Wicked Wolf (Wicked Ever After Book 3)

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.

  Copyright © 2017 Nazarea Andrews.

  Wicked Wolf

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by A&A Literary.

  Summary: Charles Blackwood has been in love with Hunter and Scarlet since he was in high school. He has never believed he could have them—until Scarlet decides to prove him wrong.

  Contemporary romance 2. Erotic fairy tale 3. Novella

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, address Nazarea Andrews

  NazareaFYI@gmail.com

  Edited by Allica Henry

  Cover design by The Illustrated Author

  Cover art copyright©: Nazarea Andrews

  Ebook Formatting by A & A Literary

  Prologue.

  Wilderwood Prep is a breeding ground for the powerful.

  It’s nestled in the hills of Virginia, a rolling campus of green grass and stately brick buildings. It’s a hotbed for friendship and grudges, for the kind of backstabbing that defined the wealthy and powerful for years to come.

  People fall in love there. They meet a dark eyed boy and have nights of meaningless, hot sex. They gasp stupid promises into the bricks and come while he laughs, dark and dirty in their ear.

  They shake up the world they’ve built and slip away in the night with a filthy kiss and half voiced promise no one expects to be kept. And when they wake up, they find that boy is dating a girl they’ll fall in love with.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  Chapter 1.

  There’s a particular moment every night that I wait for. It’s not the first rush of arousal, all the anxious need of the week spilling out in a hot wash of sex and humiliation, the needy cries of submissives and the low praise of their Doms.

  It’s not the lull that comes after, when it’s lazy kisses and slow touches.

  It’s what comes after that—the darkest part of the night, when the comfortable is gone and all that remains is want and the sharp edge of danger.

  That’s my time.

  It changes the air, makes it heavy and scorching, a thing that almost pulses against my skin, thick with the scent of sweat and sex.

  Charming loves that first rush, and Beast thrives in the space between, on the softness of aftercare.

  Mal drifts, above us all, a silent specter haunting the floor.

  And me—I live for the moment when everything that is expected has been stripped away and all that remains is anticipation and exploration.

  A shrill whistle splits the air and I grin, detaching myself from the dark corner I’ve been leaning in, watching.

  The members of the Kingdom don’t always see that I watch. They focus on Charm, with his wide smile, boyish good looks, and quick hand on the Floor. They focus on Beast with his easy amusement, his big heart, and the kindness he sometimes hides under a sharp sense of humor.

  We keep their attention on my best friends, and I linger where I like it best: in the shadows. They’ve always been where I feel most at home.

  The whistle comes again, a sharp order, and I let my smile go toothy and dangerous.

  “No, Hunt,” I hear, high and clear and just a little angry, and I almost hesitate, almost turn to the corner where I’ll find them.

  I watch.

  I know exactly what I’ll find if I turn—Hunter in black and Scarlet in his lap. His hand will be up her skirt, not even moving.

  It’s a claim, all proprietary ownership, and it drives me batshit crazy, because she allows it, and that he feels the fucking need for it.

  I don’t turn. Instead, I move through the club, through the anxious sea of want, until I reach the main stage.

  There’s a Domme there, and I grin at her as I crowd into her space. Her eyes are laughing. I’ve spent enough time switching for Angel that my behavior is surprising to no one.

  She leans in, flicking her crop across my chest in a light tease. “You’re in a mood tonight,” she murmurs, low enough that I’m the only one who hears the words, before she kisses me.

  “What are we doing?” she breathes against my ear when I dip down to nip at her neck. She sways just a little and I hide my smile there, where she won’t see it, where the club won’t.

  Secrets push into skin and are held there. “Putting on a show,” I say, lifting my head to smirk at her.

  Angel’s eyes skate past me, and I know where she’s looking. I can feel them watching me. She nods once. “Alright, Wolf. We can do that.”

  She shoves me, and I feel the last remnants of control fray and fall away, and I drop my head and let her take me where she wants, let her push me into restraints and take me to my knees. I keep my eyes on the ground as she talks to the Kingdom.

  Tonight is a lesson—how to use a cat-of-nine-tails. I roll my shoulders and bounce on my heels as she talks, the leather of my pants pressing against my cock. Angel turns toward me, her eyebrows twitching up into a question and I smile at her.

  She nods and then my friend is gone, vanishing behind the small cocky smile of the Domme persona that takes over.

  I don’t do this often. The club prefers me on the other end of the whip, and I like it there. There’s something vulnerable and raw about being exposed like this, to submitting like this.

  Beast makes it look easy. It’s not.

  But sometimes I need the rough demands and the lack of control, need to have it all taken away from me for just long enough that I can drift.

  I let out a breath, and Angel takes it all.

  Chapter 2.

  There’s a knock on my door, and I groan. I don’t really want to move. Angel is really fucking good with her whip and my whole body feels it today.

  The knock comes again, that distinctive pattern only Beast ever uses—and he's too persistent to leave.

