The mattress dipped as he leaned closer, his presence swallowing the space around me.
“You still don’t understand, do you, Loretta?” His voice was velvet over steel, dark and possessive. “You’re not leaving. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. You belong to me.”
My breath caught, but I forced the words out. “I’m not your property.”
“No. Property can be bought. Property can be sold. Property can be replaced. You are something infinitely more catastrophic than that, Loretta.”
My breath faltered.
“Hate me if you must. God knows I’ve given you reason enough—especially after what I did three days ago.”
His jaw tightened. “Despise me. Curse my name. Make me pay for it every day for the rest of my life if that brings you satisfaction.”
His hand closed around mine.
“But leaving me?” he said quietly. “Bury that delusion, Loretta. Deep.”
I lifted my chin, refusing to shrink from the heat of him. “The second I’m discharged from this hospital, I’m calling my brother. He’ll pull me so far from your reach you’ll never touch me again.”
A bitter laugh escaped him. “You think he can protect you from me?”
“If necessary, yes.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
“You want a war, Rafael?” I asked. “Then you’ll have one waiting on your doorstep.”
Rafael’s grip on my hands tightened almost painfully, his body leaning closer until his lips brushed my ear. “War?” His voice was a velvet growl, thick with obsession.
“I’d slaughter armies for you, Loretta. Burn cities. Your brother, your family, the whole fucking world—none of them matter. You’re already mine. And I will chain you to me so completely you’ll forget what freedom even feels like.”
The raw intensity in his voice stole the air from my lungs.
I opened my mouth to retort, but there was no time.
His mouth crashed down on mine.
Hard. Absolute. Starving.
It was not the kiss of a conqueror, but of a man losing a battle with his own restraint.
His lips devoured mine with ferocious possessiveness, sucking and nipping as if he had been denied this for years.
A helpless shudder tore through me as liquid heat flooded my veins.Whiskey and sin.
The scrape of his stubble. The way his free hand slid to my waist, fingers digging in like he needed to anchor me to this earth.
My hands rose instinctively to push him away, but the moment they met the solid wall of his chest, they betrayed me.
Fingers curled into his shirt, clutching the fabric as his tongue swept inside, coaxing, demanding, claiming every inch of my mouth.
A broken moan slipped from my throat—he swallowed it greedily, tilting my head back to deepen the kiss until the world narrowed to nothing but him.
My body arched toward his against my will, melting under the relentless hunger of his kiss.
Anger, fear, and something far more dangerous twisted together inside me.
When he finally pulled back, just enough for our ragged breaths to tangle, he pressed his forehead to mine.
