Page 49 of Wolf

I have to do it.

Pounding into her a final time, spilling into her, I open my mouth on her shoulder and bite down. Julia’s face turns red and her throat works as she constricts a scream. As she bursts apart on my cock, covering me with new heat and slicker wetness, I mark her as mine.

All mine.

Whether she knows what it means or not, it’s there now. She can probably feel what it means, anyway. That mark will be hidden by clothes, but we’ll both know it’s there.

When the pain fades and the redness goes away and the mark is nothing more than a hazy snapshot of memory in the midst of sex, we’ll still know it happened.

Chapter 20

Julia

I’ve really come to hate the sound of a buzzing phone. I never get called for a good reason.

It’s a quiet afternoon a few days after Wolf and I last had sex. That bite mark on my shoulder is momentarily how I track time. Every time I look at it, it’s a little more faded. I know what it means, what it’s supposed to mean. Wolf didn’t say anything so neither did I, but we both knew.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that. The closer we’re getting, the more guilty I feel for not telling him about Artie. Especially as it’s clear he’s becoming fond of his son. I have to tell him. I have to make this right, but while Malcolm is around causing trouble I can’t.

I rub the fading mark on my shoulder, just barely hidden by my shirt collar, and check my phone. I heave a sigh of relief at seeing a name and number I recognize. It might be connected with Malcolm, but at least it’s not him calling.

“Hi, Asha.” I speak low under my breath to avoid waking Artie and Mom. They fell asleep while watching cartoons, him on the couch and her in her chair.

“Is this a bad time, Julia?” My lawyer sounds unusually tense.

“No, it’s fine. Hold on a moment.”

I sneak out the front door and sit down on the porch, my feet in the freshly mowed grass. Wolf took care of that after we’d had sex. No idea how he still had the strength for that when I was left barely able to stand afterwards.

“Okay, what’s up?” I ask. “Are we making any progress?”

Her tone doesn’t sound like progress has been made. The opposite. Totally the opposite. I ask anyway because I can’t bear the thought of any more hiccups or difficulties. Maybe I misread her tone?

“Are you sitting down?” Asha asks. “You might want to be sitting down, and have a glass of water or tea nearby.”

My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach. “What has Malcolm done?”

“Malcolm’s lawyer gave me a very generous heads-up. He is going to court, Julia.”

That confuses me because this is all about a divorce, so it naturally involves the courts. “Stop tiptoeing around it to try and ease me in,” I plead. “Give it to me straight.”

“He’s going to try to prove you’re an unfit mother and have Artie taken away.”

And my world crumbles to dust around me. I’m falling into the darkness, plummeting into the nothingness. Without my son, I won’t have anything. There won’t be anything worth fighting for.

Wait.

“Hold on.” I can’t breathe, my throat too tight. I speak while choking. “Malcolm didn’t adopt Artie. He doesn’t have any rights to him. I’m a stable parental figure in his life. No court would hear this case. They wouldn’t give him custody.”

“It’s not about custody. He doesn’t want Artie. He wants Artie to be taken away from you and placed in foster care where he’ll be safe.” Asha’s voice curdles on the word ‘safe’. “This is going to be separate, but alongside the divorce proceedings. You have two battles to fight now.”

Wolf was right. Marrying me gave Malcolm the perfect little family he needed to complete the image he wanted to present to the world. Divorcing him ruins that, so he’s going to ruin me.

Us.

What fills me then isn’t fear. It tastes like the blood that fills my mouth because I’m biting my lip and it feels like roasting in an oven.

“He can’t fucking do this. He doesn’t have any proof!”