Chapter 12 Iris
IRIS
My wrists are bound behind my back, but Wolf left the knots loose enough for someone with half a brain and a little desperation. I work them, twisting, pulling, and fighting the little darts of pain until the cloth gives. Soon, my hands come free, and I rip off the blindfold, then the lace mask.
“The fuck…”
I knew the air felt familiar—my scent, my detergent, my life—but actually seeing my own bedroom instead of some uncanny reconstruction bowls me flat.
“Wolf!” I shout, swinging my legs off the bed. I stumble. “Damn thing!”
It’s only when I steady myself that I notice the problem. I’m only wearing one shoe. Just one. The other vanished somewhere between the fire, the rooftop, and his arms.
I kick off the remaining heel and run barefoot out of the room.
“Wolf! Don’t you run away!”
But no one is there.
The apartment hallway, the lift, the building lobby—they’re all empty.
And outside, there’s just a Brooklyn street washed in dawn, joggers, dogs, and deliveries beginning. No Wolf.
I go back upstairs and collapse on the bed. Smoke clings to me, to the sheets, and to the pillows, but underneath it, there’s a hint of him.
A scent that’s not cologne and not anything I could identify in a lab. But I know it.
It’s a presence stamped on me like a brand.
He was here. In my bedroom.
And…Oh God. The floor.
Please tell me he didn’t see the polka dots.
I sit up slowly, mortification creeping in. I trace the path he must’ve taken, my palm trailing the air as if I can still feel the static he left behind. And God, the feeling rolls through me, confusion giving way to something bright and wild and alive.
He didn’t hurt me, though he could have. Easily. In the manor club. In the car. On my bed.
But he didn’t.
The only moment I truly felt fear was when I thought he might leave me behind with the others, with Zebras and whatever circle of hell that would’ve been.
But he didn’t leave me there. He stopped anyone else from laying claim to me.
Zebras touched me, yes, but clinically, necessarily.
After all the medical emergencies had passed, Wolf didn’t share.
Predators don’t behave like that. At least not the real kind. They don’t step back from easy power, don’t protect the thing they’re supposed to consume. My first instinct, which is that Wolf is, impossibly, a safe place, turns out to have been right.
I step into the shower. The water hits me hard enough to make my hands sting because of the blisters from clinging to the beam. My body aches everywhere, but none of it feels wrong. It feels like I barely outran something catastrophic, yet somehow ended up whole.
As the water streams down my skin, my thoughts stray to the way he spoke to me, and the way he held me as though he was restraining himself more than he was restraining me.
I shouldn’t…
My fingers slip between my legs, and the ache there lights up every nerve.
But what really unravels me is imagining how Wolf would respond to it.
The way his body would answer mine without hesitation, hardening in response to the need I can barely contain.
I picture his mouth, the only unmasked part of him, parting in hungry shock as he realizes what I’m offering.
My wetness, my swollen flesh gripping his.
A moan drags out of me. It’s the wolf’s name, dark and addictive on my tongue.
The burst of pleasure is blinding, with color, lightning, and sensation that feels almost like creation itself. Wolf’s image ripples behind my eyelids, and I bite down on a gasp as my orgasm rolls through me hard enough to make my knees shake.
When I’m finally steady, I dry off, slip into clean clothes, and fall face-first onto the bed.
I pull a pillow into my arms like it’s him. My eyes grow heavy, but inside me, something is blazing.
My artist brain turns incandescent.
Fevered.
Awake.
Whatever this is can’t be manufactured.
I think of Vincent van Gogh, who painted past endurance because color demanded it. Of J. M. W. Turner, who chased storms so fiercely that legend says he begged sailors to lash him to a mast so he could experience one from inside its violence.
And me?
I walked straight into a wolf’s den to taste what it felt like to be provoked, to chase and be chased, and to let adrenaline smear the edges off reality. Only for the night to end with real flames, real risk, and the one creature I should’ve feared most carrying me out instead.
Maybe I’m foolish. Maybe I’m still riding Butterfly’s cocktails and the smoke in my lungs. But my instincts, human instincts, a woman’s instincts, aren’t budging. Wolf is not a monster.
He’s pure danger, yes.
But he’s intentional danger.
A man who could devour, but didn’t.
He is what I need.
The sun spears straight into my skull when I open my eyes. It’s mid-morning.
A knock rattles the door. I push myself upright, fueled more by sheer will than by anything my sore body has left to give.
Is Wolf standing there?
I glance through the peephole.
It’s Mrs. Lehmann.
I exhale and open the door.
She’s the kind of neighbor who keeps to herself unless trapped in the mailroom, where she’ll offer a polite hello before retreating to the safety of her crossword puzzles.
The last time she knocked here was to ask Reggie for advice on a dress for her daughter’s wedding.
He gave her a full couture consultation, complete with sketches, and I’m fairly sure we traumatized her.
“Hey, Iris,” she says, holding out her hand. “Someone asked me to pass these on to you.”
My car keys. My phone.
“Who gave them to you?” I ask.
