Page 44 of Wolf.e

“Fuck—” he says, turning his face from me. When he returns his eyes to mine, his pupils are contracted. They’re controlled again, devoid of any emotion. He grips my throat.

“You do what I say now, and you stay alive,” Wolfe says, his voice low.

He turns and begins to walk, expecting me to follow, and I ask myself what just happened. How he goes from so intense to cold and emotionless so easily. The rush of fear returns almost instantly. The haziness from my orgasm and the kiss evaporating by the second, making things clear once again.

I realize I truly have no idea what it means to be his and the thought of finding out terrifies me. As I follow Gabriel out of the woods, I know that the woman I was before we met might as well be as dead as the man he just murdered.

“I’m going to get an infection from that knife,” I say as wooden stairs creak under our feet while we climb them.

Gabriel unlocks the door to his private cabin and ushers me in. I realize I prefer his first name, the only reason why that I can fathom is because it somehow makes him more human than his last.

“I just finished gutting a man with it. It was completely sterile. Sanitized. Twice. Hospital clean.” He leans in and the scent of him overwhelms me again. It doesn’t even seem like the endeavor in the woods caused him to break a sweat. “And I wouldn’t put his blood anywhere near you,” he says gruffly.

“But yours is okay?” I ask, kicking my muddy wedge heels off. I’m lucky I didn’t break an ankle trying to run in those.

“My blood is clean,” he says, stalking toward me after he turns on a light. Gabriel stands over me looking down into my eyes. He grazes a knuckle over my pulse like he measures the beats. “And I’ll put it anywhere I please. In you, on you, mixed with your own. If I want you to drink it, you will. You owe your life to me. You should be saying thank you.”

Rage fills me and I fight with everything in me not to cry. I force myself not to give him the satisfaction of my fear.

“Thank you,” I say evenly.

“Time to clean up.” he says, moving to usher me toward the only bathroom. I have nothing with me. Even my phone and purse are in the reception hall on the table.

“I need to go to my room and get my things,” I tell him “I have nothing.”

Gabriel pulls out his phone and starts to text. He finishes and puts it in his pocket.

“You’ll stay with me. It’s not safe for you to be alone until I explain our arrangement.”

I.e., his club might try to kill me for seeing what I saw.

“Undress,” he says as he turns the shower on, placing his hand under the water to feel the temperature. “Your personal things are on the way.”

“My room number is—” The look he gives me tells me he already knows.

“Your things are on the way,” Gabriel reiterates, leaving me no room to protest. “It’ll work out a lot better for both of us if you stop second guessing everything I say. Then I won’t need to fucking repeat myself,” he adds.

His phone rings and he looks down before stepping through the bathroom door to answer it. I take the opportunity to close it behind him and lean back against it, already knowing better than to lock it. If he wants to come in here, the flimsy handle lock wouldn’t stop him anyway, so what’s the point?

I take the time while he’s gone to use the toilet, praying his knife was as clean as he promised. I’m tender and swollen and wishing for the solace hot water will offer. I grab fresh towels and a washcloth from the shelf then strip my clothes away and stare at myself in the mirror. The makeup I worked so carefully to apply hours ago is smudged, the remnants of my mascara is dark beneath my eyes and tracks down my still flushed cheeks in washed out black lines where it had mixed with my tears. My hair that I had curled and pinned up is in disarray and hangs down my back in waves, tiny sticks and brambles caught up in the knotted mess. There’s mud streaked across my skin and what looks like the start of bruising around my neck from him holding me against the tree. I turn and see the scratches that line my shoulder blades. They aren’t deep but…I am a marked woman.

The deep timbre of Wolfe’s voice echoes through the hollow door as he speaks to someone on the phone.

“You do what I say now, you stay alive,” he had said and meant it.

All I have is my sovereignty.

And not the sovereignty of my body because that clearly belongs to him.

All I have is my choice.

I can choose to be either an open or a closed book when it suits me. I can choose not to indulge in his world until I understand it better.

I can choose to forgive myself for wanting him. I only owe myself.

There’s also the possibility that he’ll grow tired of me and let me go quietly. It’s small, but at this point, he hasn’t even tried to claim me with his cock, which goes against everything the people around him say about what kind of man he is.

It tells me that maybe I’m just as out of the ordinary for him as he is for me. That light to his dark.

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