My stomach plummets, hot and heavy, as though it already knows he isn’t supposed to be here.
“How—” My voice breaks, comes back a whisper. “How did you get in?”
He smirks, tilting his head, dark hair falling across one brow. “Doors are for men who knock. I’m not one of them.”
I take a step back, spine brushing the counter. My heart’s pounding so hard I’m sure he can hear it. “Dean?—”
“Dean won’t save you.” Rafe’s words are a low hum, threaded with heat, with threat. “Not from me. Not from what’s coming.”
The tea kettle shrieks, steam curling between us, but neither of us looks away. His eyes pin me, dark and bottomless, gleaming with something I can’t name.
Something dangerous enough to make my body tremble even as my pulse screams to run.
“What do you want?” I whisper, fists tight at my sides.
He moves in slowly, predator-sure, every line of him deliberate. Close enough now that I can smell smoke and leather on his skin. His finger drags lazily down the counter, pausing an inch from my hip.
“I want you to understand.” His voice is a warning wrapped in seduction, the kind that steals the air from my lungs. “You’re living on borrowed time, Brooklyn. Club Z doesn’t forgive. And neither do I.”
I swallow hard, my breath catching as his knuckles graze the edge of my thigh, feather-light, like he’s daring me to move, daring me to call out.
“You don’t belong in his world,” he whispers, eyes dipping to my mouth. “But you’re in it now. Which means you’re mine, too, whether or not he likes it.”
The kettle clicks off. Silence slams back in.
And all I can hear is his last word, echoing like a brand.
Mine.
The steam hasn’t even thinned when he leans closer, his shadow spilling over mine like a trap snapping shut.
“Funny thing about Dean,” Rafe murmurs, voice coiling low in my ear. “He thinks he owns the board. Thinks he can play his little games at Club Z and still keep his sweet little assistant tucked away, untouched. Safe.”
My chest aches, tight and trembling, like he can see right through the skin to where my heart pounds out the truth.
“You’re not safe.” He says it so softly, it’s almost kind. Almost. “Not from him. Not from me. Not from the world he dragged you into the moment you opened his door.”
I shake my head, forcing a whisper past the fear clawing at my throat. “You don’t know me.”
His mouth curves, slow and sharply. “Oh, I know you. I watch what he watches. I hear what he whispers. And I see the way you burn for him even when it terrifies you.” His finger brushes the air between us, so close it feels like heat without touch. “That makes you dangerous. That makes you a target.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. My body feels pinned, but he never actually touches me—just hovers, deliberate, like he knows the tension will hurt worse than contact.
“What do you want from me?” The words scrape out, raw, almost a plea.
Rafe tilts his head, eyes glinting. “Want? I don’t need to want, sweetheart. I take. That’s the difference between me and him. Dean builds cages dressed up as choices. I rip the cage apart.”
His smile widens, wolf-sharp. “But maybe I’ll let you decide which is worse.”
The kettle clicks again as the last of the steam dies off. The silence it leaves is suffocating. I’m gripping the counter so tight my knuckles burn, nails biting into the edge like it’s the only thing keeping me standing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I manage, my voice so thin it barely exists.
“I should be everywhere he is.” He finally lets his gaze travel down my body, slow enough that I feel stripped bare, his smirk deepening when I shift under the weight of it. “Because sooner or later, Brooklyn, you’ll see it—” His eyes cut back to mine, sudden, piercing. “—he can’t keep you from me. Not forever. Not when the clock’s already running.”
He leans in just enough that I feel the heat of his breath on my cheek, the softest brush of a promise meant to unsettle.
“Borrowed time, sweetheart.”