She blinks. “Didn’t give a name. Looked like a chauffeur. A very serious one.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Lehmann.”
She nods and hurries back to her sanctuary.
I head to the garage. Sure enough, my poor Ford is parked exactly where it should be. I climb inside and rummage around. Nothing seems to be missing, though I genuinely cannot remember what on earth I had in this car last night.
Back upstairs, I make coffee, and the smell alone feels like a restart button. Then my phone lights up. There are five missed calls from Reggie.
I brace myself and answer the next incoming ring.
“Iris Noelle Hartwell Vaughn,” Reggie snaps, invoking all three names like he’s summoning a demon. “Are you alive? Are you concussed? Are you bleeding? Did someone lock you in a basement? Why—why—did you ignore all my calls while doing my dare?”
I flop back onto the couch. “Reggie, I’m alive. I’m not concussed. I have both kidneys. And I wasn’t ignoring you. I was…occupied.”
“Occupied…” he repeats, deadpan. “Occupied as in painting? Or occupied as in I’m going to need to call the police?”
“Occupied as in…I found it.”
He gasps. “The club? You found the poorly documented, suspiciously exclusive den of degeneracy?”
“I did,” I say, unable to hide the grin in my voice. “Reggie, you have no idea. The space…the architecture…the way the light hits you like you’re walking into a dream. And oh, the masks.”
I rub my face, remembering Wolf’s towering presence.
“And the chase. God. The chase.”
“Oh my God,” Reggie groans. “This is why I don’t sleep when you do my dares. I swear, I need hazard pay. Were you safe? Tell me you were safe.”
“I was safe,” I say honestly. “Actually, safer than I expected.”
“Safer, huh? As in a knight-in-shining-armor kind of safe?”
“More,” I say, because lying to Reggie is impossible. “He wore a wolf mask. He’s so…manly. Macho. Mysterious. Everything I want in a muse.”
Reggie inhales sharply. “A manly wolf. Darling, are you hearing yourself? You were supposed to sneak into an ultra-exclusive club, steal some atmosphere, and maybe hyperventilate in a hallway, not get…ravished by a woodland creature.”
“You told me to come home with a viral scandal or two.”
“That was hyperbole,” he huffs. “Supportive best-friend hyperbole. Not a binding contract that requires you to be swept off your feet by a werewolf with boundary issues.”
“Okay, okay! He didn’t ravish me,” I protest poorly. “He…rescued me. He carried me. He—” God, I need to shut up.
“Aha,” Reggie pounces. “You’re indulged. That tone right there? That’s your ‘I survived something dramatic, and now I’m horny about it’ tone.”
“I’m not…okay, maybe a little.”
“A little?” His laugh bursts out, all disbelief. “Tell me this instant. Is this Wolf person anything like Bobby Derring?”
“Fuck no.” That name alone makes my eyelid twitch. “And he’s nothing like your latest muse either.”
A pause. “Who’s my latest muse?”
“Marcus Lockwood,” I mutter.
“Oh. Him. Huh.” Reggie considers this, then dismisses it with an audible shrug. “Wolf is better?”
“A thousand times.”
“All right, all right.” He switches gears. “I know you think I have terrible taste in men—don’t start—but we’ll unpack your woodland-beast fantasies later. And mark my word, I’m not letting go of the mysterious creature who apparently made you wet, which, yes, I heard in your voice.”
“Reggie!”
“What…” he demands, triumphant now, “…were you wearing?”
I groan before saying, “You’re going to hate me.”
“Oh God. What did you do?”
“So,” I begin carefully. “Hypothetically…hypothetically…I might have needed to raid your, um, that room.”
A noise erupts through the phone. A gasp? A shriek? A strangled opera note?
“My…Atelier Noir? Iris Vaughn, tell me you did NOT touch my fall/winter couture rack—”
“I needed something that fit the vibe!” I protest. “It was a masquerade. I couldn’t just walk in wearing denim! And the Katherine Pierce look? Reggie, it worked. You should’ve seen me.”
Silence. Then a long, resigned sigh from a man whose soul has left his body and returned slightly wiser.
“Okay,” he says. “Fine, you committed. I respect the hustle. But if you stretched any of my bodices, I swear to Dior—”
“That’s the other thing,” I murmur with a wince. “I, uh…lost one of your stilettos. And the other is…not in good shape.”
Another shriek. “Those Rossis? IRIS!”
“They died heroes,” I say somberly.
“Oh my God.”
“But,” I add, unable to stop the flush rising under my skin, “I ended up being caught by the Wolf.”
“Caught,” he repeats. “Like…sexually?”
“No!” I say, then reconsider. “Well, not technically. But I was in his arms. And then I was restrained. In a good way.”
“Oh, honey,” Reggie breathes, delighted horror dripping from every syllable. “You got more than you bargained for.”
I smile up at the ceiling. “I got exactly what I bargained for.”
He exhales like a proud, exasperated parent. “So what now, Cinderella? Going to be a hermit and hunker down in that Hudson Valley barn of yours?”
“Absolutely. Try to live without me.”
“You wish,” he scoffs. “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”