Chapter 6
Boone hung from the bar in his workout room doing pullups while he watched Willow go through her weight circuit. He hadn’t taken the time to critique her in over a week, and her form had gotten sloppy.
“Arch your back and don’t fucking hyperextend,” he barked at her while looking over the top of the bar, and he slowly let himself back down when she complied.
He could watch her all day.
She was annoyed with him, but that was okay. She was beautiful when she got the lines right and the body mechanics optimized. The moment when strength and control snapped into alignment turned her into pure grace.
The conversation in Kenny’s office still played in his head, looping back while he watched her move. Kenny had closed the door to tell them June had spilled the beans, and Willow was asking about the relationship bond.
Kenny hadn’t asked how they felt about it. Just told them and waited.
Boone hadn’t hesitated. “I’m all in.”
She deserved to fully understand what she was getting into, and he’d make damn sure she did, but that didn’t change his answer. He wanted it. All of it.
Silas had gone straight to the power dynamics, muttering about how the pack might respond, and what it would mean for her to carry Kenny’s power. What it might look like when she pulled on his power and the pack felt and heard Alpha authority in her body, her voice. Her scent.
And yeah, that could be a problem, but Boone had already put the word out that anyone who challenged her would deal with him. And if they actually managed to hurt her? There wouldn’t be enough left of them to challenge anyone ever again.
Unsaid so far was the likely outcome from Kenny, because they’d probably lose contact with their wolf for a long while.
They could keep her safe, keep the wolves from thinking they could challenge her authority, and Boone liked the idea of formalizing what they’d built between them. Willow had already changed them all. They were stronger with her. Steadier. The bond would only make it official.
They’d each carry a piece of each other.
He watched her transition from triceps extensions to bent-over reverse flies and told her, “Scapulae. Not your traps. Squeeze your shoulder blades and pause at the top, hold it for a two-count. Slow down and stop just swinging weights around.”
The scent of her annoyance wafted across the room, and he straightened his arms to hang from the bar. Lifted both legs slowly until they were perpendicular to his torso, a strict L-sit hold, working deep into his core.
She’d be fine with access to Kenny’s power. Not a single doubt. They just needed to keep her safe while the pack figured out what it meant to have a hawk sitting beside their Alpha — and fucking their top three, though Boone thought they were through the worst of that.
She replaced the weights she’d been using, walked to the loaded barbell for a clean and press, and set her grip.
He watched her drop into a squat, focused. She managed to power the bar up, but it wobbled at her shoulders, her stance a little off.
She braced and pressed it overhead anyway, gritting through the motion. Her back overcompensated, shoulders rounding too soon.
He’d taught her better than that.
Boone growled low in his throat before his voice snapped across the room, tone steady despite the tension in his gut from the L-sit. “Your setup’s too narrow. Heels under your hips. And stop looking down. Spine stays neutral. Chin tucked and eyes on the horizon.”
She held the bar locked out a second longer than she needed to, then let it drop to the floor with a sharp clang before spinning to face him, cheeks flushed.
“I’m fucking squatting and lifting it over my damned head!
Stop nitpicking my every motherfucking move!
What the fuck does it matter where my damned eyes are! ”
Boone dropped from the bar, grabbed the dress off the hook near the door, and stepped to where she stood beside the weights with her hands still on her hips.
He pulled the dress over her head, forcing her arms down and trapping them, and then bent, gripped her thighs, and slung her over his shoulder.
She wriggled, but he only tightened his grip and shifted her weight higher on his shoulder.
He tightened the arm across her thighs to pin her in place better, and started walking with her squirming against his back, cussing until he hit the hallway, and then apologizing profusely while using Sir appropriately.
He telepathed Kenny and Silas as soon as he had her on his shoulders. Ya’ll are gonna want to meet us in the kitchen. I can handle it if you’re busy. Just a heads up if you want to oversee the nettles being used on a mouthy little cunt.
When he reached the kitchen, he settled her on her feet and looked at the four packmates around a table with coffee mugs, staring at him.
“We need the kitchen,” he told them. “Take a thirty-minute walk before you come back. Maybe an hour.”
No one argued.
