Chapter 3 #2
He pressed it into her mouth, not just between her lips, but deep.
Ran the bar across her teeth like a brush, coating her gums, her tongue.
He ran his soapy fingers to the back of her throat until she gagged, and he didn’t stop.
Used one hand to hold her jaw steady and the other to scrub the lies from her mouth.
And God, it burned.
The bitterness hit first, sharp and disgusting, but beneath it came heat, like fire ants under and on her tongue, like the inside of her mouth had been scraped raw and filled with an acid peroxide.
“You could’ve told us the truth,” he said quietly. “You didn’t trust us to forgive you.”
She’d truly wounded him, and it made her heart hurt.
She would’ve welcomed welts and bruises, but this left her raw and crumbling, filth in her mouth and shame in her bones, no soap strong enough to erase what she’d done.
She whimpered. Tears already slipping from her eyes.
Drool leaked from the corners of her mouth, thick and foamy, and she couldn’t stop it.
She wanted to spit. Her body screamed its need to reject the poison, the burn — but she couldn’t. That was the point.
So she stood straight. Frozen in place.
His strong fingers dragged the bar over her lower teeth again, working it in, the taste bitter and sharp, coating her tongue, her throat.
“You’re smarter than this,” he said, his tone low and intimate. “Too smart not to understand what it means to lie to wolves. What it means to be accepted into a wolfpack. Accepted into the arms of the top three.”
She sobbed, not from the soap but because she’d let him down. She’d hurt him. Wounded him.
Silas rinsed the bar and set it aside, then took a washcloth and wiped her lips clean. He didn’t rinse her mouth and didn’t tell her to. This wasn’t about comfort.
He didn’t want her to forget.
He looked at her for a long moment. Brushed her hair from her face. “You won’t lie to me again.”
It wasn’t a question.
She shook her head, still crying.
And he nodded, just once. “You may brush your teeth in thirty minutes. Look at your watch.”
She did and met his gaze. Nodded and managed the best, “Yes, Sir,” she could under the circumstances.
She turned to walk away, head bowed and mouth still thick with foam, drool sliding from her lips before she could stop it. It ran down her chin, hit her breast in warm, shameful streams. She cupped her hand under it, trying to catch what she could so it wouldn’t hit the floor, but it kept coming.
Kept leaking out.
The bitter burn clung to every inch of her mouth — tongue, gums, the roof, the back of her throat — and she knew thirty minutes would leave her raw.
She’d have to stand over the sink and drool into it, spitting when she could, rinsing when allowed — but not a second before.
But right now, all she could do was walk in silent, sticky humiliation.
And in the aching hollowness of her chest, she wished he’d just beaten her. She wished she was walking away bruised and swollen, raw and bleeding.
She could handle beatings and bruises, but this left her exposed, unraveling, ashamed — as if there wasn’t enough soap in the universe to wash away the pain she’d caused him.
* * * *
By the time Saturday afternoon arrived, she wasn’t certain how long indefinitely meant.
She’d figured it would be more than a few days, and they were barely there, but she felt as if Kenny and Boone were possibly on the edge of forgiving her, but Silas still looked at her with pain.
Still didn’t really have his heart in it when he fucked her ass, and there was no joy when he soaped her mouth every morning, only sorrow.
She’d hoped, after Silas had made her haul firewood on a piece of plywood for miles around the property while he kept her moving with a strap, it would fix things, but it was like each strike had only made it worse.
And her knees were fucking raw and bruised from the damned rice every day, but that was an established punishment. It wasn’t new.
The deadline for her letters had been late the day before. She’d poured her heart out in them, but hadn’t received feedback.
When she went outside to hand Kenny her evening lines a little early because she’d been able to start after lunch, he looked through them and handed them back. “Put them on my desk. Close the door and strip. Stand in the corner until we come in.”
The three were building a deck they planned to screen in for a hot tub.
Normally, she’d have been outside with them. Bringing them tools, boxes of nails. Screws.
They especially liked telling her they needed more screws.
She obeyed, though. Went back into the house, stripped, and stood in the corner.
* * * *
When she was gone, Kenny told Silas. “We have to end it, and your wolf is going to have to be okay with it.”
“Yeah. I get it.”
Kenny shook his head. “No, I don’t think you do. She’s fucking wounded around you. You don’t hurt her. You fuck her and send her away. She needs the connection between sadist and masochist, and don’t tell me you don’t understand that.”
“I don’t feel the connection anymore.”
Kenny could feel Silas’s pain through the pack’s bonds, and he shook his head, sighed, and said a truth he hadn’t wanted to voice. “Then you and your wolf need to decide if this remains a foursome. If you need to move out.”
Silas’s scent was sour. Acrid. Kenny’s second was hurting and wasn’t sure how to get past the lies, past what his wolf saw as unforgivable betrayal.
While they were all more than their wolves, for the truly emotional hurts, their inner animals sometimes couldn’t be logicked with.
“I know,” Silas said. “Started to walk out right away, but I wanted to try to get past it. Still want to, but I can’t see a path.”
“Look harder. We all want you here. I get that the wolf is hurt, so figure out what he needs.”
They finished the section they were working on and went inside. None had gotten sweaty, so no need for showers. Probably didn’t matter though, because Kenny didn’t think this was going to be a moment that required sex to end it properly.
The three sat in the conference room chairs on one side of the table, Kenny in the middle, and he told her, “Come stand at inspection pose in front of me, little hawk.”
Her scent wasn’t quite relief. She didn’t trust that him calling her little hawk meant everything was okay, but she hoped.
If he was reading her right, anyway.
“Is there anything you need to happen in order to feel as if the slate has been wiped clean?”
She nodded. “Permission to come around the table, Sir?”
He wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, but he said, “Granted.”
He’d assumed she’d beg for everything to go back to the way it was, but she kneeled beside Silas and met his gaze.
“You have to do whatever it takes to either forgive me, or let me prove to you how much I understand how badly I hurt you. A way to show you how sorry I am. Even if it takes a month for me to heal from it, and you don’t let me change.
” Her eyes watered. “Three months! I don’t care.
I can’t fix this. Please, Sir. Silas, please. I love you!”
Kenny held his breath. Some things an Alpha can fix, some things he can only stand by and watch. Silas swiveled the chair to face her, looked down at her for thirty seconds, and leaned forward. His face six inches from hers.
“The Story of O, when she wants to stay with Rene, doesn’t want to go with Stephen? When he beats her all over? Large purple welts covering her skin? Oozing blood all over?”
She nodded.
“I need you to hold onto a bar over your head and take it. No safeword. No words. Screams are fine. Tears. But no words. If it’s too much, you can let go and walk out.
A horsewhip and a rubber sap. All over except your face, but I might decide to slap you.
” Silence. “I’m going to let the wolf surface, Willow.
He’s the one who can’t forgive you. It won’t be me in charge part of the time. ”
Kenny saw her swallow, and knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“Whatever it takes, Silas, to make you my Sir again.”
Kenny telepathed Silas. My wolf is telling me Boone and I need to go back outside to work on the deck. The human part of me wants to supervise. Tell me whether the wolf or the human is right?
She’ll walk out if it’s too much. I won’t stop her.
If she’d been human, Kenny would’ve supervised, but hawks can heal from a lot. He wasn’t worried about Silas not allowing her to leave, but about Willow letting him go too far.
But his wolf insisted they needed to do this alone, so he and Boone went back outside.