Page 52 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

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Isa

Rafe was gone by the time I woke up, the oddly early hour for him to disappear grating at my nerves. After his actions the night before, my heart clenched with the need to be reassured. My body throbbed from the fight, and I stared down at my feet as I pressed them to the wood floor.

With all I’d fought, very little evidence of it remained in the bedroom. Almost as if there had never been a fight at all. The thought didn’t fill me with confidence about my ability to fend off someone who actually wanted to hurt me.

I swallowed back the rush of nausea that bubbled in my throat, more determined than ever that I would survive Rafael’s specific brand of training. He might be a dick, but even I couldn’t deny that he had a point.

In the moments when his arms had wrapped around me and I thought a stranger had invaded the house,nothingJoaquin had taught me remained. My panic had consumed me, until the only reason I remembered to drop my weight was because the claws of terror digging into my chest froze me solid.

When the nausea passed, I stood and made my way into the bathroom. I turned on the shower, going through my morning routine while I waited for the water to heat up. The desire to turn the water to cold pulsed at me, making me grip the edges of the counter as I shoved down the urge.

With my head tilted down and staring into the sink, I jolted when the bathroom door opened unannounced. Rafe’s face and broad body filled the doorway, sucking the quiet from the room. Despite the smile playing at his lips, everything in my body went still as he prowled into the bathroom and turned off the water for the shower. “You’re awake,” he murmured, stepping up behind me and wrapping an arm around my waist. His hand rested against my stomach, the heat of his skin through my nightie searing me as his breath caressed my neck.

“Obviously,” I said, smiling past the suspicion rising in me. Something was wrong, and I knew it down to my soul. Nothing good ever came from the things that made Rafael Ibarra happy enough to smile as he walked into a room.

“Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?” he asked, his other hand reaching around my body to place a single pregnancy test on the counter. I stared down at the wand in shock, my brain going silent as it tried to catch up.

A second passed.

And then another.

The beating of my heart filled my ears as my mind started working again, processing the words and the date. “I—”

Nothing else followed, silence consuming me as my gasp froze the breath from my lungs. My hand drifted toward my stomach, touching it gently in disbelief, only to be reminded that Rafe’s hand was already there. He’d already claimed the space above my womb as his, touching the child he seemed so confident already grew within me.

“I’m not pregnant,” I said finally, dismissing him and moving to turn away from the mirror. His hand held me steady, refusing to let me leave the bathroom and the conversation I wasn’t ready to have.

“You’re two weeks late,” he said, his voice soft despite the panic he must have felt in my body. I needed to get away from him, almost as desperately as when I’d thought he was a stranger the night before.

“It’s stress. Women are late all the time when you turn their lives upside down,” I dismissed, pressing my spine tighter into his chest to put as much distance between the pregnancy test and I as possible.

“If you’re so certain, then what is the harm in being sure?” Rafe asked, that invading hand on my stomach rubbing gentle circles. I shook my head from side to side, determined to deny it until the last breath in my body. It was too soon, and I wasn’t ready to addmotherto the list of changes taking over my life.

“I’m not ready,” I said, grasping his wrist and tugging his hand off my belly.

I spun, heading for the door only for him to stop me with a harsh grip on my arm. “Take the test,mi reina, because we both know you’re not leaving this room until you do.” He pulled me back into the center of the bathroom, positioning himself between the door and I. “We already know the truth. The plus sign on a pregnancy test will only confirm it.” He dropped the instructions on the counter and strode out the bathroom door as suddenly as he’d entered, closing it behind him and giving me a moment of privacy.

I turned to stare down at the white stick on the counter, the offending device that would change everything. I couldn’t even consider the fact that things had already changed, that, whether I wanted to be or not, Iknewthe truth of Rafe’s words.

I snatched up the stick, hiking my nightgown up my thighs and glaring down at the instructions. I went to the toilet as I tugged off the protective cap. Sitting and unbearably uncomfortable, I followed the instructions with hasty movements, replacing the cap and dropping it onto the counter as if it had shocked me.

Flushing and washing my hands, I refused to look at the test as I counted down from 120 in my head. Rafe knocked on the door when I turned the water off, the sound soft and patient even though I knew he probably felt anything but.

One minute left.

He’d been so determined to knock me up, so insistent that it was what he needed to feel like I was his in every way, he needed to see the evidence of all his plans coming to fruition.

I couldn’t even hate him for it, not when I’d known what he wanted and what the consequences of our constant unprotected sex would be. At some point, I’d even stopped fighting him on it, and I’d become just as responsible as he was.

Thirty seconds left.

I paced back and forth in the bathroom, ignoring the door opening behind me as Rafael lost his patience and entered the bathroom. He stared at me as I walked back and forth, his eyes dropping to the test on the counter wordlessly.

“Ten seconds left,” I said as I moved toward him, turning on my heel at the last moment and making my way to the other side of the bathroom.

“I hardly think ten seconds will matter that much,” he said, moving to the counter as I sucked back a deep lungful of air. He stared down at it, his body freezing solid while I watched.

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