But as I curled my fingernails into the leather of the king’s jacket and took his lips as mine, I let myself dream. That this was more than my heat turning him into an animal. That a man like King Adalai could see me as something more than an omega. More than a female body to rut whenever he pleased. He’d given me a taste of something dangerous. Want was becoming hope.
I didn’t only want to belong to the king. I wanted the king to belong to me. Like he said, I wanted to be the omega who brought the shifter king to his knees. Not only in this filthy bunker, but in front of the entire city.
My dreams and my pride would get me killed, so I would hang onto this night fiercely. The king could end me tomorrow. Tonight even. He could throw me to the guards and let them have their way with me until I couldn’t take anymore.
The king pulled away from my mouth. His cock still throbbed inside me. We were one.
“What’s the matter, my rose?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
I could barely make out his features in the dark, but there was no missing his frown. Was it possible that the king actually cared about me?
I had to keep my wits about me. He never promised not to kill me.
“Is it not how you expected it to be for your first time?”
“No.” I had the nerve to laugh, feeling drunk on the sensations he pulled from me. Rielle had smuggled some ancient romance novels out of the castle library and we all had a good chuckle while she read them out loud. But when she was done, all my housemates were left with that same wistful expression. Maybe it could be like that, and not hard and rough like some omegas were forced to serve the guards. The unlucky ones who didn’t make it to shelter in time.
“Then what did you expect?” These words weren’t as kind.
“It’s better.” Yes, he was hard and rough and he meant to claim every inch of me and remind me beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was omega and he was King, but the king wanted me. He’d tracked me down. He could’ve had any female within the city walls. He wanted me. “Because I’m with you.”
He sighed, rolling back onto his knees. His cock was no longer inside me, and the pulsing had become instant insanity in his absence. Buttons popped against my skin as he pulled his jacket open, revealing his hard, muscled chest. The leather slid down his arms, to the mattress. He was so beautiful, so real in his vulnerability. So mine.
For now.
An involuntary whine escaped my lips. Day one of the heat wasn’t even the worst. It crested in violent waves, and I had no idea how long the King planned to stay. Planned to let me live.
I reached for his cock. I needed it inside me, in any way possible. His big hand closed over mine before I had a chance to lean forward and close my mouth on it.
“I control the fucking, female.” His tone was terse. But he didn’t take my hand away from his shaft.
“I need it,” I groaned between clenched teeth. Through my mania, I remembered our conversation from just moments before we started rutting. “I want it. Please.”
The King ran his other hand over my dampened hair, smoothing it away from my face. “You want to suck my cock?”
“I do. I want to take you as deep as I can.” My head was swimming with my heat. I had no idea if I could make good on my promises. I’d never put a man’s penis in my mouth before. But now the opportunity was here, and I had to do everything in my power to convince his majesty not to kill me.
It wasn’t why I was doing it. I needed him inside me. But I was terrified I couldn’t satisfy the king the same way he could satisfy me.
A moan escaped from his lips. “That’s a good thing, my rose. Because I would like to fuck your mouth.”
His grip tightened on my hair and he guided his cock to me. Once the tip hit my lips, he let go of it, easing it along my tongue and hitting the back of my throat. I startled, but he adjusted his rhythm.
“Drop your hands, Zelene.” My name rolling rough and ready off his lips sent a shiver down my spine.
I did as I was told, letting him guide his hardness between my lips. I barely had a chance to catch my breath, but I loved it. His Majesty, for all his stern words, wouldn’t hurt me. While we were together, I could let myself believe this fantasy. I’d carry it with me as long as I could through my heat.
“Touch yourself,” he commanded.
My arms had gone to rubber, and I covered my breasts moaning against his cock as my fingers moved over my pebbled nipples. They ached for this.
“That’s good.” His voice was more like a purr now. “But I want you to go lower. Touch your clit for me, my rose.”
I did as I was told, pushing the bunched-up ruins of my dress from my stomach down to my thighs. A zap of electricity flooded my body on contact, and I rubbed in time with His Majesty’s thrusts. My body writhed, the heat taking over absolutely everything. I thought I would melt into a puddle of need and desire in this bunker, on my knees before the king.
The pressure continued to build and my head fell back as I cried out. I came, my juices soaking my fingers. I was losing control of everything, but I couldn’t stop. I was addicted to this feeling. Forcing my eyes open, I wanted to see the King. He was more beautiful, more powerful than ever, in a climax of his own. Ribbons of his seed landed on my chest.
I lay panting on the mattress as I came down from my orgasm. My hand was still between my legs, the heat and the throbbing had yet to subside. His majesty frowned slightly, running his fingers through the ribbons of cum on my body and offering it to me. I drank it down, sweet and salty, sad that he wasn’t inside my pussy when it happened. I couldn’t birth his heir.
This time, I thought as I drifted into blackness.
***
The worst part of my heat was the fever dreams. They were so real, and I couldn’t stop them because it was impossible to wake from them until they were damn good and ready to be over. Tonight, I dreamed of the king in battle. It was an old-fashioned fight, on horses with suits of armor and bows and arrows. A bloody, hand to hand fight where a warrior could look his opponent in the eye and watch him take his last breath. I gasped awake just before Adalai’s enemy sank a knife in his armor.
