Chapter 2
“I’m going to give you so much more than a knot…
everything you need.” Jules purred over her lips, as sodden fabric dragged against her wet, weeping flesh.
The firm, ridged outline of his dick split her swollen labia apart to froth her juices, fat cock just out of reach.
“I’ll show you why Alphas really keep Omega females away from Beta men.
Why their dynamic needs a pair-bond to keep mates, and men like me don’t. ”
Mind spinning, Brenya reeled, as another slow graze of his clothed length moved against her center, the fabric slimed with her slick. Something caught on her swollen clit, and perfect thrill had her gasping into his neck.
She choked on his name, voice breaking. “Jules.”
“I don’t need an Alpha growl to make you wet.” The Beta rolled the sweetness of temptation over his tongue, accent like silk as it toyed with each syllable. “I don’t need a knot to give you more pleasure than you can handle.”
Should Brenya ever comprehend how much sadistic pleasure Jules gleaned from watching his delicate bride writhe on his hook—the thrill it gave him to see how beautifully she was caught between eager hope and heartbreaking need, her sad humiliation and unmet carnal craving glittering in spilled tears—it would frighten her.
…just as he had frightened Rebecca long ago.
Scaring his sweet bride was not his goal; enticing her was. Hovering his lips a hairsbreadth from hers, Jules gripped handfuls of her ass and guided her desperate little body along the rigid line of his cock as he whispered, “I’ll fill you up so full there won’t be any room left for him.”
For Jacques.
The Alpha who had taught her males elicit obedience through fear and pain. And she was in pain, her little pelvis locked up with cramps that had her back bowing and her legs shaking when muscles refused to relax.
“You are so much braver than you give yourself credit for.” Undulating in a filthy grind between her open thighs, Jules ground the thick ridge of his cock against her cunt, the wool of his trousers scraping over slick flesh until Brenya began to hyperventilate.
“With only a cog clutched in your little hand, naked, you stole my ship and escaped a tyrant. You climbed into the bowels of this palace to find me—me—in a cell to set me free. To save your people. Knowing what I am. So take what you need from your mate, brave girl. Take everything.”
He seeped inside her, a warm rush of him under her skin, in the simmering air around her.
Jules’s thoughts threaded through hers like tendrils of sweet poison, coiling tighter with every breath.
The slow drag pulled her deeper into his writhing pit of horrors, his demons delicately scraping through her mind, tasting her thoughts, licking at every frightened little shiver as she rocked her hips for more.
Somewhere above, beyond the crushing weight of his psyche, Jacques howled. But it barely reached her ears.
Her heart began to race. Her vision collapsed to a single, burning point.
“Gods—” The word caught in her throat when he reached between them and peeled back the hood from her clit, baring the bundle of nerves fully, to grind her against him again.
Gods, don’t! That was what she wanted to scream, but the word “Yes!” rang from her lips instead. Loud, broken, undeniable. Because the fabric of his pants scraped her enflamed clitoris… the sensation brighter than the endless cramp in her guts.
He began to open her shirt, working the buttons one by one with the practiced ease of a man who knew exactly what she needed.
Sweat-damp fabric parted, Jules peeling it back to expose the flushed swells of her breasts.
Closing his hand around her flesh, he kneaded her breast with perfect, tantalizing pressure.
Thumbing her nipple. Not too rough, not too gentle.
Until she arched into his palm and was rewarded with a tweak of her sensitive peak.
The seduction of a virgin.
Who’d had sex but didn’t know what it meant.
Long denied her birthright of pleasure.
He’d get her so drunk on him she’d crawl back again and again, without understanding why… until it was far too late for her to ever regret.
Even now, her breath came in shallow whines… no rhythm, just noise. Music blending with the slick squelch each time he shifted her hips. Her stomach gurgling faintly, womb starved from weeks of neglect.
“That’s it.” Jules knew affection must be cultivated by precision. Brick by brick, experience by experience, so mistakes of the past could not be repeated. “Stay with me. I’m the one you need. The one you’ll love.”
And it was love Jules would have of Brenya Havel.
Not a romanticized fascination with a misunderstood terrorist who was going to fuck her brains out, but actual love with the very real monster he was.
Rebecca had been fond of him in her way.
