Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
brIGID
Torion's breaths were rough against my cheek, a contrast to the sleek roll of his hips, the fluid stroke of his fingers between my legs as I trembled in the cradle of his body.
The loft was too high for Torion to lay between my thighs without scraping his wings against the beams of the ceiling, so at night we found each other on our sides, my leg over his hip as we kissed, or like this with him curled around my back.
It forced us to be slow and patient with our pleasure, made urgent need turn tender and gentle.
Torion's pinky finger stroked against the scar on my inner thigh, and my breath hitched at the strange response, the way the small touch pulsed like fire in my blood. I shook, nearing the edge, clawing at Torion's hand as he slowed his rocking.
"Please." My voice was harsh, but I melted as his mouth found the pulse of my throat, kissing and sucking softly.
"I can't believe I bit you," he said, chuckling, fingers abandoning their post on my throbbing sex to walk over to the mark he'd left on me during the rut. "Well, I suppose I can. I am always ravenous for you."
He had stopped moving, his hard cock resting peacefully inside of me, and he was only tracing circles around the bite mark. There was no earthly reason why such a simple touch ought to drive me so mad, make me so feverish, so—
I cried out as he pressed into the scar, my core clamping down in a sudden and shocking orgasm.
I covered my face with one hand, squeezed my fingers over his until he was digging into the scar, and came with a release that seemed to go on and on in waves of heat and sweetness.
By the time I settled, Torion's arm was wrapped around me and he was thrusting, sheathing himself deeply, purring and growling into my ear.
"Witch," he rasped, and I shuddered once more, gentling my grip on his hand and moving it away from the baffling scar and back to my swollen lips and pulsing clit. "Yes, that's it. Again for me, darling Brigid."
I whined and twisted, and Torion read my mind as he always seemed to in these moments, his mouth slanting over mine, tongue thrusting in time with his cock, quick to swallow my whimpers and cries.
We'd already reached for one another twice in this night, although the first time I'd pushed him down to the rug by the fire and taken him with a rough quickness that left us both winded.
He would have to return to the keep in the morning.
We'd spent the day flying to the nearest village and shopping together.
I'd greeted familiar faces not as the local woods witch or healer, whatever they called me, but as the alpha's omega.
Still, I'd given my instructions to find me at the cottage, or the keep if I was not at home, ignoring the puzzled expressions I'd received in response.
It had felt like a kind of defiance, although the effect was lessened by Torion's easy manner at my side.
"I want you back at the keep," he'd said as we'd walked slowly back to the cottage, shrugging and meeting my gaze. "But if you want to be here, I will make time to come to you."
In an absolutely contrary fashion, it had been on the tip of my tongue to declare that I would return to the keep with him. I'd swallowed the impulse, stubbornly clinging to the cottage, to my solitude, to bitterness.
"Brigid," Torion gasped, mouth gaping over mine as he panted. "Oh, come with me. Come with me again."
The words would've been an empty plea if not for how well Torion knew my body.
He claimed my breast in his hand, molding and gripping and pinching, orchestrating my climbing pleasure, a finger tucking inside my body to stretch me for his knot as two others rubbed urgently over my clit.
He planted himself inside me as I came with a wail and a brief thrash of my body, arching my breast into his rough grip and trying to skirt my hips away from the touch that tortured and teased me so effectively.
Torion released me, circling me in his arms, lodging his knot deep and rubbing it inside of me to extend my ecstasy for endless divine minutes until we were both wrung dry and limp, too tired to sway and work our bodies against the pleasure.
It pulsed as we caught our breath, shuddering in time with gasps and sighs until we settled, joined and sweaty and wonderfully weary.
I opened my mouth to speak, something silly and meaningless, just a word or two that he might answer so I could hear his voice again, but he beat me to the impulse.
"Rest for now," he whispered, brushing kisses over my ear and temple and jaw, against the corner of my mouth. "I already know I will need you again tonight."
I snorted, sleepy and pleased at the promise. "You can't be in rut again."
"It doesn't take an alpha's rut to make me want you, witch," Torion answered darkly. "I have to sustain myself to leave on the morrow."
My breath hitched, and I turned my face into my pillow to keep myself from pleading for him to stay.
The days dragged by after Torion's departure.
My regular visitors returned, but the hours seemed to triple in length whether I was alone or working.
Still, I stubbornly refused to face the solution.
I had lived in this cottage for five years, taken on the mantle of the wise woman in the woods.
Surrendering the title felt as if I was pretending those years had never had any value, when they had made me a truer version of myself.
Gone was the girl who sought only to please the prominent man in her life, first her father and then her beta.
It's Torion who seeks to please you, a sly voice murmured in my thoughts as I returned to the cottage carrying a train of willow reeds to make a new basket. The words slithered through my head, a restless body turning and resettling, waiting.
