Chapter 4

Rome

This was never going to do. He wasn't about to issue commands that wouldn't be obeyed.

Seren had come to him . She'd signed his contract. She hadn't given him a damn list of things she wasn't willing to do. He'd given her the money and she'd already put it to use. She wasn't properly grateful as she should be. She needed to be taught a lesson.

"Get on your knees." His harsh command changed the tone in the room.

Seren's eyes went wide, but she tried to cover by rolling them. "How absolutely token."

"Trust me, you want to obey."

"I thought—"

"You aren't here to think. You're here to do what I say. If I tell you to get on your knees, you'll get on your knees. Or do you want to return my million-dollar investment and call the whole thing off?" He knew she couldn't, and how fucking sweet that knowledge was.

She knew it too.

She didn't find it sweet or even the least bit palatable.

The fury in her eyes played out like a violent tragedy in front of him, one in which everyone met horrific ends. She knelt down on the clean white tile. She wouldn't bow to him. She turned her face up in a final act of silent defiance.

Her pink hair settled like a sweet cotton candy river over her black velvet dress. Were those ridiculously chaste panties wet yet? Were her nipples beaded under that dress? Underneath the fiery fury there was a glimmer that told him she didn't want to like this, but she did. He knew it was true because he wasn't blind or deaf to the way her body called to him as soon as he was near.

"Thank me."

She snorted. "Excuse me?"

"Thank me for saving your shop. For lending you that money. For accepting this as a form of payment." His eyes flicked over her, a disinterested mask in place.

"It was you who suggested it in the first place. I would never have thought that I—"

"That you what?" he interrupted with a sneer. "That you were worth a million dollars?" He enjoyed her dark scowl. He hoped her knees were starting to hurt on the hard tile floor. "If you're going to continue this, you had better keep me interested. You know the penalty for defaulting on the contract. It doesn't just involve you walking away. You can break it in other ways. By not obeying or by obeying in a lackluster manner."

Her narrowed blue eyes turned to such a shade of ice that he knew if there was any sort of weapon within range, she'd have no trouble piercing it through any part of him she could reach.

"Thank you," she ground out painfully. Yes, it hurt to have to swallow one's pride to such an extent. She wasn't willing to do this for herself, but she'd save her friends and coworkers whether they deserved it or not. She saw them as worthy and that was all that mattered to her.

"Thank you for what?"

"For… for…" She blinked suddenly, quickly. She looked away, studying the light.

She was going to cry now? How disappointing.

It wasn't having her at his mercy that he needed. Rome didn't know what he needed, so he'd experiment until he found what it was. Her presence affected him. Soothed the wild animal in him, broke apart some of the restless aching, the thorny barren fields and concrete bunkers that he'd shredded himself and broken himself against since he was a child.

Ten? Eleven? When did he realize there was a universe between himself and his siblings, his parents, every wolf and human he'd met? Why had they been born to the same parents and raised the same and turned out so differently? What made him cruel and unsettled where they were kind and content?

He waited, leaving her on her knees, a bright pink blush starting as she struggled to find the words, grappling with the horror of debasing herself this way. "Thank you for accepting my body as payment, however mediocre it might be."

"Old, I think is the word you're searching for." No one said he was above being an asshole. He certainly wasn't. No one said he had to be honest. He wasn't that either.

Her mouth parted. He watched anger transform her features. Seren was nothing short of marvelous. Fucking gorgeous. Breathtaking. Damn her for existing. He cursed her for making him feel anything at all. Sometimes, it was internal. Now, seeing her on her knees with that scarlet blush of humiliation morphing to sheer rage, there was nothing internal about it. His cock hardened painfully in his jeans. He did nothing to adjust it. Let her notice the bulge if that's what happened. What was going to happen in that office was clearly nothing short of sexual whether they touched or not.

Which they would not.

But the thought of putting his hands on her body, exploring her, hearing her gasp in surprise and pleasure, didn't sicken him. It didn't make his skin crawl to think of her hands on him, ungloved, lacking a tattoo gun this time.

"Nothing smart to say? I can hear you thinking it. You're projecting your hatred loud and clear." He snapped his fingers. "Up. On the desk. Sit on the edge and lift up your dress so I can see those panties."

She moved faster this time, but didn't scramble up. There was no desperation in her movements. She moved like a true wolf, graceful, pride still intact.

He was delighted to see it. All the more fun to break it slowly than snap it apart right at the beginning.

While he watched her open her legs, trying to hide the new trembling that made them shake, and slowly pulled up the hem of her dress, he thought about his earlier life and all the things that brought him here.

He'd tried to force himself into the mold. He'd denied Lila because he knew his parents wouldn't accept her as his mate. He'd stayed when he should have left. Lila was the exception. The one his heart desired. She was more than light or fire or any such cliché. She was all of him, all of the universe, all of every law and bit of matter. She was the gravity that tethered him, and still, he hadn't had the courage to make a life with her. He should have left long before he was banished.

