An Omega's Awakening (Alpha's Woman Book 4)

by Carolyn Faulkner

  "They did exist. I'll prove it to you sometime, and from what I've read, you're very much like one, believe me. I think that's what I'll call you, in fact, since it'll help me keep you in line at the same time."

  "No! I don't want to be called after an implement I hate!"

  He grinned. "Sounds perfect to me."

  "No!"

  Instead of getting angry, he merely asked, "You would prefer I keep calling you chiquita and little one and little girl?" already knowing the answer and already knowing that he was going to continue to call her those things, to help remind her of just who she was now.

  She sighed. "Cat, it is."

  His laugh—all warm and deep as it poured over her—was entirely too pleasant for her sanity, especially right now, when she was feeling more vulnerable than she ever had in her adult life. And there he was, just waiting to take advantage of that vulnerability, in the most basic manner possible—which was exactly what he proceeded to do.

  The hips that she moved away from him every time he pulled her to him were brought back one last time before he reached down to cup her between her legs, his fingers becoming immediately drenched, which only heightened his sense of purpose. And then he began to feel her trembling in his arms as if she was terrified, wondering if she was afraid of him after he'd punished her so severely.

  But he'd misinterpreted her movements entirely, and it only took him a moment to realize what it was. She was trying to deny her own needs, to keep her body under the strict control of her mind, rather than giving in to its demands. Unfortunately for her, he was firmly in her body's corner.

  Something he hadn't done with her yet—that he'd forgotten about until this minute, actually—came back to him, and he began to purr at her from deep within his chest.

  Her body stiffened against him as if he had just lashed her again, and her plaintive tone bore that out. "Ohhhh, pleaasseee, don't!!!" she whispered in a way that sounded like a dejected wail, despite how soft it was.

  "Shh-shh-shhh. Stop fighting me, but more than that, stop fighting yourself—your true nature, Cat. Considering how you've lived until now, it can't have been what you expected from your life, but submitting yourself to me, your Alpha—in all things, but most particularly, this—is what you were born to do. Certainly, much more than what you have been doing."

  That didn't seem to help her in the least. She only became more frantic, but he continued speaking—and trilling—because he believed very deeply in what he was saying.

  "I will always keep you safe. No more having to risk your life—to fight for your life." Indeed, that idea sent a bone deep chill through him, much like the one he'd felt when he'd realized she'd fled from him. "Your every need will be met. You will always have enough food, a clean and a safe place to live, and you will want for nothing. Eventually, you'll have children, which I doubt was a possibility you'd even considered before."

  Cat didn't want to stop fighting, and, because she was cunning and crafty, she had rarely gone to bed hungry since she was a child. She had quarters that weren't much smaller than his, she had been surprised to note, but then she hadn't accumulated much in her life and they were as sparsely decorated as his were. Having had a horrible childhood, she didn't care about having children in the least. And she most certainly didn't intend to submit to him. Ever. So none of what he was saying was of any particular interest to her.

  But she didn't have much choice about any of it, it seemed, and fighting him—even though she lost at every turn—was much easier than fighting herself. There was much less shame and guilt in losing to him. Losing herself to him…that concept was just devastating to her, and she had a feeling that she was on the verge of it, especially every time he touched her like this. When he wanted to breed her, she could literally smell the intent on him, even if he wasn't actually forcing her into the act at that particular moment. She was sure he'd get around to it, eventually.

  At the moment, apparently, he preferred to torment her, and the more time she spent with him, the less she was able to resist doing exactly what he was suggesting she do—the more she wanted to surrender herself to him utterly and completely.

  Cat had a feeling that what he was planning would only make things just that much harder for her.

  And she was proven horrifyingly, mortifyingly and shamefully right.

  Chapter 5

  Why wasn't he mounting her? she wondered. The past two times, it had been damned painful—agonizing, really—and uncomfortable and awful and horrible for her, but at least he had gotten to the worst of it quickly. What was he waiting for? She couldn't imagine, but she hated how he was touching her. It was much worse than the act itself, especially for her sense of self, which was teetering precariously on the brink of being conquered by him—not because of the terrible punishments, which she didn't like but she at least understood his reasoning for, or the excruciatingly intimate act of mating, which she acknowledged there was a natural drive for, too. It was this tender treatment that she couldn't stand!

  His hands on her were gentle and soft; he was caressing her now, touching her as if she was something precious to him, and it was driving her crazy! She knew that could not have been further from the truth. Oh, she supposed, if what he had labeled her as was really what she was, he might consider that she had some value to him. She knew that omegas were very highly prized by Alphas.

  But she had yet to come to grips with that, since everything had happened so quickly. And that didn't negate the fact that there were no true feelings behind what he was doing—he didn't love her.

  No one ever had. Why would he be different, just because he considered himself to be her Alpha? No one had ever done anything for her. She had spent her life trying to stop people—men—from doing things to her. Everything she'd achieved, she'd done so herself—every single bit of it.