"For now," I muttered to myself, rounding the corner and stopping in place at the sight of the carriage waiting in front of my cottage, recognizing the crest on the door as the strong Feargus oak.
My heart leapt into my throat, a smile growing on my face at the thought that Torion had returned so soon, until I noticed the driver still waiting atop the carriage bench.
Perhaps I was being called back to the keep?
Even that wasn't so much a disappointment, for reasons I didn't care to examine in the moment.
A soft murmur of feminine voices reached my ear from inside the cottage, and I paused for a moment, trying to catch words or tone, before placing my willow reeds aside.
I brushed the debris from my skirts and headed for the door.
The driver, a man I recognized from visiting Torion at the keep stables, spotted me and offered a respectful half bow from his seat.
"Ah, there you are, milady," Maggie offered me in an uncharacteristically formal tone.
It took me a moment of squinting to make out her company, and when I did, I wished I'd spent a little longer righting my appearance.
The other woman was impeccably dressed and appeared to be of middle age.
She was tall enough that she would have to duck to avoid hitting the low beams that held up my loft.
"May I introduce Mistress Baird. She's the best dressmaker in Cambelton," Maggie continued. "Omega Feargus."
Mistress Baird made a point to give the general surroundings of the cottage a derisive sweep of her gaze before landing on me and delivering an appropriate curtsey. "Omega Feargus. What a…rustic hideaway you have for yourself."
I took a moment to swallow all my stammering confusion, drawing myself up a little straighter. "It suits my purposes when I am alone. I apologize if you've been waiting. I was unaware of any appointment."
Maggie blushed slightly, but she too seemed to be doing her best to appear dignified and composed in front of Mistress Baird. The woman had more of the air of a stern school marm than solicitous dressmaker.
"I took the liberty of arranging it for you, milady," Maggie murmured. "As you were kept so busy before taking your retreat."
I wanted to take Maggie aside and quiz her on what precisely she thought she was doing, arranging me appointments for new clothing, but Mistress Baird's presence was both oppressive and impatient. Better to get the thing done.
"Industrious of you, Maggie. Very well, how should we begin?" I asked the dressmaker.
Mistress Baird perked up at that, snapping a tape measurer between her hands, and the next hour was spent with simple, efficient questions.
What fabrics did I like? What cut of collars did I prefer, high or low?
No, she would make the best choices of colors for me now that she'd seen me. Simple or adorned?
She would never have said so, but I thought perhaps our estimation of each other was repaired by the end of the appointment. I appreciated her directness and what choices she was willing to afford, and I suspected she appreciated that I had quick and ready opinions for each of her questions.
"There will need to be final fittings. Am I to return here, or will I be attending you at the alpha's keep?" Mistress Baird asked.
It only stung a little that she'd referred to it as the alpha's and not mine as well.
"The keep," Maggie was quick to answer, and I did not feel remotely inclined to correct her.
Mistress Baird seemed pleased by this too. No doubt when Maggie had secured her for the work, she'd expected better than to be transported to my little ramshackle cottage.
"I'll await you in the carriage," the dressmaker said, before offering me a deeper curtsey than before and taking her leave.
Maggie and I both waited for my door to swing shut before releasing long sighs.
I slanted her a glare out of the corner of my eye. "What on earth was that for, Mags?"
She crossed her bony arms over her chest and jutted her chin out at me, and I had to stifle the urge to smile. I'd missed Maggie over the past week and a half. "Did you think you'd just carry on being the alpha's omega while dressed in pauper's rags?" Maggie asked, sharp tongued and red cheeked.
My eyes widened. "I didn't realize you had such an opinion."
"I didn't. Not at first, at least. But you had plenty of time to do better, and you never did, and then you took haring off back to this—this—"
"Hideaway?" I suggested, liking the term Mistress Baird had used, even if it did make me sound like a coward.
"Humph," Maggie replied.
"You're right, of course," I said, and smiled at Maggie's flustered huff. "Were the staff gossiping about me?"
Maggie looked down at the floor, her arms dropping so her fingers could tangle and twist. "A bit," she said softly, in such a way as to make it clear that the staff certainly was, and it wasn't just them.
"I see," I said, trying to ignore the nervous flutter in my belly, the warning ring in my ears that I was making some kind of mistake.
Maggie looked up, her lips pressed grimly together for a moment before she took a breath and spoke. "You're going to have to buck up your courage, milady. He'll need you soon enough, and I know no matter what else, you won't want to let him down."
My face flushed with heat as Maggie reached out and caught my limp hands and squeezed them once before releasing me and heading for my door.
"Thank you, Maggie. I appreciate your candor," I managed, and she offered me a grim smile before taking her leave.
She's right, I thought, but it didn't sound quite like my own voice. And it felt a bit like a stranger had just called me a coward.