Page 23 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

The only woman who’d ever made him take notice was Lila. She’d captivated him. He was instantly focused, instantly smitten. He’d never wanted anything in his life like he’d wanted her.

Love was poison. It would kill a person slow and sure. It spread through to every limb, a cancer that couldn’t be stopped. He’d been at the mercy of it, and he hadn’t enjoyed it. It wasn’t just love that he didn’t want. It was that hopeless, senseless attraction that took a man by the balls and the lungs and changed his brain chemistry until he might as well have had a lobotomy.

After losing Lila, he assumed that he’d never find another woman attractive again. No woman would stir his blood, no woman would make him hard, no woman could make him lose himself or make him a stranger to his own body.

It had happened the first time Seren tattooed him. She was beautiful, but that terrible poisonous sensation hadn’t settled into him until he was flat on his stomach, having ink pounded into his back for hours. The initial pricks of pain had turned into a numbness, and he’d found himself in an almost meditative state in which his simmering anger at the world dulled and his mind started going to places. Places he’d sworn never to revisit. The warmth of Seren’s body close to his as she tattooed him, the sweet scent of female wolf… Inexplicably, he’d lain there for hours with his hard, aching cock pressed into the tattoo table, wondering what the fuck was happening.

Seren was the first woman he was hard for after Lila. She was the only woman he’d ever been hard for since his banishment. And right now, she was lying in the bed beside him because he’d forced her to as both an asshole and a checkmate powerplay.

She was unmistakably masturbating.

Loudly.

There was no way that such a sweet, reluctant woman who found a white pair of cotton panties to be the most offensive thing since whatever she found utterly offensive would be touching herself and moaning right next to him, even if she thought he was asleep. She didn’t want to be sharing this bed. There was simply no chance she’d be getting her rocks off beside a man she detested.

It didn’t make any sense. It was a trap, and one he wasn’t going to step into. He made sure his breathing didn’t change. There was nothing that gave away that he was awake. He let her go on, making those soft breathless sounds.

She wasn’t faking it, that was for certain. He couldn’t just smell how wet she was. He could hear her fingers gliding through her soaking wet folds. Was she sticking them inside herself? How many? Was she close?

He groaned.

And immediately cursed himself. Idiot.

She froze so fast that he nearly believed she truly had believed he was asleep.

“Rome?” Her breath hitched. Her tone had a slight edge of guilt. “Are you okay? Are you in pain? Brooke said you’d be out until at least morning. All your family went home. Waverly is on the couch. When I came to bed, you were sleeping like you were unconscious.”

“You’re still awake.”

“Y-yes. I couldn’t sleep.”

“And you thought that getting off would help?”

She gasped. He couldn’t shake the feeling she was playing him, twisting his own advantage around, and that he was setting his neck straight into her noose. “I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Were you thinking about me? Imagining me punishing you? Bending you over that desk in my office so hard you’d have indents from whatever was on top of it set into your skin for hours after? Did you imagine me turning your ass red?” She made a sound of sharp protest. He wasn’t letting her off the hook. She wanted to play? So be it. “Or were you thinking about me fucking your ass? Or stretching that tight pussy until you creamed all over my dick, screaming my name?”

“Absolutely not. For one, you stink. You smell like hospital and bleach and herbs and barf and bandages.”

“Yet you were still working your clit like it was going to detach from your body and run away by morning. Did you think you’d never get another chance? That it had to be now?”

“Go to bed.” She rolled over in disgust.

“I’m in bed. If you mean go to sleep, that’s not going to happen until you finish what you started, darling.”

“What I’m going to do is go sleep on the couch where I should have been all along. Or in one of those chairs. Anywhere but near you.”

“Even if I stink, you like it. You might hate me, but your body doesn’t. It likes domination. You crave submission. You’re no alpha female.”

“You think you’re an alpha male?” She blew out an undignified snort.

He couldn’t see anything, the dark was so absolute. It must be the herbs, because even in human form, he should have been able to make something out. It gave him an eerie, detached sensation, like he was floating in a sea of black. That dark could be water. It could be the depths of hell. He didn’t feel fear, but his chest tightened slightly.

“You’re just a bully. You’re a man who throws his power and his money around. You’re that man who was banished from his pack. You’re no longer one of them. You’re barely a wolf any more than I am. You could have been an alpha, but now you’re just a total douchewad. No one likes you and you like that because you’re pathetic.”

If she thought she could hurt his feelings, she was so wrong. He’d have to have feelings worth being stepped on in the first place.

He chuckled, even though it made the roaring pain turn into an inferno. He was flat on his back. He wouldn’t undo Brooke’s careful work. He didn’t want to heal with a mangled leg and a useless shoulder, but if any kind of threat entered the household, he’d tear it apart, broken bones and pain and all. He was far, far from helpless, and if Seren thought he was any less dangerous now, she was wrong.

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