Rafe

by Jo Raven

  It’s as if the need has been unleashed—the need for her, the need for pleasure—and I can’t hold back anymore.

  She’s so ready, her nipples hard, her breathing fast, her pussy clamping around my fingers. I pull them out and bend over the side of the bed, snagging my jeans and fishing a condom out of the pocket.

  I tear the package and roll it on quickly, careful with the piercings and gritting my teeth as the pressure increases. I give my cock one slow stroke, then look down at her…and go utterly still.

  Uncertainty is written all over her pretty face. Shit. After the way she took over, undressing, distracting me, taking me in her hand and making me come like that, I didn’t think…

  Oh no. Doubt hits me like a lash. “Meg… You’ve done this before, right?”

  “Sure.” But she doesn’t look me in the eye.

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  Her fine nostrils flare. “Of course I am.”

  Okay. So far, so good. “And you enjoyed it?”

  She hesitates. “It was okay.”

  “Okay? Just okay?” On more solid ground now, I chew on the inside of my cheek to stop from grinning. Not a virgin, and nothing dark to hold her back. Thank God. “That means you had a bad lover.”

  She shrugs.

  A thought hits me and I lose the grin. “Was it the fucker who kissed you at the coffee shop?”

  She isn’t looking at me, so I take her chin in a gentle grip and turn her face back toward me.

  “You sure you two aren’t still together?” The words are like bitter drops on my tongue, but I have to know.

  “We went out for two months last summer,” she says. She blows out a breath. “And yes, he was the one.”

  The thought of her with anyone else, let alone that fucker, pisses the hell out of me. I press my hard-on between her legs, rubbing the head over her wet entrance, and kiss her lightly on the lips.

  “I’ll show you how it’s really supposed to be.” I feel her shiver and draw her lower lip between my teeth for a moment, before releasing it. “Do you want me to?”

  She nods, her gaze on my mouth.

  “Say it.” I nudge her entrance again, and her neck arches. Her breath leaves her lungs in a huff.

  “Say what?”

  “Say, I want you to fuck me, Rafe.”

  A blush moves up her neck to her cheeks. “I… I want…”

  “Say it, Meg.” Shit, her nervousness, her blushing skin is turning me on so bad. Plus, the feel of her warmth is so damn distracting where my hard-on rubs along her seam.

  “Fuck me,” she whispers. “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Damn.” Hadn’t realized how my body would react to her speaking the words. My balls draw up so fucking tight I groan and have to drop my head and breathe through clenched teeth, or risk coming on the spot. “You’re smoking hot, Megan.”

  Slowly I push into her, resisting the urge to ram into her all the way. Her heat envelops me, tightening around me as I sink balls-deep into her body. Her mouth falls open, and she rolls her hips, taking me deeper. Her legs wrap around my hips.

  “You feel so damn good,” I rasp, my eyes almost rolling up in my head at the pressure, the heat, the sensation of her surrounding me. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”

  What I deserve and don’t deserve don’t matter right now. What I need is to show her how incredible this can be. What I want is to make her come so hard she won’t ever look at another man again.

  Mine. She’s mine. Never felt this way before. Never wanted a girl so much. Never felt so easy in my skin, so good.

  Oh damn, I’m so fucked. I’m—

  She whimpers, her heels digging into the back of my thighs, her hands fisting in the covers. Her tits are tempting me, so round and full, the tips so dark and hard, and I dip my head to taste them again, when she clenches around me.

  Fuuuck… Can’t remember what I was thinking. My stomach muscles contract, my balls ache, and my dick is a second away from exploding. Dammit, not yet.

  Planting one hand on the bed to support myself, I slide the other between us, searching for her clit. She moans when I touch it, circle it, flick it lightly with my thumb. I need to see where we’re joined, where I’m entering her, and I raise myself up—changing the angle.

  Fucking hell. She cries out, and I stifle a shout of my own when her inner walls flutter, then tighten around me like a fist.

  “Meg… Fuck.” I trail my thumb down, to where my cock slides in and out of her, slippery wet, and it’s so hot it blows my mind. “God, you’re gonna make me come so hard.”

