Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Violet
Isleep deeply but wake restless. The nest just doesn’t feel right without Rafe. Then there is what happened last night, and the glowing, pumped-up version of Fenix to contend with—more than enough reminder that everything has changed.
Pete comes to collect Lark for work.
Hot on his heels is Grace. “You are late, lass!” she states. “Quickly now. It doesn’t do to keep Master Atlas waiting for his morning refreshment.”
Really? I am still expected to take him breakfast after everything that happened yesterday? This is truly ridiculous.
I’m late, so there is no time to take my usual bath. Well, so be it. Atlas is just going to have to deal with me smelling of other males.
I’m in a bad mood by the time I arrive at his door. Fully prepared to put Atlas in his place and demand that he release Rafe at once. I don’t even care about the Goddess or laws of nature. My new status as griffin food ought to demand some respect.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve negotiated the door with the tray in my hands. But it is still not easy. I’m huffing and puffing with irritation as I finally pass the sturdy door and kick it into the jamb with my foot.
Atlas raises his eyes from the scroll he was examining and arches one imperious brow.
The words I was about to unleash never leave my lips. He is in full brooding, dominant-male mode, beautiful wings spread wide and proud, which he knows I find distracting. I’m rousing myself to give him a piece of my mind regardless, when he lifts a single hand.
“I’ve had a trying night, Violet. Think very carefully before you speak.”
My mouth snaps shut. I didn’t realize until that point that it was open, poised to speak. I glare at him, stomp over to the table, and put the tray down with a clatter.
“Do you wish some time on the cushion first?” he asks pleasantly. “Or shall I just go ahead and spank your impertinent little ass?”
“Neither,” I say, planting my fists on my hips.
“Spanking it is.”
He rises quicker than I can anticipate, fists my arm, and tosses me over his lap. My skirt comes up, and he applies swift, sharp strokes to one cheek and then the other, until I’m a hot and indignant mess, and I’ve no idea what it was I intended to say.
“That stings, you insufferable oaf!”
He huffs a dark laugh and doubles down, moving the spanks to the sit spot, which he knows is extra stingy. Everything is confused in my mind. I strain and squirm. He continues to hold me with ease.
“You’re a very badly behaved little omega. You do not feed other males until you have fed me. That is the natural order of things. I am the Pride Leader. The Pride Leader gets to feed first. That is how it is always done. Only after you have chosen me, may the others mate.”
“Well, it is your own fault,” I snap back, utterly infuriated with his faulty logic. “My pussy has been right here and available for many days. It is you who has chosen not to feed!”
The spanks stop. It takes me several seconds to realize this. He rights me in a rush, drops my ass onto the table, stands, and braces over me. His eyes have taken on a distinctly predatory gleam.
“Is that so?” he purrs.
I squirm a little, hot and wet between my thighs.
This is the first time I have openly announced my needs—that I am already his.
I might spontaneously combust if only he would put his mouth on me there.
Channeling my inner princess, I summon up my best haughty tone.
“I believe Fenix has set the bar high. It was little wonder he was glowing when he left the nest.”
He laughs. It has a deep, resonant sound. I would like it a lot more if he were not laughing at me.
“You’re an incorrigible brat,” he says, without any heat. “This is what’s known as topping from the bottom.”
I have no idea what that means. But he rights me, takes a seat in the chair, and indicates the cushion resting on the floor between his spread thighs. “I was not topping from underneath,” I say indignantly.
“From the bottom,” he corrects.
I battle to curb my urge to argue, increasingly convinced he is not, in fact, going to choose to eat me. Worse, I now believe he might make me suffer twice as long because I dared to say that Fenix set the bar high.
His eyes sparkle with amusement. I don’t know what I expected from him today, but it was not this.
“Gods, please,” I say weakly. “I cannot go on like this. Do not make me kneel on the cushion where I must stare at your cock for an hour without a hope of a taste. I’m an omega. I have needs. It is cruel and unfeeling of you to keep me thus.”
He leans back in the chair, definitely still amused. “This is merely you seeking another angle from which to top me from the bottom,” he says dryly.
I still have no idea what he is talking about, only that every word I speak is making it worse. “I want to come,” I blurt out.
The damnable male smirks. “I am very much aware that you wish to come. You are a greedy brat. It doesn’t matter how well your mates fuck you. You are desperate for more. If you had only led with a simpler statement to that effect, we might not be here at all.”
“Well, you made me like this,” I state sullenly. “I was a perfect lady before you came along, making me kneel at your feet and stare at your cock. And then draping me over your desk. Where anyone might see the condition I was in.”
“Not anyone,” he points out. “Darrion, my second.”
“It would be a lot more pleasurable if you would put your mouth on me there.”
He holds up a finger.
“Fine. I won’t negotiate this bottom-topping or whatever that is…
” I drop my knees to the cushion. His cock is right there in front of me, jerking against the confines of his pants.
It is very distracting. I tell myself that I will not look at it on principle, and yet I am staring at it all the same.
“You’ve been a very bad girl,” he says.
I don’t argue with him. I sense that arguing will not serve me well.
“And you will have to learn to behave before you will get your hot little lips around my cock.”
I have done nothing but behave, but I keep my lips sealed and don’t point this out. I turn my nose up a little, like I’m not even interested in his cock.
He chuckles.
My eyes flash to meet his. He is enjoying himself. I am not. These mountains are apparently full of griffins. How did I manage to find one with such an indomitable will?
