Chapter Eight #2
“You can’t tell me you’re okay with what happened. You were the one to bandage her.”
Kyle hopped onto the counter, his hair still damp from his own shower that morning. “Am I thrilled? No, but shit happens when you house alphas and omegas together. “
“None of that deals with the fact that Alison didn’t agree to that.”
Kyle waved off the concern. “Alison isn’t the fragile thing you think. Exhibit A?” Kyle waved at his face, at the bruising still there.
“Yeah, and all you were trying to do was help her when she did that. I’m pretty sure leaving a permanent claim on someone’s skin is a little different.”
“I took care of her afterward. The girl was freaked out, but it wasn’t by him. The second I started cleaning her, she was trembling and wet again. Her reaction shook her more than what Trent did.”
Daniel had no real argument back to that, though it did derail his thoughts as he considered how nicely Alison heated up, the way that scent of hers would fill the space around her like a lure—one he wanted to go for no matter the risks.
“Besides,” Kyle continued. “It’s easy to get high and mighty when you’re not sleeping next to her, when you aren’t the one breathing in that smell all night, when she isn’t that close to you.
Trust me, your tune might change when you have to try and sleep while your cock keeps giving you much better ideas of what to do with the hours till morning. ”
Creaking drew Daniel’s attention over to them to find the omega in question coming down the steps, her hair dark from the shower. She didn’t walk like a woman who was fearful, like one being pushed into anything she didn’t want.
Even with the gauze on her shoulder, she walked with her back straight, with her chin high, as though she wasn’t afraid of a damned thing.
And right then Daniel felt a spark of fear, because no matter how much he focused on the job, on what needed to be done, when she walked like that, he wasn’t sure he could follow through on keeping it all about the case.
* * * *
Alison smacked Kyle’s hand when he straightened her collar.
“You are the most unruly slave I’ve ever dealt with,” he muttered, though his lip remained curled into a half-smirk. “I feel like I’d have to give you an F when it came to slave training. “
“I’m pretty sure a bad slave means a bad master.”
He chuckled before checking her cuffs, running his finger beneath them to test the tightness.
She’d found that the alphas did that a few times a day, always checking to see if they rubbed against her, if they had chafed, if they were too tight.
The concern was something she never knew quite how to deal with.
“When is he supposed to get here?”
Kyle stilled as he checked the second cuff, as though the question weren’t a welcome one. “Tomorrow. The call said about nine, but I can’t say I expect these sorts of people to be very punctual.” He released her wrists but didn’t step backward. “You nervous?”
Alison snorted softly. “Me? I’m never nervous. Have you forgotten I was the one using myself as actual bait?”
Kyle tugged her down and into his lap as he sat on the couch.
Alison had thought, after the difficult night, they’d lighten up on her. She’d thought getting bitten would give her a get-out-of-jail-free card for at least a day where they backed off.
No such luck. They’d continued to press her boundaries, always careful, as if that hadn’t happened.
Well, everyone except Trent.
Trent didn’t even look her way.
Being pulled into Kyle’s lap made her uneasy, a closeness she wasn’t accustomed to, but she took a deep breath and tried to submit to it. While she wasn’t being watched, she needed to practice, to school herself into behaving as she should.
“Yeah, but you were still in control then.”
“In control while being held to be sold into slavery?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“Don’t look at me like I’m stupid.” Kyle pressed a finger to her eyebrow until she lowered it.
“You thought you’d be playing your own game, all on your own.
It’s easy to fool someone else who doesn’t know what you’re playing at.
You in that bar? You were playing your part by yourself.
If you had to play that with someone else who knew, though? ” He left it open.
And it hit home. There was some truth. Pretending on her own was one thing. Pretending with someone else was personal, and Alison did not like anything personal.
“So, sugar, are you nervous?”
She blew out a slow breath. Was she? Why didn’t she even know if she was nervous?
Kyle slid his arm around her to draw her closer to him, so she leaned against him. “You are a stubborn, difficult woman, you know that?”
The soft chiding made her wince. In her head, she heard her father’s voice. You are a difficult child. If you are an omega, you are going to have a very hard life learning to fit in.
“Look at me.” Kyle’s voice beckoned her back, and Alison followed it, away from her father’s flat and disappointed words, to find Kyle staring at her, his hand rubbing over her back.
