The scent of her annoyance wafted across the room, and he straightened his arms to hang from the bar. Lifted both legs slowly until they were perpendicular to his torso, a strict L-sit hold, working deep into his core.
She’d be fine with access to Kenny’s power. Not a single doubt. They just needed to keep her safe while the pack figured out what it meant to have a hawk sitting beside their Alpha — and fucking their top three, though Boone thought they were through the worst of that.
She replaced the weights she’d been using, walked to the loaded barbell for a clean and press, and set her grip.
He watched her drop into a squat, focused. She managed to power the bar up, but it wobbled at her shoulders, her stance a little off.
She braced and pressed it overhead anyway, gritting through the motion. Her back overcompensated, shoulders rounding too soon.
He’d taught her better than that.
Boone growled low in his throat before his voice snapped across the room, tone steady despite the tension in his gut from the L-sit. “Your setup’s too narrow. Heels under your hips. And stop looking down. Spine stays neutral. Chin tucked and eyes on the horizon.”
She held the bar locked out a second longer than she needed to, then let it drop to the floor with a sharpclangbefore spinning to face him, cheeks flushed. “I’m fucking squatting and lifting it over my damned head! Stop nitpicking my every motherfucking move! What the fuck does it matter where my damned eyes are!”
Boone dropped from the bar, grabbed the dress off the hook near the door, and stepped to where she stood beside the weights with her hands still on her hips.
He pulled the dress over her head, forcing her arms down and trapping them, and then bent, gripped her thighs, and slung her over his shoulder.
She wriggled, but he only tightened his grip and shifted her weight higher on his shoulder. He tightened the arm across her thighs to pin her in place better, and started walking with her squirming against his back, cussing until he hit the hallway, and then apologizing profusely while usingSirappropriately.
He telepathed Kenny and Silas as soon as he had her on his shoulders.Ya’ll are gonna want to meet us in the kitchen. I can handle it if you’re busy. Just a heads up if you want to oversee the nettles being used on a mouthy little cunt.
When he reached the kitchen, he settled her on her feet and looked at the four packmates around a table with coffee mugs, staring at him.
“We need the kitchen,” he told them. “Take a thirty-minute walk before you come back. Maybe an hour.”
No one argued.
They stood. Chairs scraped. Mugs were abandoned.
The door closed behind them with a softclick.
“Dress off, mouthy fuckhole, and not another motherfucking word.” He glanced at the garden wall and looked back to her. “Harvest the nettles and present them.”
* * * *
Fuck. What had made her explode at him like that?
Willow yanked the dress off and tossed it aside, stalking barefoot to the nettles like they were a horde of fire ants swarming over a carcass.
She felt Boone’s eyes on her from behind and felt extra-exposed. She’d never been naked in the kitchen before, at least not since those first days, when Kenny had asked the pack for a few days of privacy.
It feltwrongto be naked downstairs.
She stepped to the gorgeous woodwork the men had crafted to make her punishment garden look like part of the wall, and forced herself to pick the first leaf. Boone was already upset. She didn’t want to make it worse by stalling.
Pain flared across her fingers instantly. She flinched but didn’t stop.
One leaf. Two. She worked slowly, deliberately, cradling each barbed weapon like the poisoned sentence she’d soon be intimate with.
She counted out six dozen leaves, her hands tingling, her skin stinging while she picked one-by-one at random over themultiple plants to keep from damaging the stems or causing too much of a loss from any particular area. By the time she had enough for what she knew was coming, her fingers were starting to throb, no longer merely tingling — the stingers had slipped under the skin, and it felt like she’d pressed her hands to a sheet of invisible glass charged with low current. Tiny raised welts bloomed across her fingertips, each one pulsing with fire.
She bundled the armload of leaves against her chest, against her bare breasts, and pain spiked again, savage and immediate, blooming over her nipples, her sternum, the soft upper swell of each breast as hundreds of new barbs kissed skin that should never feel this kind of agony.
Pain flared higher, sharp and electric, racing down her chest. Her body shuddered, but she didn’t dare shift the leaves. She had to hold them, just like this, had to keep every single one safe and intact.
Her arms were trembling now, the first welts forming across the insides of her wrists and all the way to her elbows. Her palms screamed. Her fingers curled awkwardly around the leaves, no longer able to grip them properly. Her breath sawed in and out, ragged and shallow. The world narrowed to the fire in her hands and chest. She blinked fast to keep the tears from falling.