  I drag myself up, stumble over to the door and unlock it before I fall back into bed, hissing a little as my back pulls unpleasantly.

  He whistles, a low sharp noise as he takes me in. "Damn, Wolf."

  I flip him off weakly and he laughs, moving through my dungeon with the familiarity of someone who's been here often. When he rubs aloe into my skin, I bite down on the moan that tries to escape me.

  The man has a pretty, jealous Domme, and I actually like her. Making pornographic noises while half naked and alone with her boy is probably not the way to get on, or stay on, her good side.

  "Where's Beauty?" I mumble into my pillow, arching a little as his fingers hit a particularly tender welt.

  "Busy. Had a consultation or something—I don't know. She'll be back in a few hours. Thought you could use a hand after Angel last night."

  I nod and fall silent as he finishes the simple treatment.

  I'm closer to Charm than I am Beast, always have been. He's my brother in a way Mal—my brother of birth and blood—can't be.

  Family is as much the ones you choose as they are the ones you are born to belong to, and Charm chose me. He dragged me home with him when we were attending Wilderwood. When I left to serve in the Army , my whole life a confused mess, wondering what the fuck came next, Charm is the one who supported my decision. His mother was th
e one who wrote me letters in Basic and spent me care packages.

  All of them showed up at my graduation, but none of them understood.

  Charm just never cared that he didn't.

  But for all that Charm is my best friend and confidant—Beast gets this side of me.

  Charm doesn't kneel, and Mal would sooner cut off his own dick than be on the receiving end of a riding crop, so they don't understand the urge—the bliss that comes from giving up all control and letting yourself fly.

  Interrupting my thoughts, Beast murmurs, "She was hard on you last night.”

  I grunt, agreeing.

  "Your choice?" he asks.

  I shift my shoulders. "Everything was consensual," I say shortly.

  He shakes his head. "Not what I'm asking."

  I’m quiet, contemplating my reply, and then answer honestly. "I wanted it, Beastie. Needed it."

  There’s a long silence before he speaks. "Brother, you don't need to punish yourself like this."

  I don't ask him how he knows I'm punishing myself. There's no point in that—my brother has been able to read me for a long time. It's what he's good at—reading people and what they need.

  "I'm not," I say.

  Beast huffs, but he lets me get away with the lie for a little while longer.

  “You know Mal will be pissed if he knows you’re doing this,” he says instead.

  I grunt in acknowledgement. “You planning on tattling?”

  His nails dig into my back, right over the worst of Angel’s work, and I yelp, almost jerking off the damn bed.

  “If you don’t take care of yourself, I damn well will,” he says sharply and then rises. “Come on. Meeting in five.”

  ~

  I shower. We don't have a lot of boundaries between the four of us—I've seen all of them in every stage of undress and sex imaginable. Still, I wasn't showing up at a business meeting covered in aloe, lube, and my own come.

  I grin.

  Angel came back to my dungeon, after our show for the Floor, and I can feel it now, the tight ache of it.

  Clean, my hair falling in my eyes—I need a haircut, I think absently—I dress in blue jeans, sandals and a t-shirt that's seen a lot better days.

  The others are already in the office when I enter. I nod at Beast where he's sitting on the floor. He doesn't do that often, not when it's just the four of us. I think sometimes it's hard for him to maintain the line—to be strong enough for us to respect him and take his wishes into account, and submissive enough for his own needs.

  That he's on the floor today, sitting at Mal's feet...

  I study him, the quiet curve of his shoulders under the button down, the hair that's a little shaggy—the tiny smile on his lips and the way he still hasn't looked away from his cell phone.

  Mal shifts, and Beast moves with him, pressing close.

  So it's not Beast, then.

  I turn my attention to my brother, best friend, boss.

  Mal is frowning at nothing, his fingers buried in Beast's hair, his right leg pressed into his side. He looks—well, he looks wrecked, the kind of rough devastation that only Briar has ever managed to put him in.

  I clear my throat as I step into the office, and his gaze flicks up to me, sharp and cold.

  "Staff meetings are usually Tuesday, aren't they?" I ask lazily. I lean into the wall, and bite down on my lip to keep from wincing. Beast's eyes narrow at me, but he doesn't say anything.

  "I'm going to be taking a leave of absence," Mal says, and that snaps my attention back to my brother.

  "Why?" Beast asks, a sub on his knees, yet demanding as fuck.

  "Family commitments," Mal says, and I snort my opinion of that. He scowls at me.

  "The family has been quite content to ignore you for the better part of a decade," I drawl.

  He shrugs. "Dad is announcing his bid for the White House. I'll be there, supporting him."

  "And Wolf?" Charm asks, his voice low. "Will your parents also request his presence?"

  I kinda want to slap him for that. He knows damn well Mal's mother and my father would never ask for me to show up for the political circus they live in.

  He knows I don't want to be there.

  "Dad didn't say," Mal says, giving me a slightly apologetic look.

