Chapter Six #2
“You’re proving you’re an asshole with a piece of nylon.”
I tried to twist toward him again, more out of anger than strategy. His free hand intercepted the movement before I made it halfway around. Wolf’s fingers slid beneath my hair at the base of my skull, gathered it low at the nape and closed tight.
Everything in me stopped.
He didn’t yank it. He just slowly drew my head back with controlled pressure until my shoulders followed and I was forced upright against him. The motion exposed my throat while the back of my head settled close to his shoulder.
My breath left me.
Wolf’s mask was suddenly beside my cheek, his voice close enough that I felt the vibration of it more than I heard the volume. I blinked up at him, unable to separate the pain from the heat or the need twisting through both.
“Stop. Moving.”
A hot shiver ran from where his fist held my hair straight down to between my legs.
The pressure itself was not pain. It was control, intimate enough that my body answered before my anger could catch up, and that answer made me seethe because I had not asked for his hand in my hair or given him permission to decide that one involuntary reaction made the rest of this his.
“Get your fucking hand out of my hair,” I said slowly.
Wolf went still.
His breathing changed once against the side of my face.
Then his hand loosened.
I should have taken the opening and stopped moving but like an idiot, I turned sharply the second I felt the pressure release.
The webbing caught.
Pain flashed from my right shoulder down my arm, sudden enough that my knees almost gave.
“Fuck!” I yelped.
Wolf released everything immediately.
His hand left my hair as the tension disappeared from the webbing. He stepped around me so fast the small room seemed to tilt with him.
“Shoulder?”
I cradled my right arm against my body. “Don’t touch me.”
He stopped.
I didn’t mean to command him, but he obeyed it faster than I had obeyed him all afternoon. For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
The pain was already settling from sharp into a deep pull near the front of my shoulder, uncomfortable whenever I moved the arm away from my side. My wrists burned where the webbing had tightened during the last twist.
Wolf looked down.
I followed his eyes.
Red marks circled both wrists. I knew the sight changed something in him, locking his whole body beneath the gear until every trace of anger disappeared behind the same hard stillness I had only seen when he was working.
“Open it,” I said.
He proceeded with no argument or lecture. The clip released with a quieter click than the one that had started this. I pulled my hands apart and rubbed one wrist with the other, then immediately regretted the movement when my shoulder protested.
Wolf’s hand lifted halfway.
I looked at it and jolted involuntarily.
He lowered it again.
“That went too far,” he said matter-of-factly.
My laugh came out breathless. “No fucking shit.”
He took the insult without reacting.
I stepped away until the edge of the bed hit the backs of my knees. The cover-up had slipped almost entirely off both shoulders and hung open over the bikini, but I refused to fix it while he was watching because I was not giving him one more indication that the physical exposure mattered.
“What exactly was the point?” I asked. “That you can overpower me? You’re twice my size and dressed like a fucking tank, Wolf. I promise the visual aid was unnecessary.”
Wolf’s eyes stayed on the marks around my wrists.
“I was trying to make you understand how quickly control changes hands.”
“By taking mine.”
I could not see his mouth, but I saw the answer in the way his eyes tightened.
“Yes.”
“And somehow you thought that would make you look reasonable?”
“No.”
Wolf reached down and folded the webbing once, slower than usual. The black strap disappeared back against his belt, but the click of the hardware closing sounded different now.
Ugly.
“You told me that I don’t get to decide what happens to your body,” he said.
“I remember.”
“You were right.”
The room stayed quiet.
There was no softness in his voice and no attempt to move closer. If anything, he looked more controlled than before, which somehow made the admission heavier. I looked at my wrists.
“You don’t get points for figuring it out after leaving marks.”
“I know.”
“And don’t use the fucking mission as an excuse.”
“I’m not.”
I searched his eyes, waiting for the part where he explained why his anger made it acceptable.
It did not come.
My shoulder ached while the skin around my wrists still stung, but the memory that kept returning belonged to his hand at my nape. The fact that thinking about that pressure sent another warm shiver through me made me want to throw something.
I picked up the cover-up from where it had slid down my arms and pulled it closed. Wolf watched the movement without letting his eyes drop.
“We’re done,” I said.
I moved toward the door and Wolf stepped aside before I reached him. It was the first time since I had arrived at ARC that he had made room for me without forcing me to ask for it.
I hated that I noticed that too.