We weren’t safe. We may never be. Would he invite me to fight by his side, or would I be that opponent, eye to eye in battle?
My heart pounded as I tore myself away from the dream. Blinking, I let my eyes adjust to the new darkness. The second day of my heat. My body throbbed, which was nothing new, but now, there was an unfamiliar ache that lived in the center of my chest. A pain of missing His Majesty.
I assumed he was gone, back at the castle with his men. It was a lost cause, but I hoped he didn’t regret what we’d done. I was still alive, that had to mean something. Safe in the bunker. More lucid than usual on day two, but I knew it was only a brief reprieve.
A slight breathy hitch alerted me that I wasn’t alone.
The room still smelled like sex. An unbroken heat had a completely different scent. And now I knew a heat didn’t exactly break. I’d hoped that being with the king would make these horrible symptoms go away. The pulsing between my legs had lessened, replaced with a dull ache.
I turned my head, expecting to see one of the girls—our heats synchronized like clockwork. Tavia, as my sister, usually turned within days of me, but it wasn’t her. It wasn't any of the omegas.
Asleep on the bed beside me was King Adalai.
He had stayed. The king actually stayed.
I blinked away the unexpected wetness in my eyes.
His soft snore brought a smile to my lips. He might be royalty, but he was so much like me. Like us.
In that moment, I knew we were the same. The same hearts, the same oxygen in our lungs. I put my hand lightly on his heart just to feel it beat.
Bad idea.
In a flash, he grasped my arm, bending it back from my body as he pinned me to the mattress with his hips. Pressing my lips together hard to keep the scream inside, I shuddered underneath the weight of his body wh
en I saw the look in his eyes. It was the same one from my dream, when he was on the battlefield, just before he killed.
“I’m sorry,” I finally forced out, when I thought I’d die from the intensity of his stare.
“Never do that.” He dropped a quick kiss to my forehead and rolled off me with a sigh. “Good morning.”
Good morning?
“Hi.” The fear rushed out of my body, replaced with curiosity. “How did you sleep?”
He ran his hand down his chest muttering, “Better than I have in ages.”
“Good.”
He turned to look at me. “Is it? Good? What if I wanted to punish you for this stunt. How am I to do that when you have this effect on me?”
“Will you punish me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I propped my head in my hand, unable to contain my grin as I raked my gaze over him. Rumpled from sleep, for once he was less than perfect. Less than kingly. He was normal. And my poor heart, which had been getting quite the workout ever since I came up with this crazy scheme, skipped a beat. This secret moment with him meant too much.
I was falling for King Adalai. His name would be on my lips when he killed me for this.
“I’m glad you stayed,” I said, filling the thick silence.
“I couldn’t leave you alone down here. No guards—”
I laughed. “You think I usually have guards? Because that never happens. The best I can hope for is one of the girls to be in heat at the same time as me. You mean you didn’t have guards to take you back to the city.”
It would’ve been dangerous for the King to walk through the Badlands without protection. And he was well within his rights to kill me for pointing it out. There were plenty of omega males with a chip on their shoulder who would love the bragging rights for taking down His Majesty.
“I don’t need anyone’s help, female.” He slammed his hand against the mattress. “I stayed because I wanted to make sure you made it through your heat safely.”
Stars exploded in my vision. King Adalai just admitted he cared about me.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” But something about this man pushed me to test every single boundary. “Does that mean you want to fuck me again?”
“You have a smart mouth for an omega.”
The pulsing between my legs was back. Needing him. Wanting him. “Does that mean you’ll punish me?”
“You keep asking like you want it to happen, my rose.” He turned to face me. Mirroring my position, with his head propped in his hand. “I could bring you to the public square and take my sword to you in front of the entire city.” He ran his hand from my mound all the way up to my throat, clasping it into his grip. “They’d cheer as you begged for your life.”
“But would you?” I asked. “And if I begged for my life, would you let me live?”
He didn’t say anything right away. “Brave. Sometimes it’s the same thing as stupid. But it’s also the only way to win a battle.”
I closed my eyes for a long blink. In the wake of this crazy dream, that I could get a man who lived inside the city walls to treat me like one of his own, so many more had blossomed. I never dared set my sights on the King, but here we were, in the heat bunker, tangled in sex-stained sheets, together. I was teasing him and I could actually see his walls crumble. Maybe I could show him my people weren’t lesser than his. We were all the same.
Or maybe he was right. Bravery and stupidity were the very same things.
“You can go back to the city if you want. It’s probably daylight. One of the girls will come check on me.” We always took turns, making sure whoever was in heat had food and water, even if they weren’t in any shape to consume it. Coaxing them to eat and drink, we’d stay as long as needed.
“Your friends care about you very much,” he said.
“They’re amazing women. I know you probably don’t think of them that way, because we’re omega, but we do the best we can with whatever we have.” I almost told him why I’d come to the party, because I truly believed we only needed one alpha or beta to see that, to see us, and it could change everything, but I was already pushing my luck, and my body could betray me at any moment and go back to a state of pure need.
