The following morning, I was on my knees with my cell wedged between my shoulder and ear, reaching underneath my couch for the sneaker I’d kicked off the last time I’d come in from a long double shift.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Brayden said. “Because I’m pretty sure my best friend wouldn’t know what to do in bed with Salvatore Wolfe.”

“Screw you. I was there, and I have the battle scars to prove it.” My wrists were still pink and a bit sore from the bite of my belt being wrapped around them, while my body had been thoroughly enjoyed by the sexiest man I’d ever met, and I didn’t mind one bit. In fact, I liked the fact that I had a reminder of last night’s escapades, otherwise I might’ve thought I’d hallucinated the whole thing.

“Ah. Did he break out the flogger for your first night?”

I felt the end of a lace and pulled the sneaker out from deep underneath the couch. Sitting up, I wiped my hands on my pants and switched the phone to my other shoulder. “The what?”

“That would be a no. Trust me, you’d know if he smacked you with it.”

“Smacked me with a flogger? What the hell are you talking about?”

Brayden ignored me. “Where’s his place? Did you stay overnight? Give me the damn details, or I’m coming over there.”

I shoved my foot into the sneaker and sighed as I began to tie it. “Look, I promise I’ll tell you everything, but I’m so late for work—”

“Fuck work. It’s your last week. What are they gonna do, fire you?”

I had to smile at his reasoning, and also the fact that I’d no longer have to wipe up crumbs and tea spills after Friday. “So, he lives on the top floor of the Astor, and when I say the top floor, I mean the entire thing. It’s massive.”

“Like his cock?”

“Brayden!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Well…no.” My face grew warm at the memory of Salvatore thrusting inside me like a man possessed. It had been the hottest thing I’d ever seen. “He, uh, took a little getting used to.”

“I fucking knew it. You’re not like his usual playthings. I bet he had to loosen you up reaaal good.”

I covered my face with my hand. “Oh my God.”

“Hold on. Are you still at his place? I didn’t even think to ask.”

“No, I’m not at his place. I told him I couldn’t stay, since I have work this morning, so the limo dropped me off after…well, after.”

“After what, Jesse? After he unloaded inside your hot ass?”

“You’re a freak, you know that?”

“Hell yeah, I do. But you’re not giving me the goods here.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear to check the time, and when I saw how late it was getting, I patted my pants pocket, making sure I had my wallet and my keys, and then rushed out the door.

“All you need to know is it was the best night of my life,” I said, making my way down the stairs. Best night might be an understatement… “He was so…like, in control the whole time, and I’ve never thought about that being something I liked, but wow. It was the most mind-blowing sex I’ve ever had in my life.” I reached the bottom of the stairs and went to open the main door of the building. “He even tied me—”

My words caught in my throat as I came face to face with the very man I was referring to. His hand was raised, like he’d been about to knock, and there was an amused expression on his handsome face.

“—up,” I finished, my skin heating to a high boil at being caught.

“He tied you up?” Brayden said, loud enough that I knew Salvatore could hear. “Fuck yeah. What did he use? Handcuffs? Rope? Cable ties? A sheet? Some—”

“Uh, Brayden, I’ve gotta go,” I said quickly, then ended the call and shoved the cell deep in my pocket. It was official: I wanted to die. I wanted to crawl under a rock and never come out. I tried for a weak smile. “Salvatore, um. Hi.”

The amusement in his eyes died, and as a frown took over the space between his brows, his hand went to the frame of the door beside my head.

“What did I tell you last night?”

With him so close to me again, his cologne filling my nostrils, feeling the authority exuding off him, I couldn’t think of anything other than how it’d felt to be taken by this man. He’d had me at his mercy, and only after he’d wrung three orgasms out of me did he clean me off and put me safely in the limo. I’d fallen asleep on the ride back home with my head in his lap, and I didn’t remember walking inside my apartment, and I hadn’t set my alarm—which was why I was running late for my shift now.

So it wasn’t surprising to me that I blanked at his question. As I peered up at him, all I could focus on was the shape of his mouth and remembering exactly how it had felt when it had been surrounding my—

“Jesse?”

“Huh? Oh, umm.” I grimaced, trying to rack my brain. What did he say to me last night?

“Let me see if I can help you out a little,” Salvatore said, as he lowered his hand from the doorjamb and took a step forward, causing me to walk backward into the narrow lobby. As the door shut behind him, I found my back against the mailboxes that flanked one side of the dim space, with Salvatore crowding in against my front. Then he took my chin in his hand and angled my face up toward his. “I told you that outside of the bedroom, you were to call me Tor.”

Oh yes, it was all coming back to me now. Tor straddling me as he stroked his dick, and then, when you’re naked and beneath me? Call me Wolfe. My cock stiffened in response to the memory, and my face heated as Tor’s lips curved into a sinful smile.