◆
Bear knew something was wrong before I said anything. I made it halfway down the stairs with my right arm held a little too close to my body before he looked up from the operations table and frowned.
Raven was still working through the party audio.
Hawk had changed out of his field jacket and was cleaning one of his optics at the far end.
Viper stood beside a monitor with a plate lookup open in front of him.
Jackal had returned to the couch and was eating chips out of a bag that definitely did not belong to him.
Nobody spoke when I reached the floor and that alone told me Wolf had not come down behind me yet.
Bear set his mug aside. “What happened to your arm?”
“Nothing.”
He looked at the way I was holding it.
“Try again.”
“I pulled it.”
Bear came around the table, his expression calm enough that refusing him would have required more energy than I had.
“Can you lift it?”
I raised my right arm to shoulder height, but the ache sharpened and my face betrayed me. Bear stopped me with one hand held up rather than touching me.
“Don’t push through it. Where?”
I pointed toward the front of the shoulder.
“Sharp or pulling?”
“Pulling now. It was sharp when it happened.”
“Any numbness?”
“No.”
“Grip okay?”
I flexed my hand.
“Fine.”
Bear nodded toward the couch. “Sit.”
I almost laughed.
“Apparently everyone here has decided that’s my favorite command today.”
He glanced toward the stairs for half a second. He might not have known what happened upstairs, but he knew enough to stop pretending nothing was wrong.
“I’m not commanding you, I’m asking you,” he said gently.
I sat.
Bear crouched in front of me and checked the shoulder with slow, careful pressure, telling me where he was going to touch before his fingers went anywhere. He had just started asking whether the pain changed with rotation when Jackal appeared beside him.
“Yo Mercer, what happened?”
“Mild strain, probably,” Bear said. “I’m checking.”
Jackal looked like he was about to crack a joke when he looked at my shoulder but then his eyes dropped to my hands.
Everything about him changed as the bag of stolen chips stopped moving in his grip.
His face emptied of the loose humor I had come to expect so completely that for a second, he looked like the man in his official personnel photograph instead of the one who had spent breakfast arguing that tomatoes were vegetables.
“Mia.”
I followed his stare.
The red bands around my wrists had darkened while I came downstairs.
“It’s fine, Jackal.”
Jackal’s eyes lifted to mine. “What happened to your wrists?”
Bear stopped examining my shoulder and I heard Raven’s typing slow down.
“Wolf and I had a… disagreement.”
Jackal did not smile.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked away, and Jackal’s voice dropped immediately.
“Did you ask him to do that?”
I opened my mouth, then stopped even though the answer should have been easy.
No.
I had not asked Wolf to restrain me. I had told him to let go.
I had told him to get his hand out of my hair.
I was angry enough that my shoulder still hurt and embarrassed enough by the marks that I wanted sleeves immediately.
But my body had reacted to parts of it in ways I did not understand and absolutely did not want to explain in front of five armed men.
The hesitation lasted maybe a second but Jackal heard everything he needed inside it.
“So you didn’t.”
“Jackal.”
He set the bag on the table with deliberate care.
“You didn’t ask him, Mia.”
“No,” I said finally. “I-I didn’t.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs and everyone looked up. Wolf came down wearing the same gear, though the plate carrier had been loosened at the sides. He saw Bear crouched in front of me first, then Jackal standing beside him. His eyes went to my wrists.
Jackal turned.
“You put those on her?”
Wolf stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes,” he said with no excuse and no attempt to soften it.
Jackal stared at him. “She say yes?”
Wolf’s eyes did not leave his face.
“No.”
Raven’s hands came completely off the keyboard and Hawk set the optic cloth down just as Viper moved one step away from the monitor.
Jackal laughed once, but there was nothing amused in it. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Bear stood slowly between us and the stairs.
Wolf’s voice stayed level. “I crossed a line.”
“A line?”
Jackal took one step forward.
Bear shifted with him.
“You tied her wrists because you were pissed off and you’re calling it a line?”
“Jack-,” Bear said in a gentle voice.
“No,” Jackal cut him off.
Jackal’s eyes did not move from Wolf. “Don’t do that. Don’t fucking calm me down like I’m the problem in the room.”
Bear’s voice remained steady. “I’m not. I’m making sure this stays words.”
“Maybe he needs more than words.”
Wolf did not move, which almost made it worse. Jackal looked at the black webbing on his belt and something in his expression went so cold that I felt it from the couch.