by Addison Cain
The Third’s shouted fury changed nothing. More slaps fell on her rear.
Roaring with the same strength he used to chasten her flesh, Kieran bellowed, “When I left the room, the Omega disobeyed me and ate old food!”
Boots stomped over the debris, the Third approaching in full temper. “She’s starving, Kieran!”
“Which is why I went to the kitchens to grab her something fresh. I brought her clean bedding and clothes.” Not sure how he managed to do it, the Second’s strikes fell even harder. “And I came back to find her swallowing drug-laced garbage!”
Wren couldn’t see it, but she felt it in the jerk of the man who’d somehow pinned her over his lap. Toby had caught Kieran’s wrist.
No more slaps fell, still her backside burned as if set aflame.
“She can’t take anymore, Kieran.” Toby’s soft spoken statement wasn’t said with anger, which implied something Wren didn’t want to consider. “Punish her, but not until she’s had food, water, and rest. Hell, let Caspian be the one to do it if you really want to make a lasting impression. But right now, our little Omega is not well.”
“The amount of Bliss Dust in that food would have killed even Caspian. It wasn’t meant to be eaten all at once.”
“Bliss Dust? Shit.” With Kieran’s fist still tangled in her wet hair, Wren couldn’t raise her head, but she did watch Toby toe her pile of vomit. “You got it all out?”
“It couldn’t have been in her longer than a minute.” Kieran’s arm must have been set free, for his hand palmed the stinging globe of her ass, the warmth of his palm increasing the pain.
“If Caspian finds out about this, he’ll do far more than beat her ass red.”
Drugged food? Kieran’s words from earlier didn’t make sense, not after what Wren had seen. Not after his cock had spilled that fluid down her throat.
She wasn’t in estrous. Just high.
Before Wren could hold on to that shard of consciousness, a new sort of warmth sufficed her. The pain Kieran had brought upon her ebbed away, and listless, cloud-soft calm stole over.
Snot thickened snivels dried up. Her every muscle went limp.
When her lashes next parted, the blurred faces of Kieran and Toby hovered over her. She didn’t even know when she’d been turned.
“Sunshine.” The back of roughened male knuckles caressed her cheek, the man speaking as if disappointed in her. “Don’t make us hurt you again.”
How could anything in the world possibly hurt when everything felt so good? Just the feel of male skin on hers, the smell of potent Alphas, and Wren was in bliss.
“In a few hours you’ll be fine.” A devilish wink, and Toby smirked. “You sure are lovely when you smile, sweet girl.”
The arms around her tightened, pulling her away from Toby’s attention. “It’s not your turn, Third. Piss off.”
Though there was boiling irritation under the Third’s grin, Toby backed off and raised his hands before him in capitulation. “By all means, Kieran. Just, clean her up before you fuck her silly.”
The word fuck and Wren’s insides clenched. The following rush of fluid that rushed from between her thighs obscene.
Toby’s eyes dilated, the male visibly swallowing.
Kieran, still holding her in his arms, straightened to standing and challenged his pack mate. “I’m warning you, Third. I’m not in a sharing mood.”
Grin growing, Toby took a few careful steps backward. “It seems that neither am I. So let’s not scare her by ripping one another to shreds. I’ll go, but only if you swear to me you’ll feed her. We don’t want our little Omega getting in any more trouble with all this garbage lying about.”
Kieran’s low, rusted growl moved through Wren’s every cell. “Oh, I intend to feed her all right.”
At the door, Toby seemed to be fighting himself to open the portal and leave. White-knuckled fist to the knob, he threw over his shoulder, “While you wash her off, I’ll see that the room gets cleaned. We don’t want another accident.”
Chapter 7
Blinking, the fuzzy glow inundating her line of sight began to slowly diminish. Belly to the warmth of another body, cradled in powerful limbs, Wren’s world came into razor-sharp clarity.
Too sharp, the light streaming in through the room’s windows glaring.
