“Green,” I say, my voice louder than I expect as it bounces off the mirrors.
“Green,” he agrees, and he takes a step away. I sway but stay standing. He studies me from the crown of my head to my toes. And then he says, “Show me you want to be here. Strip.”
There’s nothing seductive about jeans and a sweater. Wriggling as I pull my top over my head, I feel like an eejit.
“Slow down,” he orders.
I hook my fingers in the waist of my trousers, yanking them over my hips.
“Slower,” he says.
Shivering in my bra and knickers, I make a face. It takes me about three seconds to work the twin hooks on my bra and throw it to the ground.
“One,” Wolf warns.
My nipples are so hard, they ache. I can’t say if that’s because of the ice core that’s filled me since I walked out of this house or the chill in the room or the dangerous promise of Wolf’s starting to count. I cross my arms over my chest, desperate to hide my traitorous tits. The pressure sends a single sharp pulse to the V between my legs.
“Panties,” Wolf says.
“You said to slow down,” I snap.
“Two.”
I don’t even know what he’s counting—blows from his handor a paddle or the crisp leather tab of a riding crop. Something I can’t yet imagine. But my body doesn’t care. My belly flips at his promise.
“Panties,” Wolf says again.
I plant my hands on my hips, glaring at him in defiance.
This time, he doesn’t bother to count. Instead, he manhandles me over to a leather-covered table halfway across the room. I try to pull back, but he fastens my right wrist into a cuff that’s halfway down the surface. I’m still fighting when he locks my left wrist too.
I swear as my nipples grind into the smooth black leather. “Let me go, ya feckin’ shitehawk!”
“Not on your life, my dear.” It’s not themy dearthat stings. It’s the way he laughs. The way he knows he’s in absolute control.
I drop into Irish, cursing his mam and her mam and all the other women who spread their fucking legs for him to be standing here today. He can’t understand a word I’m saying, but he answers in a universal language. His hands are tight as iron bonds as he fastens my ankles to cuffs on the table’s legs.
I’m bent over. Arms and legs restrained. Arse high, like I’m modeling knickers for some deranged catalog. My brain bellows that I should hate every single thing about this.
But my body shouts another message. My body is so turned on I can barely manage to draw a full breath. I’m panting like a bitch in heat.
I want this.
I need this.
I should despise what Wolf has managed to do, seemingly without effort. I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by men who take what they want, when they want, without regard to anything approaching social niceties. I’ve fought back from the moment I could first think the wordno.
But none of those men was strong enough to truly overpower me. Not the Dark Men. Not the sickly hangers-on aroundthe Canton Crew, the sycophants hoping to impress my da. Not my father himself, screaming his commands, locking me away, paying Wolf to take me off his hands.
They couldn’t break me, not one of them.
But Cole Wolf can. He has the physical strength. And he has the mental discipline. He knows exactly how to destroy me—he’s already done it, so thoroughly I almost lost myself forever.
Hecan. But he won’t.
And the thought of that control drives me wild.
“Don’t do this,” I whimper.
