Page 133 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“Rough… sometimes…” I trailed off before the embarrassment caught up to me.

His eyes stayed on the road.

I turned toward him. “That’s all you’re getting.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I almost laughed. “Excuse me?”

“You wouldn’t have said it if that was all you meant.”

He kept making it harder to dismiss him.

“Um, maybe being held down?” I said after a moment. “Not every time. Sometimes…”

Wolf’s hand moved higher on the wheel as the highway curved. “Anything else?”

I knew exactly what he was asking about before he said another word, and the memory arrived with enough detail that my fingers tightened around the edge of the notebook.

His hand low at the back of my head. My hair caught around his fist. The anger of that night had never erased the reaction underneath it, no matter how much I wanted the two things to fit into a single clean answer.

“Hair pulling,” I said confidently.

Wolf’s posture barely changed, though his hand settled more firmly around the wheel.

I turned my face toward the window. “You can stop looking pleased with yourself.”

“I’m not looking at you.”

“I can hear it.”

“Well, that’s impressive.”

“You know why I said it.”

A few seconds passed before he answered. “I do.”

I rested my hand over the opposite wrist, more from habit than discomfort, and the movement drew his attention for less than a second before he returned it to the road.

“What happened in my room doesn’t suddenly become okay just because I liked one part of it,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

I studied him, waiting for an explanation that never came.

“That’s it?”

“We’ve already had this conversation. You said no. I ignored it. I was wrong.”

I had expected more resistance because arguing with Wolf had trained me to expect resistance from him everywhere. When none came, I found myself rubbing my thumb once over the inside of my wrist again before dropping my fingers back to the spiral edge.

“Okay,” I said.

He gave a small nod.

The highway opened ahead of us, and for a while the only sound inside the car came from the tires against wet pavement. I should have returned to the Strasbourg file. I had already told him more than I had planned to, and Wolf had somehow managed to get through the entire exchange without giving me a useful answer of his own.

“Your turn,” I said.