward his touch.
“Do you want to touch?” Graff’s eyes flashed up to me. “None of the prospects and brothers are here, so no reason to hide.”
None of my soldiers.
None of my C.O.s.
No one to stop this siege.
I shook my head.
“Holding yourself back?” Sas crossed his arms over his chest as Graff touched Adelina again.
She responded to every graze of his fingers over her curves, jerking away at first and then leaning in. Graff closed his eyes for a moment, seemingly soaking in the way her body responded to his caresses. She had been ready for a while; I had seen it in the way she appraised men while she was out in the evenings. It had been apparent in how she flirted with Graff, how she fought Sas, and...
How she returned my kiss after the gun range.
The violent kiss she forced on me earlier.
Did she have any clue we were all here for her?
Her ripeness and readiness glowed on her skin, like she was a red apple in need of being speared. As though she were just waiting for someone to take the shot, toying with them.
With me.
But the shot. .. I winced, my body in the warehouse, but hearing the desert. Listening to raids. Sniper rifles firing singular sharp cracks, followed by a brief echo. Then the Brownings’ more powerful bursts of rapid fire. Or a thump and distant explosion.
I closed my eyes and shuddered.
It would pass. Always did.
I focused on the sound of Adelina’s breathy moans.
Not there, Rafe. No guns, Captain. Come back. Come back, I chanted to myself until I could keep my mind here, grounded in the present.
“Yo!” Sas barked and snapped his fingers until I glared daggers at him. “You playing or what?”
“I’ll watch,” I uttered like it was a compromise.
I couldn’t leave her to them without ensuring she was well and happy with this situation. I needed to be ready to protect her if something went awry. Those, at least, are the things I told myself as I leaned against the wall.
“No,” snarled Sas.
Graff snapped back his hand as though he had overstepped. But the order was for me.
Adelina whimpered on the table and turned her head left and right, searching for absent touch.
“Not from there, Uncle.” Sas pointed to the far end of the table, his eyes hard with the order.
But I didn’t hear Sas.
My right eye and ear twitched as I heard my old C.O., Colonel Hayes after I’d just lost three soldiers to a car bomb: “Sit your ass, Captain, and listen up.”
“No,” I said, more to the voice in my head than to Sas.
However, the VP cocked his head as he stared me down. “No? Who do you...”
That I was already moving for the chair quelled anything else he had to say.
Taking the chair opposite where Adelina was, I turned it around and straddled it, leaning onto the back. I also knocked twice on the table. She wouldn’t hear it, but perhaps she could feel it and be reassured that she had someone there to watch over her.
When I folded my arms again and rested my chin on my wrist, Sas asked, “Do you like the view?”
I studied her face behind the blindfold, desperate to make sure she wanted what Sas was clearly intent on doing to her. But, at the same time, I liked it more than I wanted to admit. The black blindfold against her creamy skin with just a hint of olive, her arms tied down and her body exposed, and her heavy brown fall of hair spread over the wooden surface.
She was perfection all tied up in a sexy little blue-ball-inducing package.
“Yeah,” I rasped out, then cleared my throat and admitted, “I do.”