Page 51 of Flame
Chapter Twelve
He doesn’t let me sleep; I wake to the sensation of his fingers sliding inside me, wringing a moan from my throat. This round winds up moving into the shower, and by the time we’re done, the hot water runs ice-cold.
Afterward, we get dressed—him in a pair of jeans and a black shirt, while I wear a similar shirt but paired with a loose gray skirt of my own.
On his way into the hall, Rafe snatches something from the dresser and holds it out for me to see. His cell phone.
“Watch,” he commands before brushing his thumb across the screen, flicking through several images. Each one makes my cheeks grow hotter until I can’t even meet his gaze.
But he’s persistent, his voice so low the vibration resonates in my bones. “Look.”
As my eyes flick up to his hand, he strikes a button, and the current picture vanishes. Then he proceeds to do the same until each one is deleted.
“Give me your phone,” he says next.
I find it coiled within the bedsheets. Without hesitation, he does the same on my device, deleting every single picture I sent him last night. When I finally gather the nerve to face him again, he shrugs at my look of confusion. “Those belong to me. Only me.”
Meaning he won’t hoard them for ammunition later, or so I assume. I’m confident enough to believe he won’t share them either. Those intimate pieces of me will dwell within his skull for only him to enjoy—no one else.
When he hands me the phone, I can’t take my eyes off the now blank screen. It seems that he’s accepted my written apology, but I might as well say it out loud.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” I blurt in a rush. “I’m sorry. There isn’t anything between Liam and me. And I’m sorry for putting you in an awkward position with Mara.”
His laughter is such a shock, I whirl to face him. He’s watching me in return, his lips quirked, his eyes gleaming. “I never thought I’d hear a woman apologize for that,” he murmurs, stepping close enough to flick his thumb against my chin. “I’ll tell you how you can make it up to me.”
“How?” I ask in a whisper.
“From here on out, you tell me everything,” he says. “Everything. Like why you were looking at Liam like he’d just punched you in the face.”
I stiffen. “That… I was asking him about Faith’s case,” I admit. “I thought he might know something.”
He blinks, his overall expression unnervingly blank. “And?”
“They have a suspect,” I confess. “They found Faith’s phone and they think that whoever sent her one of the last messages before she vanished might know something about what happened… What’s wrong?”
Suddenly, he’s staring off into space, his jaw clenched, and a foreboding knot forms in my stomach. After days in his orbit, it’s becoming easier to read him.
And know when he’s on edge.
“Rafe?” Tentatively, I brush my hand along his shoulder, lingering over his forearm. “What’s wrong?”
Finally, without looking at me, he says, “If their suspect was the last person who messaged her, then I know who it is.”
His voice is too deep. Too cold. A heavy sense of dread washes over me, but there’s no point in running from the truth now. I need to know. “Who?”
I suck in a breath as he meets my gaze in that brutally honest way, holding nothing back.
“It was me,” he says. “I messaged her.”
