Eighteen
“ I hope you know calling me into your study like I’m a child who is in trouble isn’t going to make me any less angry with you,” I told Edison as I stood in front of my desk, my hands clasped in front of me as I tried to look anywhere but at the golden eyes that were staring me down.
“And I wouldn’t have to call you into my study if you hadn’t spent the past five days ignoring my very existence, Perrie.”
“I’m not ignoring your existence,” I insisted with a lie.
At least not entirely, I muttered in my head as Edison scoffed.
I’d still show up for every meal that was required of me, answer whatever questions he asked as quickly as possible, and then go about my days of lessons at home, classes at the university, and my own life.
Because apparently the sick little romantic inside of me had gotten ahead of herself the night of our wedding and I needed to pull her ass back down to earth.
That had been the conclusion I’d come to the day of my appointment when it had been just Rhodes going with me—Rhodes who I was pretty sure didn’t even like me very much.
“Then why won’t you look me in the eye, pet?”
“I’m not your pet.” The words slipped out of me before I could stop them.
There was a heavy pause and I could hear Edison shifting in the massive leather desk chair he’d been sitting in since I was summoned into his office while I was taking pictures in the garden.
“I see…” Edison almost sounded hurt, but I pushed that thought away. Edison Keane would never be hurt by silly words like that. “Is this really about me not calling you while I was away?”
The way he said it made it sound so juvenile and I very nearly denied it, not wanting to look any younger than I already was in my husband’s eyes. But then I thought about hearing Rhodes finishing up their nightly phone calls after dinner, or asking Oona every morning if she thought he would be home only to have the elderly housekeeper shake her head.
Marrying Edison wasn’t my first choice, but I’d been under the silly, overly-romantic notion that I could make it work. That we could make it work.
And that he would come back in and sweep me off to my room and finish what he’d started. What I’d been dreaming so vividly about nearly every night.
But when Edison did come back he swept into the dining room like no time had passed at all. Jovially joking with Rhodes and as I sat there I felt, for the first time since they’d brought me to the Keane estate, like I was on the outside looking in.
Boy did that fuck me up.
So I made the decision that night to pack any and all emotions about Edison into a tiny little box in my mind and do what I came here to do: live a relatively comfortable life, go to school, and eventually birth a dark-haired, golden-eyed little boy that would be just as detached and aloof as his father.
I made it through five days of that before Edison lost our game of mental chicken and finally had Rhodes bring me to his study.
“So what if it is? Would that make you feel sorry?” It wasn’t just about the phone calls, but how was I supposed to verbalize my growing discontent now that I’d gotten almost everything I wanted.
I was going to school, and while I loved the classes, Kailey was still the only person who approached me and I didn’t have the social skills, nor the ability to seek out new friends.
Rhodes had calmed down a bit as we settled into a routine, but people still avoided him like he was the plague and I was his first infected. He was a predator by every sense of the word and I knew that the regular people that went to classes every day could sense it, even if it didn’t bother me so much anymore.
I was an outsider there, and at dinner the night I returned I realized that I was one here too and it hurt like a bitch.
It shouldn’t have. I was used to it. Even growing up I’d been my parent’s disappointment, the accessory, the bargaining chip, but never their daughter the way that Romey was their son.
“Yes it would,” Edison said, surprising me enough to make me look up and meet his golden gaze.
A dry huff left me. “You’re lying. You’ve never been sorry a day in your life.”
His lips pulled up into a wry grin and I realized that he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his dark stubble filled with bits of gray, was growing along his jaw. Not only that, his suit was more disheveled than I’d ever seen it before. Even on the night he returned not a hair had been out of place.
“Why do you look like that?” I blurted and watched as his eyes widened.
Then he was standing and rounding the desk and the motion brought a wave of vanilla scent into my nose, the scent that I’d been forcing myself to ignore in the halls whenever I caught it in the air.
“Well, my wife is angry with me, so it’s a bit hard to focus on personal grooming when I’m trying to figure out how to get back into her good graces.”
