I should have been furious.
I should have slapped him.
I should have stepped back.
Instead—
My body betrayed me.
I could feel the thunder of his heart hammering against my chest, a wild, barely leashed rhythm that betrayed the iron control he was fighting to keep.
His lips crashed into mine again, no hesitation this time—hot, insistent.
The kiss deepened before I could even think to push him away, turning the sharp shock of contact into something dangerously addictive.
His mouth moved with ruthless precision, angling deeper, tongue tracing the seam of my lips until I opened for him with a broken gasp.
The world dissolved.
There was only Rafael—his scorching breath mingling with mine, the way every brush of his tongue felt like both punishment and surrender.
He kissed me like he owned me.
Like he’d been starving for this—for me—and the worst part was how perfectly I fit against him, how desperately I kissed him back.
My mind screamed at me to stop.
But my body refused to listen.
But then the memories of three days ago came crashing back.
I pulled away with a sharp gasp, not completely breaking free, but enough to draw breath.
My chest rose and fell too quickly as my lungs struggled to keep pace with the sudden return of reality.
This was madness.
Kissing the man who had forced me to kneel in the snow until I collapsed was the height of foolishness.
Yet I couldn’t deny what had just happened.
I didn’t know how I had responded so completely to his kiss. Unless, somewhere along the way, feelings had begun to take root without my knowledge—feelings I needed to bury immediately, before they grew into something far more dangerous.
The realization unsettled me.
I hadn’t known he could affect me this much.
I hated the way his mouth made me forget. Hated the way a single kiss could blur anger, humiliation, and common sense. Which was precisely why leaving him was no longer something I was merely considering—it had become a necessity.
But even as we remained on the hospital bed, both of us breathing hard from the kiss, Rafael’s hand never loosened its hold on me.
He still hadn’t let me go.
It tightened instead.
A firm anchor at my waist.
My heart hammered violently as I tilted my face away slightly, trying to create distance I couldn’t see but could feel.
