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“Harder.”
For me? Did she know what I needed? Did she need it too?
I did it again, thrusting again, and again, and my cock swelled and her pussy tightened and she gripped me with all her strength, and when her walls squeezed and pulsed around me, I watched her, watched her eyes close, watched her lip disappear between her teeth, and I emptied inside her, buried deep, leaving something behind, some ancient part of me, almost as if it left me physically.
Chapter Seventeen
Sofia
I woke up in Raphael’s arms. I didn’t move and tried to keep my breathing level. What in hell had happened last night? How close had I come to being whipped? I knew he’d needed that scene—that insane scene—to happen. He couldn’t tiptoe around the past any longer. Maybe coming back here, maybe subconsciously, he’d sought the confrontation because without it, there could be no relief. I hoped that last night was his victory over the demons that haunted him. I hoped that last night, he’d banished them to the hell in which they belonged.
What kind of childhood had he had?
What kind of guilt did he carry on his shoulders?
He’d told me he’d protected his brothers from his father, and I understood he took whippings to save them. What he’d said last night, though, had his father—once Raphael was too big to beat—had he turned his rage on Raphael’s mother?
What a beast. What a monster.
I looked up at my husband’s sleeping face. It was the first time I’d seen him like this. The first time I was able to watch him without being watched myself. And for all his hardness, for all those sharp edges, to see him like this, his face quiet, there was a softness to him. An innocence he hid so well in his waking hours.
I knew he was beautiful. That wasn’t a question. Thick dark hair and tanned olive skin, and bones a model would kill for. But even without that, even if he were ugly, that innocence inside him, that damaged little boy still buried there, it made me want to shield him, protect him from his monsters.
He slept holding on to me, and his arm weighed a ton on my side. I shifted a little, unable to resist lightly touching the scruff of hair on his jaw. I wondered if Lina was awake. She had to be and was probably waiting for me.
Raphael blinked, a blue that didn’t fit with his coloring flashing beneath heavy dark lashes. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.
“What time is it?”
“Almost eleven. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Almost eleven?”
He turned to me, and his face grew grave. It was like watching him remember.
“Are you…okay?”
I smiled and touched his face again. “Yes.”
We hadn’t showered when we’d come upstairs last night. He hadn’t allowed it, wanting to hold me instead. The room smelled of sex.
“I need a shower,” I said. “My sister is probably waiting, wondering where I am.”
“She probably figured out where you are.”
He rolled over on top of me and trapped me with his elbows on either side of my face. He kissed me.
“I like my smell on you.”
“Well, I don’t know if everyone else will, so I should shower.”
“What are you two going to do today?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I thought back to yesterday, to seeing my grandfather with that man. “Raphael, that man from the wedding, who is he exactly?”
Hid face grew serious, and he rolled off me. “Vincent Moriarty. A self-proclaimed businessman. A thug, and an extortionist too, to whom my father owed money.”
“He’s dangerous, isn’t he?”
“I told you I wouldn’t let him hurt you, Sofia.”
It wasn’t me I was worried about. “Does he want to hurt you?” I asked.
“He expects me to repay my father’s debt.”
“I have to tell you something,” I said, sitting up.
“If it’s about him meeting with your grandfather, I know.”
“What? How?”
“Eric mentioned it. He saw them, when you and your sister went to get her phone.”
“Oh,” I’d forgotten about Eric. Of course he would have seen. “I want to see my grandfather again today. Ask him what it was about. Have him lay all his cards on the table.”
Raphael chuckled and climbed out of bed. “You’re naive, Sofia.”
I followed him. “I’m not naive. Things have changed. You’re my husband now, and it’s different than it was meant to be.”
He stopped and turned. The look on his face made me falter.
“I don’t want to lie to you. And I don’t want to play games with you,” I said.
“That’s good, because I don’t want to play them with you.”
“We’re not enemies, right?”
“No, but your grandfather—”
“Needs to go home and accept what’s happened. Accept his loss.”
He took my face in his hands and drew me to him, then kissed my forehead.
“Naive, but sweet.”
He went into the bathroom. I followed him.