  I massage her folds as I pull out slightly and plunge back inside, and she squeezes around me, again and again.

  “God, I love fucking you,” I groan, ramming inside her harder, and she calls out my name as she comes, her eyes closed, her face flushed.

  That’s all I need to tip right over the edge, following her. Impossible not to, when she’s so unbearably sexy, when it’s my name on her lips as she loses control.

  So damn beautiful. Damn… My balls tighten, my muscles seize, and the dam breaks in a wave of fire. I groan, rocking my hips, withdrawing my hand from between our bodies to slam it on the mattress, holding on as I ride the ripples of pleasure—pure, crazy good pleasure that takes my breath away.

  My body crashes down, and I barely manage to catch myself from falling on top of her, lost in her delicious warmth. I roll to her side, struggling to breathe through the last tremors. She sighs and curls close to me, her hand stroking my cheek. She buries her fingers in my hair and pets is.

  It’s soothing. I pull her to me. Feels nice. Good. Softness and silky skin, her sweet scent and loose hair, her closeness.

  Too good. Too easy to lose myself in her.

  And I want to. So fucking much. I’d stay here with her, forever, keeping her safe in my arms, burying myself in her body until we can’t do it anymore, and then fall asleep together in her bed, away from the world.

  Locked inside together.

  But life takes the choice out of my hands, as it likes to do. My cell beeps with a new message. I turn and reach for it, thoughtlessly checking to see what it is.

  It’s Mage, telling me that Clyde, the gang leader I contacted about getting me into the underground fight club, agreed to meet me. I never met the guy, but Ralph, another gang leader I happen to know, got me the meeting.

  I sit up, stare at the message on the tiny screen, and reality crashes down around my ears. Cold washes through me, turning my insides to ice. Why tonight of all nights? Why can’t I have one evening with my girl?

  My girl…

  This is a fantasy, an illusion. The longer I linger, the harder it’ll be to end it, won’t it? Because it sounds like Clyde can help me. The game is on, and oh fuck, Megan…

  I glance at her, lying there, naked and damn beautiful, wanting me, wanting the man she thinks I am, someone good and nice, someone I’m not.

  It’s time. Time to make sure she stays away from me, that she stays safe. Deal with her stalker, make sure she is offered another job—and push her away, make sure she hates me enough to avoid me.

  Even if it breaks me all over again, and this time with no hope of forgiveness.

  Chapter Eleven

  Megan

  I’m still coming down from the most intense orgasm of my life, and I want Rafe to hold me. I want to snuggle, curl on his strong body and trace his many tattoos and scars.

  Scars. I’ve felt them on his arms, thin ones, covered in colorful ink. Then there’s the big one on his left shoulder, front and back, as if something went right through and tore his flesh up.

  I shudder.

  So many questions on my mind, so much more of his body I want to map. That rippling eight-pack, the broad shoulders, the bulging pecs. The muscular back he has now turned toward me as he checks something on his phone.

  I lift my hand to touch his warm skin, but before I do, his spine stiffens and he straightens. I hear a muffled grunt, and then
he’s standing up and stepping away from the bed.

  Smoke and darkness. Something’s off, I know it as every muscle in that perfect, beautiful body tenses. His eyes, when he finally turns to look at me, are shadowed and guarded.

  “I have to go,” he says, and swallows hard.

  “You could stay.” I know it’s a lost cause before he answers, when a flash of sorrow goes over his handsome features, and then his expression closes up completely.

  “This was a mistake.”

  “No.” My eyes sting as I sit up on the bed. “Don’t say that.”

  “Meg...” He’s standing there, gloriously naked, his sculpted body and fine face so handsome he burns like the sun. “We can’t do this again.”

  “No,” I whisper¸ my heart heavy.

  Oh God, no. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to break him, then slowly, carefully put him together again. Hold him. Wait until he talks to me, tells me about his past, so that I can help him.

  I saw him come apart in my arms, felt him change, and hoped we could be together.

