Raphael’s voice rumbled through his chest, and I tightened my grip on his shirt, fisting the expensive fabric like it could anchor me.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.Once.Twice.A third time, insistent and angry.
He didn’t move to answer it, but I felt the tension enter his body.The shift from man holding me to predator scenting danger.His muscles coiled beneath my hands, and his breathing changed, going shallow and controlled.
“You should get that.”
“It can wait.”
“It’s been buzzing for five minutes.”I pulled back far enough to look at his face.Something shifted there, gone too fast to name.His jaw had tightened, and his eyes had that distant quality they got when he was calculating, strategizing.“What’s wrong?”
The phone buzzed again.He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and his expression went carefully blank.The kind of blank that was its own tell.
“Someone touched what belongs to me.”The words came out low.Dangerous.His jaw was tight, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.“I’m going to deal with it.”
“Now?”
“Now.”He cupped my face in his hands, but there was nothing gentle about the grip.Possessive.Commanding.His thumbs pressed against my cheekbones like he was memorizing the shape of my skull.“You’ll stay at the hotel.And you won’t let anyone close enough to touch you.”
The intensity in his voice made my breath catch.This wasn’t protection.This was ownership.This was a man marking his territory before he left to destroy whatever had threatened it.
“Raphael, what?—”
“Don’t ask questions I can’t answer.”His grip tightened.“Just do as I say.This once, Lena.Trust that I know what I’m doing.”
I should have pushed.Should have demanded to know what was happening, who had touched what was his, why he looked like he was about to tear someone apart with his bare hands.But the look in his eyes stopped me.The rage there wasn’t directed at me.It was directed at something else.Someone else.And underneath the rage was something I’d never seen before in him.
Fear.
“Okay.”
He kissed me.Not the gentle press of lips against forehead that had become familiar, but something primal.Consuming.His mouth moved over mine like he was taking what might be his last taste of me, tongue sliding against mine, teeth catching my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.When he pulled back, his eyes had gone dark, the brown almost swallowed by black, and I could taste copper where he’d bitten me.
“You’re mine,” he said against my mouth.“Whatever happens tonight, remember that.You belong to me.And I protect what’s mine.”
“Tonight,” I whispered back.A question.A plea.
“Tonight.”His thumb traced the blood on my lip, smearing it.“When this is done, I’m going to show you exactly what it means to be owned by me.Every inch of you.Every part you’ve been holding back.”His voice dropped to a growl.“Be ready.”
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him, and I was standing alone in my office touching my lips and wondering when I’d become the kind of woman who watched the door after a man left.
I didn’t go back to my spreadsheets.Instead, I grabbed my coat and my keys and walked out the service entrance, past the kitchens where Ratty called after me in confusion, through the alley to where my car sat waiting in the employee lot.
The hospital was twenty minutes away.I made it in fifteen.
My father’s room hadn’t changed since my last visit.Same sterile white walls.Same beeping monitors.Same smell of antiseptic and illness that never quite masked the underlying scent of decay.He lay in the bed like a stranger wearing my father’s face, thinner than I remembered, his skin papery and gray against the bleached sheets.
I pulled the chair closer to his bedside and sat down heavily.
“Hi, Dad.”
The machines beeped their steady rhythm.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here more.”My voice sounded wrong in the quiet room.Too loud.Too alive.“The hotel… things have been complicated.”
That was an understatement of epic proportions.
I reached out and took his hand.His fingers were cold, limp, unresponsive.Nothing like the firm handshake he’d used to greet business partners, the warm grip he’d squeeze my shoulder with when I was young and had done something to make him proud.
