Chapter 15

Seren

By Monday evening, Seren still had memories of gooey chocolate chip cookies, rich coffee, and cold milk on her brain. Sundays went too fast and then it was Monday. That day was a write off because she spent them in dread and the rest of the day after her debauched hour in recrimination that she didn't have a hope in all heck in hiding from.

She walked into the garage and locked the door behind her. She knew the way to Rome's office, and it was clear that since he wasn't there to greet her that he knew she knew the way.

He wasn't there, but the small, immaculately clean room smelled like him. Like walking, living, breathing sin. Her lungs expanded hard and fast when she swept her glance around the room and saw the toys laid out on the top of the desk. They'd been blocked by the monitor when she first entered, but now they were on clear display. There was everything ranging from small vibrators to huge dildos.

If Rome thought she was going to do anything with those other than shove it up his ass or nut punch him with them, he was dead wrong.

And really, she wasn't going to do either of those things because that wasn't her kink. It was exceptionally doubtful it was his.

The hard-hitting notes of a hip hop song she didn't know flooded the office so suddenly that it she jumped. She rocked back on the heels of her bright pink lace-up ankle boots. She'd still gone with all black—a long velvet skirt with lace up both sides, a black tank and a black ripped up denim jacket that she'd put spikes into herself. She'd also taken out the back and put in grommets, threading bright pink laces through. She was going to paint the sides and arms and maybe a few designs on the front, but it was a work in progress.

Rome rode the music in like a fighter getting ready to shed his robe and step into the ring. No one should have the right to look so edible in an old black t-shirt and grease-stained jeans. They were his garage clothes. They smelled like oil and cars. It was completely obnoxious how that scent blended with his natural aura to make a combination that wasn't like breathing in exhaust.

"Music?" She raised a brow, standing her ground even after he'd probably seen her nearly leap out of her skin and

he knew what horrid surprise was waiting for her on the desk. "Do you expect me to dance for you?"

"It's not a bad idea, if that's what you'd like to do." He sounded about as joyful as if he'd been forced to sit for eight hours in horrific traffic. While having to pee.

She threw back her head and laughed, seeing herself doing a series of ridiculous moves in her mind. "I'm a terrible dancer. If it wasn't that, what other awful suggestion did you have in mind?" She stood over by the desk and Rome was by the door. She had a better view of the assortment of toys he'd left out for her like an all you can eat buffet.

Honestly, if he'd presented himself naked on that desk, he might have stood a chance.

Jesus H , sometimes she truly despised herself.

His hair was a mess, his eyes their normal coal black. There was a smudge of grease along his sharp jawline and a shadow of dark stubble. He'd been working all day and no doubt he was barely healed from whatever happened to him when he took down a gang,

which she'd read about during the week, the graphic details censored, but she'd gotten the idea. One clubhouse, sixteen men, all with rap sheets that could wrap around a whole block, found deceased. No article had used any other word. Mutilated, chewed, ripped apart, nothing said that it looked like a pack of wild animals somehow gotten into the clubhouse and wrecked those men. If there was any security footage, it had been thoughtfully removed. She was a little astounded that the place hadn't been set on fire after, but there likely was no need. What DNA did wolves leave behind that could be traced?

This man. He was so dangerous that it made her stomach cramp. A wolf who killed. A man who killed. His soul had likely long since ceased to be in mortal danger and had left the party altogether. He had zero conscience. He was broken and beyond depraved. He pretty much oozed the fact that he gave zero fucks about it all. He'd stolen her life and her body and he'd done it happily and easily. He'd proved to her that he could buy her. The worst part? He'd promised to own her and break her, and in a way, he already did and so fulfilled that last promise.

In another world, maybe they could have been good together.

In this world?

She was going to perform for him because that's what that contract said she would do because it was fine for her to say she could hold onto her pride, but in reality, she knew she'd do whatever it took to save her business and her friends.