Edison reached for my hands and I had half a mind to yank them out of his reach, but the inner omega that was supposed to sit in the back of my mind and behave was hopping up and down like a puppy dog at the thought of being touched by the alpha in front of me.
My alpha , my brain purred with pleasure as he took my hands into his and the warmth of his skin began to seep into mine.
“I am sorry, Perrie, I didn’t think you’d care about me being gone so long with your classes and everything going on. Most people wouldn’t.”
I frowned as I read between the lines of his words. They were almost self-deprecating, which was surprising considering Edison Keane had never stricken me as the kind of man to have any insecurities at all.
“Why wouldn’t I care? I’m your wife,” I told him, giving his hands what I hoped was a comforting squeeze. “For better or for worse, right? It might be a contract, but I take my promises very seriously.”
Not to mention the sheer level of craving I felt for him at night when I had nothing else to do but to obsess over our interrupted wedding night.
I told myself so many times that I wouldn’t start to have feelings for Edison, that it was a one-way ticket to getting my heart broken because Edison clearly didn’t have the time or mental capacity for romance. It was clear that his relationship with Rhodes had been stalled because both of the men couldn’t admit to each other that it was more than just a necessity. That it was love.
Even thinking back to before Edison had revealed the true nature of their partnership on the day of our wedding, I could tell that they were dancing around each other like a pair of stubborn moths.
So, with all that mess, it was better for me to put walls up and protect myself. To do the bare minimum of what I needed to do as Edison’s wife.
That meant not falling in love with the ridiculously handsome, far too perfect man.
But even as I thought it, I watched Edison’s expression soften at my words into something almost tender and my resolve started to crumble.
“You can just say you missed me and that you’re happy to have me home,” he teased, bringing his face close so I was forced to look him square in the eyes. “And that you just really wanted to finish what we started the other night.”
My heart seemed to leap into my throat as I stared at him, my eyes tracing a path from his eyes, along the straight bridge of his nose, and down to his lips which were parting into a smile.
“No, I wouldn’t say that…” I began slowly, trying to maintain at least a little bit of my dignity. I’d planned to come in here, fight with Edison, and then go back into my room and pout for the rest of the night.
Edison was really trying to make that hard, though as he brought our still joined hands up to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to my fingers.
“No? You didn’t miss me? Or that you don’t want me to touch you again until I make your screams bounce off of the walls of this study?”
My face warmed at his words, my mind going fuzzy as he pressed a kiss to my forehead, then to both of my cheeks, before hovering over my lips as he waited for me to speak.
“Promise me one thing,” I started, my shoulders drooping in surrender.
Gold eyes flashed with triumph. “Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll call next time your scary mafia job pulls you away? Every day like you do with Rhodes.”
I wasn’t on the same level to Edison as Rhodes was—they’d been together for decades—but I also didn’t want to be left out of things. I didn’t want to be on the outside looking in anymore.
“Deal,” Edison promised easily, his lips descending on mine.
It was everything that I’d been waiting for over the past two weeks, the brush of his tongue, the overwhelming push of his vanilla scent, his hands letting mine go to grip my hips as he pulled me flush to his body.
The only difference? All of the dreams about Edison’s kisses and his touches had left me feeling frustrated when I woke up, but this was reality and I had a feeling there would be no frustration by the end of it.
Edison’s grip on my hips tightened and suddenly I was being dragged up into his arms as he walked backwards to his desk.
“Wait—” I protested around his hungry mouth. “Aren’t we going back to my room?”
Edison huffed a laugh and shook his head. “I’m not giving you a chance to change your mind, pet. No way.”
Sitting me on the edge of the desk he leaned around me and swept all of the things on his desk onto the floor with a loud crash.
“You’re breaking things, Edison!” I gasped, starting to turn so that I could assess the damage.
“Doesn’t matter, I can buy new things,” Edison growled, his lips crushing mine again as he gently parted my knees and stepped in between them. I’d been so preoccupied with my anger with the alpha in front of me when I walked in that I hadn’t paid much attention to what was on the desk, but knowing Edison I knew that it was probably expensive.
