Chapter 6
KATE
My brain knew better than to come to Cole Wolf’s hotel room. It understood the danger of getting into a stranger’s car. It remembered all the things that Bad Men do.
But my body was a feckin’ traitor. The needy space between my thighs couldn’t resist grabbing the live wire Wolf stripped bare with his slap. That flash of pure sensation made me stupid. It made me forget all the reasons I shouldn’t be here.
Wolf’s a stranger.
His entire fortune is built on eliminating hackers like me.
I cut.
I’m disgusting. I know that. Every single time, I put off using my scalpel for as long as I can—weeks sometimes, even months. I have strict rules—how I prepare myself, how I protect myself. I only cut at the precise stroke of midnight. And always, always, I promise I’ll never cut again.
But the record of how many times I’ve lied is carved into my thighs. Now, Wolf knows how truly revolting I am.
As he collapses into the armchair by the window, I claw at his bowtie around my throat. Scrambling to the edge of the bed, I fight for the duvet and sheets, neatly folded back by some maid who provided turn-down service hours ago. I’m desperate to cover my shame.
“Fuck,” Wolf says. The single syllable is glacier-cold, as smooth as a pane of glass. Then: “You’re a Red Cap Raider.”
For a single heartbeat, his words make no sense. They have nothing to do with my scars. But then I remember the tattoo on my thigh.
I got it four years ago, when we Raiders worked our first big ransomware attack. That night, watching the bank balance rise in my offshore accounts, I calculated how much money I could hand over to Da, what I could give him to pay back his debts.
He took it—of course he did—without a feckin’ word. He didn’t say he was proud of me. He didn’t even say thank you.
That was the first time I realized my own father hates me. My mother, too. They can’t stand taking my money, but they can’t survive without the extra dosh. Just by living and breathing, I’m a constant reminder that they fail at running the Canton Crew.
Realizing that after my first successful raid, my need to cut was so strong I almost boked. But there were hours and hours to survive until midnight.
So I left the house in Baltimore and got my Red Cap tattoo.
And I continue to hand over the money I get raiding because I’m an idiot daughter who thinks someday, some way, my parents may actually come to love me.
Besides, I’m a mob princess. That’s my fate—to help my clan, same as my mother, same as my grandmother, same as all the other Lynch women before me.
Now I finally answer Wolf. “Yeah. I am.”
“Just to be clear,” he says. “You ran the job this morning. Against Banque Wagner.”
“Yeah,” I say again. “I did.”
“That’s why you threw the champagne. That’s why I’m a goddamn overreaching fuckwad.”
I don’t bother answering.
His knees are spread like he’s trying to fill an entire bench on the subway. His shoulders slump. His hands dangle between his legs, as if they’re too heavy to shift. “You cost me fourteen million dollars,” he says. “And that was just today. I’m going to lose more clients.”
“You cost me,” I say. My voice is hoarse. My throat is raw, like I’m parched from running a race, which might be because Mam choked me and might be because I need to make him understand. “We planned Banque Wagner for months.”
“Red Cap is a fucking parasite.” The words are worse because they’re frozen. I could shout back if his anger boiled over.
“We’ll win next time,” I say.
“I’ll turn you over to the feds next time.”
“Your clients will love that exposure.”
“Fuck you, and all your Raiders.” Every syllable is carved from ice.
I hate him. I hate everything he stands for—big money, big clients, big hammer if he decides to turn us in.
But I want—no, I need—that feeling when he slapped me. I need to feel alive.
So I toss the duvet and sheet toward the foot of the bed. Staring directly into his eyes, I say, “Fuck you. And everything you do as Lone Wolf.” Then, while I still have his attention, before he can give up and walk away, I enunciate very carefully: “Green.”
His nostrils flare like he smells a distant campfire. Tension knits up his shoulders, squeezing his hands into fists.
“Green,” I say again.
He swallows.
I match my wrist to my ankle, the way he tried to do, letting the terrycloth belt ripple across my skin. “Green,” I say one last time.
