His lips quirk, dashing water on my argument. “Your mother was sewn into that dress. She didn’t pull it off the rack as her second choice for a wedding. Go on. You get one more try.”
Fuck.
My palms prickle with heat. My scalp blazes where my mother pulled my hair. My throat aches when I swallow, and I wonder if my bruises are already dark in the moonlight.
I can’t believe I’m stuck here, making up stories for a gobshite like Cole Feckin’ Wolf.
But the best lies are ones that track close to the truth. Wolf didn’t buy my story that I was protecting my sister. My mother either. That leaves one last member of my family to try.
“My da was running a deal through some Swiss bank. I don’t know the details; he wouldn’t say. But you did something that shut down his operation cold, and Da lost millions.”
He hesitates as if he can scent truth in the distance. But ultimately he shakes his head, one quick toss like he’s breaking the back of his prey. “Your father has enforcers to make people pay. Not some little girl throwing wine.”
“Fuck you!” The words boil over before I can decide if it’s a good idea to say them out loud. I’m CyberGhost. I created the Red Cap Raiders. I’m the coder who figured out how to get past Banque Wagner’s so-called security, even if Wolf saved them at the last possible second. “I am not some goddamnlittle girl!”
“You looked like one in the side yard. On your knees. Begging.”
My hand moves before my thoughts catch up, and I slap him as hard as I can. It’s a reflex, a flash fire ripping through my body. Maybe my brain reallyisshort on oxygen after Mam grabbed my throat. Maybe I’m frustrated he didn’t buy any of my lies. Maybe my temper explodes over his suggestive taunt when he says the wordbegging.
But it feels good to strike him. Good to fight back. Good to finally catch him by surprise, to do something he never, ever expected.
Because I see the animal inside him respond. His lip curls back in a snarl. His own hand flies, heavy as a board, going for vengeance, going for pain, because no one gets away with striking the Wolf.
At the last possible second, he takes something off his blow, flexing his wrist to drain away most of his heat.
Most.
But not all.
There’s a moment when I hear the sound of flesh on flesh, before I feel a thing. There’s a moment when I can’t believe he hit me back, that he’s broken the ancient rule that boys don’t hit girls. There’s a moment before I’m utterly, completely lost.
Heat blooms across my cheek, igniting a firestorm inside my body. The flat of his hand closes a circuit I never knew wasopen. It lights a fuse that runs straight down my spine to the suddenly aching V between my thighs.
No lover has ever dared to strike me like that, but Wolf’s blow somehow feels familiar. It’s a word that hovers on the tip of my tongue. It’s a dream that disintegrates into mist the instant I try to describe it.
It’s a desire I’ve never even whispered to myself.
Cole Wolf sees all that. Heknows. I can tell, because his fingers trail over my jaw, settling over the pulse point in my throat. He must feel the thunder there, under the bruises from my mother. He must recognize the gallop of my heartbeat as an entire new world bursts open inside me.
My knees turn liquid—not from the blow, not from the pain, but because my entire understanding of who I am, of what I want, what Ineedhas just shattered into a million mirrored shards.
And Wolf freezes. All human intelligence washes away from his gaze. He becomes something different, something totally feral. I can see his teeth as he snarls: “Get in the fucking car.”
5
COLE
Islapped her out of reflex.
She took me by surprise, and she’s strong enough that her open-handed blow splashed like acid across my face. I responded with a lifetime of giving as good as I get, only catching myself at the last possible second.
And she liked it.
No.
She fuckinglovedit.
Kate moaned when I struck her. I don’t think she knows she made that sound, but the Dom part of my brain clocked it before she’d grabbed another breath.
