And she was horrified to realize just how much of an effect it had on her—just those two words falling from his mouth had her body clenching and practically flooding itself with her own cream. She was worried that he was going to notice how it was now literally running down the insides of her thighs.
Her reaction didn't get by him, either. He took another long, slow sniff of her as he bent down again, being, she suspected, quite deliberately intimidating, his nose very nearly touching hers. At this close range, her cycle-heightened senses could smell him—the leather that he was wearing, the scent she recognized but didn't want to as his own, but the worst of all was the fact that she could both smell and sense his arousal.
And his deep musk affected all of her—raising gooseflesh along every inch of her body, bringing a hot blush to both sets of cheeks, her breath already coming in short pants. It was all she could do not to rip her clothes off to present herself to him in the most blatantly submissive of manners.
But she refused to do that, and would continue to do so for as long as she could physically manage to ignore the impulse, although it grew stronger by the second. Almost worse than that, it was affecting her ability to think, which she prized more than most.
"It—" Despite her highly disadvantaged position, she did her best to keep her head on straight, swallowing hard and raising her head, although still not meeting his eyes, to deliver her answer as she would have moments before he made this disturbing discovery. "It began no more than eighteen hours ago, sir. It developed during the meetings yesterday." That might be a bit more telling than she wanted it to be, but it was the truth. "But I have, until now, successfully hidden it from anyone else. I waded through almost the entire troop to get here. None of them noticed anything." They were all too busy carefully ostracizing her for her precipitous promotion, but she didn't say that.
In a split-second decision that was unusual for him, Zerk reached out a big paw, and she wasn't able to curb the impulse to shy away from it, although it didn't end up that he was trying to touch her but, rather, reached past her to calmly and quietly set the deadbolt on the very solid door. He knew that everyone in the hallway would have heard him do that, and he knew to what conclusions they were all coming at the moment.
"Then you experienced sheer, dumb luck, and I know I don't need to tell you what a rarity that is in this world," he whispered raggedly, grabbing her wrist. He also knew it was only a matter of time before the scent of her wafted to the men outside in the hallway, and he had to act fast. The feel of his strong fingers closing surely around her flesh, controlling her, taming her, made her spasm intimately and gasp loudly in outrage, but he gave no sign that he'd noticed in the least. As he jerked her sharply towards him—and she knew she was in danger of crashing violently into his chest—he prevented her from doing so by unexpectedly connecting his fist to her jaw, dropping her like a stone.
Luckily, he was prepared for her to do that and was able to catch her up in his arms before she hit the ground, surprising himself by frowning at the bruise that was already darkening her fair skin. After reaching into her pants to rip off her underwear—which he noted with great satisfaction, despite their deplorable condition, were literally drenched in her heady scent—Zerk ruthlessly clamped down on his own rampant desires. After throwing her panties on the floor near the door, he turned to skirt around his desk and stand in front of a large bookcase, juggling her only long enough to reach into it and move a particular military tome, which resulted in the entire large—supposedly built in—unit moving to one side to reveal a small door.
Keeping her firmly in his arms, he crouched down to enter the dark passage.
But a loud knock at the door stopped him from doing so.
"Commander?"
It was Dune, his legate.
"Commander, are you all right?"
He knew that Dune knew that he was perfectly fine—and his next words proved that to be undoubtedly true.
"We, I, the men and I…there's something unusual coming from your office and we're concerned for your safety."
No, they were concerned that he was going to claim the omega she had revealed herself to be for his own, before they had a chance to fight him—and each other—to the death for her.
He moved back to stand near the door with her clasped to his side, his weapon—which was always nearby—in his other hand to push her would be underwear closer to the very slight crack at the bottom of the door, knowing that would provide plenty for them to smell, thus they would continue to think that she was in the office. "You and the men are to return to your quarters. Please inform the leaders of each strike team to be in the command room in sixty minutes. Those are my orders."
There was an abnormally long pause before his legate responded, as well as wholly unacceptable grumbling from the rank and file about his orders—neither of which would go unpunished.
Finally, there came an extremely reluctant, "Yes, Commander," and they could hear him literally having to physically fight some of the men away from the door.
Zerk grimaced, knowing he was going to lose some good men over this, and at a time when he could least afford to. Some of them would sneak back, he had no doubt, and they would have to be killed. But he and his Sec—the girl—would be long gone, and he would have created a nice diversion that might deter them from looking for them for a while, at least. Some of them would be actively hunting for her and wouldn't appear at the Commander's Call, and they would have to be killed, too. So be it.
He lifted her back into his arms and as he looked down at her, he knew exactly what he had to do.
The passageway eventually branched out in several directions, and he chose the one that went to his quarters. He'd had his room heavily fortified as soon as he had killed off his predecessor and taken command, and it would be the closest thing to a safe place for her to be.