Under her, the musculature of an Alpha shifted—the male registering a change in the limp woman splayed and held over him.
He drew in a rib-expanding breath.
Wren, in tandem, exhaled, the pounding behind her eyes growing.
Her lashes swept down again, attention running over the muscled torso of her living pillow, past his naked hip to a hair-dusted thigh, to see that nothing was right beyond.
Nothing in that over-bright space looked familiar outside of a few sparse pieces of wooden furniture.
The big room.
It had been stripped down to the cement floors. The couches gone, the purple bunting and pillows gone, the garbage gone, the offensive smells… gone.
But one familiar scent did perfume the air, the Alpha markers that undoubtedly belonged to Kieran.
Far more viscid than the mud she’d waded through to enter the waterworks, her mental fog swirled murky, thick, and cloying.
The last thing she recalled was warm water, too much soap, and persistent hands scrubbing overly sensitized flesh. Then this, this stripped room, this extended contact with Kieran who only invited attention if he were the one being cradled. He never cradled, just like he never kissed.
Male lips pressed to her crown, reminding Wren of another time the Second betrayed his character. Her house; how he fucked her in the graveyard and kept her warm against the night’s chill.
How he’d covertly given her boy the healing boost and threatened to kill her if she ever told.
This male had threatened her life often, had purposefully given her pain, had degraded her. So what had happened; what had he done? How had she gone from shower to gap in memory? How had the room gone from chaos to vacant?
The beat of his heart under her ear, the constant, sleepy thrum of an Alpha purr untangled her growing rush of adrenaline. Lifting an arm that weighed about a thousand pounds, Wren found moving far harder than it should have been. In fact, the wobbly effort upset her balance and almost sent her slipping bodily off Kieran’s chest
Increasing the pressure of his hold around her body, Kieran gave her a warning growl. One that went unheard once Wren realized how incredibly dry her mouth had become.
Sticky, with a metallic residue slightly underlined by the taste of Kieran.
Lavender eyes flowed to the bedside table where a glass of crystal clear water collected enough condensation to drip down and mark the wood.
She wanted to reach for it with a fervor, but her body felt so heavy.
Even so, her arm extended, missed the mark, and almost knocked the whole glass of precious, clean water onto the floor.
Before she might try again, Kieran stroked a hand down her back, traveling the length of her spine until a meaty grip palmed her ass.
Jerking, a raw yelp wheezing from a parched throat upon unexpected pain, Wren shot up. Palms to his chest, eyes wide, she looked down to see Kieran cock a brow.
Relaxed and languid, he wore an expression as naked as their touching flesh. “Didn’t you learn your lesson not to eat or drink things you found lying around?”
What the hell was he talking about?
Another firm grip of male palm squeezed her cheek, and again, a pained noise escaped her lips. Instinct moved her to look back, to see just why his hands brought about such pain, and Wren gasped to see the bruising all over her butt.
“You look so innocent, so put upon, for someone so guilty. Are you going to pretend that you don’t remember?” The male who’d asked the question sounded entirely reasonable in tone, even though he continued to manipulate the black and blue globes of her ass specifically to cause discomfort.
Vague flashes of his cock down he
r throat, that nectar she could swallow forever running like honey into an empty belly.
Memory of unexpectedly gagging, a wet cough following the sudden extraction of the throbbing flesh pulled from her throat. Wren would have chased after it, had she not been restrained by the very man who’d pushed his way into her mouth.
A mix of want and mortification, flushed her skin pink, and Wren remembered so much more.
Kieran was pair-bonded to the doll.
He had fed her his nectar, over and over, despite her protests, and she had eaten food left in the room in an attempt to protect herself from his urges to feed her more.
The food had been drugged, and he had saved her life by forcibly extracting it from her stomach… then spanked her like a child.
