Chills down my spine

Dahlia

When the frantic heat of his mouth finally broke, the reality of the bedroom rushed back in like a freezing tide. Rafe rested his forehead against mine, his breathing ragged and uneven, his large hands still anchored firmly at my waist.

For a second, the only sound was the distant, sullen rumble of the storm outside and the rhythm of my own heart beating against my ribs.

Then, gently, I placed my hands flat against his bare chest and stepped back.

The movement caught him off guard. A flicker of dark, restless hunger crossed his eyes, as if he expected me to stay pinned beneath him forever, but he let his arms drop away, taking a half-step back to give me space.

"Stay here," he muttered, his voice a low, raspy command as he turned toward the ensuite bathroom to wash the mud and rain from his hands.

The moment his back was turned, every instinct I had spent a lifetime burying flared to life. The oversized sweater swallowed my frame, the sleeves dangling past my hands, but I didn't care about the warmth. My eyes scanned the vast, shadowy expanse of his bedroom.

If Rafe was keeping secrets... and he was... they wouldn't be sitting neatly in the main study where Orin or Maelis could casually stumble upon them. They would be hidden here, inside his private abode.

I moved quietly across the room, my bare feet making no sound against the thick rug. I started with the mahogany nightstands, pulling open the heavy drawers.

Empty, save for a heavy silver pocket watch and a spare magazine for a handgun. I checked the small writing desk by the arched window, skimming through blank leather journals and a stack of unanswered corporate correspondence. Nothing.

Frustration nipped at the edges of my patience. I turned my attention to the massive, ceiling built-in shelving unit flanking the decorative marble fireplace. The books were mostly heavy, leather-bound volumes on architecture, legal precedent, and obscure European history. I ran my fingers along the spines, pressing lightly here and there, looking for a false panel or a hidden spring.

Nothing gave way.

"Looking for another thing?"

The deep smooth voice cut through the quiet air behind me with such sudden proximity that I jumped, spinning around so fast my heel caught the edge of the rug.

Rafe was standing just a few feet away, leaning casually against the doorframe of the bathroom. He had pulled on a fresh pair of dark lounge pants, his broad chest and shoulders completely bare, droplets of water still clinging to the dark strands of his damp hair.

His arms were crossed over his chest, and a slow, dangerous smile played at the corner of his lips that look that told me he had been watching me fumble through his privacy for the last two minutes.

"I'm looking for a way out of this room," I lied smoothly, lifting my chin and holding his gaze with artificial bravado, though my pulse was racing like a trapped sprinter. "Unless you plan on locking me in here indefinitely like some kind of gothic trophy."

Rafe pushed off the doorframe, closing the distance between us with a slow, predatory glide. He didn't look angry; if anything, he looked amused, which somehow felt infinitely more dangerous.

"You're a terrible liar, Dahlia," he murmured, stopping just inches away so that the clean scent of cedarwood and soap washed over me. "And you're entirely too curious for your own good. What is it you think I'm hiding from you?"

"Everything," I shot back, refusing to back down even as his towering frame cast a heavy shadow over me. "You act like you're protecting me from your family, but you're just keeping me locked in your orbit so I can't find out what happened to my father seven years ago."

Rafe’s smile didn't reach his eyes. The ambient light from the hallway caught the hard angles of his face, hardening his expression into something ancient and severe. He didn't answer right away. Instead, he reached past me, his long fingers sliding smoothly behind the heavy molding of the bookshelf to my right.

A soft click echoed through the room.

A hidden panel recessed into the wood popped open a fraction of an inch. Rafe pulled it back completely, revealing a shallow, velvet-lined compartment built directly into the thick masonry of the chimney wall.

"If you want to know the truth about your father," Rafe said softly, his voice dropping an octave, losing all its playful mockery, "you shouldn't go digging through my desk. You should look at what he left behind."

He reached into the dark alcove and pulled out a single, unsealed manila envelope, sliding a heavy, aged photograph across the polished surface of the nearby writing desk.

I stepped forward, my breath catching in my throat as I looked down at the image.

It was a photograph taken decades ago, judging by the faded sepia tone and the vintage tailoring of the suits. Two men stood on the stone terrace of this very estate, surrounded by a sprawling manicured garden that looked pristine and terrifyingly orderly.

On the left stood my father, Cyran Mercer—younger, sharper, his eyes bright and ambitious, staring straight into the camera lens with an expression of cold, unyielding calculation.

On the right stood Rafe’s father, Philius Senior, dressed in a heavy wool overcoat, his hand resting stiffly on a stone balustrade.

But it wasn't the men's presence together that made my blood run cold. It was their expressions. They weren't smiling. Both men looked utterly, profoundly terrified—their faces pale, their eyes wide and darting slightly to the side as if something just out of frame was about to strike them dead.

Scrawled across the bottom margin in my father’s familiar, jagged handwriting was a single sentence that made the room spin around me.