"No one looks at what is mine," he says. "Not while I can't fucking touch you myself."
The room tilts slightly.
I open my mouth. I close it. There is genuinely nothing in my vocabulary that feels adequate for this moment, while I'm sitting in silk that hides nothing and he's standing there like he's made a decision about something.
He picks up my robe from the stool and holds it out for me.
I take it with shaky hands and put it on.
“Come.” He turns and walks out of the kitchen and I follow him because my body is apparently a sucker for commands from Rafael. We go up the stairs, down the corridor, through the door to the suite, and the air between us is so thick with everything unsaid and everything undone that I feel it physically, a pressure across my chest, a heat along my skin that the robe does nothing to cool.
He goes to the bed. My side. Pulls the covers back and waits with his eyes on me until I get in.
I get in and he tucks me in. Leaning so close to me that I immediately hold my breath.
He walks around to his side. Gets in beside me. Under the covers.
I jerk up. “Hey!”
“Go to bed, Gia.”
“But…” What do I say? You always sleep on the cover and now you’re sleeping in it and it’s bad for my health?
I huff in annoyance and lie on my back again.
I feel the shift of the mattress, the warmth of him suddenly present through the sheets, closer than any distance I know how to manage right now.
I stare at the ceiling. The warmth of him seeps through the sheets between us, steady and impossible to ignore. My body is still on fire, the low persistent throb that will not let me alone. I lie here completely rigid and accept that sleep is simply not going to happen.
The man beside me breathes. Slow and even, like the darkness is a decision he made.
Minutes pass. The room is silent except for the sound of our breathing. His is deeper, slower. Mine is shallow, trying to be quiet. The heat between my thighs has become a persistent ache, a physical demand that my mind is trying to ignore. My guilt is still there, the swallowed stone in my chest, but it’s competing now with something sharper, something hungrier.
I shift on the mattress, a tiny movement to relieve the pressure. The silk of my nightdress slides against my skin. The lace hem brushes my thighs. I feel every thread.
“Stop moving,”he says into the dark.
His voice is quiet. It lands in the silence and spreads.
I freeze. My heart kicks against my ribs.“I wasn’t?—”
“You were.”
I don’t answer.
I thought he was sleeping.
The silence stretches. It becomes a thing with weight. I can feel him beside me, not moving, just existing, a presence so large it feels like it’s pressing against me from across the sheets.
Another minute passes. The ache is worse. I need to move. I need to press my thighs together tighter, to shift my hips, to do something to relieve the building tension. I try to do it slowly, imperceptibly.
The mattress dips. He moves. Not away. Toward me.
His hand finds my hip under the covers. His palm is hot, large, spanning the curve of my bone through the thin silk. He grabs my hips and just stays there. “Stop. Moving.”
My breath stops entirely.
Well, fuck me.
