Rafe (The Wounded Sons Book 4)

by Leah Sharelle

  “Fair enough,” I laughed. Only Rafe would be so honest with me like that. He could have made up something silly and romantic, but as always, Rafe went with the truth. Though, thinking about it, I couldn’t see anything romantic he could come up with about the pet name Bunny.

  Motioning for him to sit, I followed him down on the two-seater couch, perching myself on the edge while Rafe sat back and kicked out his legs in front of him, his hands going to the back of his head in a very relaxed posture.

  “You’re tense, Peyton. Don’t you know by now you can tell me anything?”

  “So can you,” I countered, cleverly reminding him without outright saying that this was our talk and not just mine. If he wanted me to open up and let him in completely then he was going to have to do the same. Whatever this chemistry between us meant, it was wasted without total honesty.

  “There isn’t much about me you don’t know Bunny, other than the things I am not allowed to talk about concerning my job.”

  “I don’t know where you go when you leave Ballarat when you get back from deployment.” And it was out. Somewhat rudely and without an ounce of finesse but out just the same.

  Rafe visibly tensed, it was quick and he recovered even faster, but I saw it. One leg was pulled back and lifted to rest on the other knee. Causal.

  “I go visit a friend who is in a hospice care facility. I made a … commitment a long time ago to visit and I take that promise very seriously.”

  “Hospice? Oh, does he have cancer?”

  Did his jaw just tic?

  “No, coma. It’s not something that will ever change, but I still go and talk to … my friend. It is something their family believes could help, and while the medical staff there don’t agree, I only go to appease them.”

  My chest ached suddenly with empathy for Rafe. His voice was full of despair for his friend, but I also caught something final in his friend’s condition.

  “Is there any hope—”

  “None. Keeping the machines on is just prolonging their pain and putting off the grieving process. I can’t get through to them, and fuck knows, I have tried,” Rafe exploded unexpectedly, surprising and worrying me. Rafe never lost his cool, and if he had, I was never there to see it happen. Getting to his feet, he paced in front of the TV like a caged animal. Tension rolled off him, and I had no clue how to respond or help him.

  “Rafe—”

  “It’s hopeless Bunny, there is no brain activity, hasn’t been for three years. But that doesn’t stop them from visiting every day acting like their kid is just in a peaceful fucking sleep. What kind of parents do that? Let their own child stay on this earth so cruelly?” Turning to me, Rafe opened his arms, almost begging me to give him the answer.

  Jumping to my feet, I stepped into his open arms without hesitation and wrapped my hands around his biceps. He was a tall man, so I had to lean back to see his face. I had no idea what this friend was to him. I mean, obviously they were close, judging by the passion coming from him about his mate being in a coma.

  “Honey, you have answered that question already yourself. They are his parents, a parent would and should do anything for their kids. Some admittedly don’t.” I thought of my own parents, so callously hiding me from their lives so they didn’t feel shame for having a pregnant teenager. They should have fought for me and my baby, but their first thoughts were for themselves and their reputations and good standing in the community. My own brush with motherhood taught me one important lesson thanks to my parent’s treatment of me. I learnt that I would have done anything for my son, from the second the nurse put him in my arms, I vowed to guard him with my life. What I didn’t know was, there were some things you couldn’t protect your children from, no matter how hard you pray you can.

  I remember begging God to let my son breathe again, let his little chest move with some sign of life. I sat on the floor of my room in that beach house for hours, holding my blanket wrapped little boy to me, desperately whispering into his ear to come back to me. So in a way, I understood this poor family’s determination to keep hoping and not turning off the life support. No parent should ever have to make that decision. I felt bad for them, and I didn’t even know them, I knew what they were going through, what they wished for more than anything.

  “I just can’t understand their motivation—"

  “I lost my son when he was three months old from SIDS,” I blurted out in a rush, stopping Rafe. This wasn’t exactly how I planned to tell him, but you go with it when an opening presents itself.

