Maddoc smiled at that.
“But it wouldn’t work for me. She practically screamed at me to take her back into the house today.”
“Why?”
Raine suddenly stilled, as though realizing she said something she shouldn’t have and was backed into a corner. “She wanted to know if her betrothed is still alive,” she said finally.
Maddoc growled. Ana was still concerned about him?
“It’s been a lot on her to take in, Maddoc,” Raine said after he’d been growling for a few long moments. “The people she thought were good people have turned out to be the opposite. I understand that she wants to know if—”
Maddoc served her a look that made her stop speaking. All the progress he thought he’d been making with Ana was now in question, all the nights he’d spent apart from her, all the times she’d looked at him without the hatred in her eyes. That had been fucking progress. He didn’t like senseless killing, but finding a way to kill that fucking duke was making a lot of sense right now.
Raine sighed as though she could sense his murderous thoughts and went to rinse out the cloth in the basin. She returned and dabbed it into his shoulder. "The good thing is, if the poison is what I think it is, we have a bit of time," Raine commented. “If it had hit any major organs, we would have needed to do something quickly.” She glanced down at his body. "It’s pretty lucky he got you here. It’s not as though there isn't enough of you to get." She laughed at her own joke, but Maddoc said nothing.
Even a lucky shot was bad if it was poisoned. He trusted Raine to patch him up and even trusted her analysis, but it might really need their healer to return to be on the cautious—
A presence in the tent made him tense. He looked over at the entrance, and at the same time, the most wonderful scent reached him, beautifully raw and so erotically sweet it made his cock hard instantly. Ana was here.
She stood just inside the entrance, her jaw clenched, glaring at both Maddoc and Raine.
"Analisa." He was about to order her back to the pavilion, but something shining in her eyes and a slight heady bitterness in her scent made him stop. He frowned at her, noticing that her gaze was locked onto Raine. Glancing at Raine, he saw she already had her palms up and was backing away from the table slowly. The women’s gazes were locked onto each other.
He glanced back to examine Ana and realized she was furious. The hardness of her gaze suggested she wanted to rip Raine to pieces—but what had Raine done? She hadn’t mentioned anything happening when she escorted her.
"What is it, Analisa? he asked. She didn't answer.
As Ana came farther into the tent, the more Raine slowly backed away, and Ana’s scent was so powerful, it swamped the tent. The power of bitterness within it, the aggression that dominated it, shocked Maddoc. His sweet Ana, mild and unassuming, was bitterly angry about something that involved Raine.
And as she reached the table, Raine reached the back entrance of the tent and quietly slipped out.
Maddoc reached for Ana's cheek to console her now that Raine was gone, but the aggression had not left Ana's face or scent. She began to undress, shocking Maddoc to the core.
"What are you doing, Analisa?” he asked, his voice hoarse. If she undressed right now, revealing that incredible body of hers, he wasn’t sure he could keep to his rule. His cock had been jerking wildly from the moment she stepped in.
But it seemed he didn’t have a choice.
Ana climbed on top of him, naked. Maddoc’s mouth watered at the sight. He rumbled with pleasure at seeing her climbing up his form, and he reached out with his good arm to squeeze her breasts.
But Ana did not stop climbing. Scooting up to his chest, and then farther up, she straddled his head, positioning her pussy over his mouth.
Maddoc groaned as her scent enveloped him. He never thought she could smell any better, but this rich, luxurious aroma was beyond any experience of her he’d had. He undid his pants to give his cock relief and then grabbed her hips and pulled her pussy down onto his mouth, suckling on her lips and her clit and licking everything he could reach. But then she moved again.
Wriggling on top of him while he tried to tongue her, she moved farther up and he took the opportunity to bite her ass cheeks and wriggled his tongue over each perfect round cheek and everything he could reach. Ana wriggled her hips above him in the sexiest way, and he couldn’t help but groan, then she wriggled back down to his mouth where he latched onto her clit and began to work it gently with his mouth. The moans coming from her throat made his cock leak, but nothing prepared him for the sight of her above him, her swaying breasts, the bliss of surrender on her face coupled with a fierceness in her eyes that made him want to fuck her raw. She gripped his hair as she rode his mouth, her hips writhing and jerking as she sought her release.
Maddoc had never seen anything sexier. He loved dominating Ana, truly brutally using her body and feeling her accept him the way that he knew she loved, but something about this drew on an instinctual need that satisfied him more. He couldn’t understand it yet, but right now, he didn’t need to.
Her climax wrecked her body, jerking her hips harder against him, blasting screams from her throat, and spasming her right leg. She dug her hands into his scalp as her pussy gushed its succulent sweet release, and when her clit’s throbbing on his tongue began to wane, she moved off his mouth and wriggled downward. Her knee pressed close to the wound on his shoulder, but he ignored the pain as he watched his Omega scoot down his chest to get more of what she needed. A trail of her fluids smeared his chest, and suddenly he realized what she was doing.
His Omega had been claiming him in the most animalistic way. She’d rubbed her pussy all over his face and his chest to mark him with her most intimate of fluids to warn off other women—namely Raine.
He didn’t know why she thought Raine was a threat—he would have laughed out loud if he wasn’t so intensely aroused.
Ana might not be talking to him, she might fight him and resist their attraction, and even deny everything he says, but her most basic instincts told her to take steps to claim him in a way that he could never have anticipated. And when she sank herself onto his cock, her tight, wet channel drawing him in so beautifully, there was nothing that could stop him from lifting off the bed and fucking her the way she deserved.
Their mating was loud and rough and raw, the grunts, panting, and yells from both of them filling the entire tent as she rode him on her toes, her slick squirting all over him, the bed, the floor as she took his cock. Maddoc squeezed her neck with one hand, and grabbed her hip with the other, fucking her down onto him with all the force he could manage. When her back arched, he flicked her nipple with his tongue, and nibbled and bit until her guttural moans were yelps. She braced herself with a hand on his wounded shoulder, her nails digging into the wounded muscle.
The pain had no impact on the savagery of their mating. Both of them instinctively understanding the need for all potential threats to be eliminated. For Maddoc, a kindling of hope bloomed in his chest that Ana would come around to understanding what they mean to each other. He had never heard of Omegas doing anything like what she had done, but it was clear why she did it. The entire tent now smelled of her, of them, and no scent of Raine remained. And he was getting the fuck of his life.