I don’t turn around. Can’t.
Because last time I wassomeone’s, they fucked me until I thought it meant something. They told me I was theirs. They promised forever, and then they fucking left me. Left me ruined and raw and exposed to the whole goddamn world. My face smeared across headlines. My name dragged through courtrooms and fan forums and smear campaigns. My entire soul sold forfive million dollars and a better contract.
I claw at my chest like I can rip the memory out. “I can’t—” I whisper. “I can’t be someone’s again. I can’t survive it if it happens again. I won’t—I’ll die if you leave me too.”
And there it is. The real panic. The truth buried in every overdose, every needle, every desperate night I watched that video just to pretend I mattered to someone.
I can’t behis. Because if Rafe leaves—ifhebetrays me—it won’t just hurt. It’ll kill me.
Rafe doesn’t give me the chance to run. He moves like a fucking strike—no hesitation, no space, no mercy—and yanks me back into him, hard, until my spine is flush against his chest and his arms are iron around me. One across my waist. One across my chest, palm flat over my racing heart like he’s daring it to stop.
His mouth drops to my ear, breath hot, voice molten. “Listen to me, Julian,” he growls, words dragging across every open nerve.“I am nothim.”
My body jerks. But he holds me tighter. Not to trap—just to anchor.
“I will never leave you unless I’m in a fucking body bag, do you hear me?”
I whimper. I sob. My head drops back to his shoulder as my chest caves, throat raw and tight and aching. It’s too much. It’s too real. It’s too much.
But Rafe isn’t done. His voice turns darker, hotter, almost feral. “You are not my dirty little secret,” he hisses. “You are not some shameful mistake I bury in hotel sheets. I will fuck you in front of every goddamn syndicate, on the fucking ice, with a gun in my hand if I have to—and I will destroy anyone who eventhinksabout touching you.”
I cry harder. Fists clenched, vision blurred. My throat burns under the tape, not from pain—but from how tight it all feels. The heat. The truth. The fucking fury in his voice.
“Do not,” he bites out, “fucking compare me to that useless scum.”
My whole body shakes with it. And I reach back—blind, desperate—and grab his arm. The one holding me. The one across my chest. I grab it like it’s the only thing left tethering me to the ground, sobbing so hard my ribs ache, but holding him like if he lets go, I’ll fly apart in pieces too small to put back together.
“Okay,” I gasp. “Okay. Okay—okay—I hear you—I fucking hear you—”
He tightens his grip. One brutal arm wrapped around me. The other sliding up, curling around my throat—fingers brushing the edge of the tape like he’s reclaiming it, like he’s reclaiming me.
I twist in his grip—awkward, shaky, wet-faced and still trembling—but I turn until I’m facing him, pressed chest to chest, heart to heart, too close to be safe. My fingers clutch his shirt like I’m afraid he’ll disappear if I blink. His jaw is so tight I can see the muscle ticking. His eyes? Fire. Steel.Mine.
And then I say it. “Then prove it. Fuck me like you mean it.”
The room goes still. His expression shifts slightly. That storm behind his eyes breaks into something darker. Deeper. But he doesn’t pounce. Doesn’t growl. Doesn’t rip the tape from my throat or slam me down like I half-expect.
He smirks, slow and knowing.Then he reaches up with one calloused hand and wipes my tears away, thumb dragging rough across my cheekbone, down to my jaw, like he’s cleaning me up for something sacred.
And he says—quiet and lethal “I’m not fucking you until you’re sober.”
I freeze as my lips part and my breath catches in a small,uneven hiccup.
He leans in, voice like smoke wrapping around my pulse. “I want you to feel and remember every second of it.” His thumb presses gently into the side of my throat—right over the black tape. “You got that, little halo?”
I nod because I do. Idoget it. This isn’t sex. This isn’t punishment. This is claiming. And he wants all of me for it. Clear. Aware. Present.
Even if that’s the scariest fucking thing in the world.
16
RAFE
Julian’s on the ice again. It’s the first time Kai has cleared him—stitches out, thigh strong enough, blood stable, withdrawal under control, barely. There are no fresh bruises, no fever, no reason left to say no, even though every inch of me wanted to. Every inch of me still fucking does.
But I’m not down there. Not this time. I’m in my container instead, feet kicked up on the table, a cigarette burning untouched between my fingers while I watch the feed from the security monitors like it’s a ritual. And it is. Every container, every hallway, every inch of the rink belongs to me to watch, to protect, to punish.
Right now, the cameras are locked on the ice. On Julian. He’s wearing the black jersey—no number, still no name—and his movements are sharper than they should be. Not because he’s fully healed, but because he’s angry, the emotion bleeding off him in waves that feel pure and hot and strangely beautiful.
