Page 3 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

She was right. He was dangerous. She’d just vastly underestimated how much. He wasn’t just a wolf. He was decidedly lacking in humanity. If she hadn’t made him bleed multiple times over the years, she would have been in doubt that he even could.

He didn’t leave her writhing there. He had something far more vicious planned for her.

“I have the money. I’ll lend it to you, but I want something in return.”

Obviously. Who wouldn’t? His chilling words made her stomach start to churn so violently she thought she’d throw up all over the floor. At least the tiles looked like they’d easily wipe clean and there wasn’t really anything in the impersonal office that was in the splash zone.

The way his black eyes fixed on hers made it all too apparent that what he wanted wasn’t an insane repayment schedule with absurd interest rates. It wasn’t anything that any legal, upstanding, normal, decent, humane institution would ask for.

Rome wasn’t the bank. He wasn’t a legal system. He wasn’t a building. He was a flesh and blood person. Sort of.

Seren might have been better off going to a loan shark. Even the nastiest one might have been a safer option. She’d made a mistake. She thought she could come here, and that Rome would be fair. That there was a semblance of goodness in him that she could appeal to. That from one client to another, one business owner with a dream to another, he’d understand.

She’d come with a plan for repayment. It was reasonable and fair, or she’d thought. It seemed utterly foolish now.

“What-what do you want?” She only stammered on the first bit and churned the rest of the words out. They sounded desperate, as desperate as her ragged breathing, but there was no helping that.

He’d respond. She could always say no. She could always walk out of here. And… what? Admit defeat? Close up the shop? Let everyone down? Listen to her mom saying I told you so for the next forty fucking years, or the end of one of their natural lives?

“You.”

Yeah. Right. She’d sort of seen that one coming as the pressure in the office changed, as the air grew frigid, and the last vestiges of humanity sailed on a ship she wasn’t even close to catching. She’d walked straight into it that trap. It felt like stepping into the line of fire anyway and taking a bullet. One she might not survive.

When she’d walked through this in her head, she’d seen that as a slight possibility, but she’d immediately discounted it given that Rome gave off that don’t fuck with me vibe, but also a strong I don’t want to fuck you either aura. In all the times she’d had him in intimate positions, all the hours she’d spent touching his skin, connected even though she wore gloves and hadn’t ever truly made real contact, she’d never once scented anything close to desire from him. He’d always been so disinterested, stoic even when she’d spent hours hammering ink into places that she knew hurt like the hounds of hell were ripping at your flesh.

He stared at her, not so icy any longer. A glimmer of smug satisfaction glistened in his dark eyes. He knew he’d already won. Jesus, even if she surrendered and took his money, it wasn’t a competition. She’d come with a legit plan on how to make good on the loan. This wasn’t going to turn into some smutty sexcapade. She didn’t see herself above anyone else or fault anyone for their line of work, but she certainly wasn’t going that direction.

“Uh, no.” She twisted a strand of her pink hair, doing her best to appear bored. “I’m off the table.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick stack of pages. She held them out, but when Rome didn’t take them, she threw them down onto his desk. “I have the repayment schedule and terms in there. Possible interest rates, that kind of thing. If you turn to the very back, I have an alternate proposal where I would be willing to give up twenty percent ownership of the shop to you in exchange for two hundred and fifty thousand, with the rest to be paid back on a schedule we have yet to decide.”

She’d never once seen Rome smile like a regular person. When a faint, ghostly glimmer made his lips twitch, adrenaline burst through her. He hadn’t moved, but he was ten times the predator he’d been a few seconds ago. Wolves ran hot, and the thought of him cornering her in the room, tearing her clothes off, and bending her over that clinically neat desk to fuck her, raw and angry, made her blood boil.

Which told her that she’d been far too long in neglecting herself. She didn’t want a man, and she didn’t need one to get herself off once in a while. Clearly, she needed to. The lack of orgasms was affecting her brain.

“No,” she repeated, but her voice was husky. That twisted smile increased a notch. He was enjoying this. He liked toying with her.

“If you’d like my money, Ms. Prescott, you’ll accept my terms. Seventy percent ownership in your shop and for the next six months you belong to me.”

Her wolf nearly tore out of her skin and leapt at the bastard. No one owned a wolf. No one. Ownership was for domesticated animals, and she was no fucking doodle dog.

“I belong to no one,” she hissed, stabbing a finger in his direction. “Least of all you.” She snatched the pages off his desk. “Forget it. I don’t even know why I came here.” She stalked to the door, but couldn’t resist turning around and giving him one last parting shot. It was more an effort to scrape together a shred of dignity than anything else. “Get yourself in line, wolf. You’re disgusting.”

He was on her in a second. He’d pulled a wrench from somewhere. She couldn’t even gasp as he caged her in, trapping her to the right of the door, advancing on her until her back hit the wall. In a few calculated steps, she’d lost any advantage she might have had. He licked his lips, staring directly at her throat like he’d enjoying tearing it out with his teeth.

There was something distinctly and very fucking out of controlabout her own body when a shiver ran down her spine and her breath wheezed out. It wasn’t a shiver of fear, and her breath hadn’t gone wrong because she hated him or the thought of the violence he might do to her. She didn’t believe he’d ever truly harm her, and maybe that was the worst of her judgement.

Methodically, carefully, meticulously, he ran the wrench down her forehead, over the slant of her nose, past her lips and to her chin, the metal cold against her burning skin. It was weird. Creepy. No part of him touched her, but with his hands locked on the wall and his body so close, she could feel his heat.

“Six months,” he growled. His lips peeled back to reveal sharp white teeth. His eye teeth were slightly crooked and one of the bottom ones crossed over at a slant near the top. Two flaws, two arguments for humanity. “Six months and you will come here every Monday night and perform for me. I will never, ever touch you. I have no interest in that. And you will not touch me.” He shivered violently, like the thought of her repulsed him, which was in direct contradiction with his words. “Your shop is closed Sundays and Mondays, so every Sunday, you will spend the day with my daughter. She is also a wolf. I have no idea how to teach her the things she should know as a female. She hasn’t shifted yet, ever, that I know of.”

Seren gaped at her captor. He was no longer the tormentor. He was giving up the huge advantage that he had over her. He was at the top, but he’d lowered himself. He might as well be prostrate on the floor.

“You’re a dad?” That word felt wrong. Dad. Holy fuck. She never would have thought. The word was ice water on fucked-up flames. She didn’t touch him because her sense of self-preservation was too strong. Instead of pushing him away, she ducked under his arm and spun into open space. “Jesus Christ, you want me to spend a day with your daughter every week and then the next day, come here and do sick, twisted things?”

“I said perform. I never mentioned anything sick and twisted. You’ll follow my commands for an hour every Monday night, but how do you know they’ll be depraved? Would you like them to be?”

She shook her head, nostrils flaring. “If you truly have a daughter, why would you ever treat a woman that way? Why debase and humiliate me? Would you like someone to do the same to her one day?”

He lifted a shoulder, but there was nothing casual about the rest of his stance. He vibrated with a potent rage. “No one will ever touch her. Not until she’d old enough to decide what she wants, and even then, if anyone ever hurt her, I would tear their heart out and feed it back to them.”

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