Fated Mates: Paranormal Romance Series Starters Boxset

by Hariharan, Laxmi

  My thighs clench.

  The soft flesh of my center quivers. A trickle of slick spurts down my inner thigh.

  And it is that which brings me to being alert. Awareness tugs at my nerves. It pushes aside the haze of desire that has clogged my mind.

  All of his gentleness, his tenderness, it is all a front. It has to be. A way to lull me into comfort, to make me trust, enough to allow my hormones to regroup, my core to relax and ready itself for my alpha. Which he is not; he never will be.

  I raise my head, gaze at him through hooded eyelids, then lean down and sink my teeth into his neck.

  9

  Zeus

  Her teeth dig into me, and the shock of it surges down my spine. There’s a primitive satisfaction that she wants to own me, while a part of me cannot believe she took that liberty with me. It is my prerogative as alpha to mark her first.

  Mine to own, to claim, to do with her as I want.

  I’ve been holding back, and she has taken advantage of that; she has taken the lead in this mating game. More than the physical hurt, it’s my ego that roars in protest at the liberty.

  With a roar, I flip her over, pinning her to the bed.

  I snag her arms together to pull them up and over her head, shackling her wrists. I want to ask her what she’s trying to prove, but one look in those green eyes, and the words stutter in my mouth. I am not someone with a soft heart, I have no tenderness inside me. I take, that’s what I do, yet one whiff of the fear that vibrates off her, and when I open my mouth all that emerges is a rumbling growl.

  Her lips are stained by the blood she drew from me when she bit me.

  It’s primal, and so fucking arousing. The evidence that she already marked me, has staked her claim on me, does she realize it? It sends a fierce surge of need pounding through my veins.

  My cock twitches and I grind the evidence of my arousal into her soft core—not because I want to show her how turned on I am, though that, too—but it’s more a clear sign to her as to who owns her and that there is no escape from me.

  “You fought well, little warrior; you can take comfort in that.”

  She bares her teeth, showing gums stained with my blood. “I’m not done yet.” Her green eyes are so large, the pupils so dilated that it’s a clear sign she is nervous, afraid, and also aroused.

  “Yes, you are.” Something like tenderness flushes through me. Nah. It can’t be that. Me? Wanting to take care of this omega who tried to kill me? I must be losing my mind, or perhaps I have been too lenient with her. I’ve indulged this wildling for too long. It’s time to show her the kind of pleasures only an alpha can give his omega.

  I lean down and lick my blood from her lips.

  Her shoulders shudder. Every muscle in her body goes on alert.

  I nibble my way up her cheek to the shell of her ear, then suck on her earlobe.

  She shivers. Her eyelids flutter down. A low groan spills from her lips.

  “That’s it, submit, give in…go with your instinct, and then it’ll be easier for you.”

  As the words leave my mouth, her body tenses again. It seems if I speak it breaks the trance she falls into when I purr for her. And it’s no hardship to do that, mind you. I’ll force her if needed. I’d much prefer someone more submissive, someone more pliant, open to do my bidding…not. If that were the case, wouldn’t I have taken an omega from the ones stocked in the harem, the ones my alphas lay with whenever the need to rut comes over them?

  I’d done so on one occasion, but the encounter had been so unfulfilling I’d not bothered again. Then I’d caught a glimpse of that dark-red strand of her hair tumbling free of its restraint to curl over her shoulder and I’d known what was missing. Her. Her fire, her breath. Her scent. I have to have her.

  My dick pulses in agreement. My shaft pushes against the softness of her core.

  Her eyes fly open, and the green in them has faded to light gold. My breath stutters. She is much more breathtaking than I’d thought. It makes me want to see how the rest of her is.

  What is so special about this female that she is already in my blood?

  Why is this prickly omega the only one I want?

  The thought pulses a trickle of discomfort down my spine. No, I have no intention of feeling anything for her. The only reason I brought her here was to punish her. To show her she can’t challenge me on my own turf.