  “What?” Rafe gaped at me.

  “I did. For three months I was a mum. And for a brief moment in time, I was a pretty good mum, until I wasn’t. So what I am saying is, I understand your friend’s family not wanting to admit he is dead to them. I get their pain Rafe, I’ve lived it every day for seven years. No parent should ever feel what it is like to bury a child, no matter the age of that child.”

  “I buried my son in a pale blue onesie with little giraffes printed on it. A dark blue wool beanie I knitted while I was pregnant, a blue and green receiving blanket and a picture of him and I’d taken minutes after he was born.”

  Rafe tightened his arms around my back, his hands splayed at the base.

  “Pey, I am so sorry.”

  “My little boy is in the ground in a cemetery over an hour away from here. He died the day after my eighteenth birthday, I had him for three months and I loved him fiercely. I can imagine how hard it would be for a mum and dad who had years and years with their child only … having to choose to let your child die. Be patient with them Rafe, you aren’t in their position. Making the decision to officially end the life of someone you love can’t be easy.” I could feel the wetness on my cheeks, talking about Dean did that to me, which is why I never spoke of him except when I was alone, but Rafe not only needed to hear my secret for my own good, but also for his. Hearing the side of a parent might just give him the encouragement to be more accepting of his situation. Plus, I felt a sense of relief for coming clean about Dean, there was still much to tell, and if I knew Rafe, he was going to have questions. Dean’s father being the one I was expecting first, and I would answer them truthfully and honestly because if Rafe and I were going to act upon this chemistry between us, then we were going to do it with a clean slate.

  Dropping my head to Rafe’s chest, I slid my arms down his arms and under so I was cuddled into him, our arms firmly around one another.

  We have the spark, now it was time for everything else.

  I wanted to be Rafe’s.

  I was ready to be something more to him—if he would have me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RAFE

  I stood there in the middle of the lounge room, Die Hard on in the background, one of my favourite movies but I couldn’t concentrate on anything else than Peyton’s fingers drawing lazy circles on my back through my shirt.

  All the information she just kit me with swarmed around in my head, yet I couldn’t even begin to process any of it, all because of her touching me.

  This wasn’t the first time Peyton put her hands on me, or in fact, the first time in my arms; however, there was something different about this moment. It was as if an electrical current was surging between our bodies, very different to our usual cuddles on the couch or falling asleep with her head on my shoulder.

  Running my hands soothingly up and down Peyton’s back, I waited for her body to stop trembling. I wasn’t too sure why she felt the need to keep her son a secret from me, I didn’t feel any different towards her just because she was a mum. Losing her baby so young and at a young age herself, it made sense the way she went at life, at least to me. Everything from her career choice to the way she looked after her car and now mine. Peyton valued the things in her life, she cared for them, protected them. But at the same time, she guarded herself against hurt. After what she just told me, the pieces were falling into place.

  Peyton was afraid of loss, and to make sure that she didn’t
lose anything ever again, she kept to herself. Getting close meant caring, and caring in her mind lead to the chance of having that something special taken from her.

  Justin came close to taking her from me. That night, I saw the terror that she wasn’t going to live through the fire in her eyes. That night had been the first time I ever laid eyes on Peyton Singleton. It was also the night I felt real God-fearing terror. One look into those exquisite amber eyes, and for the first time in my life, I felt a desire for a woman like I never thought existed. My balls haven’t been the same since that night, constantly in a state of blue. My dick forever hard and painful.

  “Rafe?” Peyton murmured, her face pressed into my left pec.

  “Hmmm, Bunny?”

  “Honey, do you know that you are massaging my butt cheeks?”

  Stilling, I looked over her shoulder and saw that indeed my large hands were, in fact, covering her denim-clad arse, my fingers sliding over the worn material as if they had every right in the world doing so.

  Fuck! That would account for why my dick was hard now.