But ultimately, she’d wondered what life might be like in an Alpha-Omega “natural state,” doubted, and slipped.
One flirtatious pass at Senator Kantor had led to her ruin.
To the murder of their sons. And perhaps was the catalyst that ultimately brought down Thólos Dome.
If Jules had never been thrown into the Undercroft, he would never have found Shepherd. If Shepherd had never found Jules…
Thólos Dome would still stand.
Shepherd may have been the figurehead Followers worshiped, but many of the deeper cruelties Thólos had suffered? Those had been painstakingly crafted in Jules’s imagination and enacted by his order.
When it came to calculation, very few matched his genius. Only Shepherd matched his ruthlessness.
And Jules had ruthlessly watched Jacques fuck Brenya for hours while he’d been trapped in a prison cell.
Catalogued her responses to Jacques’s aggression with surgical interest. After taking Bernard Dome for himself, he’d gone through months’ worth of video surveillance recorded by an Alpha who compulsively filmed every interaction with his damaged mate.
The Alpha’s narcissism was a pure gift.
When Jacques had raped her, Jules noted the seconds it took Brenya to stop crying, the minutes for a modicum of recovery. The breath patterns when she dissociated. The exact pitch of her moan when her body climaxed without consent.
Data. A map of where to touch, how to speak, when to withdraw.
He would use that information—every twitch, every tear, every whispered plea she’d made to the wrong man. Nothing would be wasted in transforming pain into passion. Give her pleasure so exact, so overwhelming, her body would unlearn agony… until it craved what it once feared.
If she had only known that what he had been watching on his COMscreen when she stole her glances of him across the room….
“The moment I saw you—” He dared brush his lips over hers, sweeping his velvet tongue into her mouth as if to tempt her to play.
“—you have a phrase for it in French. Le coup de foudre. A lightning strike.” His voice softened, purr calibrated for maximum effect.
“And when I caught you pulling my ship apart, repairing it for simple fun… it was the only time in my life that I wished I’d been a different man. ”
That first true kiss, Jules pressed it upon her mouth with a tenderness Jacques had never shown her. Gentle, lingering, his strength enveloping a female braced as if he might hurt her. One who went astonishingly liquid the moment he began to really tease her tongue with his.
Her hand, once clutching desperately, nails embedded in his skin, pulled from where little moon-shaped cuts decorated the back of his neck to slide down his chest, feeling his heartbeat.
Unknowingly resting right where their bond had forever carved itself into him.
“Mmm,” she groaned against his mouth, surprised by the satin pleasure softening the muscles twisting her spine. The relief was exquisite. Like breaking the surface after nearly drowning.
She could breathe again.
Tongue hesitantly meeting his, Brenya parted her lips further.
When he finally deepened the kiss, it wasn’t with force but with deliberate intention.
Each stroke of his tongue against hers heightened her senses.
Urged her to gasp into his mouth as his touch became real and the phantom cramping in her womb—Jacques’s rage manifested as physical torture—began dissolving.
The influence of the Alpha flickered like a dying candle flame, pushing him to the periphery, as Jules stole her breath.
Male fingers worked magic at her breast, kneading flesh, thumbing her nipple with precise pressure. Not too rough, not too gentle. Perfect circles that made her arch into his palm, whimpering when he pinched the sensitive peak between thumb and forefinger.
A pinch that sparked a heartbeat between her legs, not the grinding agony of endless, empty orgasm.
“More,” she whispered against his lips, surprised by her own boldness.
And he gave it.
The bond, their bond, thrummed between them. Not carving out her insides as Jacques had done, but a conduit for pleasure, filling her with emptiness in which she had room to be.
Moving her body against his with newfound hunger, Brenya’s body awakened to something unimaginable.
She kissed him back with desperation, because she wanted to.
Tasting him, with tentative little licks.
Then growing bolder, intoxicated, meeting the wet heat of his tongue in a dance that made her dizzy.
She moaned into his mouth, the sound raw and unfiltered. Her pebbled nipple throbbing at his touch, her other breast swollen and neglected.
Ending the kiss on his terms, Jules dragged her lower lip between his teeth before easing back just enough to see her eyes when he said it. “I love seeing you dressed in my clothes.”