I don’t move.
I should go into my closet and fetch a fresh nightgown.
I don’t move.
I should go into my dresser drawers and get clean knickers.
I don’t move.
“Let’s go,” Wolf finally says, from the doorway.
I’m startled, but I do my best not to show it. “Go where?” I ask warily. For once, I don’t think I have the strength for the dungeon.
He doesn’t answer me. He just steps back from the threshold and waits for me to obey. On trembling legs, I follow him out of the room.
43
COLE
For the first time since I met Kate, I don’t trust myself with her. She’s my wife, my sub, but those black stitches crawling across her thigh like spiders have me seeing scarlet.
I want Kate to hurt the way I did. I want her to feel the same jagged pain that stopped my heart when I walked into our bedroom. There was so much blood…
I don’t trust myself to punish her in the dungeon. I can’t be certain I’ll measure her pain correctly—especially with the adrenaline she’s already pumped through her body tonight, with Patel’s anesthetic, with those seven deadly stitches changing everything.
I can’t punish her safely. But I can humiliate her. And maybe that will finally teach my gorgeous, proud, stubborn wife to keep her fucking promises.
Humiliation.
That’s why I keep her naked as I lead her down the stairs. That’s why I enter my office first, blocking her view of the toolson my desk, the equipment I picked up from the dungeon after I saw Patel to the door.
Kate rallies as she follows me over the threshold. She stops shaking. She throws back her shoulders.
By the time she glares at the O’Keeffe she hung on the wall beside my desk, she looks like she’s playing a game. But the painted crimson poppy makes me shudder. I see Kate’s blood striping her thigh, far too much of it, far too bright.
Catching my reaction, Kate responds the only way she knows—with scorn and defiance. She tosses her head, and her ocean of red hair tumbles around her shoulders, finally escaping the braid she wore earlier tonight.
Eyeing me with a challenge that trumpets reveille to my dick, she plants one hand on her hip. “Like what you see?” she asks.
She sticks out her chest and settles her weight on one heel. It’s a move of pure defiance, meant to put me off my pace. The stitches on her thigh stand out like a brand.
My stomach twists, scorching the back of my throat with bile. When I opened the bedroom door… When I saw her curled forward, totally absorbed, completely focused on the blood dripping down her thigh… When I tried to stop the bleeding, felt it soaking through the pillowcase, welling up between my fingers…
“Yes,” I say, belatedly answering her question. “Idolike what I see. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure I get to see it for a whole lot longer.”
To prove my point, I snatch the first tool from my desk. Her eyes grow wide as I flex the dog collar in front of her face. She gulps as I buckle it around her throat, swallowing so hard I almost lose my grip on its trailing nylon leash.
I expect to see her panic. Instead, she slips a fingernail beneath the collar, measuring the space it leaves for her to twist her neck. She reaches out to tug on the lead, testing it, seeing how little it gives.
And then she eyes me with a wicked smile. “Green,” she says. “In case you were wondering.”
I wasn’t wondering. This isn’t one of our dungeon games. This is the only way I can think of to tame this wild woman.
Using the leash to pull her over to the wall of computer monitors, I force her to kneel. The screens are mounted on a metal frame that is bolted into the wall. I thread her leash around the solid steel bar at the bottom, fastening it with a large padlock I also brought from the dungeon. I tug on the nylon to be certain it can’t slip free.
It only takes her a moment to spit: “Big, brave man. Have to tie up your woman.”
“I’m not tying you up,” I say evenly. “If I were tying you up, I’d put rope around your wrists. Around your ankles. Maybe around your chest if I wanted to tease your nipples.”