“Edison—” I began, fully intending to convince him to go back to my room, or his room, or any room really, but Edison’s fingers were already reaching for the button of my denim shorts.
“You’ve been gallivanting around the house all day like this?” he asked as he slid his other hand up my bare leg until his fingers reached the edge of the shorts and gave them a gentle tug, pulling them down my waist.
“And at school,” I murmured, yelping when he growled and yanked the shorts the rest of the way off of me, pulling me nearly to the edge of the desk as he tossed them into the corner of the room.
“You wore these to school? So that all of those post-pubescent horndogs could look at your ass and legs all day?” Edison’s fingers tightened on the flesh of my thighs as he stood in between them again. “And Rhodes didn’t stop you?”
“It was hot,” I told him with a shrug, a thread of excitement filling me at his jealous reaction. “And Rhodes didn’t seem to mind.”
That was a lie. He’d told me to go change and I’d simply refused, telling him to explain to me what about my shorts was so inappropriate. They weren’t any shorter than what I’d seen the other girls wearing—in fact mine probably covered more skin than theirs. We’d stared at each other for a long time before he finally gave in and opened the door to the car for me and let me go to school.
“I’m going to have to have words with him later,” Edison rumbled. “You are only allowed to wear these shorts at home—hell—you’re only allowed to wear them in front of me from now on.”
“And I don’t like being told what to do.” My words came out petulant.
Edison’s pinched expression smoothed out into something suddenly smug as his lips twitched up into a grin and he pressed further between my legs until my core was pressed against the lump in his pants, only two layers of fabric separating us. “Pet, I’m afraid you may have to get used to it. I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but the man you’ve married is very bossy.”
My mind was still on the sudden press of our lower halves and I barely noticed the alpha’s huff of laughter before his face was crowding in on mine and he was kissing me again.
This kiss was long and slow, a languid dance of tongues as his hips ground into mine, stoking the heat that had been bunched up in my belly ever since he first kissed me a few minutes ago.
“Besides,” Edison said, his voice tinged by heavy breathing when we finally broke apart. “I think you’ll like doing what I ask of you.”
A shiver of anticipation rippled through me as Edison tugged on the hem of my shirt and gestured for me to lift my arms so he could pull it over my head.
Before, on our wedding night, I’d still been completely dressed aside from the panties he’d pulled off.
But now I sat in front of him in just my soaked panties and a bralette that was doing little to hide the outline of my stiff nipples from Edison’s golden-eyed gaze.
Reaching up, I tried to cover them with a hand which he quickly grabbed and pulled away. “Don’t ever hide from me, omega.”
Edison had called me a lot of things, Peregrine, Perrie, pet, and wife, but he’d never called me omega before.
It tickled something deep inside of my mind, like something ancient in my biology was finally clicking into place. My doctors always told me that my omega designation would recover last—that once my body was fully healthy I would be just like every other omega in the world.
And they were right, my sense of smell, the urge to nest, the need to seek comfort in others, and the rest of what made an omega an omega started to emerge within months of finishing my last round of chemo.
Yet even with all of that, I still didn’t feel like an omega. It felt a bit like I was a beta running around masquerading as one and that one day Edison would realize that I was a fake and turn me out for failing to meet his expectations.
Now he called me an omega, making me realize he’d never seen me as anything different.
Shaking off his hand that was keeping me from covering myself, I reached up and cupped his face in both of my hands and pulled him in for another fervent kiss.
The kiss must have surprised him, because Edison froze for a moment, his hands fisting on either side of me as I gave his bottom lip a gentle nip.
“Alpha?” I was just testing the word, curious about how it would feel coming from my lips.
Edison began to vibrate in a rattling purr, the first one I’d ever heard from the alpha. The noise washed over me like warm water and I nearly moaned as each of my muscles seemed to melt under the sound.
Then Edison pressed a hand into my stomach and gave me a gentle shove backwards. The desk was cool against the bare skin of my back and I had to reach up to pull the plastic claw clip out of my hair so that I could put my head flat on the surface.
