by L. V. Lane
And still he did not come.
He never touched; lay like a…lump on the bed while I did all the work. A magnificent lump of prime Alpha flesh, but still a lump.
I soon despaired that he ever would. Craved it until I sobbed with frustration and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me.
His hands hovered at my hips, a light touch…like he was waiting to steady me…I wobbled.
His growl was low and deadly, and his big hands bit into my flesh.
Oh god, yes!
His eyes narrowed. “Playing games, Pet? I think you’ve had enough for today.”
His hands returned to my hips. My pussy clamped, and adrenaline rushed in fear and anticipation of him knotting me again.
He did not knot me. Instead, he snatched me up and lay me over him so that my cheek pressed against his chest. His thick cock thudded against my thigh, and I could not tear my eyes away.
“You’re exhausted, love. It’s time you had a rest.”
I didn’t want to rest. I wanted him to fuck me the way I knew he should. The blurry memory of his hand closing around my waist and forcing me onto his cock made me restless, but he was right, I was exhausted. Inside, though, I was empty.
I stared enrapt at his cock, where it jerked and leaked against his stomach. “I still don’t know how it fits,” I said.
He chuckled, and the deep sound soothed me. “As my grandma used to say, where there’s a will there’s a way,” he said.
My eyes flashed to meet his. It was hard to imagine him as a younger man or even a boy with a grandmother. My expression must have been doubtful because he chuckled again. “It wasn’t my grandma. A pimp I worked for used to say it when it was time to break in new girls.”
That statement was all kinds of wrong. “I can’t imagine you working for someone,” I said quietly because I did not want to linger on what Lucian meant by ‘breaking in new girls’.
He smirked; he really was the most beautiful Alpha I had ever met, and yet, there was a darkness within him that I shied away from. “We all have to start somewhere, Pet. It was a long time ago, and I was a different person then.”
I guess we all made mistakes in the paths of our life. I had hidden my dynamic, and where had that gotten me? He was a successful man now, perhaps those rumors I had heard were all just sour grapes from others less successful? People did things like that, found excuses for why they had not done as well.
My brother ran drugs for a dealer. I hated that he did but understood the realities of our world, the disparateness of it, and of how easy it was to fall into that hole. I thought working for a dealer might be worse than working for a pimp, although the lines between the two were often blurred. Prostitution wasn’t illegal, and neither were many drugs, yet the industry often lent itself to the less scrupulous side of our society.
My best friend at school turned tricks for money now, the curse of beauty among the non-dynamic community saw her targeted early. She liked drugs and drink and had been treading a dangerous path before she was picked up. She was generous with her heart and body, and they paid and treated her well, and limited her access to narcotics—it might even have saved her life.
His big hand skimmed over my waist to cup my ass cheek. I liked his hand there, more than I was comfortable with admitting. “My manager said you came from another planet…that you were conscripted for the war.”
“Lyus was, and still is, the Empire’s darkest hellhole. And yes, the conscription took me out. My days working for a pimp are long behind me.”
I turned away because this was a troubling conversation, yet I was drawn into it now. “Was he conscripted too?”
“Who, Pet?”
“The pimp.”
His laughter was dark, and his chest vibrated under my cheeks. “No, love. He was a prick, and I killed him long before the conscription came, but I kept his saying and the girls.”
A dead space opened up, and my stomach dropped through it.
What was wrong with me? Why did I always try to see the best in people?
The many times my brother had returned home beaten bloody because he had screwed up an order, or some other gang had taken exception. And the day I visited my best friend in the hospital because she had been given a ‘bad’ batch.
Those shocking moments pressed upon me from all sides, reminding me that darkness was part of being in the light, and that my life had been mostly in the gray.
My naïvety shocked me.
After all this time, my life, my family, Dino, and my brother, I was still naïve. I fancied myself to have found a connection with a monster—had thought to empathize with him.
