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I get my answer the moment I turn my head. He’s sitting on the coffee table, his elbows propped on his knees. The faint glow of the streetlights reflects on his leather gloves and the smooth material of his mask.
Wolf.
He’s in my apartment.
“I know you’re awake, baby.” His raspy voice feels like a stroke of a finger right over my pussy.
I turn onto my side to face him. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Shh.” He raises a gloved finger to the curve of the teeth on his mask. “Don’t wake the boyfriend.”
I shoot a glance at the closed bedroom door. Did Luke come home after I fell asleep? True fear spikes through me. I may not love Luke anymore, but I did for a very long time. We had two years of happiness together, two years of soft moments and vulnerability and memories that I’ll cherish, even if we no longer fit together. I don’t want him hurt. I don’t want him dead. Wolf is more than capable of doing both.
I swallow hard. “Why are you here?”
“Should have stayed safe behind those spiked walls, baby. Instead you defied your parents and snuck out. How was I to take that, but as an invitation?” He hooks the corner of the blanket and tugs it slowly off me.
I’m perversely glad that I didn’t put on pants. Even without seeing his eyes, I can feel the heat of them on my exposed skin. I feel possessed, and if I believed in magic, I’d think he put a spell on me in that first text message. That’s a cop-out, though. The reality is that I tasted the truth of myself when I walked into that bar and chose to cheat on my boyfriend. Everything that’s happened in the wake of that decision rests solely on my shoulders. I could have put a stop to this the first night; I chose not to.
Just like I’m choosing not to stop it now.
“I should hate you,” I find myself saying. Confessing into the shadows between us. Of everyone, he has the most possibility of understanding. “You’re a monster. You’ve killed people. Stalked me. Threatened me.”
“Only with the consequences of your own actions.” He drops the blanket on the floor and drags a single finger from my ankle to my knee. “But you’re right. I’m a monster. It takes one to know one.”
“I’m not a monster.” But my knees fall open under the barest hint of his touch. And then open farther as his finger travels up my thigh to stop at the edge of my panties.
“You are.” He sounds so confident, as if he really believes it. As if he really knows me. “You’ve been wearing the mask of a good little girl for your entire life, but beneath it, your teeth are just as big as mine.” He drags a knuckle over my pussy. “Even before you knew me, you were willing to let people die for a taste of your pussy.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He presses hard against my clit, making me jerk. “You know what your parents are capable of. Do you really think they’d let that filthy prick stay among the living if they knew he fucked you?”
I open my mouth to say that of course they wouldn’t kill someone for such a silly reason, but it’s a lie. Isn’t part of the reason I never worried about Luke that he wasn’t in the life and we have rules? Those same rules apply to the people who owe their allegiance to my aunt.
My aunt watched what happened with my parents, how a romantic conflict with my mother almost lost the territory two of its best generals, and course corrected. Maybe even overcorrected. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on who you ask—my parents agreed with her. I think they would prefer I marry one of the spares from a different territory and dodge the potential pitfalls of elevating one enforcer above the others in our territory.
I knew that and I didn’t care. It’s not as if the rules are secret. Rafe knew it too. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die.
“You have to stop killing people.”
He snorts. The slight tension in his wrist is the only warning I get before he pushes my panties to the side and shoves two fingers into me. “I’ll stop killing your lovers when you stop fucking other people, baby. It’s as simple as that.”