“There’s no stopping tonight, pet,” Edison said as he tugged his tie off and shrugged out of the suit jacket he was wearing.
I swallowed. “I know.”
“No crisis to get in the way.” The buttons on his crisp dress shirt popped off, raining down around me as he pulled it off and stood in front of me in just his undershirt.
“I’m aware,” I whispered, swallowing down all of my embarrassment at being laid out across his desk like this, not to mention the worries that I was starting something I would never be able to take back.
Edison’s expression was full of hunger as his eyes traced down the line of my body. “Take off your bra.”
I hurried to do as he asked, my fingers fiddling with the metal fastener in the front until it finally released, pulling to the side as I lifted my torso up to slip my arms out of it.
The alpha in front of me continued to watch, fiddling with the rings that he always wore before he finally started to pull them off one by one, dropping them into a silver tray that was one of the few things to survive the arm sweep he’d used to clear the rest of the surface.
When each ring hit the train, a loud plink filled the room and my body twitched with excitement, my back bowing like the strings of a guitar being plucked.
Plink, plink, plink.
Each ring came off until he made it to the gold signet ring on his right ring finger.
A rattling whoosh left me as that ring finally hit the tray and his attention was on me again.
Bare fingers reached for me now as he gently cradled my chin in one hand, just underneath my jaw, and tilted it up for a quick, hungry kiss.
Edison’s hand continued to slide down, giving my throat a soft squeeze before slipping down in between my aching breasts and along the curve of my stomach until they came to a stop at the top of my panties.
Hooking both thumbs inside of the elastic on either side of my hips, Edison began to tug them down my legs, leaving me truly naked underneath him now.
“I’m going to need to get you ready again, like last time,” Edison murmured and then I watched as he dropped down to one knee and pressed his mouth in between my legs.
“Wait!” I gasped, shoving my hands in between his face and my pussy. “What are you doing?”
Edison shot me a questioning look. “Getting you prepared?”
“Aren’t you going to do it with your fingers? Like last time?”
Edison’s confusion morphed at my question and his lips pulled up into a mischievous grin. “Fingers will still be involved, but I want to taste you, pet.”
“But it’s dirty!” I’d read about it, of course, but I always figured that it wasn’t something real men wanted to do outside of romance novels.
“That’s kind of the point. Did you know an omega’s scent is strongest in their pussies? It’s actually making it hard for me to focus on this conversation—it smells that good,” he said, giving my hands a little tap. “Now move your hands, omega, and then lean back and enjoy what I’m about to do for you. I don’t get on my knees for just anyone.”
My face flushed with warmth as I begrudgingly moved my hands and gave Edison a full view of my slick-soaked pussy.
Squeezing my eyes shut tight, I resisted the urge to put my hands over my face just as I’d done the night of our wedding. I’d never regretted being a virgin so much as I did now—even when I thought I was going to die as one.
Edison had so much experience and it felt like I was constantly playing a game of catch up whenever we were together.
As I muddled through my embarrassment and self-consciousness, Edison was oblivious to my thoughts and soon I felt a thick finger slide inside of the tight entrance of my pussy.
“Pet, you’re going to have to try and relax or I’m afraid you’ll snap my cock in half when I try to put it in,” the alpha chastised gently as he worked the digit inside of me before pulling it out.
Then the finger was replaced by something soft and wet. With my eyes closed it took me a moment to realize that it was his tongue that was now pressed against the wet folds of my pussy, slipping up to my clit before sliding back down to the too-tight entrance below.
My hips jerked against his face and my eyes flew open to stare at the fancy coffered ceiling of the study.
Edison’s hands gripped my legs, throwing them over his shoulders and forcing my pelvis to tilt up, giving him a better angle as his tongue continued to tease.
I knew I was going to experience many new things being Edison’s wife, but this was something I never thought I’d feel. Every brush of his tongue, suck of his lips, or press of his nose brought new, electric sensations ricocheting up my body.
Without realizing I was doing it, my fingers slipped back down my body and into the black curls on Edison’s head. I gripped them tightly, nails scraping the skin of his scalp as my hips rolled involuntarily against his face.