Once there, the door he'd used closed behind him as another heavily built and fully stocked bookcase then moved into place in front of it.
Zerk put her down on his bed, then began to move about the spartan room, quickly and efficiently divesting himself of his armor and the clothes beneath it, until he stood there at the end of the big bed, looking down at her, completely nude.
He then proceeded to do the same to her, each piece of armor and clothing he removed only making it harder and harder for him to control himself as his mind and body were deluged with the almost living thing that was the evidence her body produced for him of her arousal, of her readiness—her need—to be bred, even though she was unconscious.
When he got to the bindings, he used one of the huge knives he always kept close to him to slide under them, between her breasts, slicing them as he went. It wasn't until he had thrown them all on the floor that he realized to just what extent she had been willing to go to subvert her own gender in order to succeed in this world.
Her breasts were so beautiful—despite how cruelly they had been treated—or perhaps because of that—that he could barely tear his eyes away from them. She was quite generously endowed, but he hadn't known it until seconds ago.
That was just a crime, omega or not.
He knew that some of his soldiers thought she was a man, and she had done an excellent job subduing any feminine tendencies or characteristics she had—this was a case in point. But she'd also kept her hair criminally short, and he suspected that she'd only spoken when she absolutely had to, keeping her voice deliberately deeper than it would be normally.
But she had also proven herself to be a braver and more naturally competent, thinking soldier, which is why he'd promoted her. Until now, he hadn't really cared whether or not she was female, just that she did what was asked of her and did it well.
Things had changed radically, though, and he could no longer afford to disregard her sex if she wanted to live and since he intended to have her for himself.
Allowing himself to press his lips with surprising gentleness to the now angry black and blue bruise on her jaw,
he placed himself carefully over her, between her widely-spread legs—which she then became physically unable to close—reaching out a big hand to pat her unmarked cheek firmly but gently.
"Wake up. Come on, now, wake up." What was her name? He had a fairly good memory for things he'd heard, but he couldn't recall hers. In fact, he couldn't recall anyone—least of all himself—calling her anything but whatever her rank had been at the time, and despite the fact that she'd been working under him for several years, he'd never heard her volunteer it to anyone, either.
Her eyelids began to flutter eventually, once or twice, then, suddenly, they were wide open and looking more alarmed than he had ever seen her—and he'd watched her confront almost certain death in battle and face it entirely without flinching.
She began to try to buck him off of her immediately, and for such a small thing, which had been a bit of an advantage in some physical fights she'd been in, she was quite strong and an undeniably skilled fighter but nowhere near enough to dislodge him from his chosen place.
"Get off me!" Her screamed words had no effect, except what had to be exactly the opposite of what she intended as he captured the wrists that were punching—humiliatingly ineffectually—at him and pinning them to the mattress by her head.
She couldn't believe where she'd found herself when she awoke—he was naked atop her, and there seemed to be very little that she could do to move him off. She'd managed, through skill and not a little luck, to avoid exactly this situation throughout her life, depending, at first, as a free-range child, on her knowledge of the streets and her quickness, then, eventually, her words, and finally, her largely self-taught ability to fight to keep herself from ending up exactly here, held helplessly against her will.
He subdued her almost matter of factly, rendering her unable to move in what was a few careless seconds for him but was a devastatingly short amount of time for her. It forced her to rearrange how she thought about herself and her own safety within the world around her that she'd tried to arrange so carefully for her own protection, all while tantalizing her with what she now wanted—all while hating every second of both shocking situations. But hating herself for what she was becoming, most of all.
She'd always thought of herself as strong—as almost invincible, in some ways, despite her size. The genderless-leaning-towards-male exterior she'd constructed for herself had kept her relatively safe.
And now, her own body was fucking all of that up for her, and she wanted to cry—another unfamiliar impulse she was horrified and humiliated to realize she had.
His face was inches from hers, and she could feel that part of him that was most male—very, very male, matching his proportions in its size—poking insistently against that part of her that was most female.
It was the very part of her that was most demandingly needy, at the moment, weeping copiously around his undeniably threatening presence.
"You know what I have to do."
It was a statement, not a question, although his tone wasn't threatening, either, really—not that it helped her to deal with what he meant in the least.
Despite the circumstances of her childhood—her life—up to that moment, she hadn't had any experience whatsoever with men. She thought she knew the rudiments of the act, but she had been much more concentrated on avoiding confronting it personally to explore any of the details, or indeed, even to find out if what she thought she knew about it was valid.
Zerk ignored the horrified and downright disgusted look she gave him as she revived her attempts to get away, holding her easily in place such that all of her considerable efforts did not succeed in moving her so much as an inch out from under him.
The firm "No!" she intended to issue came out much softer and more pleading than she had intended, by far.
He nodded resolutely. "Think about it, little one. Being bonded with the strongest man in the known area will give you at least a modicum of safety."