He ripped off his worn leather belt with a savage ferocity. He wanted to shake the memories off. He didn't like going back there. Not when there wasn't a single fucking thing he could do to change any of it. He'd always known he was a curse and a poison. If he didn't exist, Lila never would have died, and Waverly wouldn't be stuck with him.

Seren gasped at the sound the belt made when he smacked it against his palm. He'd done it hard because the burst of pain grounded him. Pain sharpened the mind, but it also tamed it.

"I could use this on you, but not yet." He held the belt out to her, the square metal buckle gleaming. "Run it over your thighs."

She snatched it, sighing in relief that he wouldn't be the one wielding it, but then paused, like she couldn't figure out just how she was to follow that command. He gave her no further instruction, and so she took the leather end with the holes and pressed the bluntly arrowed point into her skin. She ran it down and then up, watching what she was doing.

"I want you to smack your thighs with it. I want you to leave marks."

Her head shot up. She barely controlled herself from hurling something nasty at him. He watched her jaw click as she ground her teeth.

Unexpectedly, she snapped the belt, hissing as the leather made contact with her skin. She kept her eyes on him the whole time. They burned, but they weren't wells of hate. She hit herself again, still refusing to watch herself do it. She made that hissing sound again, over and over as she made contact with her thighs.

He didn't watch as the belt struck her flesh. He watched her face, her supreme concentration, the determination to hide the elemental truth from him and herself.

"Are you cursing yourself right now, darling, for never bothering to write into that contract the specifics of what we're doing? I won't harm you, which I did state, but I could command you to harm yourself."

"This is bullshit." The belt went lax in her hand. She'd hit herself hard, he saw with a satisfaction that warmed him more than he ever thought it could. Red marks decorated her thighs right above the black and gray ink that dominated so much of her skin.

She was heavily tattooed, and he'd hardly seen any of it. Nothing but her arms. He wanted to let his eyes linger on her artwork, wanted to try to determine how much of it she'd done herself, but now wasn't the time.

No time was the time.

She rammed her thighs shut when she noticed him staring at the welts.

"Close your thighs again and you will be punished," he said flatly, chillingly. People didn't like being spoken to that way, he'd found. He watched as a shiver rolled through her, exactly as he'd expected.

She swung them open and ran her fingers over the welts. "There. Prick. Is this what you want?"

Why punish her for every infraction when the fight was so delightful? "Run the buckle over your slit. Trace it from the bottom, hard, up to your clit."

Her knuckles turned white when she clasped the buckle. All the attention was suddenly right there. Her body stiffened when she realized what he already knew. She'd soaked the panties. It was obvious on the white fabric. It was even more obvious when she traced her slit, pressing the damp fabric so that it outlined her in glaring detail.

"You didn't need the white panties," she growled, but she kept going until she reached the little bud that made her tense again, though she tried to hide her reaction to the stimulation. "You could have smelled me."

He lifted a shoulder. She wasn't watching him. She couldn't look at him now. "Yes, but that's hardly any fun. I like it this way."

"Of course you would. Why? Because it's humiliating?"

"Only if you choose to see it that way."

"What other way is there?" The belt stopped at her clit. He hadn't given her further instruction. She wasn't going to watch him to anticipate what he wanted. Not yet, but one day. One day, she'd want to give him her pleasure as badly as she wanted to give it to herself.

There was time. Six delicious months of it.

"I think you're lying about not enjoying the pain. You've ruined your panties. Soaked clean through. You like the hurt and you like being watched. You don't want to admit that you find it hot to have someone more powerful ordering you around. You hate that deep down, deep inside yourself, you're as depraved as I am. Is that why you're divorced? Were you bored, darling wolf?"

It was entertaining to see how she collected herself and purposely didn't rise to his goading. She was a fast learner, but he'd anticipated she would be. He liked being beaten at his own game. It only meant that he needed new rules, and god knew he'd enjoy coming up with them.

"In the weeks to come, you will do what I say, and I will command you to fill every tight, sweet hole you have."

Her knuckles went white on the buckle again. She closed her hand around it and slid her fingers along the length of the leather like she'd enjoy throttling him with it.

He'd never been strangled before. He might like it.

He licked his lips and grinned ferally just in time for her to raise her eyes from beneath lowered lashes.

"Size matters, sweetheart. Have you ever taken a cock in your ass"

"Yes."

"Liar. I can smell your terror."

Her lashes shuttered and he scented that fresh, salty ocean scent. She was going to cry. He was going to make her cry thinking about all boundlessness of his depravity.

His watch beeped on his wrist. Exactly on time.

Seren knew what that sound meant, and the alarm signaled a change in her. She leapt off the desk, wrenched down her dress, and whipped his belt at him so hard the buckle struck the back of his hand as he caught it. Pain pulsed up his knuckles. He relished the sensation.