I wasn’t sure if I was holding him to me or trying to push him away, but either way Edison’s growl vibrating nearly sent me careening over the edge.
“Pull it harder, pet,” he rumbled against me, his fingers coming up to join his tongue, slipping inside of my pussy with more ease than before. “I like a little pain.”
My fingers tightened and I felt him shudder between my legs as his mouth returned to finish the job.
And boy, did it. The addition of his fingers was too much for my needy body and I had to clamp my lips together to keep from screaming as I shuddered around his tongue and fingers, my thighs pressing into the sides of his head as I came.
My back bowed again as I worked to inhale a drag of air through my nose. As I came down, I loosened my grip on his hair and pressed a hand to my heaving chest, trying to calm the spasms ricocheting up my body from my first orgasm in weeks.
Edison’s head popped up from in between my legs, a grin on his face as he licked the shining slick from his fingers and wiped his mouth.
“Next time,” he murmured as he slid up my body and gave me a surprisingly chaste kiss. “I want to hear you scream.”
“But we’re in the middle of the house,” I protested, my voice hoarse from holding my moans in.
“Exactly,” Edison said as I heard the sound of his zipper as he opened his dark slacks. “I want them all to hear how much their master pleases their mistress.”
Something hot pressed to my still twitching pussy, sliding in between the folds up and down. His cock, I realized hazily as I lifted my head just in time to see the bulbous head brush up into view.
“Did Oona give you the birth control I asked for?”
I nodded. It had confused me at first because the whole point of my being here was so that I could give birth to his child. It didn’t make much sense for me to try and prevent pregnancy, no matter how low of a chance there was of it happening outside of my heat.
But I’d done as I was told.
“Good,” Edison pressed the thick head of his cock to the weeping entrance of my pussy. “Because I’m about to fill you up with so much cum that we’re going to really test the potency of those little pills.”
Edison put his hands on either side of my head, holding himself above me as we stared at each other.
“This might hurt, pet, so I want you to put that pretty mouth of yours right here and give it all back to me tenfold,” Edison nodded at his shoulder.
“I don’t want to bite you,” I said, suddenly feeling shy again.
Edison’s chuckle filled the room. “Okay, but you might change your mind in a minute.”
Then he was pressing forward, the head of his cock stuck at the entrance of my pussy for a moment until finally it gave way to the pressure and he began to slip inside of me.
At first, I was so shocked by the sudden invasion that I didn’t feel anything except for the overwhelming sense of fullness as he continued to push inside. Then, my brain finally registered the new burn of being stretched further than I ever had before.
Nothing but fingers and Edison’s tongue had ever been inside of the tight channel and now Edison was putting what I was pretty sure was a thicker than normal cock inside.
My mouth opened in a soundless scream as I tried to ignore the stinging pain.
“Pet,” Edison’s teeth were clenched together as he spoke. “Bite me.”
Mindlessly, I lifted my head and found the muscled flesh of his shoulder. I sank my teeth in, listening as Edison grunted but still continued to press inside.
My arms wrapped around his chest and I clung to him as he lifted me up off of the desk, strong hands cradling me into the curve of his torso as he finally seemed to bottom out.
A thick ring of flesh, his knot, I realized dazedly as I panted around the flesh I was currently biting, sat just outside of the entrance of my pussy. I wasn’t sure where the hell it was supposed to fit now that he was fully seated inside of me.
“Feeling better?” Edison whispered in my ear, his breath hot on my neck.
I nodded, finally releasing my teeth from his shoulder. I hadn’t broken any skin, but it was definitely going to bruise. Just the idea filled me with a strange sort of pride. Instinctively, I ran my tongue along the mark similarly to how Edison would if he ever bonded with me.
The intense burn of Edison taking my virginity was all but gone now and all I felt was a warmth as he shifted his hips and hugged me to his chest.
“I’m going to start moving now, give me another one of those bites if it becomes too much.”