“Ahh, I can tell by that delicious color on your cheeks that you remember.”

I nodded. “Yes, I remember now.”

“Good. I was starting to worry I should’ve been more specific, since it was clear when I arrived that you remembered other details.”

I was going to kill Brayden. “Well, that was kind of, umm, unforgettable.”

“But my name was?” Tor cocked his head to the side, and the gleam that entered his eye made my heart hammer. “Hmm, we might have to do something about that…later.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but suddenly I was released and Tor took a step back. He slipped his hands into his pants pockets, and it was the first time I noticed what he was wearing. He was impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit with a pristine crimson triangle neatly folded and pushed into the jacket pocket. It made him appear distinguished and gentlemanly—refined, even. But the look in his eyes as he studied me was anything but. And I knew now from firsthand experience that there was nothing refined about that man when he took his clothes off.

“So, where are you off to this morning in such a rush that you weren’t paying attention to whoever was on the other side of the door?”

I really wanted to ask him what something we would be doing later, but I knew by now that if Tor asked a question, then he expected an answer. “I was just on my way to work. And I’m late—”

“I’ll take you.”

“No. Really, it’s—”

“Jesse. I said I’d take you.”

I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt as I took a step forward.

“And on the way, you’re going to tell me what time you finish so I can pick you up and bring you back here to your apartment and remind you who spent last night buried inside your body.”

My mouth parted in shock, but then I heard myself say, “You’re really kind of arrogant. You know that, right?”

Tor walked over to the door, shoved it open, and waited for me to walk by, and as I did, he said, “I do. And you really get off on it. You know that, right?”

I hadn’t ever thought that was the case, but as I looked up into his knowing eyes, my breath caught at whatever he had planned later, and I told him, “I do,” right before I walked out the door and he led me to the passenger side of his car, so he could take me to work—just as he said he would.

* * *

For the rest of the week, I kept close to Jesse. Now that I had him enthralled, it was imperative I keep him so—and that meant I spent every spare hour he had keeping him entertained—until tonight, that was.

It was Thursday, and I figured I better at least check in with Trinity at the Wolfe’s Den. Plus I needed to go over the month’s figures and the newly proposed pups for next month’s Bring a Guest date.

Faolán rested comfortably at my side by the heavy desk in my office as I pored over the books spread out in front of me. A glass of whiskey was helping to numb the pain of dealing with all the numbers, one of my least favorite things. I supposed I could’ve used a computer for my accounting, but there were some things that were better kept off a platform where any savvy hacker could infiltrate and get their hands on what we did and how much we made from it—and the Wolfe’s Den was one of those things.

The den was busy tonight, the bar my office looked out over jam-packed as patrons entered one after another looking for the next high, searching for the next person to bury their body inside of, and all I could think about was a golden-haired man with pale blue eyes that responded to my every whim with a breathless sigh and a hard dick.

It’d been a long time since I’d been so enamored by another, and it had only ever happened once before. But I was like those milling around the bar out there—a man who’d been in search of his high, one I hadn’t found in over two decades. And unfortunately for Jesse, he happened to be the one who could provide it.

Determined to finish up here so I wouldn’t have to come back until next week, I was about to go through the receipts Trinity had left on my desk when there was a knock on the main door to my office. The door that led out to the first floor—not the back entrance that led down the private stairwells.

“Come in,” I called out, glancing up from the paperwork sprawled across my desk, and Trinity entered, her red corset hugging her waist and her leather miniskirt barely covering her ass as her spiked heels click-clacked their way across the polished hardwood floors. When she came to a stop opposite me, I noticed a frown between her perfectly painted eyebrows. “There a problem?”

The question was redundant, of course. Trinity knew better than to bother me while I was in the middle of doing the books unless she wanted to be fired or worse, but the clipped nod she gave had me tossing down the pen in my hand as I sat back in my chair.

Trinity was a fierce den master. There was nothing she couldn’t handle on her own if need be. But when I was in the building and something unacceptable took place, she knew I took perverse pleasure in reminding those who committed such acts exactly who they were fucking with.

“Yeah. Security spotted one of the dominants on level five slipping a drug into a sub’s drink.”

I steepled my fingers over my stomach. “I assume it was done without the sub’s consent or knowledge.”

“Correct.”

Fucking piece of shit. I had hard and fast rules in the den, and one of them was that everything was consensual. “Male? Female?”

“Male. It’s Richard Wagner.”

I sat forward in my chair and looked over to the door. “I assume he’s out there?”

“He is. Security brought him up. I figured you’d want to deal with him.”

