Page 9 of Eat You Alive (Court Legacy 4)

“Don’t go too easy on that ass, Wolfy.” Thatcher nudged Ares again, and Ares’s expression was stoic. He gave no reaction to his friend at all, and his friend was a fucking idiot. No one would be teaching me anything, and it was clear Ares had far more brain cells than his friends.

Ares cuffed his arms. “Shut the door behind you, please.”

“With pleasure, my dude,” Wells said this, but not before making a kissing noise at me.Fucker.He shoulder-bumped Ares, then bounced along after Thatcher.

The two closed the door.

My body relaxed. “Thank you,” I said, long overdue. I was thankful, and though I hadn’t shown it that day three years ago, I had been then too. I sighed. “Really, thanks. Don’t know what those psychos would have done if you hadn’t—”

It happened so quickly, him towering over me…

His hands around my throat.

He backed me up against the door, my head slamming into it. Ringing hit my ears, and when Ares squeezed my throat, I gasped. “What are you—”

His balled fist collided against the door, the sound ricocheting a thunderous wave within my already ringing ears. Choking, I scratched at the hand around my throat but Ares’s hold was unrelenting. Using my windpipe, he forced the base of my skull into the door, and the only way I could describe the way he looked at me was manic, psychotic...

Animalistic.

An untamed rage lined his chiseled features, and I didn’t understand it. “Ares—”

“It’sWolf, Red,” he growled, sounding like an actual wolf. He looked it too. The charged gleam that hit his eyes was nothing but deadly, his teeth showing below it. “Cry it out. Breathe it…”

He got so close once he said that, a soft heat over my jaw, and I grabbed his hand on my throat. “What are you doing?”

The words came out struggled, strained. His crazy-ass friends had already done a number on me, and with this now, I barely had a voice. I kicked, and he grabbed my thigh, squeezing that too.

“Careful, Fawn,” he crooned, and when his breath touched my ear this time, I smelled him. His prickly jaw hinted with spice. He didn’t smell like sex, but something sharper, sweeter. “Because those psychos? I make look like kid shit.”

As if to prove the point, he parted my legs, his hand trailing heat up my thigh. My hip thrust because he had my leg, and all that made him do was chuckle.

“You were so quick to think I forgave you,” he said, coming forward. He was inches away from my face, his large body craned over me. He studied me. “Like you weren’t completely opportunist as shit and deserved that.”

“I never asked you to come between me and that ref,” I gritted, snapping. He had me in a completely vulnerable position, but I didn’t give a shit. He was acting like a bully, a monster. I snarled. “So, I’d be careful,Wolf, because your fragile masculinity is showing.”

The wrong thing to say, and his fingers literally dug into my neck when his stark-white teeth flashed. His lip curled above, beautifully full lips he used to spout venom, lies. He completely bullshitted me this morning in the conference room. He tilted my head. “I can break you, Red. A fuckingphone call,and I can end your entire world as you know it.”

He kept calling me that,Red, and how original. I wondered if I had green hair, he’d call meGreen.“What are you talking about?”

He didn’t tell me at first, scanning my face. He got really close, and I made out every varying shade in his dark eyes. He even had freckles, darker than mine, but they blended into the rich tone of his skin. Ares “Wolf” Mallick was a beautiful guy.

Too bad he was an asshole.

“Your internship, baby,” he said, and when I blinked, he grinned. “That’s right. Your pretty little internship, and hell, even your enrollment at Pembroke. Gone at the snap of my fucking fingers.”

I blanched. “You can’t do that.”

“Can’t I?” He wasn’t even holding me now, his hands on the door, his long reach crowding me. I really could smell him now, the thick aroma rich with a hint of smoke.

I wet my lips and God… dammit. I hadn’t smoked weed in a while, but I missed it. Ineededit most days, but I couldn’t take the chance. I’d been clean of anything since I was fifteen.

I scanned Wolf’s eyes. “So what? You call your daddy? Blackball me?” I recalled his father being friends with Kurt, and Wolf had said his dad donated money to the school. I lifted my head. “Real big of you.”

I was acting braver than I really was, making myself. I refused to let this man-child see any weakness.

Even if I was dying inside.

Even if I killed…bledat even the thought of losing either. I couldn’t lose either and especially that internship.

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