A broken sob slipped out instead, and when his thumb stroked slowly along the side of my neck, right over my racing pulse, I didn’t pull away.
He was still my enemy.
But in this moment, with terror clawing at my throat and his heat anchoring me to the present, he felt like the only thing keeping me from drowning.
“Loretta,” he said.
My name in his voice always landed heavier than it should — like ownership wrapped in steel.
“I take responsibility for what I did to you three days ago,”
Rafael continued, his tone calm and controlled.
“But I also warned you. Repeatedly. You kept pushing, kept triggering me with every reckless word about Zara. I tried to stop you, but you refused to listen.”
“I won’t show you that side of me again—so long as you keep her name out of your mouth and remember exactly what this marriage is.”
He paused, the silence stretching like a blade.
“The question you’re so desperate to have answered — why I hold Zara in such high esteem despite the rumors that I never loved her — will never be answered. Not by me. Not to you.”
My chest tightened, a sharp, fracturing pain blooming behind my ribs.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the finality in every syllable, the way his voice wrapped around her name like a prayer and a curse.
Zara. The ghost who still owned him.
My throat burned as unwanted tears stung my unseeing eyes.
My heart, already bruised from the snow-kneeling punishment and his earlier rage, shattered cleanly down the middle.
A raw, hollow ache spread through me, stealing my breath.
I pressed a trembling hand to my chest as if I could hold the pieces together, but it only made the emptiness sharper.
He would never love me. Not even a fraction.
I was just... Tess’s caretaker. A blind inconvenience in his cold, powerful world.
“So why did you kiss me like that?” I whispered, my voice cracking despite myself.
The memory burned — his mouth claiming mine with bruising hunger, like he was starving for me, like he couldn’t get enough.
Like I mattered.
“Like you loved me. Like you wanted me so badly you couldn’t stop.”
And the worst part... why did I kiss him back the same way? Like I was dying for it. For him.
