Page 22 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

He didn’t open his mouth, even when she tipped the mug so its contents were dangerously close to spilling all over him. All that liquid shimmering over his gorgeous body. It might be lovely, but it really was the truth that it was wasted on him.

“Your family invited me for their pack run tomorrow night. I think I’m going to go. Waverly wants to meet her cousins and aunts and uncles. I know Zora wouldn’t have asked me unless she’d already asked you, so there’s no pretending that you’re butthurt about it.”

His hand shot out, tackling the mug away from her. His fingers brushed against hers and she backed away immediately, her blood heating with a wicked electricity. Rome was all dangerous darkness and thunderstorms.

“Do whatever you’d like.” He was in full control of himself, even though he had to be in serious pain, even though he was at a disadvantage. He was a master at flipping the tables. If she was playing a game within a game, he was better at both. “It won’t change the fact that tonight, you’ll be sleeping in this bed right beside me.”

“What?” Her palm itched to smack him, but she abhorred violence. Hitting people was wrong, even if they asked for it, and Rome was practically on his knees begging.

“I implied that we are a couple. You’re here with me. It’s the logical inference. My family likes to think that I’m reformed, or at the very least, doing better. I like to let them worry less. What I did brought them heartache and trouble and I like the idea of them finding peace again.”

“I’ll tell them we’re not,” she threatened, hating Rome’s calm as she backed away a step. How could he be so deadly when he was at his worst?

“You won’t.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because then you’d have to deal with the fallout. You’d have to make the truth known.”

“I’ll go straight out there and tell them everything.”

“No.” He tipped the mug and drank a long pull, but even as his throat worked with every swallow, his eyes never left hers. “You won’t. It’s not even about your pride which you so stubbornly insist on clinging to. It would be so much easier if you would just give it up to me. Let me break you. Become fully mine. It’s what you want, in that little secret black heart of yours. You like being bossed around. You like being owned by me. But that’s not why you won’t tell my family. Not out of pride or shame, but because, for the first time in your life, you want to know what it truly means to be a wolf. You want Waverly to know. You won’t do anything to ruin that, but above all, you won’t hurt a child.”

“You’re wretched.”

“On every level.” He finished the tea and set the mug aside.

Seren stared longingly at the pillows stacked up beside Rome. She wouldn’t have the strength to smother him now, but maybe in his sleep. It might be the one perk to being forced into the bed beside him. It might be the only real place to sleep, but she’d gladly take the floor or any spine-bending couch over this new form of torture.

She gave him a look that she hoped scared him. She searched his face boldly, in open defiance. She wanted him to realize that there was nowhere he could hide from her, just as he’d stripped her equally as bare. She was coming for him whether he believed it was possible or not.

She was going to turn this around. She was going to be the one who broke him. She might not know how, but she had five and a half months to figure it out. Let this be the first step. At the end, he’d be the broken one. He’d be the one who craved her. He’d be the one following orders.

“Seren?”

“You’re right.” Let him think that half destroyed her, and half pissed her off.

She turned on her heel and left, shutting the door too hard behind her.

Suddenly, she was determined that she’d find a way to win. She’d be the victor even if she had to raze herself to the ground to do it. She was there anyway, picked apart, cornered, made base by this man just because he could. Because he was rich enough to hold all the cards.

No. She’d thought so, no. He only had any power because she let him.

No matter how much it hurt, she was going to wrest it away.

It might not be so bad. Maybe he was right. Maybe secretly, she craved the pain.

Chapter 8

Rome

Rome woke up in the dead of night to soft, tortured whimpering.

He was instantly alert, but the pain roaring through him when he was fully conscious brought back his reality in an instant. He stayed perfectly still, not giving away that he was awake. He was in Brooke Wind’s cabin and that moaning wasn’t someone being tortured.

It was someone experiencing pleasure from right beside him, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Brooke in the bed with him.

A soft moan shot through him. Despite the fact that his arm and leg felt like they’d both been chainsawed into oblivion, he was hard.

---