“I was impressed with how they came together to protect you last night. They put their lives on the line to make sure you were safe.”
I nodded. “That’s how my mom taught us. Tavia’s my sister, and the other girls were orphaned early in the war, so Mom took them in, and we’ve been together ever since.”
“Where’s your mom now?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “She died in an Omega War battle, trying to keep the Badlands a part of Luxoria.” It was still hard to talk about my mom. She’d been gone ten years, but every day I saw something that reminded me of her around our shack. Even the way Tavia talked. I always teased her about it, but I loved it just the same.
“I’m sorry,” the king said softly.
I was thankful for the dark, so he wouldn’t see my tears. Mom taught us never to show weakness. Not even when our backs were against the wall. “Me too. Mom taught us how to fight, to question everything, and not to take any shit from anyone inside the city.”
I probably said too much. Maybe he would want to know who she’d been aligned with, and ask if the omegas had any secrets. We only had one. Our ability to shift. But our energy went into surviving. Didn’t leave a lot of time to overthrow a government.
“I like her.” The King wiped the tears from my cheeks. To make sure his work was complete, he sealed it with a kiss.
I kept asking him, teasing him, if he’d punish me. But this time, I was too scared to ask. My mother would’ve served us his father’s head on a plate for dinner and topped it with mashed potatoes, since we only got those on special occasions. Up until now, I was just a clueless omega who’d overstepped her bounds and managed to lure the king into the Badlands by the promise of her virginity. He had it, and he hadn’t left. Now he knew everything about me. Too much.
“What happens now?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Are you still in heat?”
I nodded. “I will be for three more days. It’s...more manageable than usual after last night. I think, anyway. I can speak in complete sentences and I don’t feel like my wolf is trying to tear my skin open. But…”
Apparently, sex had been like a truth serum and I didn’t know when to shut the hell up this morning. If my actions didn’t get me killed, my words would most certainly be the end of me.
“But what, my rose?” And the King, I wished I could think of him as Adalai now, even if I couldn’t address him that way, was being so nice. It scared me more than when he was formal with me.
“I don’t know how long the effects will last.” I stretched to give my animal some room as she squirmed inside me, and a whine slipped out.
Shit.
I wanted him to think I had control over my body. That I could be just like him.
“Have you ever shifted?” he asked.
“No.” The pressure was building again, especially with the scent of our union still heavy in the air. With my naked body next to his. But he had to be testing me, to see how much I was willing to give him in exchange for my life. How far I was willing to go. “We can’t shift either.”
Which was the biggest lie I’d told since I entered the castle in my pretty pink dress. Last night already seemed like a lifetime ago. The wolves had been circling the bunker all night long, howling with need but unable to find the source of the scent. The King must have heard them too. I’d been more than a little preoccupied, but they did it every time a female omega came to ride out her heat.
“What would you do if you could shift?” he asked, pushing the issue just that little bit more.
I closed my eyes. A wave of heat and need came over me. “I’d run free. There wouldn’t be any alphas or omegas. We’d all be wolves.”
“But wolves have packs, and packs have leaders
,” he reminded me.
“And every wolf has something to offer the pack. No one is lesser or more than another. One is just the leader.” I writhed beside my King.
“Omegas have something to offer.” It was big of him to admit that. “They keep our city running while we keep it safe.”
“But you don’t keep us safe.” I couldn’t take it anymore. I pushed his chest down onto the mattress and straddled him. The moan that escaped his lips was so satisfying. But every move I made, every word that came out of my mouth, got me deeper into a place I wouldn’t be able to dig myself out of. “Do you know how many omegas have gone missing over the past few years?”
“Missing?” His frown told me he was oblivious to the strange abductions none of us could explain.
“You’ve seen how we live. My friends and I watch each other’s backs because we have to. Or the—”
My head fell back and I let out a whine before I had a chance to say the wolves would get us. They’d bring us to their very own bunkers and have their way with us. Just like I was hoping the King would do with me. Everyone suspected it was omega on omega violence contributing to the missing persons, but it wasn’t just females missing.
His Majesty grabbed me by the throat, and before I knew it, I was the one with my back on the mattress, with his hot thighs caging me in.
“My little omega wants to know what it would feel like if she lived in my castle,” he whispered, then nipped my ear. “You don’t just want me on my knees before you. You want the entire city to kneel for you.”
“No.” I was panting, half-mad with need. “I just want you inside me.”
He reached between my legs, and when he revealed his fingers, they glistened with my arousal, even in the low light. “Don’t lie to me, Zelene. Are you satisfied, living like this, wondering if you and your friends will live to see another day?”
He knew I wasn’t.
“You can do something about that.” I swiveled my hips, grinding against his hard cock. “You make the rules. You can change them.”
Sweat poured out of my skin. My legs were wide open, an invitation for the king to impale me. My heat pounded, and my animal was so restless just below the surface.
His Forbidden Omega (The Royal Omegas Book 1) Page 6