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She doesn’t know you.
She sat down at the outside patio table and sipped her coffee. When she glanced toward the study, I ducked behind the curtains.
I wanted her. I wanted more than just to fuck her. I wanted to have all of her.
Maybe it was prison. Maybe it was being locked up like some animal.
I’d told Sofia this would be a marriage on paper, but then I’d started fantasizing about her. About our wedding night. About prying her legs apart, making her mine. But I didn’t want that. If she said no, I would stop. I wouldn’t hurt her, not like that. But it made me fucking hard to think about it, and that was the part that scared me the most. I couldn’t let it take hold of me, no matter what.
Maybe it wasn’t prison after all that did it to me. Maybe it was her innocence. Her purity. Maybe it was some feeble attempt on my part to cleanse myself. Hell, maybe I sought absolution all along and didn’t even fucking know it.
All I did know was that this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
But why couldn’t it? Why couldn’t I have her ? She belonged to me already. Why couldn’t I have all of her?
I shook my head and returned to my desk. I picked up my pen and signed the amendment, then lifted the phone off its cradle to call my attorney. I needed to get things in order. Prepare. I needed to force myself to focus on that, not on the things Sofia had said, not on the look in her caramel eyes, not on the softness of her touch, the smoothness of her skin.
Not on the thought of how much she would hate me when she learned what I had just agreed to.
Chapter Eleven
Sofia
I didn’t see Raphael for three days after what happened in the cellar. Maria just said he’d gone out on business. I don’t know how I’d missed him leaving the bed that morning. I wondered what time he had left. I hadn’t even felt him move when he’d climbed out of bed. All I knew was I’d slept like a rock in the warmth and safety of his arms. This man who would steal me away—he was the one who made me feel safer than I’d felt in years. Ever since my parents had died.
I’d been so young, but with Lina being younger, I’d become her protector, in a way. It wasn’t even a conscious thing. It felt good to finally let go. So good, it made me realize how I’d been holding on for so long.
But what about Lina now? What would happen to her, now that I was gone? Who would protect her?
This idiocy about feeling safe in Raphael’s arms, what was that? Shouldn’t I feel the most afraid there?
But the image of him that night in the cellar, of his eyes, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Raphael Amado was broken. I wondered how long ago he’d been broken. Who’d done the breaking. The marks on his back told a horrifying story. How old had he been when it had happened? Judging from the scar tissue, it wasn’t a one-time thing. Not even close.
It was late afternoon on the third day and the shadows had begun to grow long. When Eric went inside to eat dinner, I snuck away, tired of constantly being watched. I needed fresh air and exercise to clear my head, and quite frankly, I hoped I’d run into him. I wanted to see Raphael, to face this—whatever this was.
I didn’t realize I was heading to the chapel until I got there. I wondered about the tunnel that led from the house here but shuddered at the thought of being underground for that amount of distance. I’d never been claustrophobic, but that scared me.
Instead of walking to the front door of the church, I headed around back. It felt a little wrong to do so, to come here without Raphael knowing, but I wanted to see his mother’s grave. See where he’d been that night.
The overgrown path didn’t help my progress, but I pushed open the creaky little gate around the side of the church. I wondered how I’d missed the graveyard the first day we’d come here, when he’d shown me the chapel, but with the thigh-deep grass, the grave markers were well hidden. Pushing weeds aside, I counted over a dozen grave markers, most of them flat stones in the ground, some taller. Finding his mother’s wasn’t hard. It was the only one with the weeds and overgrown grass cleared—literally pulled apart—and a single wilted dandelion lay before it.
He’d left a dandelion. He’d probably plucked it from the ground beside the grave. I felt sad to look at it, to think of him here, realizing he’d come empty-handed to visit his mother after all this time. I thought of him alone. Sitting in the spot where I stood now. And all I felt was lonely. It was almost too much.