  Unable to help the press of my hips into her, I caught her low suppressed moan, and … fuck! Did she just sink her teeth into my pec muscle? My dick jumped behind my button fly, the sexy bite pulling a moan of my own from my throat.

  “Bunny, fuck me that was … fuck!”

  I liked sex with a little roughness, not crazy shit, but gentle biting was definitely on the cards. Light spanking and some tying up now and again also part of my repertoire. Although, not for the last five years. Before Angie and I divorced, we stopped all sexual activity a year or so earlier. Angie used her body as a bargaining tool, and if I was honest, I played the same game with her. I refused to give in when I came home from missions or training, spending most of my nights at home on the couch. There were times when I stayed in Queenscliff, not even bothering going home to her, not that she gave a shit. Phone calls from her telling me that Daddy had bought her a new car or a new Master Card pissed me off enough to stay away. Our marriage at that stage was a farce, all communication broken except when a fight ensued, then the both of us had plenty to say.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I actually got my dick out of my pants for anything more than a tug with my right hand. I debated pulling away from Peyton; after all, she’d just told me a damn traumatic story from her past. She had to be feeling vulnerable right about now, and I wasn’t about to take advantage of the woman who had come to mean more to me than I even knew how to express.

  “Pey, I think we should—”

  “Not stop,” she insisted in a breathy voice, her hips pushing further into my hardon.

  Oh fuck me, she was going to kill me. How the hell was I expected to do the right thing when her tight, soft body was grinding against my shit? This night is supposed to be about talking and coming clean with each other. It occurred to me that I had only been half truthful about my side of things. Yeah, I told her where I went off to, who I went to see. Angie could be a friend, she used to be before we got together. I just left out the ex-wife title, letting her think that my ‘friend’ was a guy.

  The lies of omission didn’t sit well with me, not now that Peyton had been honest with me.

  Talking about Angie was hard for me at the best of times. My team knew about our marriage and divorce obviously, but only Gabe knew the rest. I wasn’t one for sharing my shit or my feelings and most definitely not with a bunch of guys in the middle of a desert or milled around a table in a FOB with a hundred other soldiers around. Taking your personal crap with you on deployment wasn’t the way things were done. If the army shrink got wind of a soldier carrying around the kind of baggage I had hanging off me, I would be pulled out of Team FIVE quicker than I could unload a bullet from a hundred metres out.

  Out there, on a mission, I could compartmentalise. Erase everything from my head except for the ordered objective. There, I was a sniper in the commandos, an elite soldier trained to do what was expected of him. I could forget about the clusterfuck that was my life and get on with things. It wasn’t until my feet hit home soil when it all came crashing back down on me.

  The danger that Peyton faced with Justin being on the loose, her being alone in this house with me away from her added to my stress levels unbelievably. Maybe I needed to ask Gabe about where the club was at with the search for Justin. He promised to keep me and Grill up to speed, but there had not been any updates for a few weeks now. Either Shiloh and Jason didn’t know anymore or they were keeping any information they did have quiet. Trusting that the club had Peyton’s safety in check was a given … logically, I knew that. Giving up the control of her life to others was another thing entirely.

  A sudden loss of heat hit me, my mind coming back to the moment in time to see Peyton pulling out of my arms and backing away, her arms wrapping around her middle and her face flaming red with embarrassment.

  “Pey?”

  “I am so sorry, Rafe, I thought that you … you know … felt the same … that this was something you wanted too,” she stammered, looking wildly around the room, no doubt for an escape route.

  Well, fuck that!

  Moving quickly, I reached Peyton and cupped her face in my hands. “I do feel the same way, and I want something to happen between us, Peyton. Don’t fucking doubt that.”

  “Then why did you zone out? The look on your face told me you weren’t here with me, Rafe.” There was a small accusing tone in her voice, not that I could blame her for being pissed at me. One minute I’m grinding against her, palming her arse, and the next, I’m lost in my fucked up past.

