Page 59 of Fired at the Heart

My hand twitches, wanting to touch my nape before I force my fingers to still.

“Look at me, Avery,” he commands, cutting through my memories.

I do, taking in the body I know as well as my own. His broad shoulders stretch the seams of a wrinkled dress shirt, the rolled sleeves revealing forearms thick with muscle, and rough stubble shadows his jaw.

My body responds to him even now, without the bond, a Pavlovian reaction to years of yearning for his touch.

I lick my dry lips and look around, realizing we’re still in the safe house. “What are you doing here?”

“You gave me an ultimatum, and I answered.” He leans closer. “You won.”

My heart stutters. He can’t mean that the way it sounds, and I don’t have it in me to let him break my heart again. “How did you find me?”

Raphael’s laugh holds no humor. “You stole my car, which led me right to you. It’s the only reason I’m not more furious. You had to realize I have GPS trackers on all my vehicles. You didn’t ditch it somewhere else, which means some part of you wanted me to find you.”

My stomach drops. He’s right. I’d been sloppy, driven by pain and desperation. I tell myself I’d been too sick from the bond-breaking to think straight, but the truth scratches at me. I couldn’t go through with severing every link to the man sitting before me.

I change tactics. “How did you bypass the security?”

Raphael’s demeanor sharpens, a predator watching prey. “Do you really think I haven’t been tracking your every move over the years?”

He drops into a dangerous purr that sends a shiver down my spine. “I know the location of every single one of your safe houses. The codes, the security protocols, the escape routes.”

He leans forward, filling the air I breathe with his pheromones. “You never stopped being mine. Not even when I was stupid enough to let you go.”

The possessiveness sends contradictory reactions through my body. Anger and desire. Rejection and need. I pull away as far as the handcuffs allow, pressing my back to the headboard.

“I’m not yours.” The words sound hollow to my ears. “I broke the bond. It’s done.”

Raphael’s eyes trace a path down my body, lingering at my throat where my pulse beats rapidly, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “We’ll see how long you can keep up that lie.”

He unbuttons his shirt with deliberate slowness, revealing the sculpted chest I’ve traced with my tongue a thousand times before. A clock and gear tattoo covers his upper left pec and shoulder. A symbol of how many pieces are needed to make a machine work. He’d never suggested I get a matching one, and that had haunted me in all the years without him. It was a Rockford tradition, and I was never a Rockford.

Shrugging out of his shirt, he tosses it aside, and my pulse quickens with desire. I really have no willpower when it comes to this man and wanting him.

He grins. “See something you like?”

I scoff. “You wish.”

I yank at the handcuffs, welcoming the metal biting into my skin, the crescent indentations it leaves promising to last for days, erasing the bruises left by another Alpha and replacing them with marks that belong tomyAlpha.

“The great Raphael Rockford, keeping tabs on me all these years while refusing to leave his mansion in Skyhaven.” My anger pours out with all the venom I’ve been storing since he walked away. “What, were you waiting for me to hit rock bottom? To come crawling back to you?”

Raphael’s hand shoots out, wrapping around my ankle, his grip firm but not painful. The contact sends an electric current up my leg, branching through my body like lightning seeking ground, and I shudder as those holes inside me try to knit themselves back together.

“I never wanted you to crawl.” His thumb moves to rest over my pulse point, where it races for him. “I wanted you by my side, always.”

I try to jerk my leg away, but his grip tightens. “Let go of me.”

He doesn’t. Instead, his thumb traces small circles over my skin, each stroke deliberate, hypnotic. I hate the way my body betrays me, how after everything he’s done, the simplest touch from him sets me on fire.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Raphael says, his focus unwavering. “When I agreed to Aaiden’s plan to go legitimate. The family business was under scrutiny. The feds were closing in on our weapons operations.”

His hand slides higher on my calf, his touch burning. “Aiden convinced me that the only way to protect the Rockford legacy was to cut ties with the underworld and focus on the white-collar operations.”

I stare at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much his touch affects me. “And you didn’t think to discuss this life-altering decision with your partner? With your bonded Omega?”

Raphael’s jaw tightens. “I was wrong not to talk through the plan with you. I was an asshole to assume you’d just go along with my decision.”

---