Wolf.e: A Dark MC Romance
Wolf.e: Chapter 22

I never thought that in facing my death, I would face this type of disbelief. Like this can’t be real, there has to be another way. This can’t be all I was put here on this Earth to do. Something or someone has to save me, don’t they? Did every action, every choice I’ve ever made lead me here, just like my parents always told me? If I had stayed with Evan, I’d be home safe on my living room sofa instead of trying to outrun a psychopath. All these thoughts crowd my mind as I bolt for the woods. My lungs burn as I run without stopping, uncontrollable sobs wrack my body and adrenaline courses through my veins.

He murdered that man. And by now he’s probably murdered the other one too. Murdered. And they had been tortured for who knows how long? They were missing body parts. Fingers. Teeth. Genitals? Images flash through my mind as I finally register them. The way the bigger man’s stomach was cut open in several places and leaking blood, the cuts deep, his one eye swollen shut. The smaller man’s arm was broken in more than one place and hanging limply in front of him. I blink to rid my mind of the memory, and more tears fall.

That’s where he went after dinner. To torture and murder those men. And it looked like it was second nature to him. Because it is. The voice in my head reminds me.

This man, I let him touch me. I wanted him. And even as he stood over them like their own personal reaper, I’m ashamed to admit I still wanted him.

And now he’s going to kill me too, and probably bury me with them.

Time passes in a blur. I’m covered in cuts and scrapes; I’ve fallen numerous times. I don’t know how long I’ve been running. I keep praying for a road, or a break in the trees so I can scream for help but there is none. I have nowhere to go and the sound of heavy boots on the ground behind me tells me to keep running, but I’m so tired. I have to stop.

“Brinley.” I hear Wolfe’s deep voice echo off the canopy of the woods, he doesn’t even sound winded. He sounds calm. I freeze, my back scrapes against rough, cold bark as I do my best to hide behind a tree. I can feel the sting of dirt in my scratched-up skin as I pant, so quietly I think I’m barely breathing.

“Running is pointless, I can fucking smell you, hummingbird.” His voice booms through the woods, closer this time.

I take off and run for as long as I can, almost twisting my ankle in the rough terrain more than once. Twigs snap under my wedge sandals, and I know I can’t go on much longer. All the while I can hear him; the sound of his even and steady boots crushing the dead leaves underfoot as he stalks me through the woods, is almost enough to make me scream. But screaming wouldn’t help me now. I’m not sure anything would.

I pause as I see light through the trees and desperately hope it’s a road or another cabin, anything with people and the possibility of safety. I bolt towards it, moving my sore and tired feet as quickly as I can, begging my breath to be quiet so he doesn’t hear it.

I see a large tree about twenty feet away and make that my destination, but before I can get more than five steps, a strong hand circles my throat and I’m being slammed backward into the thick trunk of a live oak. His other hand behind my head stops me from hitting it but the bark bites into my shoulders.

“Stop fighting me,” Wolfe bites out.

I don’t listen, I start to fight, scratching at him in protest. The fear of my imminent death fueling me.

“Don’t fight me,” he says as I cry out. He moves his hand from behind my head and snares both of my wrists, holding them captive in front of me so I can’t continue scratching him and places his other large palm on my chest.

“Breathe,” he says in a way that almost feels soothing.

I try to suck in a deep breath, understanding how predators calm their prey before they murder them. “You’re going to… You killed…” I sob. “Those poor, innocent—”

“Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you ever call those men innocent,” Wolfe snarls in a low voice as his palm slides up over my heaving chest to grip my throat. Even in the dark, I can see the gray of his eyes boring into mine. He’s angry, yet I don’t feel as scared anymore. I am what my father would’ve called a masochist. Stupidly soothed by the man that is about to hurt me.

The hand on my throat loosens so Wolfe can gently graze his knuckles over it as if he is trying to decide between choking me and soothing me. It’s a dance I can’t make sense of.

