Chapter 15 - Wolfson
“Out.” I make a shooing motion at my brothers. “You have a distillery to run, planes to fly, and…” I lock eyes with my father. “You have a pint-sized baby mama to irritate.”
When Frankie got abducted, Monty dropped the whole CEO gig like a bad habit, ditched his billion-dollar empire, and spent every second tearing the world apart to find her. When he finally got her back, he didn’t return to work.
He still wears the suits and owns the global enterprise. But he spends every waking moment orbiting Frankie and my brothers like a control freak. Watching. Managing. Pulling strings no one asked him to touch.
I don’t know how they stand it. If he tried that shit with me, I’d fold his pretentious clothes with him in it.
At the mention of Frankie, Monty leans back against the counter, arms folded and jaw clenched. Leo’s eyes blaze with the flesh-mauling thoughts of a mountain troll, and Kody’s dark stare drills into Jag, aiming to crush him with a single glance.
They can’t hide Frankie’s existence or their baby growing inside her. They sure as hell can’t hide what they would do if someone touched what’s theirs. It wouldn’t be justice. It would be annihilation.
As the shop bleeds hostility, Jag Rath stands at the center, shoulders back, hands relaxed at his sides as if he isn’t the target of their violent thoughts. His smirk mocks us all.
At least the weapons have been sheathed.
“You’re going to ink the man who wants you dead?” Monty growls. “Think through this, Son.”
“Relax. He’s letting me put needles in his skin. Not the other way around. If he twitches, I’ll just bleed him a little faster.”
They know I can handle myself. I don’t need a gun or a blade. I am the weapon. My reflexes, instincts, and total lack of fucks to give… No civilized man can match that.
I wasn’t made here. Hoss built me. I’m apex by design. Teeth, fists, and ferocity are my factory settings. Same as my brothers.
Which is why Monty gives a tight nod and steps into Jag’s space like he owns the man’s air. “Hand over your weapons.”
Jag flashes his teeth, bristling with ice and arrogance, but he does it. So do I. Not that it matters. There are enough guns stashed in this place to start a small war.
But that’s not the point.
Monty is laying down the rules. If this gets ugly, it stays personal. No steel. No bullets. Just skin, bone, and pain. Because Monty knows, if it comes down to bare hands, I’m walking out. Jag is not.
Even if Jag’s wrist wasn’t as swollen and black as roadkill, I’d still put him down. But damn. Just looking at the busted thing makes my knuckles ache in sympathy. He should really get it checked out.
Or not. I’m not his babysitter. Let it rot.
Monty leaves first. Leo and Kody follow, casting dark looks at Jag. When the door shuts, I exhale slowly and size up my opponent.
Alone, he’s more menacing. All coiled muscle and primal stillness. Everything about him radiates sex. It pisses me off that I feel it.
Lucky for me, I have a thing for women.
Women who dye their hair blue and smell like motor oil.
“Get comfortable.” I gesture at the tattoo chair. “Do you know what you want?”
“A leg sleeve.”
I go still. “That’s…”
“Sixty hours of work. Longer if the design is complex.” He cocks his head. “I expect complex.”
“Riiiight. But when you said a tattoo…”
“You assumed it would be a single session. That’s your problem.” He reaches for his belt with his good hand, fingers deftly working the buckle. “Start with a thigh piece.”
“Intimate.” I lean against my workbench, watching him undress without modesty.
“Thought you were a professional.” He steps out of his jeans, revealing sculpted thighs dusted with hair.
“I am. Strippers are professional, too. And while you’re working them, they’re working you. Are you trying to work me, Rath?”
“Maybe you’re reading too much into it.” He removes his shirt because… Why?
“And you’re saying nothing while revealing everything.”
Jesus in a crop top, his physique is imposing. Broad shoulders, lean waist, rippling muscles, all that shit. Why am I staring? It’s just aesthetics. Like admiring a weapon. Doesn’t mean I want to fuck the knife.
Still… There’s a pull. Feral. Wrong.
Impossible.
I shove it down hard. I’m not into him.
“Do you have a design in mind?” I force my gaze to his.
“I want a biomechanical jaguar. Full-sized.” He gestures at the rock-hard muscle from his knee to his hip. “With electrical circuits for veins and its claws gripping an anatomical heart covered in feathers.”