Why the hell do I keep doing that?
“Where do you go when you zone out?”
She swallowed hard, wanting to make a joke, to insult him, to do something to bypass the conversation.
He shook his head before she could. “I’m serious, Alison.
There is a huge tripwire here we keep getting caught on, and I don’t know what it is.
I don’t need you to pour your heart out—I’m not going to try and force you to give anything you don’t have to—but I need to understand where that line is so I stop falling flat on my face over it. ”
Alison said nothing at first. She let the stroking of his hand over her back take away some of the anxiety inside her.
Finally, she answered, choosing her words carefully. Tell him only as much as he needs to know.
“My father,” she said softly. “He wasn’t very approving of me.”
A soft rumble came from Kyle’s chest, one that eased her further. “Parents sure can fuck us up, can’t they? What was his problem? I can’t imagine being all that disappointed in a kick-ass daughter like you.”
That praise, small as it was, took up space inside her, space that had always been dark and heavy and full of all the ways she didn’t live up to expectations.
It drew more of the story from her. “He thought women should be silent, meek, obedient. I tried to do what he wanted, I really did, but I never could follow the rules enough. I never was quiet enough.”
Kyle let out a low sound, something that implied that he was listening but didn’t want to interrupt.
“He always said I was difficult, that I was stubborn.”
“Is he still alive?”
She imagined his harsh features, the dark eyes, the way he stood straight and could unnerve anyone with a silent stare. “I have no idea.”
Kyle rubbed his forehead against hers, a sweet nuzzle she had to stop herself from leaning in to, from returning. “Is that why you don’t like when we touch your chin?”
That question hurt. Her stomach rolled and she closed her eyes, the answer slipping from her without her even having to think about it.
“He never hit me—he believed if you had to hit a woman, you’d already failed as a man.
He’d grab my chin, though, and stare down at me with this level of disgust, like I was the lowest thing he’d seen.
” The words came from her like shards of glass, as if they sliced and tore at her on the way out.
Kyle did that low rumble again—a purr?—and wrapped his arm tighter around her. “That’s enough, sugar. I’m sorry he did that, and now that I understand, I’ll make sure we’re more cautious about that. Shh, just relax for a minute.”
Alison wanted to snap, to tell him she didn’t need to relax, that she was fine.
Except, she realized she was shivering. She wasn’t cold, yet her body trembled as though she were naked and wet and freezing. The warmth of Kyle’s body, the strength in his arms and that wonderfully relaxing vibration from his chest all called to her.
So Alison let herself have something she’d never allowed herself before.
She rested against Kyle and shut her eyes, surrendering for real, just for right then.
* * * *
Daniel chuckled at the way Alison fidgeted. For the first time, they’d bound her. With the meeting tomorrow, they needed to move forward with pressing her, and he had to admit—he enjoyed her reaction.
He wouldn’t have liked fear.
Real fear was sour, acidic and altogether unpleasant. Unease, though? That edge of worry? That he found irresistible, and it filled Alison.
She knelt on the floor, a pillow beneath her knees to take the strain off, her wrists cuffed behind her. It made her chest push forward, and it would have been impossible to not notice how lovely her figure was.
Even if he wasn’t supposed to notice, the way her tank top hugged her curves was a thing of beauty.
Her chest wasn’t that large, but it also meant that when she wore no bra—or something thin without much support—her breasts were still high on her chest and stunning.
Her bare skin was flushed, and her shorts showed off the expanse of her toned legs.
Kyle had sat down with Trent and Daniel earlier, had explained what Alison had told him.
While Daniel was grateful for an understanding of the girl who was so tight-lipped that—despite how close he’d gotten to her—she still seemed like a stranger, he’d had to grapple with his own frustration about her family.
He wouldn’t deny he enjoyed some humiliation. He liked to force a woman to blush when he pointed out things that embarrassed her, things that shouldn’t embarrass her but did.
However, he only liked that when the woman did, and clearly that was off limits with Alison.
Daniel checked her cuffs behind her, catching a tremble that ran through her when he moved out of her line of sight. “Everything feeling okay?”
“Why do you ask such a stupid question? Who on earth finds being tied up comfortable?”