  Because I fell for him before he even knew my name, before he looked my way. And now he’s leaving again as if he’d never been here.

  “Told you, you don’t know me.” He lifts his hand, muscles bunching in his inked arm, and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “That’s bullshit.” My heart is hammering, my pulse rushing in my ears. “Something happened, didn’t it? That text message you got. What was it, Rafe?”

  He turns his gaze away, lets his hand drop. “Sometimes…one has to take the law in his hands.”

  “What?” I kneel on the bed and tuck my long hair behind my ears. “What do you mean?”

  He laughs, a bitter, harsh sound that has nothing to do with humor. “I was christened in blood, Meg. Reborn in violence. I’m exactly what scares you.”

  “You’re not like that,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.

  And yet he hears me. He always hears me. “But I am.”

  Useless to keep discussing this, it seems. “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s better,” he says and bends to grab his clothes from the floor, “if you don’t know.”

  A door is shutting between us, a door I tried so hard to open more than the tiny crack he allowed until tonight.

  Don’t, I want to say. Don’t do this. Stay. Let me hold you. Tell me how to help you.

  But as he starts getting dressed, something snaps inside my chest, something shifts. I grab my blouse and sweater and pull them over my breasts, ineffectively trying to cover myself up. All of a sudden I feel naked to my soul, and I can’t stand it. So mortified, so sad I think my heart will stop…but also angry.

  Finally, angry. My pride is hurt.

  I guess I’ve been fooling myself that he cares, and it guts me that I’ve misjudged him. He obviously doesn’t want to stick around. Doesn’t care for me. His questions about my past, my stalker, my safety, all of it was a front.

  And I was taken in, fell for him like an idiot.

  So I welcome the fury building in my chest—a hot counter-beat to the unbearable cold filling me, drowning me like icy water—and square my shoulders.

  “This is goodbye, then,” I say, glad my voice is steady.

  Goodbye. Speaking the word out loud feels like a stab wound. I fight the urge to press my hands to my chest, to staunch a bleeding that feels all too real.

  He pauses in the act of pulling on his biker boots, and I notice his hands are shaking. He doesn’t look up, though, and before I know it, he’s opening my bedroom door and vanishing from my life once again.

  ***

  After a night spent staring at the ceiling, and a day buried under my bed covers, eating Nutella from the jar and petting Raf, I decide to move my ass and go out. I need to find a new job, and get my mind off a certain moody, gorgeous boy who wormed his way into my heart and stomped all over it.

  God, Meg. So stupid. You knew from the start the risk you were taking. You couldn’t fall for a normal guy, like Greg, no. Of course not. You had to go and crush on a douchebag like Rafe.

  I feed the kitten, and stare blankly at Raylin’s door. I’m avoiding my bedroom at all costs. Don’t know how I’ll ever look at my bed again without seeing Rafe’s muscled, bare body sprawled on it, without seeing his handsome face and ruffled blond hair, without hearing his voice and the sounds of pleasure he made.

  Oh crap… Wrapping myself up in pants and sweater, pulling on my boots, long coat, my scarf and mittens, I head out into the town.

  Bastard. Fooled me. Had me thinking there was something more underneath the rough exterior, that the glitter I saw was real gold.

  How wrong I was. I thought I was breaking him, when in fact I was breaking myself. My self-control, my confidence…my heart.

  I kick at a small pile of dirty snow, considering which other coffee shops to hit and ask if they’re hiring, when, from the corner of my eye, I see a person hiding in the shadows. Fear sends chills down my back.

  A stalker, Rafe said. I have a stalker. Carson’s man.

  My stomach twists and bile rises in my throat. Holy shit. My heart booms in my chest as I turn and run. Not sure where I’m going, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t stop. I’m shaking, and I keep glancing over my shoulder, sure he’s right there, behind me, about to grab me and drag me away.

  Pools of blood.

  An avenue is up ahead and I race that way. More cars and people mean I’ll feel safer.

  What should I do? If I go to the police and say I have a shadow, will they be able to do something about it? I don’t even know who it is, only that Carson probably sent him.