  “Peyton, you just told me something pretty deep and upsetting for you. Sliding your pants down around your ankles and fucking you like the way I have dreamed about doing for the last six months doesn’t exactly make me ‘man of the year’.”

  “You mean too much to me to be a fuck or a hook up when I slide back into town.”

  Peyton’s mouth dropped open then quickly closed, her sexy lips thinning into a firm line.

  “I never thought that of you at all, Rafe. Most of the time you are here with me when you get back, other than when you go to—” she stopped and waited for me to fill in that blank. Which of course I did. “Bendigo. I grew up about ten minutes out of the city of Bendigo,” I supplied truthfully.

  Nodding, Peyton went on, “Bendigo, right. So please don’t think that this is some kind of booty call. I know I have some issues with my son dying and then there is the whole Justin thing,” she said his name with an angry hiss, “but we have a great friendship to build with, Rafe. You know pretty much everything about me now, and I know what you have been doing, the hard stuff is out of the way. Or that is how I see it.” Again she blushed, probably thinking she had gone too far, but she would be wrong. Hearing her admit that she had been thinking about us being more than friends pleased the fuck out of me.

  Leaning forward, I pressed my forehead to hers, her amber eyes rimmed with emerald green.

  “I see it that way too, baby, I do. But I want to do this right; we might have just had six months of chemistry, heated looks and sexy as fuck flirting, but I have real deep feelings for you, Bunny, deeper than I have ever had before. Fucking up our friendship worries me, understand?”

  Immediately my mind went to Bastian. He and Wren had been friends for years before they transitioned to a couple. I remembered all too well how Bastian worried and fretted over fucking shit up with Wren in the early days of their relationship. He drove the unit nuts with his what-ifs and his concern over losing more than a girlfriend.

  The same went for me about Peyton. Yes, she is sexy, yes she turned me on with her tight toned body, her heart-shaped arse and fuck did I love her pastel rainbow of colours she dyed her hair. Importantly though, she was my best friend. Even with Angie, I thought of her as my girlfriend, fiancée, then my wife, though sadly never my best friend like Peyton is now. I would cut off my right arm before hurting her in any way.

  But you would lie to he
r? My annoying inner voice taunted me.

  I’m going to tell her, just not while her face is in my hands, and her eyes are looking at me like I hung the fucking moon.

  “I don’t want to mess up what we have either, Rafe.” Peyton’s hands came up to cover mine, holding me to her, “I think we can make it better. Um … don’t you?”

  So close, her lips were so close. Pink and soft and so plump, begging to be sucked into my mouth. How many times had I wished I had the guts to lean forward on the couch while watching TV with Peyton and kiss her. Every time, that’s how many, and here she was offering exactly that and more.

  Tired of over-thinking every move I make around Peyton in fear she can see my true feelings for her. Sick of taking the blame for Angie’s accident on my shoulders, I decided to do what I wanted to do. For me.

  Looking down at the woman I wanted, I rubbed my nose down the length of hers, “Yeah, I fucking do,” I growled before sliding my mouth over her lips, heaving a sigh at the same time Peyton moaned into my mouth. Moving my hands from her cheeks, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and brought her as close as possible, her arms weaving under mine to wrap me tight.

  The kiss was slow, our mouths continually slanting, wet and warm. I don’t think I had ever experienced anything so spectacular, so sensual than kissing Peyton.

  With a groan of pure pleasure, I walked us back to the couch and sat, bringing Peyton down on my lap. Not once lifting my lips or breaking our kiss. Shifting her, so her legs were sideways over my lap, I kissed and pecked at her lips, holding her around the waist, my hands clasped tightly on her hip. What I wanted was her straddling me, but I knew if I had access to her denim-covered core, this make-out session would turn into me driving my hard dick past the thin material and I didn’t think she was ready for that.

  Yet.

  “Don’t stop, Rafe,” Peyton breathed against my moving lips.

  “Not going to happen baby,” I promised, opening my mouth wider and devouring her.