Page 51 of Scarlett Thief (Criminal Underground 2)

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Scarlett

Ididn't know how long I stood under the spray, but when the door to the shower opened, I turned toward the man stepping in behind me with a shocked gasp. “You can’t be fucking serious!” I snapped. "What part of that exit"—I gestured to the bathroom door as I glared at him—"made you think I'd wanted you to follow me."

"This isn't about what you want, Scarlett," Wolf replied calmly. "This is about what you need."

I scoffed. "Oh, and you think I need you?"

It was a struggle to keep my eyes above his waist because, like me, he was naked. A veritable wall of hardened muscle. Although I was blocking ninety percent of the water, what little that did manage to hit him clung to those muscles and raced down over the rippling abs that lined his stomach.Damn him.

"No, I think you need to be honest with yourself."

My lips parted in surprise.Be honest with myself?I thought.What the fuck did he know about me being honest with myself?

"You want me to be honest with myself?" I repeated aloud. "I'm always honest with myself. I know what I do is dangerous. I know where it can lead—it can put a target on my back and I can wind up in jail. I decided to take that risk when I started this, I—"

"No, you didn't," Wolf interrupted me with a shake of his head as he stepped closer to me in the glass enclosed stall. It was a large shower, but now with him in it, it seemed smaller. He moved toward me, and my arms came up to cover my breasts even as my legs tightened. His eyes ate me up and the closer he came, the faster my heart beat inside my ribcage. One arm shot out over my shoulder as he stepped into the spray, backing me out of it.

"You didn't decide to take that risk when you started being a thief, Scarlett," he said. "You didn't even understand that it was wrong. It's all you've been taught, all you've known. Your father shouldn't have used you like that—shouldn't have brought you into his cons."

I felt cornered by a wild beast. The water beat down over his head, soaking into the short strands of his hair and making them stick to his forehead and temples as his gaze settled on me. There was something so magnetic about the look in his eyes that I couldn't seem to look away, no matter how much I wanted to.

"I've been used my whole life, Wolf," I heard myself say. I didn't know why the words came out the way they did but I couldn't stop them. "For sex, for jobs, for greed. I'm used to it. Regardless of how I got my start, I know the score now. I knew it when I took this job, and certainly knew it when I met Jaxson for the first time."

"Tell me something," Wolf pressed, moving until his chest brushed against the backs of my arms as I continued to hold them over my breasts. It seemed a little silly to hide from him now, but I couldn't seem to make my arms lower to my sides. "Has anyone ever actually given you what you need, Scarlett?"

"What I need?"

"Do you know why Hadrian and I took you to that club?"

I stiffened, reminded of the night we'd gone to Incatenato. "To get the information you needed," I said. "It would've been odd if you hadn't gone with a sub." That's all I was—a fake sub. Not even good enough to be a real one. I'd been a prop.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Wolf scoffed, and one corner of his mouth curled up into a wry grin. "No, Scarlett. You came in under my leash. As far as anyone else was concerned, Hadrian was a free Dom. No sub to tie him down, and yet, he didn't go looking for a sub while he was there. Why do you think that is?"

I growled, sure he was mocking me. "We were there to do a job," I snapped. "Nothing more."

"The job was part of it," he stated. “But the real reason he didn’t go looking was because he already had his eyes on one. He had his eyes on you.”

I blinked, my irritation fizzling out. "Me?" I repeated.

"Hadrian is interested in you, or haven't you noticed?" Wolf's body radiated heat. I tipped my head back, letting it rest on the tiled wall of the shower beneath the nozzle. He didn't seem all that interested in the downpour of water that sluiced over his skin. It dripped down the sides of his face as he bent over me. "We're both interested in you, Scarlett."

"For the job," I said.

He shook his head. "No, not for the damn job. We're interested because the two of us noticed something that I'm sure you haven't even realized yet—you're a sub. A gorgeous, bratty submissive. A little bit of a voyeur and a whole lot of repression. You give everyone around you something they need—and you say you do it for you, but why did you set up this place for us when you knew Hadrian could have gotten something? You might say it's because you didn't trust him; you don't trust me."

I inhaled sharply. "You're right," I said. "I don't trust you."

"You don't trust anyone," he shot back, and I couldn't deny it. There was no point in trusting when people would eventually fail me.

"Where's Hadrian?" I demanded suddenly, narrowing my eyes on him before glancing toward the bathroom door. "Did he put you up to this? He—" As I spoke, I moved to get past Wolf, done with listening to him tell me what he thought about me. He let me step around him, and my hand was almost to the glass door leading out of the shower when a hard hand clasped my upper arm and jerked me back into the spray, cutting off my tirade. I gasped as heated water rained down over my face. I sputtered, wiping the water from my eyes.

"You're dangerous, Scarlett," Wolf said, making my back stiffen as he slid up along my spine, his massive chest to my back, our naked skin touching.

It took a moment for me to respond. "If I'm so dangerous, then why don't you just let me go?" I said, hoping he didn't notice the tremble in my tone.

"You might not trust me and, hell, I might not trust you," he whispered back, the heat of his breath on my neck. This time, there was no repressing the shiver. “That doesn’t mean I can’t fuck you. And make no mistake, I want to.”

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