“One of them blew up Jake’s truck the other night. Anyone could have been standing there, been inside it, and that man isn’t dead. He’s going to deliver a message for us to his piece of shit leader.”

My breath hitches as I try to catch it.

“The other one. The fucked-up bastard I shot—he groomed, drugged, and raped a sixteen-year-old girl almost a year ago, then shared photos and videos of it. He practically ruined her life. She wouldn’t even leave her house for two months.”

My stomach drops as time seems to stand still. Suddenly, I feel just as angry as he looks.

“And she’s family. One of my men’s little sisters.” His palm leaves my neck and presses back into my chest as it rises and falls. “It was a rival club. They weren’t happy. We did something that hurt their crank business in Atlanta, in one of their most profitable areas.”

“I can’t hear this. I don’t want to hear this.” I panic.

If I hear this, I’m dead.

“The girl was Mason’s little sister—it was a retaliation of the sickest kind, and it goes against everything men like us stand for. So, did I let her brother do unfathomable things to him? Yes.”

Mason’s sister? I shudder, thinking of Mason angry. I find myself wondering if this girl I don’t even know is okay.

As he speaks, Wolfe flips his hand over on my chest and his knuckles begin another leisurely graze over my collarbone, then to my shoulder, as his other still grips my wrists and I realize my breathing has involuntarily slowed. His hard body presses against mine and some fucked up part of me wants him here, feels safer with him pressed against me.

His lips come down to my neck and he shocks me by licking a slow trail upwards, tasting my sweat as he goes. I fist the bottom of his warm shirt with my still clasped hands under his cut without thought.

“And after I let her brother torture him, and get everything he wanted from him, did I shoot him in cold blood?” Wolfe releases me, moving both of his hands down to slide up the outside of my thighs, taking my dress with them, over my panties to wrap around my bare waist.

My deranged body ignites with this soft, intimate touch. It’s a moment I’m sure I’ll remember as traumatic for the rest of my life, but I pant as his thumbs trail over my lower belly.

“Fucking right I did. And I’d do it again. I don’t regret it. Not for a single fucking second. My only regret is that we couldn’t torture him for longer,” Wolfe growls, that ominous tone coursing through me.

I whimper as Wolfe pulls me tight to him, holding me up with his hands circling my waist. His lips find my throat, then my collarbone, as his tongue sweeps across my skin. I grip his shirt tighter, but I can’t tell if I’m pushing him away or pulling him closer. Is there any point in struggling? I fall completely slack against him, defeated. His mouth searches my shoulders, nipping, sucking, biting, like he can’t control himself any more than I can. My hands slip under his shirt and I whimper. His hard muscled body feels warm against my palms.

He’s too strong and if I’m going to die anyway, being handled like this, with more passion than I’ve ever felt in my life, is the way I choose to go. He’s touching me with a hunger I’ve never felt.

I can’t explain it. I can’t understand it. Hell, I can’t even process the reality that this is actually happening. I don’t even ask myself why I shiver with desire as Wolfe grips my cotton panties and tears them from me, just as he did last night. Only this time he brings them closer to his face. I know they’re wet with all the evidence he needs to prove that, however fucked up this is, whether I want to admit it or not, I want him. Darkness be damned.

He closes his eyes and breathes in, then slowly exhales with a deep groan, rubbing the damp cotton between his thumb and his first two fingers, as if he’s assessing how wet they are. I watch with fascination as Wolfe pulls them to his mouth like he’s about to suck my arousal from them, and that’s exactly what he does. I’m helpless to do anything but watch as he turns his eyes to me and grins wickedly.

“You understand what it means that you just witnessed my club’s business?” he says as he places my soaked and torn panties inside his cut.

I give a shallow nod, knowing this is the end. I begin to spiral.

“I won’t say anything, I—”

“Shh,” he says, running a thumb over my bottom lip, instantly calming me.

I silently pray that there’s no pain.

“Listen to me now. You have two choices, little hummingbird. You die in these woods, or you become mine in these woods.”