The first few pulls and pushes of his hips were uncomfortable, akin to the same feeling as pressing a finger into a fresh scrape, but the more he moved the more the discomfort shifted and changed until I found myself starting to move my hips in order to meet him on his next thrust.
“There you go, good girl,” Edison praised as I relaxed underneath him, the same tingling sensations from when he was touching me earlier starting to return.
He continued to whisper in my ear, his hips rolling almost too slowly for my liking.
Then I felt his hips stutter.
“Edison?” I pulled my face away from his neck to get a good look at him and found his eyes looking over my shoulder. “What is it?”
I started to turn, thinking that maybe someone had stumbled upon us, but he stopped me and his hips slammed into mine with more ferocity than before.
“It’s nothing,” Edison growled, his mouth catching the moan that left my mouth with the pick up in pace. “I thought someone was coming in, but I was wrong.”
In the back of my mind, I knew the way he phrased his words was odd, but I was too far gone to care at this point.
I clung to him, wanting nothing more than to feel even more of him—to get that first overwhelming sense of fullness that he’d given me on his first push inside.
“Knot me, alpha,” the words slipped out almost on an impulse and I felt his fingers dig even more into the flesh of my back.
My hands came up to slide along the back of his neck and into his hair again. It was more disheveled than I’d ever seen it and I reveled in making the man above me look even a little bit different than the handsome perfection he oozed the rest of the time.
“Knots take a while to deflate, pet, are you sure?” Edison asked, his voice rough.
I gripped his hair tightly, pulling his head back so that I could look him in the eye and he could see my resolve. “I am.”
On his next thrust, Edison forced the thick ring of flesh inside of me. For a moment, I was confused, all of my romance novels told me about the mind-numbing sensation of being knotted by an alpha.
But this didn’t quite measure up to that.
“Why are you still able to pull it in and out still?” I asked with a huff as he continued to work the swollen flesh in and out of my pussy.
“Because,” Edison said with a laugh. “That requires a bit more stimulation for me, pet.”
My back met the cold surface of the desk again and Edison’s hands, now free, traveled down my body before he gave my clit a little pinch.
“ Oh !” The pressure of his fingers nearly sent me careening over the edge and I clenched around Edison’s knot, surprised to find that it was more swollen than before.
“You see, I need you to come first and clench as hard as you can around me.” Edison covered my body with his, pressing me into the desk. “Though, I’m starting to wonder if I’m not enough for you, greedy girl.”
I frowned with confusion, my vision wavering as he picked up the pace of his thrusts again, giving my clit little tandem pinches as he pushed deep inside of me. The more he did it, the harder it was for his knot to slip in and out.
“What do you mean?”
“Imagine doing this pressed in between two alphas, pet, both inside of this pretty pussy, or maybe,” Edison’s hand snuck under my thigh and he pressed a thumb to the tight entrance of my ass, not hard enough to slip inside, but enough that I knew what he was trying to say. “You’d like to be filled here too.”
Edison had never said who the other alpha he had in mind was, but my mind was already working overtime to conjure the image of me being caught in between him and Rhodes.
I shuddered with need at the thought and I watched Edison grin. “I see that you seem to like that idea.”
“No…” I denied, looking away from him.
“Really?” Edison’s hips slammed into mine and I nearly came from the roughness of it.
Then his mouth was next to my ear and he was whispering. “Then you don’t want Rhodes to stick his long cock in your ass and put his mark on your gorgeous body?”
That was too much for me and I came with a whimper, my mouth finding his as I spasmed around his knot which, compared to earlier, was almost too thick now as he continued to move inside of me, no longer able to pull the ring of flesh free from the tight clutch of my entrance.
Edison made a noise, hugging me so tightly to his body that every inch of our skin seemed to be pressed together as his hips twitched and warmth began to spread deep inside of me.
After a long time, Edison pulled me up off of the desk and collapsed into the cushioned office chair with a sigh, my legs spread around his hips as we were still locked together by his knot.
“I’ll make anything happen for you, my wife,” Edison murmured as he continued to press soft, intimate kisses to my mouth and jaw. “All you need to do is ask and your wish is my command.”