“A heart with feathers?” I narrow my eyes.
“You heard me.”
“Sounds personal.”
“It is.” He smiles, cold and secretive.
I nod slowly, understanding too well. The jaguar is his namesake. The feathered heart, obviously Dove’s. The circuits, his hacker skills, his need for control.
The whole thing is fucked-up and obsessive, exactly like him. It’s also clever, unapologetic, and badass. I hate myself for appreciating his vision.
Without another word, I sketch the design, blending sleek fur into intricate circuit patterns and claws sinking deep into the symbolic heart of a bird. Each line feels like a confession, each stroke a betrayal.
When I present the outline to Jag, his gaze softens with satisfaction, barely perceptible but undeniably there.
“Perfect.” He drops onto the chair.
After I prep my station, I don my gloves and straddle the stool, rolling it close to where he sits. Right up to his exposed, muscular thigh.
The room holds its breath as I grab a razor.
Why are my hands shaking? I shave strangers every day.
Resting a palm on his leg for balance, I drag the blade along the curve of his thigh and clear away the fine dusting of hair. The razor glides in slow strokes, and each pass leaves a clean, bare path behind it. His skin is smooth beneath the steel, the muscle taut underneath.
I focus too hard on the task. Maybe because Jag focuses too hard on me. The intensity in his stare makes the back of my neck prickle.
That done, I grab a sharpie and sketch directly onto his skin. No stencil. I rely on instinct and muscle memory.
Hard flesh flexes beneath my pen, sending a jolt through my nerves.
“Higher,” he murmurs.
With his black briefs in the way, I stretch the material to the side and add more detail farther up. Muscle leaps under my touch, but I don’t look at his face. I can’t.
“Higher,” he repeats. “I want the piece to wrap over the hip, reaching into the oblique.”
I can’t move the fabric high enough for what he wants. I pause, about to tell him it won’t work unless—
In one fluid motion, he hooks a thumb into the waistband and lowers his underwear, letting it hang around his knees. He’s completely exposed, utterly shameless.
Sweet suffering Christ.
I flick my gaze away before I get a good look at his dick.
“Problem?” he asks.
“Only if you start moaning. Cover yourself.”
“Are you this shy with all your clients?” He fully removes his underwear and drapes it over himself. “Or just me?”
“You’re not the first pervert to drop his pants in my chair.”
But he’s the sexiest.
Not that I care.
I return to the outline, drawing carefully, aware of my knuckles moving within inches of his groin and my breath brushing the inside of his leg. Every line I sketch is another line I’ll have to ink.
It’s going to be a long damn day.
“So…” My hand glides up the inside of his leg, the jaguar taking shape in my mind and flowing from my fingers. “Why her?”
He stares ahead for a beat, then down at me. “She’s mine.”
“That’s a diagnosis.”
“You think I’m sick?”
“I think you’re obsessive. Murderous. Maybe worse.”
“Obsessive is just another word for consistent.”
“And murderous?”
“You tell me.” His hooded copper eyes dip to my mouth. “You chopped up Sitka’s beloved heart surgeon without blinking an eye. That wasn’t survival. It was pleasure.”
I pause, the sharpie frozen above his skin.
How the fuck does he know about the doctor?
“Don’t pretend you’re the gentler animal.” He drags his tongue across his bottom lip. “You think if you play hero to a woman with scars, no one will notice the ones you’re trying to hide?”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me.” Reflexively, I clench my scarred abdomen.
“I know enough.
“How did Dove get her scars?”
“How did you get yours?”
“Your hacker skills didn’t divulge that?”
He sighs.
I return to drawing, pressing harder, making the lines bolder. More jagged. Less art. More confession. “She’s not a prize to fight over.”
“No,” Jag says. “She’s a battlefield, and we’re the soldiers.”
“We’re not the same.”
“Not when it comes to her. You hold her hand. I hold her by the throat.”
“And you think she wants that?”
“She came to Sitka. For me.”
“To kill you.”
“She had multiple opportunities. Yet here I am.”
I finish the sketch in silence, swap my gloves for a fresh pair, and grab the machine.
With a quick glance at his nude form, I confirm what I already assumed. This will be his first tattoo.
But I notice something else.
A scar.
