Page 27 of Ignition Rites

“I contain multitudes. You’ve heard this.”

We’re standing closer than the conversation requires, close enough that I notice, close enough that he notices me noticing. The parking lot is empty except for us and the bike and a streetlight buzzing overhead like it’s trying to decide whether to work tonight.

“Lo.” My name, quieter than I’ve heard him say anything all night.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me if I’m reading this wrong.”

I don’t tell him he is.

His hand rises toward my face, then pauses before touching me, close enough to echo Ash’s palm hovering beside my jaw in the shop, close enough that Cassian’s silver ring flashes through my memory too. Three men, three different kinds of waiting.

Then Rafe touches my cheek and kisses me, and the comparison disappears under the taste of ginger from dinner and something warmer that’s just him. My hands catch the front of his jacket like I need something to hold onto that isn’t the ground.

“We should stop,” I say, except I don’t stop, and neither does he.

“Probably.” His mouth moves along my jaw, slower than I expected. “You want to?”

I don’t, and I tell him so, and something in his whole body changes when I do — less careful, more certain, like he’d been holding some part of himself back until he knew for sure and now doesn’t have to anymore.

“Not here,” he says, glancing around the empty parking lot. “Come on.”

The ride back doesn’t feel real. I wrap my arms tighter around him than the speed requires, palms flat against his chest, feeling the engine’s vibration travel through his body until it seems to come from him instead of the machine underneath us. He takes the first turn slowly, deliberate enough that I know exactly what he’s doing, which is giving me time, and I don’t use it.

My hands slip beneath the hem of his shirt where it’s ridden up, finding warm skin, and his breath catches as the bike drifts half an inch before he corrects.

“You’re gonna get us killed,” he calls back.

“You’re the one who taught me not to overthink things.”

When the next light catches us at red, I lean forward and put my mouth against the skin below his ear. The shudder that runs through him is immediate, one hand leaving the handlebar just long enough to grip my thigh.

“Lo.” My name comes out rough. “I need both hands on this thing if you want us to actually make it home.”

“Do I?”

“You’re killing me.”

The light changes, his hand goes back where it belongs, and he gets us home noticeably faster.

We come back through the estate after most of the main house has gone dark, and Rafe takes me to the room he keeps here because Dominic has spent most of Rafe’s life working at Alistair’s side. I barely register the space beyond an unmade bed, low light, a pair of sneakers kicked beneath a chair, and Rafe turning on me the second the door closes, his mouth finding mine again like the parking lot was only the opening argument.

I don’t remember deciding to stop thinking. I only know that somewhere between the door and his bed, I do.

His fingers work at the button of my jeans while mine fight his belt, and the buckle catches.

“Hold on.”

“You’re losing a fight with pants.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, for a man with this much confidence—”

He gets the belt loose and kisses me hard enough to kill the rest of the sentence, and I laugh against his mouth.

“Cheater.”