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likes to hurt people. He’d cut off your clothes and play you like a goddamned violin. Make you get down on your hands and knees and let him fuck you in front of whoever he wanted. Make you beg him.” Dan’s voice grew rougher still. Darker. Like steel spiked velvet scraping my nerves. “That would be just the beginning. He likes whips and knives and blood. You want to be the one sucking him off while he carves his initials into your skin?”
    I couldn’t breathe. I just stared at him. I’d never told Dan exactly what Tate had done to me. How the vampire had done almost exactly what Dan was describing. Tate hadn’t raped me but he’d made me like everything else he did to me.
     “You wanted that girl’s blood back there,” Dan continued. “You could taste it, couldn’t you? He could make you lose control of the wolf. Let the beast out until all you think about is hot blood and soft flesh tearing under your teeth. Is that what you want to be? A rogue? A killer?”
    My teeth chattered as my gut twisted. “He w-wouldn’t. Marco—”
    Dan growled, a real growl. The sound a human throat shouldn’t make. His scent was drowning in smoke and electricity. “You think he gives a fuck about Marco? They’re Old Ones. One day one of them will probably kill the other. You want to be a casualty of that war?”
    I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes.
    “Then listen to me. You’re not doing it. Whatever he asked, forget it.” His fingers tightened again. “Understand?”
    I tore myself free, stumbling backward. Christ, how did everything get so screwed up? I couldn’t let Dan get in the middle of my problems again. The last time he’d done that, he’d almost died. “And how am I supposed to explain that to Marco? Or Esteban?”
    A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I said I’d deal with Marco.”
    And there was a statement that scared me even more than Esteban ever could. I swallowed hard. “You can’t start a fight with an Old One. Ani and Sam would kill you if Marco didn’t.”
    “Screw that,” he said. “Just look at you.” He ran his hand down my arm and I leaned into the warmth before I could help it. “An hour with Esteban and you’re a wreck.”
    Clear concern threaded under the anger. He was right to be concerned. He was right about Esteban. But I had to do what I’d agreed anyway. “This is my mess to clean up. I went to Marco.”
    He dropped his hand, anger tightening his face into a nearly unrecognizable mask. “Why are you being so goddamn stubborn?”
    “Because Marco helped me save your
life
. I owe him. I
promised
.” I clenched my teeth together before I could say something I’d regret. Like admitting that I was doing it to get Dan to forgive me, to let us move forward. I couldn’t handle that conversation right now. Tears rose in my eyes again and a half sob caught in my throat.
    The fury on his face evaporated and he looked like Dan again. “I’m taking you home. We can talk about this later.”
    “I—”
    He put an arm around me, drawing me close and I leaned against him, needing to feel something solid. “Don’t argue. We’re going home. You need to get warm. My place.”
    It wasn’t a question. I nodded, glad of the reprieve. This wasn’t an argument we could solve tonight. I wasn’t sure it was an argument that we could ever solve. But I didn’t want to fight with Dan anymore.
    * * *
    We didn’t talk on the way back to Ravenna. The silent ride gave me plenty of time to discover damp leather is cold, uncomfortable, and in no way a distraction from the fact I’d just agreed to take on an Old One as a client.
    Or from the fact the Old One in question had nearly given me a meltdown. It wasn’t just the leather that was causing the shivers I couldn’t quite control. I’ve worked for vamps before but my clientele tend to be those vamps who prefer acting mostly human. Not the big, scary, mojo-you-into-orgasms powerful ones.
    If I was going to go through with this, I needed