Faint, old, but not forgotten by the flesh, it lives just below his rib cage. A thin line, no longer angry but stubborn in its permanence. The width of my thumb. Clean entry. No fraying at the edges. Someone knew how to hold a blade, and they sank it deep.
A kill shot.
Whoever did it meant for him to bleed out.
I’ve seen stab wounds. Too many. Dozens mar my reflection in the mirror. I know how they age, how they change over time. This one is ancient history.
Who put it there? An ex-lover? A job gone wrong? Dove?
I hope it was her.
The buzz of the machine is the only warning I give him before driving the needle into his knee.
It’s an excruciatingly sensitive spot, but his body doesn’t flinch. Eyes half-lidded, breathing steady, he takes the pain like it’s a cigarette break.
The only sign he feels anything is the way his fingers flex against the chair, slow and rhythmic, syncing with the pulse of the needle.
“You like hurting me,” he says after the initial shock of pain passes.
“You deserve worse.”
We lock eyes.
The buzz returns.
The ink sinks deeper.
Neither of us speaks for a long time, but I feel his gaze pressing against my skin, stroking, burning, never leaving.
“Watching your artist work?” I don’t look up. “Or are you undressing me with your eyes again?”
“I can multitask.”
“Yeah, well, keep your fantasies to yourself. You’re not my type.”
“Sure about that?”
“You’re not even your type.” I wipe away a bead of ink and angle the machine higher, tracing around the outline of the heart. “She told me you used to scare her.”
“I protected her.”
“By fucking her fiancé?”
He’s quiet a breath too long. Then… “Dove and I survived things together. Things you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He shifts, the motion subtle. Not discomfort. Something else. “We were hunted. Homeless. Starving. On the run. I was sixteen. She was eight. I kept her alive.”
“Hunted by whom?”
“The police. Social services. The people who murdered our parents. You name it.”
“Who murdered your parents?”
“Monsters. That’s all you need to know.”
“So you went through some shit together. Doesn’t explain why you look at her the way you do. Like she’s not your stepsister.” I grind the needle a little deeper, intentional, watching the skin respond.
He doesn’t flinch. “Maybe you should pay attention to how she looks at me.”
“She seems more interested in disappearing from your life entirely.”
“You assume she knows what she feels.”
“And you do?”
“I know she needs me. That’s never changed.”
“You’re the reason she sleeps with a knife under her pillow.”
This time, he does flinch. “You protect her like you know her.”
“I protect her because I recognize a cage when I see one.”
“You think I’m her prison.” He tilts his head.
“I think that’s your plan.”
The machine buzzes against his skin as I begin detailing the circuitry veins running along the jaguar’s spine.
His eyes remain on my face, studying, curious. Carnal.
“Why didn’t you let your vicious brothers kill me?” he asks.
“Dove doesn’t want that, and for now, that’s enough. But don’t mistake my patience for forgiveness.”
“I don’t think you want me dead, either.”
I pause, glancing at his swollen, broken wrist resting on his abdomen. “Nice hand.”
Fury ignites in his eyes, reminding me who I’m tattooing.
“Touchy.” I wipe the ink away with more force than necessary.
“Speaking of touchy, have you touched my sister?”
“Yes. But that’s not what you’re asking.” I meet his gaze evenly. “You want to know if I’m giving her the ol’ in and out.”
“Are you?” His voice drops to a guttural rasp.
Ah. There it is. The edge beneath the question. The crack in his tone he tried to bury under a cool, murderous whisper. I struck something vital.
He doesn’t care if I’m dangerous. Doesn’t care that I have needles in his skin or that I could break his other wrist without blinking.
But the idea that I’ve been inside her? That I’ve touched what he thinks belongs to him? That’s the wound that bleeds. He’s not afraid of death. He’s afraid of being replaced. That’s his weakness. Not pain. Not blood. Her.
I could lie. Feed him every brutal detail he’s terrified to hear. Watch the storm roll in behind his eyes and swallow him whole.
I could own him with a few graphic words.
Too easy. Too fast. Better to let him squirm. Let him question. Let that image poison his brain from the inside out. Because if I want to break Jag Rath, I won’t do it with fists.
I’ll do it with suggestion.
With silence.
With every moment I don’t answer, every breath I leave hanging.
Let him wonder if I’ve claimed the only thing he’s ever pretended to love.
Let him choke on it.