Lucian was a man who took what he wanted…who took girls. He kept pets—he wanted to make me one, to put a collar on me.
You foolish, silly girl.
The threat became palpable. Here, I would become another victim, like those girls being ‘broken in’. Like my brother running drugs and dodging the next beating. Like my best friend turning tricks and courting the next overdose.
Lucian was a dangerous man; in my very soul, I knew this to be a fact. I was looking at the tip of the iceberg, and what lay beneath the surface terrified me.
You foolish, stupid, silly girl.
What had I done? After the way I had notified my parents and informed the coffee house, there was literally no one searching for me. I froze—my breath trapped in my lungs and my throat closed—and something akin to a panic attack whited out my mind.
In a split second, I was on my back with his hand cupping the front of my throat. “Breathe, Pet.” I wheezed, trapped under his blazing gaze. “Slow your breath.” It took several minutes, but his commanding tone—his sheer force of will—slowly dragged me back from the brink. As my breathing steadied, he rolled, pulling me into the warmth of his body like I had not just lost my mind.
What have I done?
The urge to cry was strong, but I was exhausted and empty, and my cheeks remained dry. “Were you ever going to let me go?” I asked.
He sighed and squeezed my ass in a possessive way as a deep rumble resounded under my cheek. It comforted me, and I hated that he could force calm.
“No, Pet, but you made it easy for me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHIMERA’S WEATHER WAS changeable at this time of year, and despite the onset of evening, it remained balmy. An overgrown jasmine bush in full bloom poked through a window and the sweet scent permeated the air…along with the stench of petroleum.
I lit a cigar and sucked in a heady shot of nicotine. Holding it in my lungs, I savored the slight rush before releasing it.
I nudged my head at Jordan. “Wake the fucker up.”
The abandoned warehouse made for a grim setting. Most of the windows had been shattered, and glass layered the dusty floor and scattered junk. There had been an old homeless guy in the far corner when we arrived, but he’d beat a hasty retreat. I wasn’t worried about him notifying anyone. A single look at me told him that would be a very bad idea.
An Alpha had been chained to a metal girder. Beaten bloody, and now dripping with the petroleum Jordan dowsed him liberally in. I hadn’t decided whether I was going to set his ass on fire yet—but I might.
Jordan popped a revive capsule under his nose, and he awoke with a growl, jerking at the chain and setting his body spinning. Just his toes touched the floor and they scraped frantically as he sought to find contact.
Jordan punched him in the stomach as his spinning slowed, and it took the growl right out of him.
I stepped up as he fought for breath, drawing another nicotine-rich shot into my lungs.
“You know how this works,” I said, pausing to examine the faint glow on the tip of my cigar. “You give me answers, and I will make this quick, or you don’t give me answers, and I watch your skin melting off while you scream like a bitch.”
His nostrils flared, and a low growl erupted from his chest. I smirked. No Alpha liked to be bested, and they sure as fuck didn’t like
the idea of screaming for mercy. It was in our nature to want to be the one on top. I was the fucker on top as far as Dino fucking-dog Malaxos was concerned, and I was going to torture every one of his mutts until one of the bastards squealed.
It wasn’t going to be this one, though. I could see the glint in his eyes that said he would rip me to pieces should he manage to get free, even after the beating Jordan and Kade had administered. He was bigger than me by a good thirty pounds, all of it muscle. But he wasn’t smarter than me, and smart won every time.
Putting the cigar to my lips, I inhaled more of the sweet drug until the tip glowed a brilliant red.
I released the smoke on a sigh while holding the Alpha’s eyes. “He’s not gonna talk. Asshole is stubborn as fuck.” I stepped back. “I’m to going enjoy watching you turn crispy. After, I’m going to drop your chargrilled ass at the entrance to the underground. And I’m going to keep doing that every time a mutt pokes his head up until there are none left.”