What about the alternate reality where you'd do anything to save him? He wants you. He doesn't want to want you. You're the position and the antidote. If he can use you and discard you in order to stop wanting you and that's what this is about, then you can use him back. You can want him back and have him and put an end to all of the cravings that are driving you mad.

It was insane, but wasn't all of this? Wasn't the very notion that you could stop wanting something by having it? It worked with food. Killing a craving. Songs too. Maybe he was right. She wouldn't know until she tried, but the trying might kill both of them.

"I'll dance," she agreed, throwing what little caution she had left entirely to the wind. "If you dance with me."

This was what Rome had turned her into. An insane person, because only an insane person would want to take the beast who held the keys to her cage and drag him in there with her knowing full well there was no taming or domesticating or fixing him.

"That would be impossible," he stated flatly.

She'd done a lot of thinking ever since Wednesday. She'd done far more thinking than that, but it was only after Rome picked up Waverly that she'd had the idea that he needed her and that was also why he pushed her away. It was why he wouldn't let himself touch her. It wasn't just for his protection. It was for hers.

She was going to disregard her own safety for both their sakes. Rome didn't want to be saved. She hadn't wanted more complications in her life. Neither of them wanted a mate again. She'd thought that it was the softest animals on the inside that required the most armor or quills on the exterior, but Rome didn't fit in that category. He was hard all the way through.

"You bought me as a toy," she said. "You bought me as a thing. But nothing has gone according to whatever plan you had. Why not just scrap it and do something different?"

His eyes flashed. He was the lightning, the thunder, the entire storm. His face was always broody, but an extra shadow moved in front of his eyes. His face grew pinched. "No, thank you."

"No?" She stood on her toes and leaned a little bit closer to him. They were separated by a few feet. She might as well be standing on the edge of an abyss, ready to hurl herself off without any sort of chute. "Why not?"

"I'm not interested."

She choked. Gasped. And then laughed. She couldn't keep it in, not even with Rome glaring her a new one. "I've never met anyone who was so full it."

"Full of what?" He crossed his arms and looked at her like she was a stain he might have to bust out the industrial grade cleaner to remove.

"To say shit would be far too token. Honestly, I don't even know what. You said you wouldn't ever touch me, but you did. You kissed me. It's like it never happened. I show up here after taking your broken ass halfway across the state and it's like it never happened. You just give me commands and watch me. You make me want… ugh. You're mean! You won't compromise an inch. You've done horrible things. You might even be the devil, but you secretly love your family." This was a lot further than she was planning on going, but now that she'd started, she couldn't stop. She was mid-tirade and there was no slowing down that trainwreck. "You look after Waverly, and I know that you love her. It's not just obligation that makes you a family. You showed up at my work, ready to break the door down and you couldn't even be honest with yourself about why. You tell yourself no when all you want to hear is yes. You're not the least bit like anyone I've ever known, but that's not so mystifying considering there isn't a being on this planet who is anything like you."

He gave her a bored look and his eyes purposely swept over her body, like he could intimidate her the way he used to. That wasn't going to work any longer. He stood like a statue, the most beautiful one she'd ever seen, a cold, cruel, demanding, demeaning, evil work of art.

That's all she'd seen at first, but now she knew that wasn't the truth. That was just what Rome wanted people to see.

"I think we're more alike than you realize. At least, there's one thing we have in common. We both structured our lives so carefully to keep them from coming apart."

His lips curled into a mocking grin. It did nothing to change the fact that he wasn't as dead inside as he liked everyone to believe, including himself.

"You try to keep people away with all your sharp edges. I have a thousand friends. I know half the people in this city. I was mated. I'm a daughter and a best friend and a co-worker and so many other things, but truly, hardly anyone knows me. They see what I give them. We also have that in common. Maybe I've been seeing what I gave myself. Maybe I had no idea what I really wanted. I tried to believe I did. I tried to figure it out. I had the perfect life, and it wasn't right. So what was? Being by myself, working hard, being a good daughter and friend? I thought that was enough. It was enough, maybe, for that time."

