Chapter 32
KATE
Ilook up and down the Georgetown sidewalk as Nilsson sets his palm to the scanner outside Wolf’s gate.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say. This is the third time I’ve interrupted his workday—once to bring me back to the main house for my appointment with Dr. Patel, again to help me back across the street so I could sit with Granny for the rest of the afternoon, and now to come home for supper.
I feel like a child who can’t be trusted to cross the road without a nanny holding her hand.
“It is my pleasure,” Nilsson says, without a hint of emotion.
“Wolf… er… Mister… um… my husband said you’d get me credentials for the system?”
“There has been a change in plans. I am happy to assist you until Mr. Wolf completes your profile.”
I’ll complete my own feckin’ profile. My fingers itch for my computer keyboard.
Nilsson presses his palm to another keypad, opening the front door of the house. “Mr. Wolf is waiting in the dining room,” he says.
“I’m not hungry,” I say automatically.
“Mr. Wolf says you should join him, all the same.”
“I’m busy.” I’ve been thinking about Mask’s project all afternoon. I can’t wait to dig up everything I can on NightSaber.
“Mr. Wolf says your work can wait.”
Not once in my life have I followed a direct order, and I’m not about to start now. I jeer at Nilsson, “Do you have a feckin’ comlink jacked into your brain?”
He doesn’t even blink. “Mr. Wolf anticipated how you would reply.”
“And did Wolf anticipate this?” Anger, my old ally, flames across my cheeks as I raise both middle fingers to Nilsson. “Fuck Wolf. And fuck his fucking dinner.”
“Kate.”
I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of my name. I didn’t think Wolf would do his own dirty work. I didn’t anticipate him coming to the foyer.
“Thank you, Nilsson,” he says. “That will be all.”
Once we’re alone, Wolf pins me with those brown-gold eyes. “You can join me under your own power,” he says. “Or I can drag you in against your will. But you’re my wife, and we are going to eat dinner together.”
He’ll do it. He’ll frog-march me into the dining room, or he’ll throw me over his shoulder. I have absolutely no doubt that Cole Wolf will make me sit at his table. So I draw myself up as straight as I can and follow him to the table.
Someone—Anna or Nilsson—has set places for two. They could have put us at opposite ends, like some lord and lady in a stuffy country home. But one plate is at the head of the table, and the other’s to the immediate right. In between, there’s enough cutlery for an army. Glasses too.
“Dinner is always at six,” Wolf says. He gestures to the chair beside his, saying, “Please.”
It sounds like a request, but we both know it’s a direct order. I sit, so I can plan my next attack.
The walls are lined with paintings. Two girls playing a piano, their laughing eyes black in their soft pink faces. A vase of sunflowers, the slashes of yellow-gold paint gleaming like they’re still wet. A row of ballet dancers stretching at the barre, white tutus accented by blue and green ribbons.
I know nothing about art, but I’ve seen these paintings before, or ones very much like them. I’ve read articles. I know each one is worth millions.
I swallow hard as Wolf pours a glass of red wine from a crystal decanter that looks like it also belongs in a castle.
Before I can think of anything to say, Anna comes in from the kitchen.
She’s carrying a platter—a golden-brown chicken surrounded by roasted potatoes and carrots.
A second trip brings a basket of rolls, still fragrant from the oven, along with two plates of salad.
“Can I bring you anything else?” she asks Wolf.
“No thank you,” he says.
My mouth floods with saliva before the door to the kitchen swings closed. Everything looks perfect, like it’s been made for a movie set. It smells incredible.
And I won’t eat a single bite. Because Wolf can drag me from Baltimore to Georgetown. He can lock me behind his twenty-foot walls. He can take me down to the basement and make me come harder than I’ve ever come in my life. But he cannot break my will.
I pick up my goblet and sniff at the dark wine. “I thought white goes with chicken.”
“I prefer red. And I always get what I prefer.”
Feckin’ gobshite. I put my glass back on the table.
“How was your day?” he asks, like we’re auditioning for some 1950s sitcom.
“Fine.”
He offers me the platter of chicken.
“I’m not hungry.”
His face shows no emotion as he helps himself. I’m not surprised to discover that Wolf is a breast man. “You saw Dr. Patel?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I have no desire to tell him about the quick physical exam the doctor gave me in the privacy of the bedroom, about the blood sample he took, the rapid-result tests that say I’m clean enough to fuck bareback.