His hand goes to his belt. My eyes widen of their own volition, even though I tell myself I don’t want to give him anything.
He undoes it slowly, and then the buttons holding his trousers tight around his cock, one at a time.
I wet my lips, riveted, the scent already reaching me as he lets the material part.
The lighter material of his underthings strains to contain his girth.
My eyes nearly pop out of my head. He looms—broad and immovable.
I have vague memories of our arrival, of them watching us in the chamber naked, but I was in heat then, distracted.
Now it’s right here before me. The beast is doing this on purpose, taunting me with what I cannot have, making me suffer.
He leans forward and drags the bodice of my gown down on one side and then the other, slow and deliberate, exposing both my breasts. I can’t breathe properly. I can’t think. My mind is full of a strange buzzing noise. My slick is already trickling down my inner thighs.
He strokes his fingertips around my right nipple. It puckers tightly. I scarcely breathe, anticipating him pinching it, craving the pleasure, and yet knowing it will only make me feel worse.
He doesn’t. And instead leans back. And then he drags his pants and underthings down, allowing his thick, heavily ridged cock to spring free.
A weak, needy sound escapes my lips. He does not have a knot, but rather a spiral of ridges running the length.
He strokes his fingers along the shaft, cups his balls lightly, before running his hand back up once more. He pushes the hot flesh away from his body before squeezing almost cruelly. Pre-cum leaks from the tip—clear, sticky goodness—trickling down to meet his fingers, his scent filling my nose.
“Is this what you want, Violet?”
I cannot tear my gaze away, even to glare at him. He strokes it absently. It seems to grow impossibly thicker with every passage of his hand.
“You want to feel this inside your needy cunt?”
I nod, my breath little more than a pant, and my core throbbing with need.
“Make no mistake, Violet, that if I give you this, then you shall be mine. Is that what you are asking for? To be mine?”
In this heightened moment, as I watch him stroke himself, I understand this is a man of iron will.
Who can and will stop at any point he chooses.
A man in full command of himself, his emotions, and instincts.
He is not like Fenix, who might let his instincts carry him away.
Nor like Darrion, who embodies tempered restraint, yet gives himself away when he leaves his silk jacket in my nest.
And I crave him all the more for his control. I crave to be his. To find a chink enough to make me his.
His fingers still and then move away. To my deepest dissatisfaction, he puts his cock away and, in a no-nonsense way, does his buttons and buckle back up.
Stubborn male.
My eyes flash to his.
“The truth,” I state boldly, no longer afraid. “Is that I am already yours.”
Atlas
She is already mine.
I don’t move or even breathe for the longest time in the wake of her declaration.
She tells me in clear, unambiguous terms that she is mine, and has been for a while.
I don’t claim to be a poetic male. I have neither the words nor the nuance to articulate these feelings beyond it is like a cataclysm going off inside of me.
Perhaps to an outsider, it might seem she was merely the first omega I met. That this is no more than nature at work. That I only imagine love at first sight, that every moment in her presence has not put me deeper under her spell.
Entranced.
Besotted.
Definitely obsessed.
Now more than ever, it is important I hold on to restraint, for I am building the foundations of a relationship that will last all our lives. Goddess willing, that will be for a very long time.
With hindsight, Fenix was always going to blunder his way in first. He is younger, although not young.
Among our kind, that makes him more volatile where his feelings and emotions are concerned.
That does not make them any less valid. Although I might have appreciated her lamenting his skills a little less, I think dryly.
As for Darrion. He wants desperately to hold himself aloft, but his actions tell me he is likewise already gone for her.
“She is ready,” Aldric announces. “Ready to be our Griffin Queen.”
And what a Queen she is. She may be on her knees, but it is I who am humbled.
I hold out my hand, as I have done many times. She takes it without hesitation, and I lift her onto my lap.
“Are you going to make me come now?” she demands.
I smile as I kiss her temple. “You have a one-track mind, little red.”
“And you are very unbending.”
“That,” I agree, “is true.” Then I rise and carry her across the room to the couch, where, according to Darrion, she was sleeping before I charged into the room yesterday. “Now, you will rest here while I must deal with some urgent matters.”
She doesn’t protest as I lay her down, already adjusting the cushions to her liking. I had a servant bring a couple of soft blankets here earlier, hopeful that this might become her second nest. Certainly, she cannot stay in the ritual room forever. It’s time for change. It has already begun.
She accepts the blanket, tucking it around her and issuing a heavy yawn. I cannot even find vexation with her other mates keeping her awake with rutting. Violet is no passenger in life, and initiates intimacy as often as not.
I straighten.
She peeks up at me. “When you say ‘matters’, do you mean Rafe?”
My lips tighten. She is as intelligent as she is pretty, and she is very pretty indeed.
“I do.”
“What if he is already all he is? What if you are wrong?”
She is worried I will hurt him unnecessarily. About him being bound in the training pit alone. Her fears are reasonable, if unfounded.
“Griffins are ancient and know things on levels beyond human comprehension. Aldric believes he is more. All the griffins believe he is more. We don’t know what that means yet.
Nor how this will play out. I do nothing out of cruelty, although my actions might appear so.
He is your mate. He will always be your mate and carries all the due respect that entails.
This impasse is temporary. It will end. When it does, you will be reunited with him again. ”
Her face is solemn, but she nods. “I love him.”
I feel the weight of her unspoken words. If I fuck this up, she won’t forgive me.
I return to my desk. Rafe is only the first step. After, and if my concerns for an impending war are realized, I will have to tell her about her sister’s men.