My nerve endings stretch. My core trembles, and I fight the need to cover myself. To throw myself at him and ask him to follow through on his words.
Then, “I want to touch you, hold you, kiss you, and protect you.” He frowns as if his words puzzle him. “To keep you safe so that someday you may carry my child.” His gaze drops to my stomach and stays there.
His voice cuts through the thoughts skittering in my head. A child. Someone of my own. Someone born of my own flesh and blood. It pulls at that nurturer I’ve hidden deep inside of myself, that I’ve tried to drown out all of these years under the voice of rebelliousness, under the need to be independent.
And I am still all of that.
Only, I am also an omega. A fierce provider, someone who was born to procreate. And the thought doesn’t fill me with horror. Not even the fact that it is this monster…this alpha who could have already impregnated me, and that he’d done it without sharing his intentions with me. That he’d done it in a cold, calculated manner. All of it…he’d planned all of it. I sink against the back of the chair. “You’d been looking for an omega for this reason.”
“Not any omega, but one of superior breeding to ensure my future generations can weather everything that the future is going to bring. Imagine my surprise when you sweep right into my clutches? One sniff of your scent and I knew your genes were exemplary. Learning that you came from the royal family of Russia only sweetened the deal further. And, of course, then there is your cunt.” His gaze slides down to the apex of my thighs.
I resist the urge to squeeze my legs shut. Try to pretend that hearing him talk about that part of me is not making my flesh weep with need. That his gaze sweeping over me does not encourage moisture to trickle from my core.
“Your sweet pussy that made it abundantly clear that it ached for me.” He raises his gaze to my face.
Those molten eyes deepen until they seem to be almost clear pools of spring water.
A mirror in which I can see myself reflected.
One that I want to shatter, but which I know is going to tear me apart instead. My stomach twists.
“I don’t want you.” I force myself to keep my features straight, to keep all emotions from showing on my face. To clamp down on the lust that pushes at me and thumps at my temples. “I don’t want you…” I shake my head. “I don’t.”
“So you keep saying.”
His jaw firms, and I am sure he is going to close the distance between us and take me and throw me on the bed and bury himself in me. And I want him, too…with every fiber of my being. I tense my body, grip my forearms so my nails dig into my skin. My toes scrunch into the floor, and I wait…and…he swivels on his heels and stalks to the door.
I watch, not sure what’s happening.
A part of me already aches that he is leaving. While my core throbs with unfulfilled lust and my lower belly pulses with readiness, my mind says this is the right thing, that he did not force himself on me. That he did not seduce me to give in to him. There’s a ball of emotion in my chest that’s growing larger by the second. The breath shudders out of me.
He pauses with his fingers on the door handle.
Every part of me tenses up again.
He turns and fixes that glorious blue gaze on me. “When you face up to the fact that this is not one-sided, that you want me, that you need me to break you, that you revel in it, that more than that, you are but this…an omega who wants every depraved thing that only me, only your alpha, can give you. That only I, Zeus, can fulfill you. When you finally accept that and ask me to rut you…only then will I mate you again.” He shoves open the door, which slams shut behind him.
30
Zeus
I’d walked out of there and that was not what I had intended. I’d wanted to try to be civil, to stay with her, make sure she was okay after the last few days. And that thought itself is so unnatural. What does it matter how she feels? She is my hostage. The daughter of an enemy who’d walked into my palace with the express need to hurt me. Why did she agree to do that?
I’d never bothered to ask her of her intentions.
I didn’t need to.
The look on her face when I had called her out on her own identity was proof enough. Besides, I am judge, jury, and executioner. I don't need to explain my decisions to anyone, and certainly not to an omega.
And yet that part of me that seems to come alive when I’m around her, insists that I give her the benefit of the doubt.
Why is it that the sight of her green eyes, wide and with tears shimmering in them, haunts me? That scent of hers, that familiar, honeyed, sugary essence clings to my every pore, tugging at my nerves, while the mating cord in my chest thrums with discomfort.
A feeling of sadness seeps through the bond. She is hurt and lonely, my omega.
Well, she deserves it. Doesn’t she? She’d known what she was getting into when she’d flounced into my lair. Surely, she hadn’t thought I’d go easy on her. She couldn’t have possibly known that I’d spare her…and yet something inside me insists I should have treated her with care.
That I should have asked her first, given her a chance to defend herself. Right… Next, I’ll be asking her permission before I mate her. I have already done that…in a sense. I’d told her I was going to wait until she came to me. That until she really wants me, I won’t take her again. Fuck this! I am losing my mind and all over a timid omega, over a pair of green eyes that haunt my soul, over a sweet cunt that grasps my shaft and milks it as if it has been designed for me. Whose womb throbs in readiness, and I know that she is the one who is meant to birth my offspring. Did I just think that? Am I am waxing poetic about her…? Do I still have my balls? No fucking way am I letting a female get the better of me.
Striding out of the palace into the courtyard, I stop at where my troops are practicing.
“So our mighty leader arrives,” the hulking alpha lurking in the corner of the courtyard drawls. “I take it you found the omega satisfactory? Given we haven’t seen you here for a few days. Most unlike you, mighty Zeus, the Bastard of the East End.”
I swerve toward him.
Jerome sniggers, then the fool saunters out into the center of the court to stop in front of me. “Yet by the glowering darkness on your face it seems perhaps she is not to your satisfaction? Care to pass her over perhaps? Maybe what she needs is a real male to satisfy her.”
Blood thunders in my temples, and red sparks flash in front of my eyes. My fingers twitch, and the next second, I find myself hauling Jerome up in the air, his legs suspended off the ground. A fight is exactly what I need, and this…this sniveling excuse for a man will do quite nicely for getting his head pounded into the wall.
I stalk toward the wall, carrying him along with me, then slam his head against the hard surface, again and again.
Blood sprays out, and bits of his flesh fall to the ground.
There is the sickening sound of his skull cracking, but I don’t stop. All I can think of is no one dares talk about her like that in front of me. No one dare look at her again. “She is mine,” I roar. “Mine.” I slam the man’s head into the wall with such force that it flattens all the way down to his neck. His body grows limp, and I throw the irritating burden to the side. Turning, I pound my chest. “Anyone else?”