  And, yeah, because the thought of any other alpha violating her is something that affects me in a way I still can’t understand. It’s that which makes me pull my weight off of her and stand back.

  Her legs are flung apart, her breasts rising and falling, her cheeks flushed. And the remnants of the jumpsuit cling to her body like petals from a rose on damp ground.

  Bending down, I grab the seam of her collar and rip the fabric to her waist. Yanking it over her legs, I pull it off her.

  She is naked underneath.

  Her full, lush breasts spring out, dark-pink areolae crowned with the most delicate of buds for nipples.

  Desire grips me, hot and hard. I can’t tear my eyes away from the perfectly formed specimen of femininity.

  Her slim waist seems impossibly narrow. I trail a finger over her navel to where her waist slopes to meet the dark-red hair that points to her clit.

  Goosebumps pop on her skin. Her muscles tense.

  I look up to find those green eyes dilated yet burning with a fire that entrances me. She flexes her jaw. A muscle throbs above her cheekbone. She is gritting her teeth, to stop herself from making any noise, knowing that will only encourage me. And suddenly I want to hear her voice more than anything else.

  I trail my finger down to the edge of her clit and hover there. Her thighs clench. Moisture trickles between her legs and pools below. The scent of her deepens and goes straight to my head.

  My cock hardens and aches with the need to feel her warmth clench around me. I raise my gaze, up her trembling stomach, over her swollen breasts to her face.

  Those green eyes, the gold in them sparkles and burns. Yet her lips are pursed in defiance. She is aroused. She wants me. Yet she is still able to resist me. A fierce surge of pride grips me. It makes me want her more but also slows me down. I want to seduce her until she has no choice but to give in to me. And give in she will. I’ve never lost a fight and don’t intend to start now. Certainly not to a weaker omega.

  “Does the thought of my hands on your flesh, discovering all your secrets one by one, stripping you of your layers and baring you to my gaze…does that turn you on?”

  She raises her chin but doesn’t answer.

  She doesn’t need to.

  Her chest rises and falls, and her belly trembles. That sugary-sweet musk of her arousal laps at my senses.

  My mouth waters.

  And yet I pause and wait…for what? I can’t understand my own hesitation. She is mine to take, to ruin, to do with as I want.

  I am the most powerful alpha in the land, the newly ascended leader of this city.

  So what stops me from having my way with this wisp of an omega who dared try to assassinate me?

  Precisely nothing.

  I drop to my knees and lower my mouth to that trembling flesh between her legs.

  10

  Lucy

  I see the play of emotions on his face…and, really, it should not be possible to differentiate the lust that leaks from his every pore with the flicker of something very much like confusion that I am sure I glimpsed there for a second. No, surely, I am mistaken.

  This is Zeus, the fiercest alpha in the city, the man who killed his own father to become the General. The very hungry male who licks his tongue from the bottom of my pussy all the way to my clit at the top.

  No, no, no.

  I must have said it aloud, for a low purr flows over me. This sound is tenacious, insistent, like the vocal equivalent of a battering ram, seducing me, asking to be let in. And that confuses me. I am at his mercy. He is the alpha, I am the omega, in his suite, on h
is bed, and his tongue is writhing inside me, and yet a part of him tries to soothe me.

  I almost wish he didn’t.

  I wish that he’d take me and be done with it.

  If it is my heat cycle that is making him want to claim me if that is all this is about, then I want him to be done with it, so I can get down to business and perhaps ask him for a way to help the rest of my omega clan. If… His fingers join his tongue in my core, stretching me, hooking inside and finding a vulnerable, delicate patch of skin that is so responsive, so delicate, so everything that I know he’s found that secret place inside of me that I hadn’t known existed.

  I thrash my head from side to side, and my back arches off the bed, and my hands, they are buried in his hair. I should drag them away. Instead, all I can do is rake my fingernails over his scalp until they snag on his heavy locks that are…smoother than they look, silky. Like how my skin must feel in comparison to the second calloused digit he’s pushed inside me.

