Chapter 38
KATE
Wolf is right about a lot of things. He’s right that I’m shaky with hunger after we finish downstairs, after he’s introduced me to a spreader and marked my arse with a riding crop and I’ve come harder than I ever have in my life.
He’s right that he can treat me like a prisoner, cuffing my hands to the bed and teasing me with a dildo until I come again.
He’s right that I beg for him to fuck me anyway he wants to, for him to fill me, just to let me feel his cock, please, please, please, to let me be his wife.
He finishes me a third time, with a vibrator against my clit. He doesn’t let me touch his cock.
I’m humiliated. Embarrassed. I’ve never begged a man for anything.
I’ve never had a man understand so completely what I want.
What I need. I’ve never had a man hold me after firing every nerve in my body, rub arnica into my bruises, hold a cup of water to my lips and brush my hair off my face as I swallow.
He talks to me when I’m coming, telling me I’m beautiful, I’m fierce, I’m a goddess.
It’s a drug, this thing we do in the basement, and I’m a feckin’ addict. It shorts out every logical circuit in my brain. It erases every belief I’ve ever had about who I am, what I want, what I need.
The Tuesday after Wolf fires Ms. Sutton, he’s gone all day, on a “quick business trip” to Boston.
I spend the time with Granny and her new nurse, Helen Watson.
Mrs. Watson—she insists on the Missus—is at least seventy years old.
Her arms are ropy beneath the sleeves of her starched nurse’s uniform.
She keeps a watch pinned to her pocket, like she’s a midwife from the middle of last century.
She tuts disapprovingly of the ink on my chest.
But Mrs. Watson takes care of everything my grandmother needs.
She transfers Granny easily from her bed to her wheelchair, massaging my grandmother’s legs before wrestling on the difficult compression stockings.
When Granny aspirates a bit of bread at lunch, Mrs. Watson doesn’t panic.
She lets my grandmother cough until her throat is clear, readying the supplemental oxygen Granny needs to recover.
When Granny picks up her knitting, Mrs. Watson works The New York Times crossword puzzle. In ink.
I miss Maya Sutton. But I know my grandmother is in excellent care with her new nurse. Even if there’s no way in hell Mrs. Watson would ever fall for the lie I told so I could break free from my prison.
Nilsson walks me back to the main house in time for dinner. I eat my supper alone at the imposing dining room table, sampling everything like an obedient wife. After, I head to my office.
The Raiders are waiting in Winter Reckoning.
For once they aren’t hiding away in the Ice Knight Castle.
They give me shite for not making it into their feckin’ private club.
They ignore my protests that I’ve shouldered the lion’s share of the programming for our raids on StarCoin and that goddamn feckin’ bookie.
I’ve been working while they’ve been faffing about.
I fail to mention that my work has not yielded a single success. I’m no closer to hacking into StarCoin or those gambling books than I was when Mask first brought them to the group.
Finally, we decide to go after an icesnake, one of the most dangerous creatures in the game. It sheds its scales as it fights, and just one touch can poison a grown warrior.
Shaddow won’t let up about my not being an Ice Knight. He tells me I missed two hunts the past week. He says they solved Ice Novas, team projects harder than any Snow Star.
When I can’t take the taunts anymore, I tell him to shut the fuck up, that he’d skip the fucking Ice Knight Castle, too, if he had a real woman to give blowjobs on command.
It’s the command that gets Shaddow’s attention.
Gets all of them, really. They give me shite, asking what else I order my supposed girl to do.
I start to tell them some of it, the things Wolf has forced on me.
But I stop before I get the first sentence typed.
What Wolf and I have is private. It’s real.
Instead, I tell them all to fuck off, and I leave them standing around the entrance to the icesnake’s lair, arguing over who will go in first.
I’m shaking as I leave the game. Just thinking about the dungeon has my nerves on fire. If Wolf was home tonight, I’d taunt him. If Wolf was home tonight, he’d get revenge.
Spreading my legs beneath my mahogany desk, I shove my hand past my fancy lace knickers. Before I even touch myself I know I won’t be able to come. My fingers on my clit are too tame. I need something harder. Something more dangerous.
Padding out of my office, I’m struck by how large the house is. How quiet.
The door to Wolf’s office is open. The display wall of monitors sleeps, glinting like the eye of a giant housefly. I sit at his desk without turning on a lamp, relying on the light that bleeds in from the hallway.
Of course his chair is locked in an upright position. I palm the lever on the side, releasing the gear so I can put my feet up on his desk. I pull his keyboard onto my lap and try to hack my way into his files.
It’s impossible. I know that. He won’t use any of the information I’ve uncovered.
Not the name of his sister, not even his mother.
Not one of the dozen street names that showed up on official records from his childhood.
He said he never had a pet and I believe him, but it doesn’t matter because he wouldn’t use that either.
I put together random words, changing some of the letters to numbers and symbols.
Dung3onH@ndcuffPadd!e
Spre@derCr0pSpank1ng.
Subm!ssiveC@neC0me
Those words aren’t random at all. And I’m counting on Wolf keeping a log, so he’ll know exactly what I’ve tried.
My husband should be home by now. “Quick business trip,” my arse.
I glare at the painting on the wall to my right, the one I threatened my first day in the house. It looms out of the darkness, all reds and blacks, thick slashes that look like hunks of bleeding meat. It’s a terrifying work of art—what he deserves, Wolf said.
Here in his office, under the Soutine’s baleful gaze, he keeps himself under perfect control. He reduces the universe to cold, emotionless lines of code. He butchers the online world, carving up byte after byte.
The painting in our bedroom has the same colors—crimson and shadows. But the poppy couldn’t be more different. It’s lush. Sensual. It drips with desire.
The poppy lies. Wolf is exactly the same upstairs as he is in this office. He ignores spontaneity. Emotion. He refuses to fuck me, even once.
And suddenly—alone in this house, an abandoned newlywed bride—I’m not willing to let that lie stand. Forty million he said it would cost me, if I damage the Soutine.
But I don’t intend to damage it.
It takes more work than I expect to liberate the painting. It’s suspended on the wall from two sunk bolts. The house could go through an earthquake, a hurricane, and a torrential flood, and that painting wouldn’t budge.
I’m gasping by the time I get it up the stairs. The wooden frame is heavier than it looks.
The art in our bedroom is fastened just as securely. Gritting my teeth, I wrestle it from its fittings. I’m sweating by the time I’m done, breathing like Wolf’s kept me in the dungeon for hours.
After I hang the bleeding meat on the bedroom wall, I’m almost too tired to bring the flower down to Wolf’s office. But I force myself to complete the switch.
I almost change my mind after I climb into bed. The meat glistens on the far wall—violent, angry, brutal. I try to imagine how terrifying it would be in the dark, a wordless threat looming across the room.
But I don’t have to glimpse that painting in the dark. I leave the lamp on, the way I do every night. And I fall asleep wondering what Wolf will say—what he’ll do—once he sees what I’ve done to his collection.