  I laugh and shove my hands in my pockets, shrugging. "Not terribly surprising. They've been doing this for fifteen years. Why the fuck would they change it now?"

  Charm makes a noise in his throat that's just a shade short of furious, but he doesn't argue with me or tell Mal he's being an ass.

  Neither would be productive, so why bother?

  Mal draws attention back to himself, speaking up. "While I'm away, I'll need you all to step up and keep the Kingdom in order."

  I tune him out as he gives us our marching orders, trusting that Beast will keep up with them and tell me if there's anything important I should be doing and when.

  "When are you leaving?" I ask, when he finally stops talking.

  "Tomorrow morning," Mal says.

  I nod, pushing off the wall. I smile at him. "Tell Briar I say hello."

  Beast curses quietly, and Charm moves closer to me.

  There are things we don't talk about, not in the Kingdom, not to each other—wounds we don't pick at.

  We don't talk about when I switch or need pain to breathe properly.

  We don't talk about Charming’s family and how they expect things he can't give.

  We don't talk about the psychological mess that is Beauty and why Beast feels the need to fix her, or why he so rarely goes back home.

  We sure as fuck don't talk about the little blonde girl Mal met at Wilderwood, the daughter of an ambassador who spent just long enough there to make my brother fall head over heels in love with her before she left and sent him into the worst depression I'd ever witnessed.

  We don't ask about these things, and because we don't, this—us—keeps working. We're successful and we're rich and we're so fucking broken it's almost laughable.

  Mal looks at me, with his pale pale eyes and his cold, remote face, and I try not to forget that I’m terrified of my half-brother.

  “I will,” is all he says, and Charm throws a worried look at me before Mal turns the conversation elsewhere, and I tune out completely.

  ~

  “What’s going on with you?” Charm demands, sliding into the chair across from me. I blink at him over my laptop.

  It’s been three days since Mal turned the Kingdom over to us, three nights of watching the club, three nights of sex and submission.

  My whole body feels raw, like a giant exposed nerve, and Charm is poking it.

  “Dunno what you’re talking about,” I mutter into my screen, watching it with a single-mindedness that’s almost fanatical.

  “That why you’re hiding in the office when Scarlet is waltzing around the club without her leash?”

  I snarl, softly.

  Charm looks, disgustingly, unimpressed with my temper, as history has always shown him to be

  “She’s not gonna wait forever, dude,” he says softly.

  She isn’t waiting at all. She never has been. I mean, it appears on the surface that I have nothing in common with my older half-brother.

  But that's not altogether true.

  We both fall for completely unattainable women.

  "Go talk to her, Wolf."

  "And what, Charm? Tell her I'm in love with her? She knows. Tell her she should leave her fiance, the guy she's been with since fucking high school? She knows that too. Offer her my heart on a silver platter, with my bastard name and my questionable career? She's very aware all of that is hers."

  I hear him inhale, but I don't look up.

  "You never know what might happen if you take a chance," he says quietly.

  Now I do look at him.

  "I'm not you and Celeste, Charm. I'm not gonna get the pretty, unlikely girl that doesn't make any damn sense. I'm not gonna knock her family and mine int
o submission by the sheer force of will and the power of love. I'm the illegitimate son of a Senator and I run a fucking sex club. Scarlet wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole."

  Charm doesn't answer that. His expression goes flinty and he stands, his blue eyes dark and angry.

  When he's gone, I let myself breathe.

  Charm thinks he knows what the hell’s going on. He thinks he's got a grip on what I'm doing, pushing Scarlet away and ignoring how much I want her.

  He doesn't know about Hunter.

  No one—not even Scarlet—knows about Hunter. It's the secret we've both carried for more than a decade, and I'm not sure when it became so big, but it did. Now it's all that sits between us, an immovable boulder of history neither of us can move.

  One night stands are supposed to be fun, and then forgotten. The worst that's supposed to happen is an awkward run in at a bar down the line.

  You aren't supposed to walk into lunch and see the girl you're in love with in the arms of the guy who just fucked you senseless.

  But then, I've always had a strange sense of what you should and shouldn't do.

  I roll my shoulders, letting the rough material of my button down drag over the raw skin on my back. I hiss as the pain digs in, centering me, and I put her out of my mind, and him right next to her.

  I go back to work.

  ~

  The twisted part of this story isn’t that Hunter fucked me, all those years ago. You’d think that was it—but no. The twisted part is that he still does.

  ~

  They’re in the club now. Angel, sitting across from me at one of the high tables, smirks, her gaze going sly and teasing.

  Angel isn’t just a Domme I bend to, on occasion. She’s a friend, one of the few I’ve got at the club that I don’t also call brother. She’s good in bed, she doesn’t get pissy when I’m not submissive, and she doesn’t expect me to be emotionally involved.

  She also knows the worst kept secret in the Kingdom: that I’m obsessed with the bright eyed tech genius and budding CEO.