“Don’t be afraid.”
She starts at my voice, her gaze flying to my face.
Her pupils have dilated again. She is more aroused than she realizes. A yearning flows to me down the mating bond.
It tugs at me, pleads with me to take her, yet I sense a resistance. A reluctance to give herself to me. I could overpower her and take her…but… No. I rise to my feet so fast that she gasps and pulls back into the chair. And she’s not meek—at the height of her heat cycle she fought me, she wanted me, but didn’t want to give in to me. It was only when the hormones had overridden every other part of her rational mind had she asked me to take her.
I feel a grudging respect for that, though I shouldn’t.
I know then that I can't stop at seducing her into giving me what I want, and that only turns me on even more.
The hardness of my arousal strains against my pants. Yeah, like her, my body, too, has a mind of its own. Given a choice, I’d drag her to my bed, and then proceed to mate with her over and over again until I’d marked her completely. I’d own her such that she’ll never again refuse me, that she’ll never again be scared of me.
Why is it so important that she comes to me of her own accord? That she wants me as much as I want her? That she accepts the mating bond?
“How long can you resist?” I take a step back.
She stares. Color rushes to her cheeks. She swallows. “You will be surprised. Remember, I was a virgin all these years. I managed to see through many heat cycles on my own, without asking the first alpha to cross my path to take me.”
“And yet you did.” I smirk, my lips pulling up at the sides. I sound like I am gloating, and I am. It is the truth, after all. “You did ask me to take you. The alpha who rescued you from a room full of marauders.”
“And yet, you weren’t careful with me either.” Her hand flies to the shredded, still-healing marks on the side of her neck.
I angle my head and survey my handiwork. Satisfaction curves my lips up in a smile. “No. I mated you.”
“Why?” She shoves back her hair so the strands float around her shoulders. “You could have rutted me through the heat cycle, could have taken all you wanted from me and then let me go.”
“But you see that wasn’t my plan.”
“You didn’t know who I was then, did you?” Her body stills, and she stares at me
“I didn’t,” I agree and lean back on my heels. When did this entire conversation change tack? Why is it that she always refuses to follow my lead?
With my men, I tell them what to do, and they bow and scrape to please me. They follow my command.
Except Ethan who has a mind of his own. Which is why I respect him…which is why my admiration for her ticks up a notch. “You are no ordinary omega, Lucia.”
“Lucy.” She folds her arms over her chest and thrusts out her chin in a gesture I am beginning to recognize.
“You know why I brought you here, Lucy. I intend to keep you here for as long as it takes.”
“As long as what…?” Her lips tremble.
I want to go to her and soothe her, and yet a part of me says if I do that I’ll be lost. That I’ll give her the power if I do so, and then what? Would that be so bad?
I pace.
When I’d mated her, my only thought was that she was mine, that she belonged to me.
What I hadn’t counted on was for the mating bond to go both ways. That I belong to her as much as she does to me.
And I want to tell her that, but something in me refuses.
I can’t.
I am here in this palace for one reason only. To destroy the legacy of the man who had shown my mother no mercy.
Her gaze bores into me.
The tension grows in the room, filling the space, mixed with that edge of sexual need that always seems to be there between us. That will never go away no matter how many times I mate her.
“Answer me,” she says, her voice low but firm.
“I intend to keep you here for as long as it takes for you to acknowledge who I am.”
“Who are you?”
“Your mate.”
29
Lucy
I hear his voice as if from a distance. See his face set in an expression of determination. His jaw firms. A nerve ticks at his temple.
His chest planes ripple under his dark skin, and all I can think of is going to him, dragging my fingernails over his chest and marking him. Then, throwing myself at him and asking him to take me over and over again until I reach that space where all that remains is that bare essence of my soul—a naked need, a burning desire to be part of something.
To be joined to him in a way that I have never been to anyone else and never will be again. And that thought is a shock.
But is it, is it really? When I’d known from the time I’d set foot in this palace that there would be only one logical conclusion. That I was going to be taken and knotted, and not by any alpha, but by the most powerful of all of them. And inside I’d been ready. More than ready. Maybe it was that genetic superiority in me that came from being part of the royal family of Russia that expected to only be united with a bloodline that was different from the norm.
Which was what my father had intended for me, with the alliance he had forged with the leader of the Vikings. I had turned my back on that and run away…straight to a fate that was apparently not very different.
“Why me? Why choose me as your mate?” A shudder of nervousness runs down my spine. The hair on my neck prickles and stands up. It shouldn’t be important to hear his answer. It shouldn’t matter what his reasons were to bond with me. And yet it is. Something primal inside me insists that I force him to admit what I’d already sensed. “Tell me.” I hold his glowing blue gaze.
A myriad of expressions flit across his face. For a second, I sense that vulnerability that I thought I’d touched, that I’d felt when he was deep inside me, when he’d insisted that I say his name.
It is then that I realize that behind that charade he projects to the world he is as lonely as me…and I am sure he is going to finally tell me something that is real, that matters.
Something that will give me a reason to push aside everything else that binds me to the outside world and gives me the space to finally be myself, to accept the bond that tugs and pulls at my gut and is worming its way into my soul.
He straightens his spine.
His shoulders stiffen.
His features form into a mask of indifference. Once more he is the General, the leader of the insurgents, the alpha who killed his own father and took over.
“Because I need a mate by my side, to win the respect of my followers. To show the old guard that I am serious in my claim to being their leader. To cement my position of power.”
“So it is to further your own needs?”
“Obviously.” He angles his head.
His gaze narrows and he searches my face. Does he expect me to react with surprise? Or perhaps he wants to see some other emotion; one that will set right everything that has happened.
“No.” I gulp. Is all of this a ploy for progeny? My palms fly to my belly, and I want to tear them away and tuck them at my sides; but I don’t.
“Yes.” His voice is soft but firm. “I want to control, command, dominate and use you.”