So she stood straight. Frozen in place.
His strong fingers dragged the bar over her lower teeth again, working it in, the taste bitter and sharp, coating her tongue, her throat.
“You’re smarter than this,” he said, his tone low and intimate. “Too smart not to understand what it means to lie to wolves. What it means to be accepted into a wolfpack. Accepted into the arms of the top three.”
She sobbed, not from the soap but because she’d let him down. She’d hurt him. Wounded him.
Silas rinsed the bar and set it aside, then took a washcloth and wiped her lips clean. He didn’t rinse her mouth and didn’t tell her to. This wasn’t about comfort.
He didn’t want her to forget.
He looked at her for a long moment. Brushed her hair from her face. “You won’t lie to me again.”
It wasn’t a question.
She shook her head, still crying.
And he nodded, just once. “You may brush your teeth in thirty minutes. Look at your watch.”
She did and met his gaze. Nodded and managed the best, “Yes, Sir,” she could under the circumstances.
She turned to walk away, head bowed and mouth still thick with foam, drool sliding from her lips before she could stop it. It ran down her chin, hit her breast in warm, shameful streams. She cupped her hand under it, trying to catch what she could so it wouldn’t hit the floor, but it kept coming.
Kept leaking out.
The bitter burn clung to every inch of her mouth — tongue, gums, the roof, the back of her throat — and she knew thirty minutes would leave her raw.
She’d have to stand over the sink and drool into it, spitting when she could, rinsing when allowed — but not a second before.
But right now, all she could do was walk in silent, sticky humiliation.
And in the aching hollowness of her chest, she wished he’d just beaten her. She wished she was walking away bruised and swollen, raw and bleeding.
She could handle beatings and bruises, but this left her exposed, unraveling, ashamed — as if there wasn’t enough soap in the universe to wash away the pain she’d caused him.
* * * *
By the time Saturday afternoon arrived, she wasn’t certain how longindefinitelymeant. She’d figured it would be more than a few days, and they were barely there, but she felt as if Kenny and Boone were possibly on the edge of forgiving her,but Silas still looked at her with pain. Still didn’t really have his heart in it when he fucked her ass, and there was no joy when he soaped her mouth every morning, only sorrow.
She’d hoped, after Silas had made her haul firewood on a piece of plywood for miles around the property while he kept her moving with a strap, it would fix things, but it was like each strike had only made it worse.
And her knees were fucking raw and bruised from the damned rice every day, but that was an established punishment. It wasn’t new.
The deadline for her letters had been late the day before. She’d poured her heart out in them, but hadn’t received feedback.
When she went outside to hand Kenny her evening lines a little early because she’d been able to start after lunch, he looked through them and handed them back. “Put them on my desk. Close the door and strip. Stand in the corner until we come in.”
The three were building a deck they planned to screen in for a hot tub.
Normally, she’d have been outside with them. Bringing them tools, boxes of nails. Screws.
They especially liked telling her they needed more screws.
She obeyed, though. Went back into the house, stripped, and stood in the corner.
* * * *
When she was gone, Kenny told Silas. “We have to end it, and your wolf is going to have to be okay with it.”
