When was the last time anyone had managed to do that? Not since I had dueled with Ethan, and we’d been teenagers then. And Kayden had sent her. Had he anticipated that this omega would get through my defenses much easier than any alpha would?
A prickle of awareness tugs at my subconscious, and I push it aside. Not even Kayden could have expected this omega getting as far as she has.
It should piss me off really that she thinks she can go toe to toe with me, and yet it’s alluring. And exciting. She is wild, this one. She will not give in easily. Her audacity is an aphrodisiac that calls to me. And there is no way I am letting her out of this room, not for a long time.
She knows it, too.
And perhaps it is that which makes her struggle afresh.
She snarls and tries to knee me in the groin. I swerve, and her leg scrapes my waist, her inner thigh brushing my hardness. The scent of her arousal is heavy in the air. Honeyed, yet with a hint of something deeper… I have no doubt she will taste sweeter.
Desire tightens my groin.
She slams her fist into my back. The vibration shudders through me. I don’t stop the growl that escapes my throat and am rewarded with her body trembling against mine.
It’s cute that she thinks I will actually heed her cries, that I might consider setting her free. Not when she’d walked right into the den of the big bad alpha. I angle my head and sink my teeth in the curve of her butt.
She screams out. “You bit me?”
“You bit me first,” I growl. “I only returned the favor.”
She thrashes her legs, her body bucks, and she pounds her fists on my back.
“Behave.” I drag my arm down to below her hips and hold her there.
“You haul me away, capture me and bring me here, and you expect me to stay quiet?” Her voice is muffled, but I still hear her.
Her knees dig into my waist.
“I gave you a chance to escape, you failed. You are mine.” I snap my teeth.
She trembles.
A primitive surge of satisfaction tightens my groin. She’s afraid. Good. “It seems it’s finally sinking in you are in my control.” I sneer.
She brings down her joined fists on my back. The blow only sends another pulse of heat tearing through my veins.
“Have you lost touch with reality so much that you don’t know right from wrong anymore?”
There’s a touch of anguish in her voice and helplessness, and it tugs something inside me. Some long-forgotten, humane part of me that only one other woman has ever touched. What am I doing? I’d seen her and lost control. Had smelled that essence of ripe omega mixed with a dash of something forbidden, something so tangible that I had wanted to throw her down on the floor and rut her right there in the open.
It had blinded my senses to everything else. Except her. I am the hunter. She is my spoils. So why am I so hesitant? I cross the floor toward my bed.
She must realize that I am approaching my destination for she begins to struggle again. Arms and leg thrashing, she writhes in my grasp.
Another flare of her arousal hits me, and on cue, my cock thickens. What the fuck? I tighten my grip on her, “Keep that up and I won’t be responsible for what happens to you. I’ve been a gentleman so far.”
“You are kidding, right?” She yells, “If this is how you treat your guests—”
“That’s where you are mistaken.” I reach the bed. “You aren’t a guest. And I am not your host.”
I am a callous bastard who does not hesitate to plunder first and ask questions later, as she’s going to discover soon enough.
She knees me in the stomach, and the breath whooshes out of me. Another shudder of arousal tightens my belly.
“Let me go,” she pleads.
“You bet.” I throw her down on the mattress.
She bounces once, then springs up on her feet. Of course, she does. She’s already demonstrated that she knows how to fight, and she’d almost held her own…almost, even against someone as powerful as me. And that’s not ego, just a fact.
It's imperative that I make her a conquest. My dick throbs. The beat echoes the pulse thudding at my temples.
Swiveling around, I stomp to the table by the window and stab my finger at the tray of food there. “Eat.” I jerk my chin at the omega.
Her features grow pale. Her gaze drops to the tray, and she purses her lips. “I don’t want to eat, you fool.”
Her choice of insult is almost anticlimactic.
I snicker, and the skin at the corners of her eyes tightens.
Still holding her gaze, I kick off my boots. “In that case, let’s fuck.”
6
Lucy
Bastard! He knows that pronouncement while not exactly a surprise is only going to alarm me, and that is his intention: to frighten me so that I’ll submit to him like a nice docile omega. Well, he’s got that so wrong. I am not going down, not without a fight. The alpha-hole can go screw himself if he thinks I am going to make this easy on him.
He shrugs out of his vest, then places it over the chair near the bed.
The arrogance of the brute! He turns his back on me. I bare my lips, then lean low to charge him.
He tears off his tunic to reveal his naked back.
My breath catches, and my thigh muscles freeze.
Without his clothes, this alpha is overpowering.
I swallow, and my heart hammers.
Nothing has prepared me for those shoulders that seem hewn out of stone. His biceps flex, and I don’t need to touch them to know they’ll be hard and ungiving, like the rest of that body he is so casually baring to my gaze. Colored ink marks one side of his back and continues up and over his shoulder.
This is when I throw myself at him and catch him unawares. When he is the most vulnerable. I force my brain to connect my thoughts with action and place one trembling foot in front of the other.
He bends and pulls off his pants.
The scent of him, that earthy, woodsy, packed-with-need aroma intensifies. It’s laced with something deeper, the tang of his precum, all of which sinks into my blood and heads straight to my core.
My throat closes; my mouth goes dry. Moisture seeps out from between my thighs.
The muscles of his back ripple, the intricate tattoos on his skin undulate like the patterns on a rattlesnake.
The man is deadlier. He’ll hypnotize me, seduce me, take me, and I’ll not be able to protest. A shiver runs down my spine.
He drapes his fatigues over the seat, and all thought dribbles out of my head. His corded flanks are a thing of beauty that sweep down to meet the backs of those muscled thighs.
I must have made some noise, for he turns and gives me a full-frontal view of that sheer unleashed dominance of his physical self.
His chest is sculpted. There are tattoos colored across those angles and planes. His honeyed skin sweeps over a torso that has weathered many fights. A tattoo slashes diagonally across the expanse, and I want to touch it. Trail my fingers over those pecs, down to where his concave stomach dips to meet his shaft. His fully aroused massive dick that stands up almost vertical with need.
Heat sweeps through my body, chased by chills. Goosebumps flare on my forearms. Every pore of my skin seems to open as if to absorb each nuance of his touch, the feel of him. My body is preparing for the invasion by this alpha that is bound to come. My stomach lurches. I want to look away but I can’t.