“I don’t care if you don’t want me.” Abandoning her ass, a warm caress moved up her spine until Kieran had gathered the hair at her nape in his fist. Drawing her close, his point razor sharp, he growled, “Do you understand that? You can say no, and I will still make you lie here. I’ll still knot you until you beg for more. I’ll use tricks that will leave you panting and on the brink of madness only I can soothe. I’ll put my children in your belly.”
The man was deluding himself. He was bonded to another. A full bond. Going against his urges to nest with his mate would torment him with every thrust he put in her body.
And children… no. Wren would not raise babies in this hellhole.
So she shook her head to make her point clear. It did nothing but add to the fire in the Second’s green-eyed gaze.
In fact, her negation seemed only to excite him, the cock pressed between their bodies kicking with that first rush of blood. “If you ever disobey me again, if you stupidly put yourself in danger, I’ll give you so much more than a bruised ass to worry about.”
As she was between his spread thighs, there was little leverage she could use to sit up without pulling away, and it would seem he was not in a charitable mood. When she pressed against his chest, Kieran showed his teeth, eyeing her neck as if tempted to rip right into it.
Caspian had already marred that spot. Much of her flesh would forever be decorated by the First’s attention. Looking to it brought the First Alpha to Kieran’s thoughts. “Caspian would have hurt one of your boys, badly, to make a point. Keep that in mind next time you’re tempted to disobey. Be grateful that I am not going to tell him what took place here.”
Her disobedience had not been intentional, Wren had just been so hungry, so frantic to stop falling into the spell of the fluid Kieran kept flooding into her belly. Not at all in her right mind.
“Had I not returned as quickly as I had, you would have died. Do you have any idea what an overdose on Bliss Powder looks like? Bloody foam spills out your mouth, bulging eyes, the skin turns a mildew shade of green in less than a few hours.”
How could she have known all that food had been drugged? He’d pointed it out to her. And why the heck had he been feeding it to the new little girl? All the females here wanted Kieran. He didn’t need to—
“I found dear ol’ mom like that. Dress up around her waist, mouth gaping, and reeking of whatever pimp she’d got the drugs from. Man probably works for me now. I wouldn’t have any way of knowing which one of my pushers was there with her when she took it too far.”
Inner rant cutting short, Wren felt the real-world weight of those words. She felt them, imagining finding her own mother in such an awful state, knowing that the person partially responsible probably called him boss. That Kieran knowingly had his men concoct, push, and sell designer drugs despite his history.
The feelings that came with all of that were so ugly she didn’t even know what to call them.
What if Alec had seen her that way? What if they had shown Mikael? What if either of them were ever tempted with this shit. Heck, Alec might be upstairs, but he was and always would be a member of the Syndicate. Part of his job would be to push their interests.
Sometimes it was easy to forget just what these males were really responsible for.
Trying to clear the sand from her throat, Wren found she couldn’t meet Kieran’s eyes. He’d see the judgment, the pity, all the things he hated most. So she rolled into him in the only movement he’d allow, the meat of her palm to her eye, and he settled her frame where he wished.
And she purred, as much to comfort herself as to appease him.
Gentle fingers combed through her clean, dry hair. “If you think purring over me is going to make this better, you’re wrong.”
The censure of her glare behind her hand, the silent not-everything-is-about-you look, she kept them to herself. Yet the way her purr magnified as if in defense of her feelings, didn’t stop him from batting aside her hand and drawing her mouth up for a kiss.
Chaste, lingering. Soft and gentle.
A lover’s kiss.
Fingertips burrowing against her scalp in a way that left her tingling, he pulled her small body ever nearer. Thighs parted, legs moved with ease, until he’d rolled her under his mass, all the while his mouth working magic, his purr infiltrating, and his cock growing ever harder.
Silken lips moved to her ear. “I could have fucked you the whole time you were high. You begged for it with those pleading eyes and parted lips. It was all I could do just to restrain you. Remember that. I could have fucked you raw, done anything. But I didn’t.”