He grunts as he pulls himself out of the chair. His hands are firm as he gathers both ends of the belt. He loops them around my ankle, yanking tight to finish a vicious knot.
I suck in a breath, fighting the fever-burn from friction. He pauses barely a second, long enough for me to yelp two syllables—yellow—or one—red. I bite my lip and shake my head.
He ties the other side then, left wrist to left ankle, pulling tight enough to spark involuntary tears in my eyes. The tears, I can’t control. But there’s no way in hell I’m giving him my feckin’ safeword.
He strides to the closet then. Comes back without his shirt, with his braces hanging beside his hips. A long length of black leather slips through his palms.
It’s a belt. A slender, supple belt.
“Open,” he says, because I’ve instinctively pushed my knees together to protect myself. I’m hiding my scars. Hiding my tattoo. Hiding the soft pink folds that ache with needy pressure.
I shake my head. I can’t comply. My body won’t follow the signals from my brain.
“Nine,” he says, calmly. Reasonably.
My knees press tight. I can’t make myself submit.
But I watch the leather flex as he wraps it around his fist. I hear the sharp report as he slaps the tongue across his palm. I imagine the fiery edges against my flesh, biting deep.
“Ten.”
It sounds like a promise, not a threat.
I can’t protect myself. I can’t escape. I’m powerless to leave this room.
But that’s not true. I have my safeword. I’m in control of everything that happens here, of every punishment he can possibly dream up.
I take a deep breath. I hold it for a count of five. And as I exhale, I let my knees fall to the sides.
I’m more exposed than I’ve been to any other man. My scars, yes, and my tattoo. The tender folds he made me taste after I fingered myself in the living room. The back of my throat is still coated with the smell of me—ocean and sun and a hint of something sweet.
My knees fall open further, and I realize the bed is damp beneath me. I’m soaked. My nipples tighten into stone as my cheeks burn in a mixture of excitement and shame.
“Count,” Wolf says.
Before I fully understand the word, he strikes me with the belt. The leather lands squarely across my pussy, just the tip blazing against my clit. The pain is as sharp as my scalpel, but wider, deeper. It wakes a creature inside me, something made of burning ice, something carved from frozen fire.
I’m supposed to say something, do something, and an eternity passes while I’m suspended, trying to remember. But then it comes to me, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside my body. “One,” I say, and my limbs flood with relief that I managed to follow Wolf’s command.
Before I can figure out how he possessed my mind, how he turned me into this needy, obedient creature, the belt whistles through the air again. It lands just as cleanly and twice as hard. The thing inside me spins out a single word: “Two.”
He strikes again. The creature ripples. I tell him, “Three.”
Each blow hurts more than the one before, winding the thing inside me tighter. Every slash reminds me that I am strong, that I am powerful, that I can bear whatever Wolf requires.
By eight my world is reduced to a few square inches of pure sensation. By nine I know I’ll come. At ten everything explodes at once—the thing inside me and the single glowing point of my clit and the ice fire pain heat of my aching pussy.
I’m laughing because I’ve never felt anything so glorious, and I’m crying because I hurt, and I’m panting because I want Wolf to praise me. I want to stay tied up like this forever, and I want him to leave me alone because I hate the very fact that he exists.
I wait for him to untie me. I’ve done everything he told me to do. But he has other plans.
He takes his time working the button on his trousers, then the zipper that tents over his cock. He steps out of his clothes. Out of his silky black boxers.
He’s too large. I can’t take him, not now, when I’m still aching from the punishment he just delivered.
But he climbs onto the bed. He settles between my bound limbs. I’m powerless to stop him.
No. Again, I’m not powerless. I have my words—yellow and red.
But I don’t have to choose which to say, not now, not yet, because he lowers his head to my chest. His lips close over my right nipple and he sucks hard, pulling a line that goes straight to the rippling, throbbing heat between my thighs.