Dr. Patel numbed my arm for the birth control thing.
My fingers keep finding the little matchstick he left under my skin, the only proof I won’t have a baby for the next three years.
Dr. Patel didn’t say a word about the Fuck You on my chest. He just told me to use condoms for a week. He said to call if I feel sick, if I’m worried about anything at all.
The things I’m worried about can’t be helped by a feckin’ doctor.
“Your grandmother is settling in?” Wolf adds scoops of potatoes and carrots to his plate.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t need to know that Granny and I spent the afternoon laughing about our last trip to County Donegal.
That she taught Ms. Sutton how to swear in Irish.
That she cast on a new scarf before she nodded off about an hour ago, clearly worn out from all the excitement of the last few days.
“Help yourself,” Wolf says, gesturing to the food now that his plate is full.
“I’m not hungry,” I repeat tightly. I don’t even try to make my lie sound like the truth. This isn’t about making Wolf believe me. It’s about showing I’m in control.
“I’m not asking,” he says, the way he says everything—with absolute certainty that he’s correct. I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t react, not one tiny bit.
Game on.
I’ll be happy if I win. But I’ll be thrilled if he gets the better of me. I press my legs together to still the sudden pulse at the V of my thighs.
What are you going to do? I start to say. Force-feed me? But then I remember hanging from that iron cross, staring at the bamboo cane on its shelf and fighting the drumbeat of my thudding heart—right before he ordered me not to top from below.
Lesson feckin’ learned.
“Jaysus,” I say, spreading my hands on either side of my plate. “No one’s keeping you from your supper.”
“One,” he says.
“Back to counting, are you? Well, here’s a thought: I’m an adult. I decide when I’ll eat and when I won’t eat.”
“Two.”
A hummingbird takes flight inside my belly. It has nothing to do with my brain. Nothing to do with what I know about right and wrong. It’s part of the animal-me, the bare-bones me, the me that melted in Wolf’s bed in Boston, that found myself chained in his dungeon last night and liked it.
No.
Loved it.
I push my chair back from the table.
“You will not leave this room,” he says. His voice is as even as a board.
Words boil over in my brain as I glare at him.
“Who hurt you when you were a little boy? Because whoever it was, they sold you a bill of goods. You’re allowed to take the stick out of your arse.
You’re allowed to relax for one goddamn minute.
You’re allowed to treat other human beings like equals, to listen to what they have to say, to consider the fact that they might actually be living, breathing creatures, with their own thoughts, their own feelings, their own dreams of how they want the world to be.
Did you ever consider that, Mr. Lone Wolf? Did it ever cross your feckin’ mind?”
“Three.” He says it in the same tone as the rest of his count, cold as ice, utterly certain he’s the one in control.
“Fuck. You.” I enunciate the words carefully, like I’m speaking a foreign language. The ink on my chest blazes like I wrote with acid. I turn on my heel and head for the stairs.
He gives me three steps before he pounces. His arm is a tree trunk, slung across my body. He lifts me from my feet like I’m no bigger than a doll, and he spins me back to the table.
With one hand, he presses my chest against the polished mahogany, pinning me with his elbow when I thrash to get free. His other hand finds the elastic waistband of my sweatpants. He yanks hard, taking my knickers too, baring my arse to the room’s cool air.
The first smack sounds like a cannon. I screech as my thighs push into the edge of the table, but even my jaded ears know that isn’t a sound of pain. It’s pure, raw pleasure.
“Count,” he says. When I don’t respond quickly enough to satisfy him, he reaches between my thighs and catches my clit between his finger and thumb. “Count,” he says again, pinching.
“One,” I say, because I don’t want his fingers slipping. I don’t want him feeling how wet I am.
The second blow is harder, landing right on top of the first. I feel the five pincushions of his fingertips. I picture my arse flushed the red of the stuffed tomato in the sewing kit Granny gave me when I turned ten.
“Two.” I drip venom over the word, concentrating on making it shrivel so I don’t have to think about how close I am to coming.
The third spanking is harder than the other two combined, or maybe it only feels that way because his hand falls in the exact same spot. This is punishment. I’m supposed to hate this. But something about Wolf has opened a door deep inside my heart. He’s found a secret I didn’t know about myself.
I want this pain. I need it. It binds up loose ends I didn’t know were frayed. Wolf’s hand on my bare arse makes me feel alive, when I wasn’t even aware that part of me had died.
