I smile as Scarlett shrieks with delight, launching a full-scale sneak attack on Rory’s sandcastle. He gasps like she’s committed treason, then lunges with a roar and scoops her up. Her red curls whip around as he spins her in wild, laughing circles, her joy louder than the waves. She fiddles with his pendant crest.
I press a hand to my chest, watching them, my heart somehow both aching and overflowing.
A little farther down the beach, Jude is sitting cross-legged in the sand, reading to our almost-three-year-old son, Jasper Vincent. He’s tucked against Jude’s side, their heads tilted toward the same page, his soft golden skin and rich brown curls glinting in the evening sun.
Seth sits in the sand with Atlas, our fifteen-month-old, trying to show him how to play with the wooden dinosaurs he carved—knocking them together, growling dramatically. But Atlas is far more interested in the sand, his chubby fingers digging in search of seashells or treasures only he can see. Seth keeps at it anyway, his patience endless, his grin wide and foolish, and I swear I feel my ovaries clench.
Vincent walks the shoreline with Pew Pew on a leash, looking like something out of a quirky seaside noir. His hoodie flaps in the breeze, his eyes drifting now and then toward the horizon like he’s expecting a kraken to emerge from the waves that only he can defeat. And protect us all.
And me? I stand here, wearing a loose royal purple dress with a black corset, perfect for autumn. It’s been a few months since I weaned Atlas, so I have the piercings again.
I can’t seem to drink it all in without drowning.
This beach. These babies. These men. This peace.
I didn’t think I’d live to see it, much less have it. And even now, part of me keeps waiting for the tide to take it all back. But Raphael helps most with that. He smells like the forest since he just returned from a week-long hunting venture, still dressed in his black clothes and gear strapped to his back. And his cap, black this time. I replace it every year.
He would never leave us alone on Halloween.
Raphael turns his head, and his eyes meet mine like he already knows where my thoughts have gone.
He doesn’t say anything, just leans in, brushes his shoulder against mine, and lets me feel it. The warmth. The realness.
Raw. Real. Alive.
I ease a heavy sigh of utter contentment, rest my head on his shoulder, and murmur, “Thank you.”
He doesn’t move. Or respond. But judging by his sharp intake of breath and the flexing of his muscles beneath my head, I know he understands.
“For Level 5,” I finish.
I smile at the strands of his hair wisping across my forehead.
I inhale, taking him in, and inch my hand closer until I touch his wrist. He doesn’t flinch, so I ask, “When did you know?”
I think back to all the milestones. The first night I swung that axe, and he stopped me. The first time he took me in the Initiation. The arrow. The Truth or Dare revelations.
“When did you know I was the girl with the purple hair?” I ask, tilting my chin up, my lungs stripped when I find his tilted down. Our mouths are a thread from one another. And I can feel his warmth on my face.
Silence thickens, and I hold his gaze without shrinking.
Raphael parts his lips. “The moment you bumped into me. And looked up at me. You did the same thing all those years ago in the foster home.”
“Except, I didn’t hug you in the woods,” I point out with a smile.
I love it when the corners of his mouth tug up in that subtle way, proving only I have that effect on him. He is no less beautiful and brutal since that night in the woods. Sculpted and striking features with soul-piercing eyes, he still steals all the air from my lungs and the sanity from my soul.
Lowering his head, Raphael seizes my mouth, commanding me with the power of his jaw, rendering me a prisoner. The only man who can make me feel like a slave and a queen at the sametime. He anchors his hand at the back of my spine, so I can’t move until I am utterly under his control, his possession.
A fever of lust spreads through me as he devastates me with his tongue and sends my pulse spinning.
Raphael doesn’t love like other men. He can’t.
Heconsumes.
What he feels for me doesn’t come in words or warmth. It’s obsession, sharpened to a blade’s edge, a blade dancing in flames. It’s not affection. It’s need.
It’svore. A ravenous, primal instinct to devour what he can never be.
