Chapter 12 #2
His mouth moved with ruthless precision, angling deeper, tongue tracing the seam of my lips until I opened for him with a broken gasp.
The world dissolved.
There was only Rafael—his scorching breath mingling with mine, the way every brush of his tongue felt like both punishment and surrender.
He kissed me like he owned me.
Like he’d been starving for this—for me—and the worst part was how perfectly I fit against him, how desperately I kissed him back.
My mind screamed at me to stop.
But my body refused to listen.
But then the memories of three days ago came crashing back.
I pulled away with a sharp gasp, not completely breaking free, but enough to draw breath.
My chest rose and fell too quickly as my lungs struggled to keep pace with the sudden return of reality.
This was madness.
Kissing the man who had forced me to kneel in the snow until I collapsed was the height of foolishness.
Yet I couldn’t deny what had just happened.
I didn’t know how I had responded so completely to his kiss. Unless, somewhere along the way, feelings had begun to take root without my knowledge—feelings I needed to bury immediately, before they grew into something far more dangerous.
The realization unsettled me.
I hadn’t known he could affect me this much.
I hated the way his mouth made me forget. Hated the way a single kiss could blur anger, humiliation, and common sense. Which was precisely why leaving him was no longer something I was merely considering—it had become a necessity.
But even as we remained on the hospital bed, both of us breathing hard from the kiss, Rafael’s hand never loosened its hold on me.
He still hadn’t let me go.
It tightened instead.
A firm anchor at my waist.
My heart hammered violently as I tilted my face away slightly, trying to create distance I couldn’t see but could feel.
He didn’t move. Just hovered.
Heat lingered between us like a third presence.
“The remainder of your recovery will take place under my roof,” Rafael said. “You have stayed here long enough. We are leaving.”
Before I could point out that I had not been discharged and that the doctors would likely object, he bent and lifted me into his arms.
A startled breath caught in my throat.
One moment I was lying on the hospital bed; the next, I was cradled against his chest, my feet no longer touching the floor.
I tensed instinctively, one hand catching at his shoulder out of reflex, the other hovering in midair as I tried to orient myself.
“Rafael—” I started.
He didn’t respond.
He simply carried me out of the hospital, and I was too disoriented to register whether anyone tried to stop him.
We moved quickly.
I felt the shift as he reached the car, heard the door open, and then I was lowered gently onto the back seat.
“Lie back,” he said flatly.
Before I could argue, he adjusted me into position, making sure I was resting properly before closing the door.
A moment later, the driver’s door opened and he slid in.
The engine started.
The car began to move.
Exhaustion weighed down on me in waves.
I was too weak, too drained to form a single question, let alone protest what he had done or where he was taking me.
The rhythm of the road blurred everything into a heavy, drifting haze.
I must have fallen asleep.
Because the next time I became aware of anything, the car had stopped.
The door opened.
And Rafael was there again—lifting me out of the vehicle as though I weighed nothing, carrying me toward the house without a word.
The air changed immediately—the outside night replaced by the familiar interior scent of polished wood.
His steps were steady.
I hated that I could feel the difference.
A few moments later, the motion stopped. He had carried me into a room—but it wasn’t mine. I realized it the second I inhaled. The scent was wrong. Masculine, unfamiliar, clean in a way that didn’t belong to me.
The mattress dipped beneath me as he lowered me down with careful precision.
As if I still required handling.
I immediately curled inward without thinking, knees drawn up, arms wrapping around them as though I could contain the chaos inside my chest by physically holding myself together.
The shame came second.
Hot under my skin.
I shouldn’t have kissed him back the way I did.
I should have slapped him the second his lips landed on mine.
But I hadn’t. Instead, I had melted into the heat of him like a traitor, my mouth opening, my tongue meeting his in a desperate, furious dance I couldn’t take back.
Shame burned hotter than the lingering taste of him on my lips.
Now I couldn’t see his expression. Couldn’t see his face.
All I had was the heavy, unmoving presence of him standing beside the bed, close enough that the heat of his body wrapped around me like a cage.
My fingers twisted into the sheets as I tried to find the words to tell him to leave.
To get out. To stop haunting me.
But then his voice came—low, rough.
“While you were unconscious,” he said, voice low and lethal, “I hunted down every last one of your father’s clients. The men who dared lay their filthy hands on you.”
He trailed off, letting the silence stretch just long enough to make my stomach drop. ““They’re chained in my warehouse like the animals they are. And by morning, they’ll scream for the mercy they never showed you... right before I carve it out of them myself.”
My entire body went ice-cold.
Past memories slammed into me like a fresh blow—rough hands, laughter that still echoed in my nightmares, the metallic stink of that cell.
Fear crashed over me so violently I was back there again, helpless and broken.
My throat tightened so viciously I couldn’t draw a proper breath.
My chest heaved in shallow, useless gasps as my body began to shake uncontrollably.
I clenched my fists so hard I felt the sharp sting of nails cutting into my palms, warm blood slicking my skin.
I hated hearing words about that particular period of my life.
Hated that he knew.
Hated that the monster standing next to my bed had just handed me the one thing I’d never dared to dream of—vengeance—while still feeling like the enemy who had stolen my freedom.
I sensed him shift closer.
The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge of the bed.
One large hand reached out, his fingers brushing my trembling shoulder with a gentleness that didn’t match the violence he’d just promised.
The same hand that had gripped my waist and tilted my head during that devastating kiss.
“Breathe, Loretta,” he murmured, voice dark and intimate, far too close to my ear. “They will never touch you again. No one will. Not while I’m breathing.”
I wanted to scream at him. To shove him away. To tell him I didn’t need his protection or his bloody gifts.
But my body betrayed me again—just like it had when I kissed him back.
A broken sob slipped out instead, and when his thumb stroked slowly along the side of my neck, right over my racing pulse, I didn’t pull away.
He was still my enemy.
But in this moment, with terror clawing at my throat and his heat anchoring me to the present, he felt like the only thing keeping me from drowning.
“Loretta,” he said.
My name in his voice always landed heavier than it should — like ownership wrapped in steel.
“I take responsibility for what I did to you three days ago,”
Rafael continued, his tone calm and controlled.
“But I also warned you. Repeatedly. You kept pushing, kept triggering me with every reckless word about Zara. I tried to stop you, but you refused to listen.”
“I won’t show you that side of me again—so long as you keep her name out of your mouth and remember exactly what this marriage is.”
He paused, the silence stretching like a blade.
“The question you’re so desperate to have answered — why I hold Zara in such high esteem despite the rumors that I never loved her — will never be answered. Not by me. Not to you.”
My chest tightened, a sharp, fracturing pain blooming behind my ribs.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the finality in every syllable, the way his voice wrapped around her name like a prayer and a curse.
Zara. The ghost who still owned him.
My throat burned as unwanted tears stung my unseeing eyes.
My heart, already bruised from the snow-kneeling punishment and his earlier rage, shattered cleanly down the middle.
A raw, hollow ache spread through me, stealing my breath.
I pressed a trembling hand to my chest as if I could hold the pieces together, but it only made the emptiness sharper.
He would never love me. Not even a fraction.
I was just... Tess’s caretaker. A blind inconvenience in his cold, powerful world.
“So why did you kiss me like that?” I whispered, my voice cracking despite myself.
The memory burned — his mouth claiming mine with bruising hunger, like he was starving for me, like he couldn’t get enough.
Like I mattered.
“Like you loved me. Like you wanted me so badly you couldn’t stop.”
And the worst part... why did I kiss him back the same way? Like I was dying for it. For him.