They stood. Chairs scraped. Mugs were abandoned.
The door closed behind them with a soft click.
“Dress off, mouthy fuckhole, and not another motherfucking word.” He glanced at the garden wall and looked back to her. “Harvest the nettles and present them.”
* * * *
Fuck. What had made her explode at him like that?
Willow yanked the dress off and tossed it aside, stalking barefoot to the nettles like they were a horde of fire ants swarming over a carcass.
She felt Boone’s eyes on her from behind and felt extra-exposed. She’d never been naked in the kitchen before, at least not since those first days, when Kenny had asked the pack for a few days of privacy.
It felt wrong to be naked downstairs.
She stepped to the gorgeous woodwork the men had crafted to make her punishment garden look like part of the wall, and forced herself to pick the first leaf. Boone was already upset. She didn’t want to make it worse by stalling.
Pain flared across her fingers instantly. She flinched but didn’t stop.
One leaf. Two. She worked slowly, deliberately, cradling each barbed weapon like the poisoned sentence she’d soon be intimate with.
She counted out six dozen leaves, her hands tingling, her skin stinging while she picked one-by-one at random over the multiple plants to keep from damaging the stems or causing too much of a loss from any particular area.
By the time she had enough for what she knew was coming, her fingers were starting to throb, no longer merely tingling — the stingers had slipped under the skin, and it felt like she’d pressed her hands to a sheet of invisible glass charged with low current.
Tiny raised welts bloomed across her fingertips, each one pulsing with fire.
She bundled the armload of leaves against her chest, against her bare breasts, and pain spiked again, savage and immediate, blooming over her nipples, her sternum, the soft upper swell of each breast as hundreds of new barbs kissed skin that should never feel this kind of agony.
Pain flared higher, sharp and electric, racing down her chest. Her body shuddered, but she didn’t dare shift the leaves. She had to hold them, just like this, had to keep every single one safe and intact.
Her arms were trembling now, the first welts forming across the insides of her wrists and all the way to her elbows.
Her palms screamed. Her fingers curled awkwardly around the leaves, no longer able to grip them properly.
Her breath sawed in and out, ragged and shallow.
The world narrowed to the fire in her hands and chest. She blinked fast to keep the tears from falling.
She pulled the drawer at the end of the garden open with her pinky and retrieved the panties and bra tucked inside with the same finger.
Nitrile gloves too, so the smug bastard could stamp pain onto her most tender flesh without having to feel it himself.
She didn’t know if it would be Boone’s hands or Silas’s though, since she’d heard him come in while she harvested. Her stomach turned at the thought. Though Boone was pretty annoyed, so he might be just as sadistic with the placement as Silas.
She turned and faced them, her skin too tight over her hands. Her chest.
She looked down, staring at their feet, unable to meet their gazes. What had possessed her to snap at Boone? Her shame at her behavior sat sour in her stomach while the fire spread outside her body.
Correction when she got something wrong was fast and done — pepper oil on a plug while she cleaned a bathroom she’d missed, lines while she sucked Silas’s hot-pepper fireball creations when she forgot to say Sir, corner time kneeling on rice when she zoned out and forgot drinks or neglected something else.
But out-and-out disrespect like this was different, and she was ashamed of her actions.
The sharp edges of each leaf shifted with every movement, and now the barbs were working into her breasts with every breath. She swore she could feel them pulsing like they were alive, angry, and multiplying with every step.
Her nipples burned. Not throbbed. Burned.
She whimpered, and then cursed her clit, pulsing away like it was looking forward to having the damned leaves wrapped around it, confusion and fear bleeding into arousal in the worst possible way.
She walked carefully, like a woman carrying a hive of copperhead snakes in her arms. That’s what this was. A twisting mass of punishment, alive and poisonous.
Her knees wobbled.
She looked up, hoping to see some kindness or mercy in their faces, but she saw none. They both stood with arms crossed, faces unreadable.
Until Silas met her gaze and smirked.
The fucking bastard was going to enjoy every second of this.
Her cheeks flamed. Her breath hitched. She looked back down and kept walking toward whatever was coming, every step worse than the last.
Boone took the gloves and snapped them on. “Leaves on the paper.”