Like something ruined on purpose, a cathedral broken just enough to let God bleed through the cracks.
“Do you know what the tape means, little halo?” Rafe asks.
I freeze.
The words echo in my chest like a secret I wasn’t supposed to hear. My lashes flutter and I almost choke on a sob, because I think I imagined it—I have to have imagined it. He doesn’t give out nicknames. He gives orders, scars, tethers.
But when I look at him, he’s staring at the screen. At me. Like I’m his.
And the tape around my throat isn’t gagging me.
It’s marking me.
Rafe climbs onto the bed behind me like a fucking inevitability—slow, controlled, the mattress dipping under his weight in a way that makes my whole body jolt forward. His thighsbracket mine, huge and unyielding, his chest flush against my spine before I even remember how to breathe.
His hands don’t touch me yet. Not my hips, not my shoulders, not the tape at my throat. He just sits there,behindme,aroundme, a cage shaped like a man.
The screen glows in front of us, showing me—collared in black tape, eyes wet, face flushed, breathing like I’ve been dragged out of my own skin.
Rafe’s breath hits the back of my neck, hot and steady and punishing. “It means you’re mine now,” he growls, his voice so close I feel it run straight down my spine. “Not his.”
My fingers twitch against my thighs as I stare at the screen, unable to look away and unable to breathe without tasting his voice in the back of my throat.
“He doesn’t deserve your tears,” he murmurs, his mouth skimming the shell of my ear without touching it. “Or your blood.” His hand finally moves—just one—coming up slow, deliberate, and wrapping around my waist like he’s claiming a weapon. “Or the space in your little drugged-out pretty brain.”
I shudder. My eyes go glassy again on the screen, and the version of me up there reacts like he felt it too—tiny, involuntary tremble at the base of the throat.
Rafe sees it and growls—deep and satisfied. His fingers splay over my lower belly, dragging my shirt up inch by inch, exposing warm skin to cold air. “Look at you,” he whispers. “Look at what you become in my hands.”
The image on the screen is obscene. I look wrecked. Beautiful. Owned.
Rafe’s other hand slides up—slow as sin—over my chest, up my throat, stopping just below the tape. His fingers hover there, the barest pressure under the strip, making the tape bite gently into my skin.
“You’re not his ghost,” he growls, lips brushing my cheek as he speaks. “You’re my fucking problem. My responsibility. My addiction to manage.” His fingers press firmer against the tape, making my breath hitch. “My little halo.”
My knees nearly give out, even though I’m sitting.
On the screen, I watch myself melt back into him—head tipping, mouth parting, eyes heavy like I’m drowning in his voice.
Rafe’s palm drags lower again, sliding down my stomach, slow and inevitable, heat seeping through every nerve he touches. “Say it,” he murmurs, teeth grazing my jaw. “Say you’re mine.”
My body wants to say it. Every inch of me—skin, breath, bone, the twitch in my fucking thighs—wants to collapse into the moment, lean back into him, let the wordsfall out like a confession I’ve been holding since the second he taped my mouth shut for the first time. I want to say I’m his.
But my brain—my traitor fucking brain—It flashes back.
Nathan’s voice.“You’re mine, Julian.” Nathan’s hand curling around my throat. Nathan’s lies.Soft and pretty and fatal.
And suddenly it’s not Rafe’s hands on me. It’shis.
My vision goes white at the edges. My lungs lock up. The tape on my throat feels too tight, and the warmth behind me becomes a vice, and I’m shaking, I’m shaking so fucking hard I might vomit.
Rafe doesn’t move.
But I do.
I jerk forward—hard—out of his grip, off his lap, landing on my knees like I’ve just been shoved underwater. My hands go to my throat, not to tear the tape off but to make sure it’s not choking me. My heart is sprinting. My ears are ringing. “No,” I rasp. “Don’t—don’t call me that—don’t say I’m—”
Rafe is still behind me.
