Mikel shrugged the other man’s hand off, and with it, his influence. Kalen rarely tried to overpower or outrank him, but he could already see in the older Alpha’s eyes that this would be one of those rare situations, if Mikel resisted. “I can’t. You don’t know what we’re dealing with. Go see Elijah—”
“Elijah already called me and told me everything.” Kalen folded his arms, his dark button-down stretching tight across his chest and biceps. “And I’m making the call. You’re done. We’ll find another way to deal with the Track Team.”
“Tilda is our way to deal with everything inside the control room,” Mikel snarled back, before pushing his hands through his hair, his fingers shaking.
He didn’t want to do it.
He had been putting it off since finding out about Carter: stopping short of fucking Tilda, distracting her with her own pleasure, and keeping his distance in general. Elijah had informed them all that different forms of intimacy outside of the bond could come with consequences, and he really wanted to believe that it was part of the reason …
But he had hit some sort of limit.
He couldn’t pretend to care anymore. He couldn’t play that game anymore. He needed to switch tactics.
Kalen just waited quietly, a spark of sympathy in his expression.
“Okay, shit.” Mikel shook his head. “Yeah, I’m done.”
“Good.” Kalen turned on his heel, but paused, glancing back at Mikel. “I know you’re mad at yourself, but you need to find another way to funnel it out. You need to find another way to punish yourself or you need to deal with your shit. After what happened to Elijah and Gabriel, this is the last example you should be setting.”
Mikel nodded, his jaw clenching as he gritted his teeth too tightly. Forcing it to loosen, he muttered. “I know.”
“Don’t take too long, we need to strategise.” Kalen walked off without another word and Mikel fought his way through the emotions to the cool, calm well inside him.
He had completely recovered by the time he arrived at the building neighbouring the family centre, where the on-site officials were housed, and he was focussed as he stepped out of the elevator and opened the door to Tilda’s apartment.
She was kneeling, as he had told her to, but wearing a set of lacy lingerie—always trying to push him into punishing her. She always thought she wanted to be hurt, pushed, disciplined … but Mikel knew her. She wasn’t made of the kind of material he could work with.
He needed someone who would bend, but not break.
If he ever truly punished Tilda the way she begged for—his way—the woman would shatter into a thousand jagged pieces, and Mikel really didn’t have a kink for ruining people’s lives.
“We’re done here,” he said calmly, watching as her head snapped up, her eyes narrowing.
Expectation.
Tilda was many things, but she wasn’t an idiot.
“That’s not very wise,” she warned him immediately, jumping up to her feet and reaching for the dressing gown she had tossed over the back of a bar stool. She knotted it tightly, a familiar tremble of fury shaking her full lower lip. “You’ll lose all your special little privileges, Professor Easton.”
“I’ll survive.” He stood there, waiting. Because there was bound to be more.
She rounded her small kitchen counter, uncorking the bottle of wine she had left out, two glasses already waiting.
“Sit?” She didn’t look at him as she poured out two glasses. “You owe me that much.”
He moved to one of the stools on the other side of the counter, accepting the glass she handed him, though he didn’t take a sip. He was already saturated in Carter’s scent and doing his level best to ignore it. He didn’t need to add alcohol to the equation.
“You’re fucked up, Mikel.” Tilda looked down her slender nose at him. As though she had just read his mind.
He smirked, deciding to take a sip of the wine after all. He levelled her with a cool stare as he waited for whatever else she wanted to throw at him. It was only fair that he stuck around as a punching bag for a few minutes. He had just dumped her without explanation.
“We could still play, you know.” She set her glass down, toying with the stem, the fingers of other hand tangling playfully with the sash of her gown, her mood shifting abruptly.
Tilda was the kind of woman to beg him to mark her, before turning around to the officials the next day to claim he had forced her.
She had a mind for devious strategy.
They wouldn’t give just anyone the Creative Director position for the entire Ironside project. She had a big-picture mind and a very small compartment reserved for feelings and emotions—most of which were her own.
He had been telling himself for months that he was just too lazy to end it, but the real reason was … he was concerned about the repercussions.
He needed to tie this up in the right way.
Put a pretty bow on it.
“Come here,” he said lowly, snapping his glass back onto the counter.
She moved toward him immediately, stopping between his legs, her hands on his thighs, her tongue running across her lips. She was a pretty woman, sharp-tongued and intelligent. A good decade older than him, but fit and lively. She had a wry smile and eyes that cut through all the bullshit. A thin, stiff upper lip and a full, sensual lower one.
Pity she was disintegrating on the inside.
She could have made some big-shot human director a very terrified man one day.
He coaxed the strap of her dressing gown out of her grip and then yanked it from the loops, tearing one of them and forcing her to stumble forward, eyes wide.
He flicked the silky material up over her eyes, slapping her hands down when they jumped up in protest.
“Do you want this or not?” he growled, ignoring the bile in the back of his throat.
Her hands fell again, and he looped the strap twice, three times, tying it off above her nose.
There, a pretty bow. He could tick that off his to-do list.
He slid off the stool, forcing her back a few steps as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled it up to start a video of her bow-tied face. He deliberately pressed his finger over the microphone, keeping his voice low as he spoke.
“You want this, Tilda? Tell me how much.”
He uncovered the microphone, and she made a low, whining sound in her throat. Part frustration, part annoyance. She wasn’t good at begging.
“Just fuck me already,” she rasped, and he set his phone down for a moment, blinding the camera. He hoisted her up onto the counter, moved the glasses out of the way, and set the half-full wine bottle between her thighs.
“Show me,” he whispered in her ear. “Prove it, and I’ll mark you up nice and good.”
She should have realised that he was onto her then and there, but instead, she thought she was miles ahead. Running laps around him.
She had no idea.
He had been running laps around everyone at Ironside long before he even arrived.
He picked up his phone again, moving back several steps and lifting the camera to focus on her. She shrugged her dressing gown off and shimmied out of the lacy lingerie, kicking the pieces onto the floor, her breaths coming in short pants. As he was recording, a group message notification popped up on his screen, and he clicked on it, leaving the camera to continue recording in the background.