Page 12 of His Wild Seduction

Starving my humanity. Hardening my heart. Bleeding my soul.

It seemed the only way to survive at the time. But now, fuck, now I was beginning to suspect there was another way.

Maybe the Big Bad Wolf didn’t have to end up starving, cold, and alone, after all.

Goddamn.

She smelled good. Really good. Mouthwatering.

Her skin bore the same rich cocoa butter fragrance I remembered from our time together before.

I’d never seen a woman faint, so this was a first. But watching her beloved face go pale as her eyes rolled in the back of her head was more than I could stand.

“Get me a fucking doctor!” I shouted at Mario, who was hovering close by.

I shuffled her in my arms and rose to my feet carefully.

She was so damn beautiful up close, and I was a goddamn lecher for thinking so when she was clearly suffering from stress and fuck knew what else.

Fifteen years of self-loathing and anger.

Fifteen years of wanting vengeance.

It was right in front of me, within my grasp. I finally had Meredith Gray right where I wanted her.

But it seemed I still hadn’t learned my lesson when it came to this woman.

Needing to make sure Meredith was safe was as deeply ingrained in me now as it had been then. As if protecting her was simply a fact of life.

Fuck me.

I’d searched for her over the years. Frustrated myself to no end when I couldn’t find her.

Tried to forget her with other women. With booze. With violence.

Nothing worked.

I thought I’d die without the satisfaction of bringing her to her knees.

But all that changed a little over eight months ago when her old man started trolling banks for loans. Gray Corps was in trouble, and I finally had an in.

I wasn’t a good man.

Hell. That was an understatement.

No one who was good would have earned the nickname Big Bad Wolf.

But when you worked for the Volkov Brothers, it sort of came with the territory. Adrik once explained that his surname, Volkov, meant wolf. So, that was what we were.

Adrik, Marat, and me.

The Dark Wolf. The Devil Wolf. And the Big Bad Wolf.

Though technically, I had earned my nickname and my reputation in the military, and that was before I knew them both. At forty years old, I was older than Adrik by one year and Marat by over ten years.

Fucker.

But they were my brothers by choice, and I owed them everything. They were the closest thing to family that I had.

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