On that score, he wasn’t lying. Wren’s memories of the past hours were nothing but flashes of slick and aching need. She’d been a bitch in heat, rubbing this man, squealing and whining in frustration as he denied her.
Is that what estrous would feel like?
A brainless need for physical release no matter who was near? An embarrassment of invitations and a drooling mouth?
That’s what Alphas were eager to enjoy? It seemed so mechanical, passionless in every important way.
The tip of Kieran’s tongue flicked between her lips, a small grunt coming from the male when his cock spilled on her belly in invitation.
When more fluid burst from him, more than was normal to entice a female, when it began to run down her sides and pool on the fresh sheets, Wren realized he’d cum fully. Just from a kiss.
He’d denied himself a knot, would be in aching discomfort unless pressure was applied, but did not draw her hands down. He didn’t make her do anything but continue to bear his mouth.
Breathless, a hair's breadth from her parted lips, Kieran caught her eyes before she might be wise enough to look away. What confused her most was reflected in those envy-green eyes. Affection.
“Drink the cup of water, it’s safe. There is more in a pitcher under the table. We’ll build a nest when you’re finished. When it’s done, you will invite me to share it.”
He had not offered any threats. There had been no bet or temptations. These direct orders without caveats were so unlike him.
But welcome.
“Are you hungry?”
Always. The wry smirk that came with the thought was enough to explain. The rumble of her stomach sealed it.
Climbing over her body to straddle her face, Kieran slipped halfway into the creature he’d been in the shower. Cock already pumping nutrient substance so that it dangled like a thick dollop of cream, he smeared her lips before she could protest. “Then open up.”
He was down her throat before Wren even registered the turn.
More than he had offered her yet drained from him to nourish her, to cut off her air, to set her sex to dripping. As with every other time he’d forced himself on her this way, he had to fight her off to retrieve his member, and left her panting, red-faced, and confused.
When she scooched back, fighting her breath and her body’s reaction, her feet slipped on the copious slick unintentionally spilled.
Easing back, Kieran took her chin and looked over her blush. “Did you think I offered you food?”
Of course that’s what she thought!
He lifted the cup, holding it out to her and helping her
keep it steady so she might gulp it down. Clean water rinsed the addictive taste of him from her mouth, but it did not wash away her desire to lean forward and lick his oozing cockhead for another taste.
Palming his erection, expression blank, Kieran subtly waved his cock at her. “Do you want more?”
Yes! But she sure as hell was not going to latch on.
A shaking hand set the cup on the table, an extended troubled breath falling from her lips as she slipped from the bed as if to reach for the pitcher. The inelegant retreat was allowed. Glass refiled, drained, and filled again, she took all the water she could bear.
Next came the building of a nest. One built around the male already occupying it.
After an inordinate amount of time, long after the nest was truly finished and she was just fiddling to stall, Kieran took her hand, and shook his head as if to say no more.
Pulling her in, he arranged her comfortably on her back, her legs cradling his hips. And then, like a total stranger, he spent hours making careful love to her.
All of it was about her pleasure, every touch seeking out the places on her body that made the Omega sing.
Not an ounce of pain came even in the moments his long thrusts became more passionate. He didn’t twist her into a pretzel or mock her lack of skill. Instead he praised her with soft compliments and gratuitous attention.
Wound up beyond the euphoria of a mating high, Wren lost all sense of time. Waves of pleasure washed away regret, purified fear, and purged anger. When at long last he knotted her, she was an active participant, kissing her lover, pulling him nearer, enraptured and enwrapped in the form of a doting Alpha.
She didn’t even notice when he set his teeth to the other side of her neck, floating far away and lost in a sense of joy. The pain didn’t even register when Kieran punched his teeth deep.
It wasn’t until she woke later, still in their nest, still in his arms, to the sounds of a holo projected before them that she even smelled the blood.
Kieran, watching a comedy, had one arm thrown behind his head, laughing as if all was right and normal.