Page 44 of Rampant

Everything crashed back with the strength of a tsunami. Naked, cowering in the corner, trembling from the cold, terrified because I hadn’t known what Rafe was capable of. I folded my arms around myself, as if to ward off the memories and the chill in the air.

But I was safe. On the most fundamental level, my body knew that. It also responded in a way that used to make me loathe myself.

Not anymore. Not when it came to Rafe.

My gaze zeroed in on the cuffs dangling from the ceiling and warmth flooded between my thighs. He’d left the door to the prison open. I entered, this time of my own free will, and stripped the clothes from my body. Goose bumps broke out on my flesh, and my nipples tightened into aching buds. I lifted my head and eyed the cuffs again, noting how he’d left them unlocked. They spoke to me, whispering to slip my wrists inside and close the metal on my free will.

He’d probably think I was insane, and maybe I was, but something told me this would bring him back to me. I stood on tiptoes and worked one wrist into the circular restraint. The lock clicked in place, making my pulse speed up. After some maneuvering, I managed to secure my other wrist too.

There was no going back. I’d effectively trapped myself, leaving the decision of freeing me up to him. Suddenly, my stomach dropped. What if he didn’t remember where he kept the key? I didn’t have time to agonize over that too-late realization. The door creaked open and his footfalls announced his arrival. The instant he saw me, he froze.

I hung before him, naked, exposed, wrists bound as effectively as my heart was to him.

“Please tell me you know where the key is?”

“If I had to guess,” he said, taking a step closer, “it’s on my keyring.” He gestured toward me. “Why are you doing this?”

“You know all my secrets, all my shame.” I glanced at the cement floor, remembering how I’d awakened, naked and cold, with my hands restrained to the bars. “This is where you first brought me. You wanted to make me suffer the way you did. But we shared something, Rafe, and I want that back so badly.” I shut my eyes, disturbed by the utter shock in his.

“I don’t remember.” I heard him come closer.

“I have faith you will.” A tear slipped from beneath my closed lids, and the brush of his thumb caught it. I sucked in a breath. “I crave your touch so much. Please…make his disappear.”

He grazed his fingers across my breasts. “He hurt you.” His words came out strangled. He inched lower, hands drifting over the evidence of my brother’s brutality, and smoothed a palm along my stomach, where Zach had branded me with his name. “And though I don’t remember it,Ihurt you too.”

“Rafe—”

“Look at me,” he interrupted.

I opened my eyes, and my insides melted from the heat in his. His palms cradled my cheeks with a tenderness that masked his need to conquer. He might not recognize the hunger in himself, but I did. That need colored the command in his tone, was evident in the wide stance of his feet and the bulge behind his zipper.

My heartbeat rocketed. What if he remembered and went back to hating me? “Please don’t hate—”

He silenced me with his mouth, his unyielding hands holding my head in place as his lips forced mine open, tongue thrusting in gentle possession that claimed, commanded, owned. My lids shuttered, and I lost myself to his taste. His kiss infused me with a raging, burning need. An explosion went off at my core, spreading from my belly down to my thighs, all the way to the soles of my feet. I spread them and gained better traction on the ground. Cool air drifted between my legs, where I ached for him—for his touch, for his hot mouth kissing so intimately, for the girth of his cock.

He inched away, breaths puffing across my swollen lips. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”

My heart jumped at the endearment, and my lashes fluttered open. “You remember,” I whispered, both fear and hope warring in my soul.

“No.” His thumbs caressed my damp cheeks. “I don’t need to remember to know that I want you.” His brows narrowed, and he frowned. “It’s the way I want you that worries me.”

“Tell me.”

He hesitated. “I’ve had fantasies for a long time.” His gaze lifted to my restrained hands. “Dark fantasies I never thought I’d act on. I don’t know what I did to you, or what that place did to me, but it scares the fuck out of me.”

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

He stepped back and took in my nakedness with a single glance. “We’ve always orbited each other,” he said, pausing with a shake of his head, “but I never imagined it would lead to…this.”

“Never imagined we’d be so right for each other? Rafe, you already know how I feel about you.”

“You had a crush on me.”

“Is that how you saw me back then? Just an annoying kid?”

“At first, maybe.” His green eyes flickered to my face again. “I felt it too. I won’t deny it, but I’ve got eight years of memory missing, and you’ve been…so fucking scarred by Zach and me, I don’t understand how you’re standing on two feet right now.”

“Technically, I’m on my toes.”

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