  “No, please.” I moan, trying to push him—at least I think I am trying to shove him away; the fact is, I am holding his face close to my pussy and thrusting my pelvis into his face, offering up all of myself to him.

  He can take me now and I wouldn’t stop him.

  Another deep purr from him crawls over my skin, settles in my belly.

  More slick oozes from between my legs and a wave of dismay grips me. Around him, I can’t control my own response. It’s alarming and also makes me want to give in.

  He draws in a deep breath as if he is inhaling my very essence, taking a part of me inside him. It shouldn’t be so arousing, shouldn’t turn me on, but it does.

  Primal lust tightens my skin. I pant, only to scream when he circles his tongue over my clit, then drags it to the entrance of my channel where he licks up my moisture. Leaning up and balancing his weight on his forearms, he dribbles the liquid into my mouth. And I slurp it up from his lips and swallow it down.

  I taste myself, sweet and musky, and him…spicy with a honeyed edge that is a shock. It’s far from unpleasant. There’s a strange intimacy in this, in tasting our joined-up essences, and it’s the closest, the nearest I have ever been to anyone else. My soul seems to intertwine with his in that instant. I shake my head, trying to deny these strange feelings of heat and lust and sheer passion that are tearing me apart. It can’t be like this. It can’t feel so right, not when he is all wrong for me.

  As if sensing my confusion, and how close I am to either submitting completely or retaliating with a fresh burst of anger, he raises his head and stares into my eyes, that startling blue gaze of his holding mine. It keeps me still for a second. I find myself slipping, sliding into those molten, colorless depths. Pulled into a strange vortex that I hadn’t expected to encounter.

  A jolt of awareness tugs at my nerves. Every cell in my body seems to be sensitized and yearning for his touch. The hair on my forearms harden.

  I’ve fought enemies on the journey from my home country to get this far…but faced with the biggest monster of them all, I am speechless. A low moan swells up from the pit of my belly. I open my mouth, and all that emerges is “Please…” I gasp.

  There is a flash of satisfaction in his eyes, then he leans down. The hard flesh of his shaft grazes the melting folds of my pussy. My insides twist, my belly churns…but it’s not with fear. A shudder of anticipation tightens my skin. Heat enfolds me, and sweat pops on my brow.

  I swallow and try to speak, but all that comes out is a mewl.

  “I know.” His voice is soft, so gentle, deceptively so.

  My muscles relax and I spread my thighs wider. Then I raise my pelvis, a millimeter more. My core skims his swollen shaft.

  He groans and rubs the head of his cock over the entrance to my throbbing channel.

  A searing need sweeps over me, followed by a jolt of fear. An awareness of what I am, of what he is going to do filters into my mind. He’s going to take me, and this is wrong.

  This is not how I wanted it to happen for my first time.

  Not with an alpha I didn’t choose.

  With the one who my body aches for. With the one who can match my needs. Who makes me feel this depth of yearning I’d not thought possible. I want him to break my heat cycle, I need him to fuck me, knot me, fill me with his cum, breed me. What am I thinking?

  He brushes his shaft over my melting core.

  His movement is almost tentative, and that is my undoing. A groan spills from my mouth. His lips fasten over mine, absorbing the sound. His hands shackle my wrists above my head, and between my legs, that vicious part of him throbs. And his mouth, oh, that hot, needy mouth of his sucks from me, drinks of my essence. It's as if he's trying to rip out the very depth of my soul and fuse it with his. I squeeze my eyelids shut and am no longer sure what I am fighting. Him? Me? This keening need that churns my gut, leaving me hungry and shaking and needy for more, so much more.

  I shake my head, trying to dislodge his sensuous tongue with which he’s licking the inside of my mouth.

  His body shudders. He pulls back, his shoulders trembling as he props his body over mine, holding his weight up with his biceps.

  And it is that unexpected gesture, the fact that he restrained himself instead of ramming into me and taking me, that has the desire roaring through my veins. Heat sears my cheeks.

