He was mine.
I lifted a leg to step into the tub, gasping when Rafe's hands shot out from the water and he caught my calf in his grip. Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to the scar on my thigh, trailing his lips down over the edge of my knee and down my calf. His eyes never left mine, the green and blue shock of his gaze staring up at me as he released me and let me take that first step into the hot tub.
Rafe's eyes on me felt like dancing with the devil, his touch like the greatest temptation toward sin.
I lowered myself into the hot tub in front of him, sighing as the scalding water surrounded me, and then leaned my back into his chest as he enveloped me in his arms. His mouth touched the top of my head, drawing in a deep sigh as the same contentment I felt washed over him. Nothing mattered when I was in his arms.
Not the way he'd scared me the day before. Not the fact that I'd have to say goodbye in four days.
It didn't matter that I'd go home to a life I no longer recognized and go about my business as if the glimpse of a life he'd shown me hadn't changed me forever.
There was only his touch. His heat at my back. His brand on my skin.
I laid my head back on his chest, closing my eyes with a contented sigh as I exhaled all the tension in my body and let everything else drift away. When I opened them, the stars and moon above stared down at me, reminding me of the invitation that had brought me to him.
I'd danced with the devil in the moonlight.
And I'd fallen in love with the man underneath the monster who hovered just beneath the surface.
Tears stung my eyes with the realization and the knowledge that I loved him in spite of knowing it was foolish. That it was beyond foolish and downright stupid. It would end in heartache for me, and a return to emptiness that I wasn't sure I could bear anymore.
"When I was little," Rafe murmured softly, "my mother used to sneak me outside at night to stare at the stars. I remember trying to count them." My body locked, afraid to move as he volunteered information about himself. I'd never felt like he would speak to me, like he was even remotely accessible in that way.
All his hints of something dark in his life and his history kept me from trying to pry too deep. He was right when he told me I might not be ready for the answers to those questions.
I'd never tried to Google him since he caught me and warned me away from it.
"That might be the sweetest thing I've ever heard," I said finally when he didn't continue. Even if the admission had been small, the fact that he’d volunteered it of his own free will made my cheeks turn even warmer than they already were from the hot tub. It had been everything I wanted from him in that moment, and everything I shouldn't have gotten.
Knowing he cared enough to share even the smallest part of him would make it that much harder for me to walk away.
"I know it was pointless now, of course. Even if it had been possible to count the stars in the sky, what purpose would it serve?" he asked with a sigh. "But knowing that there isn't a purpose doesn't stop me from knowing you have nineteen freckles across the bridge of your nose and on your cheeks." My heart froze in my chest, furiously trying to count my freckles in my memory. In all my life, I'd never thought to put a number to the dots on my skin.
But he'd done it in days.
The significance of such a number stripped me of breath as his arms tightened around me. "I'll never stop wanting to know everything about you," he murmured, the words feeling like a promise despite the timer on our relationship.
"You counted my freckles," I whispered as my breath returned.
"You have one here," he said, reaching around to touch a spot on my chest that he couldn't see. "And here," he moved his hand down to the left of my belly button and just a little lower. Through the water, I stared at the exact spot when he dragged his hand away.
A freckle stared back at me, tiny and hardly noticeable.
"Everything, Isa," he murmured.
The words sounded like a threat as he maneuvered his way further inside my heart and showed me every mark on my skin, but I couldn't shake the feeling that for the first time in my life, someone saw me.
It couldn't have been normal for him to spend such effort on someone who would leave in four days, so that left me with one question. Did Rafe think we were something else?
Would he let me go home when the time came? Or would he drag me to the pits of Hell?
Music pulsed through my veins as we walked through the dimly lit club. The soft purple and gold lighting with decorations through the bar space screamed of luxury. The music was more upscale than I'd expected of a nightclub in Ibiza.
I had no experience with going to nightclubs, but all the photos I’d seen before the trip made it seem like a massive party.
Excitement filled me at the prospect of seeing my friends, knowing that, while not everything was resolved between Rafe and me in terms of defining our relationship or the remote possibility of a pregnancy, at least I could put on a happy face for my friends and make them believe that everything was okay. I regretted telling Chloe about what Rafe had done at the waterfall and the way he’d made me feel.
Rafe wasn’t perfect, but the