"We're nothing alike, darling." Rome cracked his knuckles like he was getting ready to do violence, but his size, his cold, dead eyes, the feral aura, the toxicity he oozed didn't frighten her. She knew what he did to her and she was prepared for her body's reaction.

The heat didn't shame her this time.

"You know what you do to my body. I want to touch you. I want to get inside you. I want you inside me."

"I don't think you do. You have no idea how to handle a man like me."

She sneered right into his face. "Seriously? Because you're a wolf? I'm a wolf too, or did you forget? You're the one who likes to keep proving to me that I'm as fucked up as you are when it comes to what my body wants. You're the one who came to my doorstep, half undone. If you're looking to use me and discard me, then do it. I don't think it's going to work, but if that's what you want, I'm ready to give it to you."

"There is no scenario in which I don't hurt you. There is no happy ending coming."

"I think you'd feel pretty good with my lips wrapped around your cock. If that's the only happy ending we can have, I'd still take it. Maybe I want you to hurt me." She angled her face to the desk. "You clearly had plans to do just that, or was that all for show? And the hurting thing? You already have. Multiple times, starting with that contract. You don't care. You're not sorry."

"No. I'm not sorry. That's the kind of man I am."

"I know. I don't care."

"I take what I want."

"You haven't, though," she whispered. Not because she was losing her courage, but because she didn't want to provoke a rabid beast too hard and too fast. "Commanding isn't claiming. Maybe if we fucked, it would fix the broken parts of us. You obviously know you have an infinite amount. I didn't know I had any. Obviously, I do. Broken or not, maybe it would just feel good."

"It's not in the contract."

She knew he'd circle back around to that. "Rip it up. Amend it. Do it on a non-contracted night."

"Seren."

"No, seriously. I'm not the mushy romantic type."

He was the beautifully heartbroken type, so tragic that she could have wept for him.

"That's fucking obvious. It should be painfully obvious that I'm not either."

"The modern notion of storybook romance is overrated."

"You don't need to tell me that. Your cunt told me that from the very second you creamed those white panties because you crave degradation. You want to be mastered. You're filthy. Not just your sweet little pussy, but the rest of you too. You don't want someone to worship you. You don't want someone who plays nice. You want the darkness, you want the filth. You want the alpha in every way. You want to be told what to do. You want to be taken and bent and reformed. You want to be bought and watched. You want to be filmed. You want the one thing you can't have, darling wolf, the one thing you were never supposed to have just because it's forbidden. It was my name you chanted when you came with that toy deep inside you. You lost yourself, but you haven't surrendered. You want so much more than you can give yourself. That's why you're here, begging me to make you my slut, to lick your pussy, to give you my cock, to fill all your empty, aching holes."

The language was crude, but she knew he was being purposely crass. He was taking her to her limits. If she couldn't handle a few words and an arrogant look, she'd never be able to handle any of him. He was protecting her again by pushing her away.

Well, she hadn't expected him to be convinced by words alone.

She backed up and hoisted herself up on the edge of the desk. She spread her legs. The skirt was long, but had two slits up both thighs. She took the hem in her hands and slowly worked it up, exposing every inch of her boots, her calves, her knees, her thighs, all her ink. She kept going, lifting all that velvet, gathering it in both hands, until she reached the end.

She'd come, not sure if she could truly do what she needed to do, but she'd done most of it. She broke one of her own rules and exposed herself fully to him. She hadn't worn any panties. Let him see what he did to her. Let him see how she was already glistening and slick and needy.

It might be visceral and dirty, but so what? Shame was a contrived notion. Whatever was between them, that was real. She felt it down to her bones. Wrong? They were so far past wrong.

"Yes, Rome," she whispered, seared down to the blood and sinew and marrow of herself at the way his eyes shot straight to her parted legs. Her throat was raw with the same feral ache that tore through the rest of her. "I want you to lick my pussy, give me your cock, and fill all my empty, aching holes."