I gave the soon to be dead Alpha’s shoulder an affectionate pat, which set him growling and thrashing on the chain.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I realized I had gotten some of the fuel on my hand. Jordan rolled his eyes as he passed me the cloth he’d been using to wipe his bloody hands. I took it with a grimace as I stood back to watch the show. “Light the fucker up.”
As I predicted, he screamed like a bitch. The sounds soothed me, and I tossed my cigar butt at his feet for good measure while he danced on the chain. Black smoke billowed as the flames went to work, and soon the sweet scent of jasmine was a distant memory, replaced by the distinctive odor of burning human flesh.
When it was done, they wrapped him in plastic and tossed his stiff carcass into the back of a ground transport.
“Want me to hook the next one up?” Kade asked, nudging his head at the rail-thin kid kneeling beside him. His right eye was swollen shut and his bloody mouth had dried into a crust around the gag. For a non-dynamic, the kid was a mouthy prick, and I’d ordered Kade to gag him about two minutes into the show at the risk of offing him before we had a chance to chat. Looking him over, I made a little upward motion with my hand.
He was nearly as tall as Kade but built like a strip of wind. Making him talk wasn’t a problem, he’d gone a mile-a-minute from the moment we’d picked them up. All of it had been bullshit, getting him to talk something useful was going to be the challenge.
Drawing my gun, I stalked over and shoved the muzzle against his chest hard enough to drive him into Kade, who had stepped to block his retreat. “I’m really tempted to waste your whiny ass,” I said, pinning him with a glare. “But you might be useful, so I’m going to explore that possibility first. The gag stays in place, and when we get back, Kade here will introduce you to misery. After, he’s going to take the gag out, and I suggest you think long and hard about what you’re going to say. Because I’m giving him permission to shoot you if he hears any more bullshit.”
I holstered my gun and straightened out my suit jacket. “Don’t force him to kill you,” I said. “His therapy is very fucking expensive.”
The kid nodded frantically. Maybe watching his buddy burn had done some good.
Days had passed in a daze since I stupidly tried to make a deal with the devil. The bed was soft and comfortable underneath me, and although I was alone in it, his scent surrounded me.
No, it wasn’t even a proper deal, I had tried to trick him, and should he ever find that out, I knew it would not end well for me. Not that it mattered anymore, because like a fool, I had walked straight into his trap.
I belonged to him, had imprinted upon him, and he could and would do with me as he pleased.
It was the first time I had been alone while I was awake, and the experience unsettled me…like something was missing, and this realization galvanized me into action.
My whole body ached, a bone-deep weariness, and even my mind felt tired.
I could not think straight while he was close, and while his scent surrounded me. But in his absence, I felt like I was waking up. It still took a great deal of will power to force myself out of bed, but as I stood under the hot spray in his spacious shower, I felt much better.
The shower in my parent's house was the size of a small coffin. The water came out as a trickle that was either scalding hot or freezing. It wasn’t my shower anymore. I didn’t have a shower anymore; I was officially in limbo, and about the only positive I could find was that I didn’t have to hide what I was anymore.
The pelting water soothed me, and I tried to picture all my troubles flowing from me and disappearing through the hidden drain. When my skin began to wrinkle, I flipped it off and dried myself on the soft, fluffy towel. He had so many soft things here that I might have forgiven him for being a monster had I not recognized manipulation at play.
Finding myself sniffing the soft towel because I could detect Lucian’s scent, I tossed it aside.
“I like my entertainment willing, Pet,” he had said before I dived headfirst down the rabbit hole. “Omegas are always willing.”
Willing? What was willing? What did that even mean to an Omega who had imprinted on an Alpha? I was a slave, and a victim, and a prize-winning fool. We had made an agreement. He had promised me money enough to escape my life—he had promised me suppressants.
I needed clothes.
I would feel equal to this challenge if I had clothes.
The master bedroom was beyond even my imagination. It was dark and masculine, and you could have fit my parent's entire apartment in here and still have room to spare. Windows spanned one wall, the tint taking the glare from the setting sun.
