Page 88 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Then his hand loosened.

I should have taken the opening and stopped moving but like an idiot, I turned sharply the second I felt the pressure release.

The webbing caught.

Pain flashed from my right shoulder down my arm, sudden enough that my knees almost gave.

“Fuck!” I yelped.

Wolf released everything immediately.

His hand left my hair as the tension disappeared from the webbing. He stepped around me so fast the small room seemed to tilt with him.

“Shoulder?”

I cradled my right arm against my body. “Don’t touch me.”

He stopped.

I didn’t mean to command him, but he obeyed it faster than I had obeyed him all afternoon. For several seconds, neither of us spoke.

The pain was already settling from sharp into a deep pull near the front of my shoulder, uncomfortable whenever I moved the arm away from my side. My wrists burned where the webbing had tightened during the last twist.

Wolf looked down.

I followed his eyes.

Red marks circled both wrists. I knew the sight changed something in him, locking his whole body beneath the gear until every trace of anger disappeared behind the same hard stillness I had only seen when he was working.

“Open it,” I said.

He proceeded with no argument or lecture. The clip released with a quieter click than the one that had started this. I pulled my hands apart and rubbed one wrist with the other, then immediately regretted the movement when my shoulder protested.

Wolf’s hand lifted halfway.

I looked at it and jolted involuntarily.

He lowered it again.

“That went too far,” he said matter-of-factly.

My laugh came out breathless. “No fucking shit.”

He took the insult without reacting.

I stepped away until the edge of the bed hit the backs of my knees. The cover-up had slipped almost entirely off both shoulders and hung open over the bikini, but I refused to fix it while he was watching because I was not giving him one more indication that the physical exposure mattered.

“What exactly was the point?” I asked. “That you can overpower me? You’re twice my size and dressed like a fucking tank, Wolf. I promise the visual aid was unnecessary.”

Wolf’s eyes stayed on the marks around my wrists.

“I was trying to make you understand how quickly control changes hands.”

“By taking mine.”

I could not see his mouth, but I saw the answer in the way his eyes tightened.

“Yes.”