22
Isa
Ipouted playfully as Rafe guided me up the steps to the private rooftop terrace we had to ourselves. I'd known about it, but never had the opportunity or need to utilize it. It was foolish to think that I'd ever be able to beat Rafe at chess given the limited time I had to try, but the competitive part of me that didn't often get the opportunity to rear its head wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong.
Even knowing chess was something that took people years to master.
Rafael pushed open the doors to the rooftop, bathing us in the dim lighting from the stars above. Music pulsed below us as people enjoyed the music by the pool. But none of the buildings around us were near as tall as our hotel, and it gave us the illusion of privacy. Even if people danced below us. Even if they swam in the pool or frolicked on the beach.
We were alone in our own little world as Rafe drew the cover back from the hot tub and turned on the jets. He stripped his shorts down his legs without preamble, stepping into the hot tub entirely naked and relaxing against the back of it as he closed his eyes. Opening them and glancing at me out of the corner, he crooked a finger for me to join him.
"Don't you ever get tired of being in the water?" I teased in reference to our expedition the day before and the way he'd traumatized me.
"The water is part of life on an island," he said, watching with darkening eyes as I shoved my shorts down my legs and tugged my shirt over my head. Making the walk toward the hot tub with his eyes on my body would have terrified me only a few days prior, but there wasn't a corner of my body he hadn't explored.
His tour of the Ibiza he loved involved a bunch of tours of his body, unsurprisingly. It wouldn't even surprise me if he thought he was the highlight of Ibiza.
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.