  In serious danger of slipping and falling in the slush, I make it round the corner and come onto the avenue. At the sight of passersby, I slow down, trying to catch my breath.

  This is… I shake my head, trying to wrap my mind around this new development. Will this be my life from now on—jumping at shadows, running, always looking over my shoulder? Always afraid?

  Maybe I should skip town, hide elsewhere. I’ve done it before. What do I have to lose?

  Rafe.

  Seriously, I need to stop thinking about him. Like, right now. I’m on my own again, like I’ve always been. I can take care of myself. No choice.

  It doesn’t matter that the only time I’ve felt safe was with Rafe. That just his name sends a thrill through me and brings warmth to my chest.

  And then pain and anger.

  Stop. Hardening my resolve, I make my rounds, asking if waitresses or any other help is needed. I have to find money for the rent, or I’ll be out on the street very soon.

  But the coffee shops, and restaurants, fast food joints and stores I visit all reply they don’t need anyone at the moment, thank you very much, and my feet start to drag. Disheartened, I step out and stand on the dirty sidewalk, looking up at the cloudy sky as evening gathers.

  This is bad. Really bad. A weight is crushing my chest. I miss my mom, in spite of the hell she’s put me through all my life. I need…comfort.

  Rafe won’t be there to hold me. Nobody will be there. My bed will be cold, the apartment empty. The urge to call Tessa or Zane is strong, but I’m not good company, mired in sadness and helpless anger.

  Maybe tomorrow. God knows I need help. Zane has found me jobs before. He may be able to do so again now. I hate asking more from him, but I’m not that proud.

  So I head back to the apartment. At least Raf the kitty is waiting for me and looks happy to see me. When I lift him in the air, he wiggles his short legs with the large paws and stares at me trustingly.

  Unconditional love, huh? Or rather, conditional on the food I give him.

  “Good boy,” I whisper, and he meows and tries to lick my face.

  Smiling for the first time since Rafe left last night, I take the kitty to bed with me and he curls beside me, purring contently.

  ***

  “What do you mean, it’s b
een paid?” I frown at the bare wall of the kitchenette, my fingers clenching around my cell phone.

  “The rent’s been paid,” the landlord repeats with an edge of exasperation in his voice.

  “By whom?”

  “They didn’t leave a name. A boy came by, gave me the money in cash and said if I didn’t come clean with you about it, he’d leave dead rats on my doorstep.”

  I shiver, caught between horror, relief and an uncontrollable urge to laugh. “Seriously? Rats?” I draw a shaky breath. “You say it was a boy? Or was it a man? A blond guy?”

  Because there’s only one person who knows I can’t afford the rent this month, but that’s out of the question.

  “Not blond. A young, dark-haired boy, more like fifteen or sixteen.”

  “Right.” I should’ve known it wouldn’t be Rafe, who ditched me like a hot potato—or more like a bad habit.

  Oh God. The rent has been paid. Oh God…

  “Look, Miss Durant, I don’t find this funny.” The landlord clears his throat. “I’d appreciate it if this prank isn’t repeated and that the money is deposited in my account next time, without any threats of dead rats or otherwise.”

  Promising it won’t happen again, I disconnect the call and scratch at a stain on the kitchen counter.

  What is this about? Who is the boy who delivered the money? And most importantly, who paid my rent?

  My thoughts go to Mom. Could it be? She knows where I live. Unlikely, though. Why would she suddenly care?

  Holy crap, the rent’s been paid!

  I do a little jig in the kitchenette, whispering “Yes! Yes!” and pumping my fists in the air.

  Raf is watching the proceedings with big amber eyes from his perch on top of the fridge. Then he lifts a paw and tries to swat at me as I pass in front of him, dancing. Of course he misses, and I dance my way into the living room where I sink into the threadbare sofa and let out a long breath.

  I’m not going to be thrown out on my ass. I have a place to stay until I find a new job. This is still my apartment.

  Raf wanders over, jumps onto my lap, sniffs my fingers and curls up for a nap.