I nodded, because deal with him was probably the nicest way to phrase what I was going to do. “Right. Bring him in, then.”

Trinity turned on her heels and headed back in the direction she came. When she got to the door and pushed it open, two of the den’s security guys brought Richard inside. They had a firm grip on each of his biceps, and when they came to a stop just inside the door and let him go, I finally got to my feet.

I was taller than Richard by a good couple of inches, and as I came around the end of my desk, I tugged at the cuffs of my black shirt where they’d risen a little up my forearms. I wandered over to where Trinity stood off to the side and Richard now stood between my two guards. He was dressed much the same as I was, all black, head to toe, but where I had the hair color and temperament to match, he was a dirty blond and had a shit-scared expression on his face.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked. I took immense satisfaction in the way his eyes darted around the room as though looking for a way out. But alas, no such luck, sir. “I asked you a question. Do you know who I am?”

The air of authority in my voice must have registered this time, because he lowered his eyes to the ground, something I knew he likely never did, and replied, “Yes. You’re the Wolfe.”

“That’s correct, and you’re Richard Wagner. Raise your eyes, please. Come now, show some courtesy to the one addressing you.”

As Richard raised his eyes, the flash of worry that crossed them had a cruel smile twisting my lips. He had good reason to be scared. I had a reputation for dealing with rule breakers in my place of business.

As I held his stare, I reached down and unbuttoned one of my cuffs and rolled it up my forearm, prolonging his suffering just a little more. “I hear you’re having a little bit of trouble following the rules tonight, Richard. Is that true?” He gulped once, then twice, and I paused. “Is that true?”

He nodded quickly. I caught the way he bunched his fists and almost laughed at the poor bastard. Yes, please, go ahead and try to hit me.

“You have to know by now that I don’t take kindly to people breaking my rules,” I continued, unbuttoning my other cuff and rolling it up my arm. “You see, I don’t have that many, but the ones I do have I expect to be obeyed. Do you understand?”

Richard’s jaw bunched, and I knew I’d just hit him where it hurt, considering he was the one used to issuing the orders, but that was about to stop. Right. Fucking. Now.

Quick as a whip, I reached out and grabbed hold of his cock and balls in an unrelenting grasp that had Richard howling in pain and his eyes watering. He lurched forward, arms rising, as though to grab me, but when security moved in, he dropped his arms and began to whimper instead.

“My number one rule in the den is that everything done is consensual,” I said as I closed in on him until the tips of our shoes touched, and my fingers twisted in a brutal tourniquet. “And you drugging someone so you can then violate them doesn’t count as consensual in my book. You see,” I said through gritted teeth, my anger starting to rise at the disrespect this ingrate had shown. “When a cock is used incorrectly, it’s painful, isn’t it?” I emphasized my point with a vicious twist, and when Richard cried out in pain, I released him, raised my hands, and shoved him hard enough to have him stumbling backward, out through my office door and into the narrow hallway.

I followed, determined now to make my point with this piece of shit, and when his back hit the wall and he reached down between his legs, I grabbed hold of his neck and pinned him in place. He had wet cheeks from his eyes watering from the pain, but I wasn’t done with him yet. I pressed my thumbs to the base of his throat and thrust his head to the side so he was looking down the hallway toward the main doors to the first level. Then I bent my head and said in his ear, “It is a privilege to walk through those doors. One that’s granted by me. So while my name is Wolfe, in here I am also your motherfucking god. And what the lord giveth, he can sure as fuck take away.”

As I brought my knee up between his, he crumpled to the floor, sliding down the wall in a heap, and as I looked down at him, I began to unroll my sleeves. “If I ever catch you in here again, or even sniffing around the door, I’ll cut your dick off and show you how unpleasant it is when used against one’s will. Now get the fuck out of here, before I decide you breathing is more than I can handle.”

As Richard struggled to get to his feet, he slipped back down to the floor several times, and I looked over my shoulder to security. “Get him out of here,” I said to them, and when they brushed by me to pick the piece of shit up off the floor, I glanced up and my eyes locked on to familiar ones. They belonged to Brayden Fairchild—Jesse’s friend. The man who’d first brought him to the Wolfe’s Den that night, and the man I’d watched Jesse with at Breakaway Point. He must’ve just come from the bar, because he had a full drink in his hand, and judging by his expression, he had just witnessed everything that had gone down in the hall. This wasn’t good, especially if he told Jesse. But at the same time, I couldn’t help the sense of gratification I got from knowing that perhaps I had just killed two birds with one stone tonight, because Brayden looked fucking terrified of me, and if he kept sniffing around Jesse, he’d have good reason to be.

So, yes, perhaps this is a good thing, I thought, as my lips curved into a savage grin and I turned on my heel and went back into my office to finish crunching numbers.