I feel his teeth. I feel his tongue. I feel his lips. And I feel another orgasm unfold so deep inside me, it’s like he’s hollowed out my spine. This one is slow and rhythmic, spreading to the tips of my bound fingers and toes.
He shifts his attention to my other tit, and I come even faster, or maybe it’s the same orgasm, circling back to meet itself in the deepest animal parts of my brain.
I can’t move. Every muscle in my body has melted. I’m a perfectly smooth pool, spread thin under a starless sky.
I go away for a while, to somewhere dark, somewhere warm, somewhere safe. When I come back, my wrists and ankles are free.
I’m gone again. This time, I return to someone saying my name, to arms around my arms, to legs around my legs, to a broad, flat chest pressing against my back.
I should reach for Wolf. Find his cock. Finish him with my hand or suck him off. Let him come between my tits. Give as good as I got.
But he traps my grasping fingers. Smooths them against the sheet. Murmurs something, telling me to rest.
I’m gone one last time, but I come back to a dark bedroom, all the lights turned off, here and in the suite’s living room.
“Kate,” someone says, and the cool lip of a glass presses against my mouth.
I swallow, and part of my brain knows Wolf said my name and Wolf brought me water, and it’s sweet and it’s cool and it’s the most glorious thing I’ve ever tasted.
Most glorious, that is, until something slips past my lips, and it’s chocolate, dark and rich and magic, and I remember that the duvet and the sheet were folded back beneath a foil-wrapped square of candy, and I think turn-down service is the most incredible invention ever made by modern man.
I’ll regret this in the morning. I hate Cole Wolf. He’s bigger than I am. Stronger. He’s the only man I’ve ever met who can code better than I can. This is all a terrible mistake.
But he brushes my hair back from my face. He eases me down beside him. He drags over a pillow to cushion my neck, and he pulls the sheet up to my chin, along with the duvet. When I still start to shiver, he presses his chest against my spine.
“Shh,” he says, his lips close to my ear. “Sleep.”
I want to sleep. I need to sleep. But more than that, I need to turn on a light. The Bad Men come in the dark.
Something rotten coats the back of my throat.
“Sleep,” he says again.
That’s an order I can’t obey. Not in the dark. “I can’t,” I say, panic rattling through my voice.
“I’ll take you back to your hotel in the morning.”
“I don’t care—” I start to argue, because it’s not the hotel that has me panicked. “I— I need light.”
“Shh,” he says again.
But I’m sitting up. I’m fumbling for the nightstand, for the lamp. I’m searching for a button to push, a toggle to rock, anything to flood the room with light. I’m shaking. I’m frantic.
He finally reaches across me and triggers the control I couldn’t find. Light flares and relief rolls over me in waves. “I’m sorry,” I say, a sob swelling the back of my throat. “The dark… I can’t…”
He smooths my hair from my face. He pulls me back to rest against him. “Shh,” he says one more time.
“Don’t turn it off,” I beg.
“I won’t.”
“I mean after I’m out. So you can sleep.”
“I don’t sleep.”
That’s a lie. Everybody sleeps. But even though I don’t believe him, I’m too tired to fight now. I’ll call him a liar in the morning. When I remind him that I hate him. That this was a mistake. That we’re never doing this again.
With the light on, I finally give in to my exhaustion. I don’t dream. I don’t move. I just sleep, deeper than I have in years, maybe since the Bad Men, maybe ever.
Which means I’m completely confused when I hear the jangle of a phone. After a lifetime, I fumble for mine, wondering who could possibly be calling. But my mobile isn’t on the nightstand. I remember it’s in my pocket. In my skirt. In the other room.
Wolf finds his phone while I’m still piecing things together. I feel him shift, and I open one eye to see him glaring at his own device. He swears at the screen, then stabs at the glass with one insistent finger.
“Wolf,” he says, and I realize he’s put the call on speaker.
I’ve made it up to one elbow. I start to twist, looking for a clock, but I’m frozen by the voice that booms from the phone.
“Mr. Wolf,” my father says. “I have a business proposition for you.”