Page 186 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“Now look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“Keep doing it.”

I almost rolled my eyes but his voice hardened before I could.

“Try it.”

I stopped.

He had never spoken to me like this before, and the warning made it clear that tonight he was done indulging the expression.

Wolf had always been controlling. I had watched him run rooms full of armed men with almost no wasted language and make half a dozen people change direction with a single word over comms.

He had been rough with me before, crossed a line with me before, then spent the days afterward making sure we both understood exactly where that line sat. I had thought the version of him he warned me about in the car would be physical. Restraint. Pulling hair. Being told what to do once I had agreed to let him.

Standing in his office now, I realized I had misunderstood the warning. The part he thought might send me reaching for the door wasn’t the webbing or what his hands could do.

It was him.

This. The cold, relentless attention. The refusal to let me hide behind sarcasm or give him half an answer because I knew how to make one sound clever. He looked at me as if every excuse I had brought upstairs was something he intended to strip down until there was nowhere left for me to stand except the truth.

“What did I tell you in that warehouse?”

I exhaled through my nose. “You told me to stay in the corridor.”

“Wrong.”

My patience tightened. “That’s what you meant.”

“I didn’t ask what I meant, Mercer. Repeat what I said.”

I looked toward the desk.

“Eyes up.”

My gaze snapped back up to his. The order sent another pulse through me, lower this time, and I hated the timing enough to become angrier at him for causing it.

Wolf stepped even closer, now towering over me.

“What did I say?”

“You told me not to move.”

“Again.”

“Wolf-”

“Did I tell you to use my name, or did I tell you to repeat it?”

I held my ground, and so did he.

“You told me not to move.”

“Again.”

I could feel my jaw setting.