There’s only a relief that I can stop pretending. Is that what I have been doing so far? Pretending? The thought brings on a fresh wave of tears, and a sob racks my body, then another. Before I know it, I am holding on to the same arms that imprison me, hanging on to him for support as I bawl my eyes out.
My insides twist.
I curl up my legs and bring them close. I am wound around this man’s chest like a baby clinging to her mother.
My sobs intensify. What the hell is wrong with me? This is not the time to have a full-blown breakdown. Not in the arms of my captor. Yet surrounded by the heat of this alpha's body I feel secure in a way I've never felt before, not even with my own family. I don’t have many memories of my mother who died too young. My father was a warrior, the Czar of Moscow. Though I was an omega, he’d recognized the fighter in me. He’d made sure to train me. I’d been fortunate that as a member of the royal family I’d had the choice of when to mate with an alpha. I’d managed to delay it, too, until now.
The tears keep coming.
My throat is so dry I am sure I shouldn’t be able to cry anymore, and yet I can’t seem to stop. It’s as if all the years of pent-up hatred, fear, recklessness, all of it wound inside comes bubbling up. I am falling apart, and it’s in the arms of the most powerful alpha in the land. The one who will no doubt take my virginity against my will.
But even that thought doesn’t stop my weeping. Nothing matters anymore. Nothing except the feel of his arms around me.
The soft growls that rumble up his chest rock my body.
The rich bass of his purring crawls up the space between us, vibrates up his throat and curls around me. Sensuous, gentle. His tone is almost sub-vocal, and yet it’s unmissable. It’s hypnotic. I listen to it. Am entranced by it. I hiccough once. My ears pop, and the sound grows deeper. A soothing, resonant murmur that rolls over my skin and sinks into my blood.
Each new wave of purring sets off sparks of heat in its wake. Seducing. Comforting. Like he’s weaving a cocoon around me. I am caught in the wonder of this new experience.
The earthy scent of him, mixed with the dark cinnamon of his arousal, sloshes over me. I breathe it in, not aware that I am doing it, not until the hard planes of his chest bite into my cheeks. I become aware of digging my nails into his skin, which is streaked from my tears.
My tears.
It’s so intimate. And yet it shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t feel so right when everything else is wrong, so wrong. I shouldn’t be here. With him. In his bed. Enfolded in his arms. Soaking in his warmth. Reveling in that entrancing alpha scent of his, seeking out his touch…his caresses. Him. Only him.
How can I feel so much, in such little time? And for someone completely and utterly wrong for me? My eyelids grow heavy. I try to crack them open, but it’s too much of a struggle. I push against his hold, knowing I should try to break free.
Another soothing purr rumbles over me, and the muscles of my shoulders unwind.
He slides his thigh between mine, but I am too weak to protest. The rough hair of his upper thigh brushes the tender skin between my legs. I was wrong. The feel of his skin on mine is not only pleasurable, it heightens the contrast between what only he can offer and the emptiness swirling inside me. Something like pain skitters down my spine.
I swallow and reach once more for that rumbling that is growing in volume, deepening around me. Pulling at me. Tugging at me. I want to protest, say something. But I feel too weak. Like I have been running, fighting too hard.
The purring changes tenor becomes deeper, resonant. It sparks a response from my nerves which immediately seem to catch fire. I shudder, not sure exactly what he’s doing to me.
If this is what it means to submit, so be it.
He may as well take me when I am half out of my head with grief, with sadness, and an overwhelming desire to be done with whatever it is that an alpha does to an omega. Or not. I’ve heard of it but I’ve never been with a man before. Not because I am a prude, not for my lack of trying, but because for an omega, once you get an alpha to mate you to break the heat cycle, then you can’t stop, not until the heat cycle has run its course. More often than not it results in an omega’s pregnancy.
And I’ve never thought I’d want to bring a child into this world, not until I’d met the right alpha. Which isn’t him.
My muscles tense.
His arms tighten as if he senses my discomfort.
I wriggle in his embrace, pushing against the sculpted planes of his chest.
His breath raises the hair on my head. Another purr builds up from his groin. I am lying on him so I can track exactly the source of that sound, follow it as it shivers up his iron-hard stomach, ripples through his rib cage, vibrates up his throat and then pours out in mellifluous chords that slide into my blood, straight to my core.
My thighs clench.
The soft flesh of my center quivers. A trickle of slick spurts down my inner thigh.
And it is that which brings me to being alert. Awareness tugs at my nerves. It pushes aside the haze of desire that has clogged my mind.
All of his gentleness, his tenderness, it is all a front. It has to be. A way to lull me into comfort, to make me trust, enough to allow my hormones to regroup, my core to relax and ready itself for my alpha. Which he is not; he never will be.
I raise my head, gaze at him through hooded eyelids, then lean down and sink my teeth into his neck.
9
Zeus
Her teeth dig into me, and the shock of it surges down my spine. There’s a primitive satisfaction that she wants to own me, while a part of me cannot believe she took that liberty with me. It is my prerogative as alpha to mark her first.
Mine to own, to claim, to do with her as I want.
I’ve been holding back, and she has taken advantage of that; she has taken the lead in this mating game. More than the physical hurt, it’s my ego that roars in protest at the liberty.
With a roar, I flip her over, pinning her to the bed.
I snag her arms together to pull them up and over her head, shackling her wrists. I want to ask her what she’s trying to prove, but one look in those green eyes, and the words stutter in my mouth. I am not someone with a soft heart, I have no tenderness inside me. I take, that’s what I do, yet one whiff of the fear that vibrates off her, and when I open my mouth all that emerges is a rumbling growl.
Her lips are stained by the blood she drew from me when she bit me.
It’s primal, and so fucking arousing. The evidence that she already marked me, has staked her claim on me, does she realize it? It sends a fierce surge of need pounding through my veins.
My cock twitches and I grind the evidence of my arousal into her soft core—not because I want to show her how turned on I am, though that, too—but it’s more a clear sign to her as to who owns her and that there is no escape from me.
“You fought well, little warrior; you can take comfort in that.”
She bares her teeth, showing gums stained with my blood. “I’m not done yet.” Her green eyes are so large, the pupils so dilated that it’s a clear sign she is nervous, afraid, and also aroused.
“Yes, you are.” Something like tenderness flushes through me. Nah. It can’t be that. Me? Wanting to take care of this omega who tried to kill me? I must be losing my mind, or perhaps I have been too lenient with her. I’ve indulged this wildling for too long. It’s time to show her the kind of pleasures only an alpha can give his omega.