“You don’t get to take that back,” he said.
“I’m not trying to.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and full of unspoken things. I didn’t know what I expected—that he’d pull away, that he’d break the moment with another filthy promise. But he didn’t. He stayed inside me, his breath slowing, grounding us both.
Finally, he eased out, careful. Like I was something breakable now, even after the violence of what we’d just done. He turned me around and pressed his forehead to mine, one hand curlingaround my jaw, the other sliding into my hair. Holding me there. Seeing me.
His thumb brushed my cheekbone. “You’re shaking.”
“No shit,” I whispered.
His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I said, and meant it. “You ruined me. That’s not the same thing.”
He didn’t speak. Just studied me like I was the first thing he’d ever learned to read. And I let him, standing bare in front of him, sweat cooling on my skin, legs unsteady, heart even more so.
“I meant it,” he said after a moment. “All of it. You slap me like that again, I will mark you in every room of this house. But I’ll still wrap you in a blanket after. I’ll still carry you to bed. I’ll still stay.”
My breath hitched. “Why?”
His gaze sharpened. “Because no one else ever has. Because you look at me like you don’t care what parts of me are broken, so long as they belong to you.”
I closed my eyes, chest tight. “I don’t know how to stop wanting you.”
He pulled me against him again, bare skin on bare skin, his mouth at my ear. “Good. Because I’m not going to let you try.”
He didn’t kiss me again. Not yet. He just stood there, arms locked around me like he was holding everything we couldn’t say in place. I pressed my face into his shoulder and exhaled, tasting salt and something quieter.
I stared into the dark, pulse still skipping, mind still catching up to what my body had already accepted.
This wasn’t about falling in love.
It was about falling out of resistance.
I’d crossed a line, and not because he pushed me over it.
Because I walked.
Because I wanted to.
Because part of me liked the way his violence felt like reverence. The way he held me after—quiet, firm, certain—like I was something rare. Not fragile. Justchosen.
I didn’t whisper any declarations into the dark.
I didn’t pretend this was something beautiful.
I just breathed.
We were both too raw to speak. Too full of everything we’d done. What it meant. What it didn’t.
But one thing was clear, even now, even in the wreckage of it:
I wasn’t afraid of Rafe Conti.
I was afraid of what I’d become if I fully allow myself to be his.
22