Not much surprised him anymore, but he was indeed surprised and entertained when Seren tore the panties from her body. Literally. The seams didn't hold up to her intense battle as she tore them down her legs from beneath her skirt. She kept herself fully shielded from him with the clothing. She went to toss them at him, but his evil grin stopped her.

She shook her head, balling the underwear into her fist as she stalked to the corner where she'd placed her clothing and boots.

She gave him a filthy look as she grabbed it up as fast as she could. Truly, he didn't know why he was there or why he'd taken such pains to make this happen. Was it absurd to think that someone like him could be helped? She was right. It was sick to make her do this. He needed to break her in order to break himself, but he had to slow down. She'd have almost a week to recover.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out why you were banished."

If she thought that was going to be a knife blow slipping between his ribs, she was mistaken. "Hardly. My dark soul was tolerated and even somewhat appreciated. I wasn't all bad, just mostly." He gave her another grin because he could see how it rattled her. "The eight wolves I killed… my father couldn't let that slide. He had to put on a good show of getting rid of me as punishment and appeasement."

The noise she made was as strangled as her horror. She was utterly appalled by him. If she wasn't afraid of him before, she was now. He thought he'd enjoy that too, drink her fear in like a heady wine, but his chest twisted. He didn't like her afraid. Not of him. It set his teeth on edge. It made him want to do something to prove to her that she was safe, which was absurd. He had nothing to prove to her.

"How-how many people have you killed?" She edged to the door like she might be next.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes!" When she reached what she thought was safety, a quick escape, she straightened, trying to pretend she wasn't afraid. She wanted to be a worthy adversary.

Something new entered the room. A heady musk. She was half terrorized, but she was turned on by what he'd just told her. His size, the threat of him, of what he'd done and what he could do to her.

"You should bring your daughter to your family. She'll never be safe with you. Ever."

That was the one weapon that could pierce through his armor, and she knew it. He'd handed her that knowledge straight up. He wasn't afraid to have a weakness. He'd prepared a good defense and nothing, fucking nothing , was getting through him.

"Never. I love my brothers and sisters, and she might even be better off there, but I won't ask them. Ever. She's my responsibility. She's mine. Her mother left her to me."

"Left her?" She was well and truly disgusted with him, thinking that he was fine talking about his daughter like she was a thing.

He didn't have to answer her, but he found himself responding. She'd find out eventually anyway. "In her will. Lila gave me full custody in the event of her own mother's passing. She had no other family. Waverly isn't my blood daughter. I've adopted her, so it's official. Blood doesn't matter. She's mine ."

Seren stepped into the doorway. It was obvious how badly she wanted to leave, but still, she wasn't going to give herself away. She still stared him down like she enjoyed a challenge.

"Any questions I have, I assume I can ask you on Sunday."

The thought of her reaching out, voluntarily, felt like a caress. It went against reason, and while his reasoning might not always have been sound, his instincts were generally good. They screamed at him to run or to stand his ground and fight, but not to accept something so intimate, even if it wasn't.

"Yes. Sunday." He withdrew into himself, shutting himself back inside his fortress, where it was safe. He'd done it for as long as he could remember.

Nothing hurt him as a child. He was well protected. Safe in their pack. His father forged peace and he was alpha for nearly forty years. In that time, they'd never been at war and threats were few. The tension in the area was still there, but it never broke wide open. It didn't matter if the threat was real or not. He'd always found a way to retreat inside a safe zone when his skin crawled and his senses prickled and everything screamed at him to either find a hiding place or fight his way through.

How could he fight an unseen enemy? It was safer to hide. He'd die if anyone knew he felt that way. It was cowardly and no proud wolf would own it.

"See you Sunday." Seren fled then, showing herself out.

The lock flipped and the front door banged shut.

She hadn't stuck around, thank any fucking god that might be out there, so she wasn't privy to his small meltdown. He stumbled to his desk chair and sat heavily. Panted for a while before he set his head down and forced calmer breathing.

He'd been worried about what he'd tell the guys about why the security cameras in the office were turned off, but not anymore. He'd tell them that it was a liaison. They might think it was strange, but they'd shrug it off. They were all shifters with dubious pasts. The garage was a sort of safe place for all of them, and if they were good at one thing, it was keeping their opinions about the others' personal lives to themselves.

Had he made a mistake instigating all of this with Seren? He still couldn't name the foreign sensation in his gut, but it was spreading through his veins like a sickness, and nothing about it was any closer to being fixed for his ownership and mastery over the one who inspired it.

Seren was the venom. He thought she might also be the antidote.

He might have thought wrong. He knew what he should do, call it all off, leave Seren alone, send Waverly to his siblings for instruction, but he just couldn't do it.

Any of it.