Chapter 6 Down to the Last Cent
POV: Catherine
8:22 a.m.
The ding of the email cuts me off mid-breath. My phone screen lights up and burns my eyes.
From: Eric Wood
Subject: Meeting 8:30
Catherine, my office at 8:30. Be on time.
That is it. No agenda, no polite formula. Just that sentence, dry, slamming shut like a locked door. I can feel my coworkers’ eyes on me across the open space. They do not say anything, but they feel the storm. They feel something heavy coming. Shame burns my blood and rises into my throat.
I stand up fast and my chair scrapes the floor. I lock myself in the bathroom with my hands shaking on the cold porcelain sink, and I call Anastasia. My voice barely comes out.
“Ana, he summoned me. I’m going to die. I know it.”
“Think about Liam, Cath,” she murmurs, and her voice is calm and grounded. “Head up. You breathe. You walk in. You walk out.”
“What if I quit over text and slip out the back door? I don’t come back. Ever.”
“Tell him you weren’t talking about him. That you were too drunk, that you said stupid shit!”
8:30 on the dot.
I push his office door open. The blinds are down and let in only gray light. The air is thick with his scent: cedar, rain, and something wild that is not human. Eric sits behind his black glass desk, huge and motionless. He is not reading. He is not typing. He is waiting.
“Sit down, Catherine.”
His voice is a razor. He stares at me with those storm-gray eyes, and I feel like he sees through my skin, my bones, my lies.
“Your performance last night at the bar was memorable. You talked about hate, submission, and punishment. Do you remember the exact words?”
Before I can answer, before I even find air to speak, he slides an object across the desk. The Red Folder. Its cover is blood-red, provocative, sitting there like a threat.
“Open it.”
My fingers shake. I open it. The first page knocks the breath out of me, literally. Debt Buyout Agreement. My student loan, line by line. My mother Sophie’s debts. The dates, the amounts. He bought it all. All of it. My financial past laid bare in front of him.
“Turn the page.”
I obey and vertigo hits me, real vertigo that makes the room tilt: Total Exclusivity and Private Services Clause. He is not buying my debts. He is buying me. Every hour of my days, every inch of my skin.
Eric stands, slowly. He rounds the desk and stops too close. His heat washes over me and crushes the air conditioning. He leans in, his breath brushes my ear, and my spine turns to ice.
“If you want to be punished, if you want me to dominate you, do it for real. Sign this folder, and you will belong to me down to the last cent.”
He straightens and adjusts his cufflinks with insulting precision, like we just talked about the weather.
“You have until tomorrow morning, 8:30. Either you sign, or you give me your resignation. If you leave, I unleash the bailiffs. Liam will be on the street before the week is over. You may go.”
I walk out with the folder clutched to my chest like a shield that protects nothing. My legs barely carry me to my cubicle. My phone vibrates in my pocket. Blocked number.
Don’t sign, or you’ll never be free.
I snap my head up. I look toward his office. Through the blinds that are barely cracked open, our eyes meet. He has not moved. He is waiting. He knows.
POV : Eric
The door clicks shut behind her. The sound echoes louder than it should. I stay motionless with my eyes fixed on the dark wood while the scent of her fear and arousal still hangs in the air. It burns my lungs. It burns everywhere.
My wolf rams my ribcage in a fury. He claws at my insides with his golden eyes devouring my vision, replacing the office with a hunt.
What was that, Alpha? he growls, and his voice is an earthquake in my skull. Why did she leave? Why is she not already on this desk, skirt hiked up, begging?
Patience, I hiss through my teeth while my fists clench on the black glass until it threatens to crack. The contract is the only way to bind her to us without her running. Without the Elders touching her.
Fuck your paper! the animal roars. He rears up and his muscles roll under my skin, straining the fabric of my shirt. I do not care about her debts! I do not care about tomorrow! I want her here, now. I want to mount her, Eric. I want to sink my teeth into that vanilla-scented nape and hear her scream my name until her legs give out. Until she does not know who she is anymore.
My claws slip out a millimeter and score the surface of my desk with a screech no one else can hear. My vision tints red. The predator instinct is so strong I almost get up to chase her, to kick that door down and drag her back here by the scruff of her neck.
Imagine, Alpha, my wolf whispers, lower and more vicious. Pin her against that window. Rip off that prim suit that drives me insane. Take her in front of the whole city. Show every wolf in this pack, every human on this floor, that she belongs to us. I want to devour her now.
“Shut up,” I growl out loud.
The sound escapes me. My breath is short. My wolf’s desire is a fever, a sickness under my skin. I feel myself hardening painfully in my pants, a primitive response to her scent that still lingers. The wait is torture. Every second is a blade.
You are weak, the beast sneers, coiling back, ready to pounce and take control if I slip for one second. I do not negotiate with folders. I take what is mine. And she is ours.