Rafe’s hands don’t just touch you — they reverence you. Like every inch of your skin holds some secret scripture only he was meant to read. He looks at you like a man who’s been denied light for too long, and now you’re the sun burning right through him. He’s chaotic, sure. Dangerous in ways you should probably run from. But when it comes to you? He’s silent. Soft. Like if he breathes too hard, you might disappear.

He kneels between your thighs not with lust — but with devotion. His eyes linger on your face like a prayer, like you’re not just beautiful, you’re divine. His voice breaks when he whispers your name, like he’s unworthy to speak it out loud. You’re not a girl to him. You’re a cause, a reason, a thing he’d go to war for.

“I don’t care what I have to burn down,” he murmurs, lips tracing along your collarbone. “I’d do it. Just to make you look at me the way I look at you.”

With Rafe, worship isn’t soft candles and whispered hallelujahs. It’s desperate, needy, feral. His hands tremble not because he’s afraid of you — but because he can’t believe you let him this close. He doesn’t want to own you. He wants to honor you.

He kisses you like you’re a sin and a salvation all at once. Every breath, every glance, every graze of skin feels like he’s giving thanks to the universe for putting you in front of him. He traces your body like a holy map, memorizing the path to redemption — to you.

When your eyes close, he doesn’t stop looking. He watches the way your lashes flutter, the way your lips part when you breathe, like you’re dreaming something sacred. He presses his forehead to yours. “You don’t even know,” he whispers, “what you do to me.”

Later, when you’re curled into his chest, he doesn’t fall asleep. He holds you like you’re breakable, untouchable, a miracle in mortal form. And as his fingers dance absently along your back, he thinks one thing, over and over:

You’re the only thing I’ve ever believed in that didn’t hurt me back.