I blink, my eyes moving to his.

“When I say mine”—Wolfe steps back, unbuckling his belt. I have no idea what he’s about to do but he surprises me by removing a large, sheathed knife from it. My breathing accelerates, turning frantic again as his hand moves back to my thighs—“I mean everything I did tonight is your cross to bear too.”

“Why? why would you want—”

“Don’t fucking ask me why.” Wolfe presses me into the tree, his voice is frustrated and full of gravel. The bark gnaws at my skin.

He gently brushes my hair from my damp forehead and closes his eyes momentarily, as if to calm himself.

“I have no fucking idea why I can’t stop thinking about you. No idea why I crave you the way I do,” he says evenly.

Gripping me tight around the waist with one arm, the other yanks the top of my dress down exposing my breasts, and I moan as my head falls back against the tree. His hot mouth finds my nipple and he bites down, my pussy throbs with the pain. Before I can even cry out, he’s pulling it back into his mouth, swirling his tongue over it and soothing the sting, setting my core on fire. I fantasize, once again, about what it would be like to have his mouth on mine.

“Why would I choose not to end you right here? Why do I want to take you and mark you and keep you for my own?” Two large fingers slide through my embarrassingly soaking slit as he holds his knife in that same hand. I feel the handle press against me in time with his fingers. The fear coursing through me with the thought of what he might do ignites me. A deep growl leaves his chest as he pushes his fingers further into me.

“It’s the same reason you’re fucking soaked…soaked all for me.” Wolfe murmurs as he brings his fingers up and spreads my arousal across my bottom lip then moves back down to make slow sweeps against my clit with his knuckles.

Wolfe sucks my bottom lip into his mouth. I taste myself on his lips and realize how messed up it is that I pray for this murderer’s kiss.

“The poetic justice is that we always crave what we’re not.” He bites down, and I whimper, suddenly understanding that while I crave his darkness, in some way he must crave my light. I push my hips into his hand, anything for more friction, for more of him, more of this.

The expert way he trades between strumming my clit and fucking into me with his fingers has my pussy clenching tightly to him, threatening to fall apart within seconds.

“I live to take what I shouldn’t want, what I shouldn’t deserve. I never question why I want things.” His deep, velvet voice washes over me as my pussy clenches around his fingers, the sound of cicadas and my desperate moans fill the air, echoing off the trees like a soundtrack, the soundtrack of him playing my body like the most intimate instrument. “If you choose death, you’ll never know…”

I’m so close to coming all over his fingers.

“Wolfe…” I whimper.

“If you choose to be mine, you will learn how easy it is to accept who you are…” He pulls his fingers from me abruptly and notches the smooth handle of his cool knife against my pussy, sliding it up and down through my slippery arousal. My brain begs to protest.

Inside, I’m screaming.

Outside, I grip his cut tighter and pull him closer.

“The same way your heart doesn’t ask why it beats faster for me, I don’t ask myself why I want you. I only take, hummingbird.”

He clutches the leather sheath of the blade and slides the handle into me further. I cry out at the intrusion but still, I don’t tell him to stop. I can’t tell him to stop.

“I’m sorry I saw…” It rushes out of me. “I won’t tell anyone.” My eyes widen as he pushes the handle into me further.

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” Wolfe says as he slips the handle in another inch. “I need you to be an accessory,” he growls as he pushes the smooth handle all the way in, and I gasp at the feeling of it fully seated inside of me. He slips it back out and begins fucking me with it at an all-consuming pace. His other hand leaves my waist as he brings his thumb to my clit and begins circling it with perfect pressure, giving me exactly what I need. I quiver as ecstasy and adrenaline rush through me.

“I need this pussy to crave me. To beg for me to take it any way I choose.”

I hear him but I feel like my soul has left my body. His unhinged actions are sending me to places that have only ever haunted my darkest dreams.

“I need you to crave me the same way I crave you.”