His fingers tighten on the back of my neck, shaking me like a dog with a toy. “Three.” I whisper, because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing my full voice.
His elbow shifts from the hollow of my back, but before I can pull away, he grabs my arm. He tugs me firmly toward his chair at the head of the table.
Sitting first, he forces me onto his lap. My pants are still down, so I feel his trousers beneath me. His cock is iron against my bum, as eager to learn more rules for this game as I am.
Before I can sneer and lie about the size of him, a band of cold steel cinches around my right wrist. It’s a handcuff, a serious one, not padded with leather or lined with fur. Before I can squawk, he cuffs my left wrist too.
He planned this.
Before we sat for dinner, he fastened the cuffs to his chair. He tested. He measured. He knew exactly how little range of motion he’d leave me. He knew precisely how long it would take me to spot the key, nestled beside his silver knife, so close, and yet completely beyond my reach.
His arms stretch around mine. He picks up that knife, along with his fork. He cuts a perfect bite of chicken and raises it to my lips.
I clench my jaw so tight I see stars.
His laugh beside my ear sounds like a growl. “I promise you, girl,” he says. “I am far more stubborn than you are.”
I shake my head, hoping to catch him on his chin, but he avoids me easily. Restrained like this, bare arse stinging from his spanking, framed by his strong forearms, my options are severely limited.
I have the willpower of an Irish martyr. I can go days without food, and have done, just to prove a point to Mam and Da. I’m a princess of the Canton Crew, as hardened as any of the mobsters who report to my father.
But Da sold me to Wolf. I’m captive in this house. And in my heart of hearts, I know my husband has told me the absolute truth. He is more stubborn than I am.
Plus, the chicken smells amazing.
I open my mouth. I use my teeth to take the bite from the fork. I chew, fighting the urge to moan at the balance of salt and herbs and perfectly roasted meat. I swallow.
Wolf feeds me chicken. He feeds me potatoes and carrots.
He feeds me tiny bites of expertly buttered bread, slipping them past my lips with fingers that know precisely what to do.
He finishes with salad, using his fingers again, selecting tomato and cucumber and hot, peppery radish, like he’s painting one of the masterpieces hanging on the wall behind us.
It’s humiliating, being fed like a child. But it’s weirdly comforting too. It’s a sign that he wants to keep me safe. He cares.
Every single bite makes me more aware of my body—my arse, where it rides his eager dick, and my swollen clit, desperate for friction between my thighs. I can’t stop thinking about the letters scrawled on my chest, my warning, but also my invitation: Fuck You.
I’ve never felt so alive within my skin. So I don’t fight when Wolf finally wipes his fingers on the napkin he’s kept beside his plate. I don’t twitch when he picks up the key, freeing first my left hand, and then my right.
I swing my left leg over to my right, so I’m sitting sideways on his lap, my arse still bared. I drop my hand to the hard ridge that’s fighting against his zipper. I fumble for his button, eager to set him free.
His hand closes over my wrist, tighter than the handcuffs ever were. “No.”
“Dr. Patel says I’m clean.”
He shakes his head, once.
“We don’t need a johnny. We can do other things.”
The gold flares in his eyes, but he repeats, “No.”
“I’m your wife. Let me do this for you.” I trace the length of his cock with one fingernail.
He shudders like a dog coming out of a lake. But his hands close around my waist. He sets me on my feet before he rises out of his chair.
“No,” he says one last time, and he crosses the room, then the foyer. He heads down the hall to his office.
Rejection stings worse than everything else he’s done to me. I know how to fight—the Bad Men taught me that. But I don’t have a clue how to handle Wolf’s cold control. I can’t provoke him, can’t push him past his feckin’ limits.
I can’t win.
Alone, I pull up my knickers and sweatpants. I rub my wrists, which feel like they’ve been baptized by flame. I think about going to my own office, but I don’t want to be anywhere near him, so I go upstairs to our bedroom instead.
There’s a deadbolt above the doorknob, but I don’t turn it. I don’t care if Wolf comes in. I want him here. I want him with me, as I slip my hand past my waistband. As I find my aching clit. As I dip my fingers deep inside the needy hole he made so slick that I whine.
I finish in less than a minute. But the mechanical clutch-and-grab of my body leaves me empty, desperate for more. It’s only after I’ve settled against my pile of pillows with my mobile that I realize Wolf was right.
He was more stubborn that I was.