Because every time Rafe bites, every time he drives deeper, every time he growls mine like it’s gospel—I remember what love feels like when it comes from the mouth of a monster.
And I’d choose this over everything else a thousand times again.
“Rafe! Rafe!” I moan—loud, wrecked, begging like my spine is made of fire. My body’s shaking, pressed so tight to the container wall I can feel the bolts in the steel, my chest slick, my hips bruised, and still—still—I push back against him like I need to crawl inside his ribs and claw my name onto his heart.
His voice rolls molten behind me, low and dark and utterly fucking mine. “Yes, little halo.”
“Destroy it,” I rasp, the words scraping raw from my throat. “Destroy the fucking thing. Now.”
There’s no hesitation. I feel him shift—one hand leaving my waist—and the next second there’s a click, the cold whisper of steel as he draws the knife from behind his jeans like he’s been waiting for this permission, like he’s wanted to kill this ghost as long as I have. In one clean, vicious motion, he drives the blade straight through the phone still taped to the container wall. The screen splits with a sickening crunch—sparks flare, static hisses, the light flickers once, twice—then dies completely. The tape goes black. The moans vanish. Nathan’s ghost is executed mid-whimper, silenced forever.
Rafe doesn’t pull the knife out. He leaves it buried like a gravestone, the hilt jutting from the shattered screen like a marker over something long dead.
And I watch it die.
My whole chest convulses—not from grief, not from guilt, but from the shattering relief of a thousand nights of weight finally breaking apart under the hands of the man holding me up. A strangled sound escapes me—half sob, half laugh, somewhere raw in between—and I push back into Rafe like the devil himself is chasing me.
“Fuck,” I whimper, voice wrecked. “You’re insane—”
“And you’re mine,” he growls.
He slamsinto me again—brutal, unforgiving—the dead phone rattling against the wall, knife still lodged through its skull like a trophy. The force rips through me, and I come so hard the world dissolves into nothing but red.
Rafe doesn’t let me go. Not even close.
He pulls out—just for a second, just long enough for me to gasp, shattered and stunned, the world still spinning in violent loops. Then he spins me—fast, dizzying—grabs the backs of my thighs, lifts me like I weigh nothing at all, and slams my back against the nearest tree.
Bark bites sharp and rough into my skin, real and grounding. I gasp loud, air punched out of my lungs as my legs wrap around his waist on pure instinct. And then he’s inside me again—no warning, no mercy—just the full, devastating length of him driving back in like the only thing that matters is owning every ruined inch of me until the only name I can remember is his.
“RAFE—”
My fingers claw into his shoulders, spine arching off the tree, bark scraping fresh lines across my back as pain and pleasure twist together so tightly I can’t tell if I’m crying or simply alive. He growls—feral, brutal—mouth at my throat, teeth grazing the spot where the tape once marked me. His hips pound up into me with a force that would break lesser men, but I don’t want gentle. I don’t want safe. I want this. I want him.
“Say it again,” he snarls. “Say who it belongs to.”
“Yours.”
He thrusts harder, deeper. “Again.”
“Yours—fuck, Rafe, it’s yours, always yours—”
The tree creaks behind me. My breath fractures into broken moans.
He leans in close—nose brushing mine, voice rough and shaking with something almost reverent. “You don’t need the tape anymore, little halo. You need me.”
And I sob it out, wrecked and certain. “I know.”
Because it’s true.
He’s carved me clean.
There’s no Nathan. No past. Just Rafe and bark and blood and the kind of holy, goddamn fire that makes my bones feel like scripture.
He’s slamming into me so hard I swear the tree’s cracking. Bark digging into my back, my thighs clamped around his waist, sweat dripping down my chest in rivulets that stick to his shirt—if he’s even wearing one, I don’t know, I don’t care, because I can’t fuckingthink. Not with Rafe like this. Not with his hands fisted in my hips, holding me there like if I fall, the world ends. Not with his mouth bruising mine between growls, curses, promises.
It’s no longer just sex. It’s grief and fury and worship poured into every brutal thrust, all of him slamming into me as though he’s trying to fuck the poison out of my body, to rewrite every cell Ezio ever touched, to claim me so deeply that not even death could tear me away from him again.
I’m shaking. I’m burning. And fuck, I’m smiling—because I’ve never felt more alive than I do right now, pinned against rough bark with his body driving into mine like it’s the only truth left in the world.
