In one step, Rafe closed the distance. She startled, but before she could react, he clasped her face in both hands…and kissed her.
The gears of Mia’s brain stalled, and a murmur of surprise escaped her lips. She fisted her hands in his blazer, trapped between shoving him away and sinking in.
Before she’d decided, he broke the kiss abruptly.
“Stop,” he said, a little breathless. One hand pushed into her hair. He dropped his forehead against hers, and his eyes closed. “Just stop.” He pulled back only far enough to focus. “Go back to the part about why you came. Why you slept with me. Why you’re really pissed at me right now.”
“Why? Just so I can humiliate myself again? Forget it. And don’t tell me what to do. I’m sick of you and Tate throwing your weight around. If you didn’t hear what I said the first time, too damn bad.”
He pulled her in for another kiss. This time, she pushed at his chest. But he wrapped his free arm around her waist and hauled her off her feet.
She turned her head to escape his mouth. “Rafe—”
He dropped to the sofa, pulled her in to straddle across his lap, and held her there.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.
“Then you’re going to have another black eye soon, because if Tate walks in on us like this, he’s going to go ape shit—talk with Joe or no talk with Joe.”
“So you did come to fuck me out of your system,” he said, ignoring her warning. His eyes were narrowed and intense, and she couldn’t read him. And those stupid kisses were messing up everything.
“You have a hearing problem…among others.”
He huffed a laugh, and his lips quirked on one side, but it wasn’t a smile. His eyes were still dark as they lowered to her mouth. “I always did love that smart mouth of yours.” He lifted a hand to her face and ran his thumb over her lips. A rough, slow rub that pulled her mouth open. “Such a dirty, sassy, smart mouth.”
His thumb moved across her cheek, but he didn’t meet her eyes. His cock was right where it should be, riding the heat between her legs. And he was hard. His expression, his voice, his touch, everything about him told her he was hungry. And her body was conducting a mutiny. She wanted him worse right now, even hurt and pissed off, than she ever had—including their first night. Because now she knew exactly how much pleasure he could deliver. Now she had memories of his passion. And it took every sliver of resistance not to rock her hips against him. Not to bend her head and taste him.
“Did it work?” His question was low and rough.
“What?” She frowned, pushing against his chest to lean away. “What are you—”
His gaze cut to hers, deliberate and hot. “Did it work? Did you fuck me out of your system?” He waited only a heartbeat to continue. “Because you are infused in my blood.”
“That’s lust, Rafe. You should recognize it by now. And it’s not what I want anymore. It’s not enough. I may want you, but I don’t like you right now. And honestly, anyone who could pull away from me so completely for so long, as if I didn’t exist, doesn’t even deserve any part of me.”
“I did that because I had to,” he snapped. “Because talking to you and seeing you got too hard. I knew I’d never be able to have you all to myself with this twisted little family we’ve created. I couldn’t stand seeing you with other guys when you came to town. And I couldn’t stand the way you turned away from me and went running to your boyfriends when not one of them was there for you the way I was. That night in New York, I realized my expectations were way out of whack. And I knew I had to put some distance between us. The fact that you were mad at me over it only helped.”
His anger turned sullen, and Mia’s mind darted to the last time she’d seen him. To the week from hell in her previous apprenticeship and how she’d called him in a moment of weakness when her boyfriend at the time had been too busy at work to take her call. Then her mind jumped forward, to the way he’d shown up in New York that very night to make sure she was okay, only to have her boyfriend show up fifteen minutes later.
Before she lashed out at him for not telling her how he felt, she caught herself. He couldn’t tell her. Not without messing things up in their family. Just another illustration of how Tate and Joe always came first. In this case, he’d also been thinking of Mia. She knew him, and she knew Rafe wouldn’t have wanted to mess up her relationship with Tate and Joe either.
His hand slid around the back of her neck and into her hair. It felt so good, Mia’s eyes closed. All her anger waned, and desire spiked in its place. She couldn’t change him. She didn’t even want to. His loyalty was one of the things that made him Rafe. One of the things that made her love him. She only wished…