6. Conor
CONOR
“She’s not taking the bait.” Emile checked his watch for the third time. “I told you we needed a contingency plan.”
“She’ll come,” I reassured him. “This alpha is a perfect target. Abuses omegas. Powerful. Criminal. Connected to the Institute. Otherwise untouchable. Catnip to Lark.”
When we caught her, we’d known she’d run the next morning, and it almost destroyed us anyway. Emile, at least, had his job as a high-powered attorney to keep him busy. My role as a gentleman who lunches for my obscenely wealthy family meant I had time to ruminate.
But we had a plan.
We’d lure her back with a target she couldn’t resist.
It took us two months to find her and another month to get her to respond to our text messages. She ignored my demands to see her, but Emile’s sweet teasing finally got her attention.
Our gorgeous, tiny omega dropped into the seat at the coffee shop in a huff, her long brown hair pulled back into a French braid and her brown eyes sharp with annoyance. I’d never been so overwhelmingly happy to see anyone in my life.
Her scent wafted through the cafe, and I inhaled, feeling whole again for the first time in months. Emile caught my eye, smiling gently. He’d missed her too.
“You,” she muttered, as if she were surprised to see us.
“Us,” I grinned unrepentantly. “We miss you, sweet omega.”
Emile harrumphed. “Sweet, my ass. She’s a killer.”
“And that’s hot, baby.”
“You two are deeply weird,” she muttered, even as her cheeks flushed.
I pushed the dossier across the table at her.
She pushed it back. “I’ve already done my research.”
I dragged my finger across the top of her hand, watching the gooseflesh spread up her arm. Her eyes flashed to mine before she snatched her hand away, hiding them both in her lap.
“Why are you doing this?”
I inhaled her sweet scent, the lilac and vanilla going straight to my cock. We want to protect you. Make sure you’re safe. Hold you in our arms and never let you go. But if I said that, she’d run fast and far and never look back.
“We want you,” I said instead, keeping my voice as casual as possible.
She cocked her head. “You’re alphas. You could have me whenever you want. Why the song and dance?”
Emile dragged her seat closer to his and yanked her half against him, so she could inhale his scent.
She melted against him.
“Like that,” she murmured as she relaxed into his hold.
“Feel good, little one?” Emile said, then gave up on trying to wrap his arm around her and hauled her into his lap.
She nuzzled into him before cuddling close, and I’d never envied anything as much as his shirt, with her sweetly flushed cheek pressed against it and her fingers clutching him like he was a lifeline. So delicious. Such a sweet, tempting morsel for us to take.
“Yes.”
“Do you like feeling like you don’t have a choice?”
Lark was silent for a moment. She shifted in Emile’s lap, then turned her face so she could see both of us. “I liked it when you tied me up and hurt me. I don’t like how you could ask me to drop to my knees right now, and I’d do it, just because my biology compels me to.”
That was the kicker.
She was kinky as fuck.
Kinky like us.
A killer like us.
Like I said. Perfect.
“Work with us. Trust us.”
She looked at the file, then up at me, then at Emile for a moment. Her face was unreadable, but her scent flooded the café, edged with the bitterness of burnt sugar, telling me she wasn’t as sanguine about this conversation as she wanted us to believe.
Lark shoved the folder back at me. “No.”
Shock wound its way through me, then hurt, before I remembered we had a plan for this, the unimaginable scenario in which she didn’t feel the same way about us as we did about her, like the night we spent together wasn’t life changing.
Emile caught my eye before I could say something stupid.
I had to remember that just because we’d spent two years stalking and obsessing over her didn’t mean she’d done the same.
For her, we were just two scent matched alphas who’d breezed into her life, kidnapped her, and now wanted her full attention.
He purred softly, his gentle touches on her bare skin eliciting a slight moan from our gorgeous little slut. Then he picked up the chocolate chip cookie on his plate and fed it to her.
My eyes narrowed as Lark nibbled, her pink lips soft and plump, unable to resist the siren call of an alpha—her alpha—caring for her as she was surrounded by his scent.
Lark pushed away from Emile but couldn’t escape the hard cage of his arms. She blinked slowly, dreamily, then looked up at me, her breathing speeding up in panic as she realized what we’d done.
“You assholes,” she swore softly as her eyelids lowered, her long lashes brushing against her flushed cheeks. She settled closer into Emile, curling up tight against his softly rumbling chest. “I’ll kill you for this.”
Maybe so. But what a way to go.