Chapter 10
Ten
Rafael
She is not mine. Not yet. Not officially.
But every cell in my body screams otherwise.
My pulse ratchets up. Watching her wrap her arms around Drake sends something dark and primal clawing through my chest, a possessive rage that has no business existing in a man who has spent two weeks holding this woman without claiming her.
I couldn’t bring myself to. As heartless as the public thinks I am, I've seem to have found a heart somewhere between the time I took her and now.
I keep my feet planted by the window because if I move, if I cross this room while another man's arms are around her, I will do something that cannot be undone.
Drake is my brother in every way that matters, and I would put a bullet between the eyes of any man who threatened him.
But right now, watching Persia press her face against his chest and thank him for protecting her, I want to tear him apart with my bare hands.
This is not rational. This is not the cold, calculating man I have spent decades becoming.
This is something else entirely, and it terrifies me more than any enemy ever has.
She releases Drake and moves to Rowan, who accepts her embrace with the stiff awkwardness of a man who has forgotten what human warmth feels like. I know the feeling. Before Persia Fiore walked into my club with tears on her face and desperation in her eyes, I had forgotten too.
My brothers leave without a word, reading the violence coiling in my muscles with the ease of men who have watched me destroy empires and enemies alike.
The elevator doors close behind them, and then she turns, and the sweetest angel I have ever shared breathing space with gives me her full attention.
Two weeks. I have had two weeks of this woman in my bed, two weeks of holding her in the dark hours before dawn, two weeks of breathing in her scent and feeling her body mold against mine like she was made to fit there. Two weeks of trying to convince myself that I deserve her.
And every single night, when I curl myself around her and pull her into me, I know the truth. If I touch her, if I dirty her with everything I am and everything I have done, I will be responsible for destroying something pure. For killing an angel.
But looking at her now, with her hair falling loose from its braid and her blouse torn at the shoulder and someone else's blood on her skirt, I realize that keeping my distance has not protected her at all. Magnus found her anyway. The fucker has been a problem in my side for years now and he’s only growing more powerful.
I pause. She has on one of my suit shirts. The buttons are open to reveal a cute tank top. The sleeves are rolled up and the way she has the ends tied around her waist is sexy.
The animal in me roars with pride to know she’s wearing my clothes.
The only way to keep her safe is to make her mine in every way that matters. To claim her so completely that no man alive would dare touch what belongs to Rafael Milano.
My hands find her face, tilting her chin up so I can examine every inch of her for damage. Her aqua eyes are wide and still carrying the glassy sheen of adrenaline, her pulse fluttering visibly in the delicate column of her throat.
“Are you hurt?” This time when I ask, I wait for her to answer instead of cutting her off. The question comes out rougher than I intend, scraping against my vocal cords like broken glass. I try again. “Worrying about people I care for is new to me. Let me try that again. Are you hurt, little dove?”
A delicate smile moves over her soft lips tempting me to kiss her. That will come later, right now I need to hear her speak so I can settle the animals inside me thirsting for blood.
She wraps her fingers around mine where I have her face captured in my palms. “No, Rafael. Your brothers moved fast and effectively in protecting me and eliminating the threat.”
Magnus is a man who doesn’t like to be challenged. He thinks once he claims something as his, everyone else needs to step back. I know because this isn’t the first time I’ve taken something the man wanted out from under him.
“Oh?”
She’s cute when she’s inquisitive and I am pretty sure I see a hint of jealousy glitter in the pretty flecks of moonlight white in her eyes.
“It was real estate instead of a bride, but yes.”
I never get caught up in a woman’s scent or the sweet sound of a soft voice.
But I admit I’m fascinated by Persia. The way her mouth pulls a little on the right when she speaks.
The way she holds your gaze when you speak like she cares about what you have to say.
But what truly has me obsessed is her patience and the kind heart she possesses.
I’ve watched her for two weeks with Marta and the kindness and respect she shows the woman who has saved my life more than once made me want to thaw my own heart.