He looks back at me and smirks, his pupils blown out wide and filled with a frenzied bloodlust.

“Make the right choice, Brinley, so I don’t have to flip this knife over and slit your beautiful throat with it.”

My legs begin to shake, and my protest dies before it reaches my lips as I give in to him. My orgasm is inevitable, and I’m lost to whatever this is, whatever I am, with him.

My heart thunders in my chest as the slightly curved handle pulses against a place deep inside me and I feel like I may explode or lose control of my bladder—or both.

I tip my head forward and meet his gaze, reaching my hand up to the side of his strong jaw, running a thumb over his cheekbone.

“I don’t want to die,” I moan softly.

“Then come, little hummingbird, and say my name while you do,” he commands.

My hand feels small against his face and the gentle touch I’m offering him in this moment feels wrong, but his eyes take in the look of desire I’m surely wearing and grow dark, like he might devour me at any moment.

“I don’t know your first name,” I say breathlessly. “Tell me,” I add as the tight coil of heat takes a deep hold within my belly, my thighs, my soul.

“Gabriel,” he answers softly against the shell of my ear.

“Gabriel…” I whisper his name for the first time, and the sound he makes is animalistic. It’s enough to hurl me over the edge, to fall into the dark, stormy depths of him as I unravel around the handle of his knife.

“Gabriel,” I cry out again, louder this time and his answer is a deep growl that rumbles through his chest.

“Again,” he commands, and I do what he says, calling his name as the euphoric release of an explosive orgasm rushes to my center from every cell in my body and I come harder than I ever have, soaking the handle, his hand and his forearm.

With no end in sight, I call his name again along with some form of please, more and don’t stop, all while hating that I want him, this man I don’t even know with the hollow gray eyes.

When I open my eyes finally to the sound of our breathing, the only thing I see is treetops, my shame, and the stars.

Who am I in this moment? Who is this woman who just came without abandon all over the blunt end of this murderer’s knife? And where is the torment I should feel?

Gabriel pulls his knife from me, and I look down, finding he’s gripped the sheathed blade so hard it cut his hand through it and his blood drips from his palm into the grassy earth. He replaces the knife at his hip and skims his fingers into my pussy, pushing his blood into me, smearing it all over my swollen lips. It feels like a marking, a type of claiming. He slowly pulls them out, moving his hand up to my face to spread his blood and my cum all over my lips, like he’s painting his masterpiece.

“I live inside you now, little hummingbird,” he says as he leans in, staring down at me, his mercury eyes focus on my lips and all I can hear is his breathing. A battle wages in his eyes as his hand slides to the back of my neck where he grips possessively before his control snaps and he violently fists my hair. He pulls at my roots sharply, tilting my head back just before he captures my lips with his own, kissing me deeply.

I lose my breath, unprepared for the kiss I never thought would come. I’m docile and molded to him instantly. Wolfe kisses me as if he’s desperate to taste me. His lips press into mine, and his tongue plunders, hungrily. I meet it with my own, just as eager as he is. The taste of copper and my own arousal washes into my mouth, and he groans into my lips before releasing me, leaving me completely unraveled.

He feasted on me for mere seconds, but it was the most incredible kiss I’ve ever experienced, one that commanded my entire body.

I realize as I watch him try to compose himself now that there is a part of him, however small, that is fully capable of losing control.

“Fuck—” he says, turning his face from me. When he returns his eyes to mine, his pupils are contracted. They’re controlled again, devoid of any emotion. He grips my throat.

“You do what I say now, and you stay alive,” Wolfe says, his voice low.

He turns and begins to walk, expecting me to follow, and I ask myself what just happened. How he goes from so intense to cold and emotionless so easily. The rush of fear returns almost instantly. The haziness from my orgasm and the kiss evaporating by the second, making things clear once again.

I realize I truly have no idea what it means to be his and the thought of finding out terrifies me. As I follow Gabriel out of the woods, I know that the woman I was before we met might as well be as dead as the man he just murdered.