Page 59 of Wolf Tamer

Red explodes across my vision, and for a second, I can’t see anything through the pain. I can’t think above the sudden roaring in my head and the echoing of my racing pulse in my ears. One second I’m staring at her, and the next, my head cracks against the post of the four-poster bed when she follows the punch with a grab and smash.

She’s not playing around.

“Come on, big guy,” she taunts. “Show me what you’re made of. Hit me back.”

Her voice sounds like it’s coming from another room.

I barely see her as she jumps at me, taking advantage of my dizziness by wrapping her arms around my neck. She’s choking me so quickly that I have no time to fend her off before she has her right arm pressed to my throat and her left fist slamming against my temple.

The same one she already hit with the book.

“Come on,” she growls out against my ear. The heat of her body normally turns me on. Today, the only thing I can think about is getting her off me before she plunges the knife through my temple next.

I manage to whirl around and knock her against the same bedpost hard enough that she gasps. She doesn’t let go. If anything, she tightens her chokehold. She’s already got her wrist pressed to my Adam’s apple.

My lips pull back from my teeth. “Tash, don’t,” I grunt.

I can barely draw in a breath. All I can think about is not wanting to hurt her. I only want her off me.

Her temper always does get the best of her.

I hiss, managing to get my arm up in time to avoid her next hit to my face while alternately slamming her back against the bedpost a second time. Her fingers unfurl at the last minute and send her nails scraping down the side of my face hard enough to draw blood.

Howling, I drop down to the ground on all fours. She’s tackling me, pummeling me, all in my own home.

Some might say Tasha has a death wish.

And here I am doing my best not to fight her back, only to keep on the defensive.

“You want to be the big man, then let’s see how well you can lie without your balls, you son of a bitch,” she screams.

She wraps her legs around my waist with her heel way too close to my dick for comfort. She always has had a thing for scrotal torture. I’m about half a second away from rolling on my back and squashing her with my weight. I have a sneaking suspicion she still won’t drop that knife, and I’ll be on the receiving end of it shortly.

“You insufferable bastard!”

I struggle forward as breathing becomes a titanic-sized endeavor. I’m on my feet a tense moment later. “If you keep whispering obscenities in my ear… you might just turn me on.” My voice comes out as a garble, and I somehow shift just enough to knock her back into the bed and loosen her grip without hurting her.

The element of surprise is on my side. Once I have the room to maneuver, I wrench her away from me and hold her at arm’s length, wincing as her nails slice along my forearms now.

“Will you stop?”

She flips over, rolling away and whirling to get her feet back under her. She throws the knife into the air and adjusts her grip on it when it comes down. This is no longer the sweet, beautiful woman I see when I glance at her. This is the huntress. The Wolf Hunter.

Right now, she looks ready to trade what’s left of her life if it means she can take me down with her. Destroying me has become her number one priority.

“No,” she hisses. “I won’t stop. Not until I make you pay in blood.”

Some of the stuff already leaks out of the cut on my temple. That damn book hit harder than I thought. I know I’m baiting her further, but I smile at her. “I’ve paid more than my fair share of the stuff already, and more than you know,” I tell her, channeling that horrible, casual calm my father had been so fond of using. “Now let’s sit and talk like rational adults.”

“I don’t want to be rational,” she screams. “I want you to pay.”

She’s got her knife, raking it through the air in front of her until that wicked blade has my sole attention. It’s one of her favorite weapons and one I was stupid enough to get for her.

“Why?” I ask her.

A pivot has her back to me and her elbow driving into my ribs. She follows the movement with a second pivot and a slash that misses my sternum by an inch.

“Why would you use my sister?” she replies.

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