She didn't necessarily know what the word "modicum" meant, but she inferred from context.
And he wasn't likely wrong about that.
But, although her body was already busy making itself ready for him, had indeed been doing so for nearly a day, her mind rebelled as much against the idea of being bound to this man as she would have to any other man. She didn't want that—railing not so silently against a fate she considered to be worse than death. She wanted to continue the life she had created for herself. She wanted her independence, to make decisions for herself and then act on them, without having to look to anyone else for permission.
If she allowed him to do what he wanted to do to her, she would be lost to him—to herself—forever. She'd become no better than his slave. She hadn't seen it for herself, but she'd heard about how men treated the rare commodity that was an omega female—they were closeted and cloistered, under their mate's thumb at all times, mindless with the need to mate and bred as often as was possible, kept constantly pregnant and entirely dependent.
They were bred to their mates, even when conception wasn't possible, such as when they were already full of their mate's baby as a method of control. She wasn't sure exactly how they were controlled that way, but it wasn't something she was interested in finding out for herself.
But she had a terrible feeling that she wasn't going to be given a choice in the matter.
And, in the next second, she uttered an angrier, more full-throated scream than she ever had—even in the midst of fighting for her life—as he drove himself deeply inside her with one powerful jab, his insistent head nudging forcefully up against her tender cervix.
Chapter 2
And she continued to yell in frustration—and not a small amount of pain—at her impotence as he simply lay there, buried deep within her, overwhelming her in every possible way he could, reducing her once rather exalted status—especially for a female—to nothing more than her ability to provide him with the children he got on her in one swift stroke.
"You were a virgin," he said, almost conversationally. There had been but the slightest hesitation from a body that was primed to receive him, but he noticed it.
She clamped her mouth shut at that, but not before she bared her teeth at him, snapping them shut loudly, as if biting down on the part of him with which he was currently impaling her. But those long arms of his were wisely holding him—all of him—well away from her mouth, unfortunately.
She was a smart woman, so as he engaged in his own battle to retain the famous control he prided himself in having, he tried to appeal to her intelligence. "If you would try to relax, it'll be much easier for you—you'll enjoy it." He was cursing his men for the need to take her now, when he didn't have the time he really needed to create the response he would want from her. Zerk knew that even if it would have been much better—much more likely to bond her to him if she could enjoy it, even be forced to enjoy it—it had to be done now if she was to have any measure of safety from being claimed as his and bonded to him. Granted, it wouldn't be much, but some men—probably most of those under his command, he hoped—would respect his prior claim on her.
And anyone who challenged that would be dealt with personally, by him, and in the harshest of ways.
"Fuck you! Get your motherfucking cock out of me!" Although she had resolved not to yell again, she was so incensed at the position in which she found herself that she descended to it almost immediately. She hadn't felt so out of control since she was the little girl he kept calling her.
"What's your name?"
The question threw her off, as he had intended it would.
For the first time—ever—he thought, she looked him directly in the eye. "Fuck. Off."
His patience, which had never been particularly plentiful or even present within him at all, some would undoubtedly say, was growing thin. Zerk drew her arms further above her head. "Tell me your name." He wasn't quite sure why he wanted to know it so much, but he did.
Her mouth remained tightly closed.
In respons
e, he moved just enough to position himself very particularly within her, settling the tip of his cock a bit further back than it had been, up against a part of her that made her squirm once, then stop, but he caught the small movement—and her slight intake of breath—anyway, of course.
He knew he was right where he needed to be, and what her name was became a matter of much less concern to him.
Then, as his body egged him on, he pierced himself into her in that particular Alpha way, being deliberately cruel as he did so without warning, and pretty much knowing that she had no idea what he was going to do. He took perverse delight in being able to drive her past her stubborn resistance, even if it was into another blood curdling scream, this time, of pure, unadulterated pain.
Her body tensed beneath him as much as it could, fighting to alleviate the pain by changing positions. But not only was there no way to do that from beneath his considerable bulk, but there was not going to be any respite for her until he decided to release her from that peculiar form of bondage. She tried to come to grips with what he'd done to her—how he'd hooked her internally—she really did. But it was agonizing to the point that it took her breath and her prized intelligence clean away. There was no marshalling her faculties enough to get her mind past what he'd done to her.
She couldn't stop herself from continuing to scream, until what he did to her next caused her to want—no, need—to clamp her mouth shut again, against an entirely different kind of sound.
When she began to holler, he first looked around for something with which to muzzle her. But, it had been too long for him to still have such things quick to hand. Lacking that option, Zerk grimaced, taking her wrists into one big paw while sighing impatiently and reaching down between them—which wasn't easy, due to the disparity in their sizes—to find her thigh first, then past that and beneath himself, to claim her most intimate places even further than he already was.
An Omega's Awakening (Alpha's Woman Book 4) Page 2