Persia straightens my stolen shirt where it’s ripped over the swell of her shoulder, trying to hide the scars there no doubt.
The tear reveals a strip of bare shoulder, unmarked except for the faint silver lines of old scars I have been pretending not to notice for two weeks. The blood on her skirt is not hers, thank God, probably from the cut across Drake’s eyebrow.
I inhale and let the adrenaline fully fade from my system.
She is alive. She is whole. She is here.
The relief that floods through me is so intense it borders on pain.
I move my hand around the back of her elegant neck and draw her in, placing a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Drake mentioned something about a gratitude dinner,” I say, forcing my voice into something resembling calm as I guide her toward the living room. “Before everything went to hell.”
Her laugh is brittle, fractured at the edges. Signs of her entering an adrenaline crash.
“I wanted to do something. Anything. I've been sitting in this penthouse for two weeks with nothing to do except wonder what I'm doing here and why you won't—” She stops herself, pressing her lips together like she's afraid of what might come out if she keeps talking.
I settle onto the leather sofa and pull her down beside me, lifting her feet into my lap before she can protest. The sandals she's wearing are covered in dust from the market parking lot, and I slip them off one by one, setting them aside with a care that feels foreign in my hands. These are hands that have signed death warrants and pulled triggers. They have no business touching something as delicate as the arch of the little dove’s foot.
But I do it anyway, pressing my thumbs into the ball of her foot and working out the tension that has been building there for weeks.
She makes a sound that is half gasp, half moan, and the noise goes straight to my cock. I grit my teeth and keep my movements clinical, therapeutic, anything but the worship I want to lay at this woman's feet.
“What are you doing?” She tries to pull away, but I tighten my grip.
“Taking care of you.”
“No one has ever…” She trails off, her voice thick with something I do not want to examine too closely. She straightens her skirt, pulling up the frilly end to give me better access to her feet despite her objections.
I’ve never wanted to hold and kiss a woman so deeply before in my life. She is the complete antithesis of every woman I’ve allowed into my life.
Thick black lashes narrow over aqua blue eyes. Her chest rises and falls with her heavy breathing.
“Why do I feel like you're buttering me up for something?”
Perceptive little dove. Because I am. Because everything I do has an angle, and she is smart enough to see it even when I wish she could not.
I do not answer. I just keep working her foot, letting the silence stretch between us while I try to find the words for a conversation I have been avoiding for fourteen days.
“Tell me about your parents,” she says finally, filling the quiet with a question I was not expecting.
My hands still on her ankle. “Why?”
She crosses her arms, pushing the fullness of her breast higher. The low neck of her tank top gives me a delicious view of what I want to run my lips over.
“That’s easy,” she counters. “Because I've been living in your home for two weeks and I don't know anything about you.
Because you hold me every night like I'm something precious and then disappear before I wake up.
Because I'm sitting here letting you rub my feet after someone just tried to kill me and I don't even know your mother's name. And yet you know everything there is to know about me.”
The accusation in her voice is fair. More than fair. I have given her nothing except confusion and mixed signals and a gilded cage that is starting to feel more like a tomb.
“Elena,” I say finally. "Her name was Elena. She died when I was twelve."
“I'm sorry.”
The tenderness in her words shouldn’t throw me off balance, but they do. No one has cared to ask me about the woman who brought me into this world and loved me when my father only wanted to use me.
I reach out and tap the underside of her chin.
“Thank you, little dove. She was the only good thing in my father's house, and when she was gone, he made sure I understood exactly what I was worth to the Milano empire.” I’m not usually so open.
It feels good to share a piece of me I’ve kept guarded for a very long time.
I work my thumb along the sole of her foot, pressing into the tension gathered there. "I know what it is like to be used for the family business, little dove. To be traded and bartered and sold to the highest bidder. I am not so different from you.”
The confession costs me something I cannot name. I do not talk about my mother. I do not talk about my father or my brother or the childhood that taught me softness was a weakness that would get me killed.
But Persia looks at me with those aqua eyes full of something that might be understanding, and the words keep coming like blood from a wound I forgot I had.