“Put that on,” he says.
I don’t move.
“Reva.” The order is clear in his use of my name, and that just prickles against my skin in the worst way.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” I know I sound like a child, but he holds all the cards and I need to prove to him…to myself, really, that I still have a choice here.
His eyes flick down—slow, deliberate—taking in the way the sheet has slipped over the swell of my breasts, the way I’m still bare in his bed, in his space.
Then he looks back up, completely unfazed.
“You can sit there naked and argue with me,” he says evenly, “or you can put that shirt on before I fuck you raw and make you scream. Because your anger makes me just as hard as everything else about you,little wolf.”
Asshole.
I snatch the shirt and drag it over my head, the fabric warm from his body, smelling like him. It settles over my thighs, too big, too intimate, and I hate how much that bothers me.
“Now talk.”
He doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he shifts, then moves in one smooth motion, pulling me into his arms and standing like I weigh nothing. I barely have time to react before he’s carrying me out of the bedroom, my hands bracing automatically against his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Answering you,” he says, already moving down the hall.
His terms. It’s always on his terms.
He doesn’t slow down.
Doesn’t give me time to think, to regroup, to decide how I’m supposed to feel about any of this before he’s already through the doorway and into his office. The shift from bedroom to workspace is jarring—cooler air, sharper lines, everything in here clean and controlled in a way that makes the intimacy of a few seconds ago feel almost unreal.
Like I imagined it.
He doesn’t set me down.
Instead, he drops into his chair and pulls me with him, settling me across his lap, one arm braced around my waist to keep me from shifting too far away. The position is deliberate—too close for me to pretend distance, contained enough that I can’t escape him.
My attention snaps immediately to his hands, settling on the keyboard as he strokes out his password.
I watch. Carefully.
He types without hesitation, fingers moving in a pattern I try to follow—counting keystrokes, tracking rhythm, filing it away. He’s fast, but he types like a typical man, one blunt peck at a time, and his password isn’t fast enough to miss entirely, and when the screen flickers to life, I force myself not to react.
That’ll be for later, if I ever need it.
The desktop loads, organized into folders that look exactly how I expect—clean, labeled, efficient. No clutter. No wasted space. It feels like him.
He clicks one open. A file loads, and a photograph fills the screen. The air leaves my lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp.
There it is. The rosary tattoo.
Red ink winding around black, stark against skin, unmistakable in its shape and placement. It’s clearer than itever was in my memory, sharper, more real—and somehow that makes it worse.
Because it’s attached tohim.
The man in my living room. The man I see every time I close my eyes.
