Chapter 26 #2
I picked her up and laid her down on the stone floor, pinning her in place by her stomach and driving my fingers into her again.
She was overstimulated, each shift of my fingers, or tongue against her clit making her shudder and whine, and I thought her grip on my hair was to get me to stop, not pushing me on.
I told myself this was the control I had. The punishment after she’d kept me up, demanding a gift. But it was possible I simply needed this. Needed to hear her desperate whimpers and feel the way her thighs clenched around my head, both overstimulated and unable to stop arching into me all at once.
It was possible there was nothing complicated about this at all—that seeing her body cave for me even as she begged me to stop, was a shot of ecstasy in its own right.
I revelled as her thighs trapped my head, her breath of pleasure lighting every instinct like it was a drug. Her relief flooded me, a cool balm to a thousand burns, a cruel fix as I was forced to worship the woman who’d chained me.
But I was parched and she was life.
When she came apart this time, body giving out, sensation so overwhelming that she didn’t know if she needed to fight, or cave, it was a rush of adrenaline I’d never felt before.
She was left panting—breath drowning out the crickets chirping in the night, dazed, even through the bond.
I don’t know what came over me. Her eyes were glassy and dazed, the moonlight bathed her skin, and I lost myself.
She didn’t stop me, expression vulnerable as I took her in. Her usually messy buns were now catastrophic, almost all her hair loose and splayed across the stone. Her pale skin across her slender frame bathed in moonlight. Her small breasts rose and fell with her breaths.
It wasn’t enough. After so many years, this just wasn’t fucking enough.
I drew back, cupping her waist in my hand, then lowered my mouth down to her arm, teeth digging into her flesh.
She let out a low whine, but I didn’t stop. When I drew back, I took her in once more, my own chest heaving.
Again.
I made myself pause, trying to blink away this haze—this fervor, but suddenly her fingers were lacing through my hair, violet eyes furious. She didn’t want me to end this anymore than I wanted to.
So, I didn’t.
The sheer fabric of her nightclothes tore easily beneath my teeth.
My fingers ran up her flesh, brushing her nipples, and my teeth dragged along her soft breasts.
Again, I left a mark, pulse careening through my veins.
The world was a haze of blood and pale flesh, of her little mewls and violet eyes, fierce and overjoyed even as they glittered with the remnants of tears just gone.
This was the Omega who’d haunted my dreams for years—who’d carved out a space I’d sworn no one could have, and all that time, I’d denied myself this.
I cupped her waist, arching her against me, teeth finding flesh again.
My Omega.
The tang of iron on my tongue tangled with the taste of her release, the brilliant scent of a lightning storm that drowned out the cool scent of a midnight desert around us.
The passage of time was strange in this fervour, and I didn’t know if it was the heat bonded madness, or a madness I’d inflicted upon myself. But I knew, now I’d crossed this bridge, how deeply this denial had mutilated me. Now I allowed it, a thousand scabbed scars showed themselves.
When I leaned back at last, she looked sad, and scrambled to her knees after me.
Next thing I knew she’d reached up, cupping my cheek and dragging me into a deeper kiss than we’d ever shared.
I fisted her hair, not wanting it to end, and when it did, she was out of breath, flecks of crimson spotting her pretty lips.
Finding the old train of thought that had deserted me the moment I’d dropped to my knees, I reached into my pocket.
I pulled out the bracelet I’d withdrawn from the safe in my mansion. It was the most important thing I’d returned for. It had been a gift from my grandfather to his scent match.
It wasn’t something I’d given Thistle before now because I had convinced myself it wasn’t needed. She’d always been under my watch and protection.
But the reality was, I’d never wanted to legitimise this bond.
I turned my free hand palm up, waiting. She narrowed her eyes, taking in what I held, then placed her palm in mine.
“Power isn’t made of anything but belief, Omega. Tomorrow, you will take up space with enough confidence that no one dares question you.”
The bracelet was custom made, each of the gems embedded with a trigger. Press the smoother side down, the sharper edge against the skin, and it would inject its poison.
Blue made the wearer venomous, so a bite from her would paralyse the strongest attacker.
Red was the reverse—it would make her blood poison to any Alpha that tried to bite or bond her.
Pink created a false death, slowing the heartbeat until it was all but undetectable, and black and pearlescent were a true, deadly poison for a painless death, and its antidote.
She stared, one final wave of shock flooding the bond as she realised I was giving her a gift.
She picked it up carefully, scent marking it before slipping it onto her wrist beside the slender cuffs Knox had given her.
Pride swelled in my chest as I saw it on her—protection passed down from my family now resting upon her body.
“I don’t lose,” I told her. “Not to anyone. Not ever.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“What it means, Omega…” I tilted her head so she couldn’t look away from me. “You can never lose to anyone ever again, because I refuse to belong to anyone less than a queen.”