  I crack my eyelids open in time to see the sweat run down his temples and plop on my cheek.

  His lips slow their assault, his tongue licks the inner seam of my lips…and that softer, gentler touch is so seductive, so full of promise that I tremble. In that second, he reveals a tenderness that connects with me. That omega instinct of mine rushes to the fore and tells me to grab him, hold him, take what he is offering… Do it. Even as he holds back and waits and watches me out of those searing, almost colorless eyes that mirror back my own desires.

  His features are strained, his lips swollen, and yet he stays where he is.

  Why is he holding back?

  What is he waiting for?

  Only he can give me the relief I crave. Only he can make me forget everything I have endured to come this far.

  I bare my teeth and in one swift move wrap my legs around his waist and angle my hips so he slides in, a fraction more. His shaft brushes against the barrier inside me.

  I shudder.

  Desire pools in the pit of my stomach. Goosebumps flare over my arms. Another millimeter more…that’s all that stands between this yawning emptiness and…that feeling of something I crave that I still don’t understand.

  His eyes flash blue with shades of a deep, dark violet in them that hints at secrets, at nightmares.

  A growl rips from him.

  I shiver. Then, still holding my gaze, he pulls out, all the way out of me.

  11

  Zeus

  I stay poised at the entrance to her moist, trembling core.

  Her body heaves and bucks and strains to get closer. Her skin grazes over mine and my blood pulses with need.

  That ache inside me for more, for so much more, to own her, to break her, hammers at my temples. I sniff the blood in the air, and it reminds me that it was she who had bitten me first…and yet I can’t just take her.

  Surprise! Apparently hidden inside is a kernel of someone decent, someone I thought I’d lost a long time ago, someone I still don’t recognize. It’s probably an aberration. And I am sure the restraint on my side is only because she is a virgin. No one, not even an omega who’d dared to break into my stronghold, deserves to be taken against her will for her first time.

  And I am her first.

  I grow impossibly hard at the thought. Yet I also want to watch her closely, study her reactions as she responds to my touch.

  I plan to be her only. I don’t question the complete, utter truth in it that I feel all the way to my core.

  It was she who came to me. She, an omega on the verge of her heat cycle, knowing full well that being in the company of so many alphas was only going to drive h
er over the edge. She knew it…yet she had burst into my ascension ceremony. It was she who’d made the first move to claim me.

  As I am going to claim her.

  Slickness floods her channel, and despite myself, I slide in farther.

  She groans.

  So do I.

  I lower my head and hover above her, balancing my elbows on either side of her body.

  Her eyes are squeezed shut, and sweat beads on her upper lip.

  “Look at me.”

  My voice comes out rough, and it feels like I have drawn it out over cut glass that lines my throat. I pinch her chin. “Open your eyes.”

  She must see me. Know who the alpha is who is taking her, staking his claim on her. She has to acknowledge me.

  Her eyelids flutter open. Her black pupils have grown to expand, covering almost the entirety of her green irises.

  More of her slick flows over my cock as I angle my hips and pause there, my stance planking over her with my weight balanced on my forearms and my feet.

  A slight move and I can slide into her, ram into her all the way and give her the relief she craves. But not yet.

  She moans again, fine lines appearing between her eyes. Her lips part, and her arm comes up to grip my biceps. “Please,” she gnaws on her lower lip.

  “Please what?”

  She shakes her head and purses her mouth. Her cheeks are fiery with color. Her cheekbones stand out under her skin. Her shoulders heave, and her breasts thrust out, the nipples so hard I swear I can cut my skin on their sharpness. Desire coils and tightens my groin. I throb inside her. Every part of me wants to plow into her, to show her who she belongs to, to take her again and again. My biceps tremble with the strain of holding my weight back. “Tell me, Omega?” My jaw firms.

  I move my hips and my cock scrapes the sides of her walls. A shiver of heat sparks down my spine. Her throat moves as she swallows. Her chin wobbles and her eyelids flutter down.