That view was the product of hopes and dreams: soaring towers, brilliant billboards, glistening streams of shuttles and other aircraft, and in the distance, mountains. I had seen Chimera’s mountains on the entertainment viewer, but I had never been anywhere that I could see them in person.
The quietness of his apartment soothed me. In all my life, I had never known such calmness. None of it felt real, not the decadent bedroom with the huge four-poster bed, not the soft, thick flooring under my feet, and not the views out of the window. Clouds, when had I ever paused to watch clouds?
Never was my answer.
My musings had brought me to a halt perilously close to the unmade bed where his scent taunted me, coaxing me to return to the jumble of pillows and soft quilts in shades of black and gray.
I wasn’t a victim, I had seen far too many of them in my short life, and I was not about to become one.
Turning away, I rifled through his closet with a hand over my nose. His clothing would cover me, but even laundered it reeked of him and wearing it would weaken my resolve. On the other side of the closet was a colorful wall of silk and lace.
Women’s clothes.
I tried not to make eye contact with them. I imagined them belonging to one of his other pets, and struggled to calm my temper. As my fingers skimmed over the silken mass, I drew a tentative breath. Clean and new, no other scent adorned them, not even faintly.
My fingers trailed over the soft luxurious things. I paused at the pink negligee; it was the most beautiful garment I had ever seen, shear and so light under my fingers.
And small.
Not for the tall Betas then—this had been bought for me.
It wasn’t practical on any level, but it was better than naked, and it wasn’t suffused in Lucian’s scent. There was a tiny pair of matching panties that left more of my ass exposed than they covered. I slipped the soft negligee over the top, but it didn’t cover much more.
I paused, catching a glimpse of myself in the floor to ceiling mirror. The person who stared back at me might as well have been a stranger. Long dark red hair, damp from the shower, hung in clumped tendrils, leaving a little wet patch where it touched the negligee.
I looked like a pet who had been left out in the rain—sad and a little disheveled. Rarely did I stop to regard myself; the cracked mirror at my parent's home had l
ost its luster with age, and while at work, I was wearing a dreadful uniform and barely spared a glance at myself.
My slight body came with soft curves that the clothes accentuated. It was little wonder Lucian had sin on his mind, I was a living, walking sex doll. I smoothed out the material, imagining it were his hands instead of mine, imagining him standing behind me, dwarfing me, and demanding I ask for his collar.
My chest was rising and falling unsteadily, and my splayed hand rested just above my pussy over the place where Lucian had tapped. I could almost feel his finger there tapping softly and driving me mad with want.
Snatching my hand away, I drew a shaky breath, turning and searching the closet and having no idea how or why I was here.
His scent was doing this to me, even here. There was nowhere in this apartment I could escape from it.
Five minutes, I needed five minutes, and I would be almost right, almost me. I couldn’t—wouldn’t become someone’s mindless slave.
Resolved, I went to the lounge I had seen only briefly before he had taken me to his bedroom, where he had fucked my free will away. My eyes aligned on the closed elevator door almost immediately before I sent a glance to the high corners of the room. There was no apparent monitoring, but that did not mean that there was none. Perhaps not in his private space, but there would be some in the elevator surely?
I pressed the call button anyway, fingers shaking, and petrified that it would not come, and yet as fearful that it would.
When the door opened with a soft ding, I nearly had a panic attack. It took several deep breaths before I could accept that it was here and empty.
What the hell was I doing? I needed to get out as fast as I could.
My mind was screaming at me to step forward, but my feet were rooted to the spot.
When the door shut again, it snapped me out of my daze, and I jabbed my finger on the call button like a madwoman until it glided open again. There was no hesitation this time, I was in, and staring blindingly at the various buttons and only half seeing what they said. Lots of numbers, and at the bottom, the letter ‘B’.