Page 108 of My Solemn Vow

“So, you’re making me wait to figure out what and howyou’re fucking me until after we torture whoever ended up in the basement?”

I sigh. My previous resolve to spank her fades because the throbbing of my cock demands more attention. “The mixed number of how many edges and orgasms you’ll get. Don’t worry, there’ll be more orgasms than edges.”

Her eyes are wide. “Oh, fuck.”

“That’s the plan.” I kiss her forehead. “I’ve got to get downstairs. You don’t have to come. Get some rest. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, you’re getting tortured for talking back and torturing me all night.”

The obedience in her nod swells my heart, and I wrap my fingers into her hair and wrench her head back to kiss her again. This time it ends with a gentle bite to her bottom lip.

We could bite her there just like that. We could change her. It doesn’t have to be love bites.My wolf encourages me.

Too little time. We want her to succeed.I remind him. Winter break will be done before I know it.

“I’m coming with.” Antonella clears her throat, wobbling for a moment as she shakes her head. “As soon as I remember how to breathe when you’re in the same space.”

47

ANTONELLA

SHARP AND POINTY

“Hello.” Valor sounds so cruel with such an ordinary word.

Walking in behind him, I see what happens when Valor isn’t here to receive his ‘special shipments’ himself.

A captive, a nondescript, twentysomething male, is sitting in that cruel-looking chair. He blinks against the harsh light and squints, quickly becoming more alert from what must have been a disappointing nap. “Let me go! I didn’t do anything. I was to stay with the truck and shoot anyone who comes out.”

“And that doesn’t seem a little bit problematic to you?” Valor flicks on a tablet, showing camera feeds of the house, and then retrieves paper from a printer and starts flipping through the pages.

“A job is a job, man. Guy paid us good money too. I got kids to feed.” He defends himself. “You get it.”

I take it he’s trying to talk to me.

“No. I don’t.” I shake my head. “Sexist to assume that.”

“And you don’t either. I can hear it in your voice.” Valor tsks condescendingly.

This Valor more aligns with the one Berto says to be afraid of. He hands me a page withoutlooking at it.

Fred Smith.Lives with a roommate. Not communicating with his parents. One sister, lives in Washington.I skim the document... Valor is right. No kids.Can he tell if someone is lying based on tone of voice?

“The kids, not the money, that is.” Valor clarifies. He keeps reading a document but engages the twentysomething in almost casual conversation. “I understand the love of money, Frank. But you took the hit job from an unknown number to kill how many people? For what, a measly ten grand?”

“Fourteen, ten up front, four when the job’s complete, and that was just my cut,” Fred argues.

“My hit men don’t get out of bed to even hear about the mark for a penny less than twenty-five thousand. That’s strictly consultation fees. That’s such an insult that even if I wanted to let you out of this basement alive, which I don’t, I couldn’t.” Valor sets the papers on the table and then braces his hands against it, looking at the captive. “This can go easily, you can tell me everything I want to know, you don’t get hurt at all, and then at the end, when you’ve given me all the information, I’ll kill you nice and painless.”

“Fuck you!” Fred snaps.

“Awfully bold for someone strapped to a chair in arguably the creepiest basement in the suburbs,” I muse, stepping over to Valor and leaning against him.

Fred watches me like a hawk.

Valor stiffens as he notices. It has his arm snaking around me, holding me close to him.

I turn my head into his chest and murmur, “He may respond better to someone less assuming?”

Valor nods but moves my head away from his chest, kissing my lips, then my cheek, and whispering, “He might, but... I’ve another idea. Have you ever had an audience?”