  And now, he was flat out telling her that all of that was gone and couching it as if that should be something she was proud of—that her body had risen up against her and gotten her a mate she'd never desired. She didn't want—or expect—him to do anything for her, except that which she knew he would never do, which was to let her go.

  And yet he persisted with that annoyingly relaxing purl of his continuing to emanate from deep in his chest, reverberating such that she could feel it against her back because of the way he was holding her. She was surprised to realize that he was trying not to touch her breasts, which were still throbbing and stinging badly in the aftermath of that horrible chastisement he'd put her through, as was the rest of her. It wasn't a punishment. It wasn't discipline—she'd seen both in her days in his service.

  Despite how ruthlessly he had conducted it, the undertones he gave it had made her feel as if she was a naughty, misbehaving child, and she hated that almost worse than the strokes of fire that he had laid viciously across her skin.

  And now he was enticing her, with his sounds and his words worming their way into her consciousness and his hands tantalizing and teasing her with that which she didn't know, that she was sure was a fool's pursuit that would get her nowhere but further under his thumb. But her body—and her mind, by now—were tangled up within themselves, and she felt adrift, with no way to right herself, as he lay there, coercing her into giving herself to him, so that she wouldn't have to think or worry about any of that.

  She would simply have to submit to him, as her Alpha, to give him the power to spank or whip her whenever he preferred, to give her rules about how she would act, to take away her freedom and plant his seed within her very body—or try to at every given opportunity.

  All of this seemed designed to his advantage. There was very little to nothing in it for her.

  But as his hands began to travel over her, touching here and there, always stroking softly, imparting absolutely no pain to her whatsoever, she could feel resolve to resist him beginning to weaken, to seep insidiously away from her. The will to get away from touches that coaxed her desires to the forefront as easily as his did was a
hard thing to maintain, especially as he very carefully began to caress just the swollen tips of each of her breasts.

  When she finally lost control and cried out at that—not in anger, not in defiance, but in deep frustration—she unconsciously crossed her thighs tightly together to try to stop the terrible throbbing between them that seemed to get worse by the second. And, in that moment, Zerk knew he had her well on the way to where he wanted her to be. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be fast with her. It couldn't be, and he felt he understood that about her. He couldn't support her opposition to his dominance of her, of course, but he knew why she did what she did.

  But he was confident that he would win, in the end. She couldn't hold out forever, and he was more than patient enough to wait her out, to unleash a deluge of attentions—some very pleasant, some very much not so, some she might grow to want, some she would probably always wish to resist and resent, whether or not she did—that were designed to bind her to him in other ways, besides breeding her. Being as confined and restricted and utterly dependent upon him as he intended to keep her wasn't going to set well with her, especially at first, but he would do his best to make sure that she was distracted while he was with her and well controlled when he wasn't.

  He wasn't a man to make the same mistake twice. She would be well secured before he set foot outside his quarters.

  Zerk didn't allow her to keep her legs crossed, inserting just his foot between her calves, insistently at first, her strength no match for his so she couldn't help but yield to him. He kept her legs open to him—in one way or the other—from that point on, seeing it as an important way to demonstrate that she was no longer in charge of even such a simple thing about herself.

  Cat tried to close them again around his thick thigh, but that just created the unwanted effect of pressing that hairy, muscular appendage up against the most delicate and mindlessly greedy part of her, christening his leg generously as she leaked her fluids constantly onto it. She couldn't stop that from happening, which was something she was incredibly mortified about, and his deep chuckle didn't help.

  "That's a good little girl. You should always be leaky and wet for me, but even more when you're in heat, when you need to be bred by your Alpha."

  "No! I'm not going to let you do that horrible thing to me again!" She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, especially since they just made him laugh at her again.

  "Please continue to try to stop me, my tiny kitten. Very little would delight me more than that."

  She knew that—not that the knowledge had stopped her from making an utter fool of herself in front of him, quite consistently trying to free herself since he'd abducted her. So, Cat resolved to simply not respond to him, in any way. She'd played dead on occasion, when the need had arisen, and she was quite good at it, she thought. She could go away, to a much more pleasant place in her agile mind, completely divorcing herself from what was happening around her.

  But when she'd done that, she'd had her body under her control, and the combination of her own frightening, undeniable desires and the way he was touching her—encouraging her body to follow his lead rather than her own—rendered her plan damned near moot.

  She quickly found that she couldn't concentrate while his hands stroked over her body as if he was playing some kind of instrument that he knew very well, and she couldn't keep herself from whimpering softly as he rubbed the callused tips of his fingers over nipples he'd already sensitized and that were swollen to twice their normal size just because of his presence near her.

  Her resolve not to acknowledge what he was doing to her lasted a shamefully short amount of time, once his thumb and forefingers first gently pinched then began to slowly tug at her tits.

  "Stop—please!" she whispered, biting her tongue when she realized how pathetic she sounded to her own ears, never mind his! It wasn't a plea; it was a groan of aching desire!

  "No, baby. This is how it should be for you—and mostly will be. Your body wants me, and I will have it, any time I choose. You welcome me and entice me with your scent and the pungent honey between your legs. I will be at you, day and night, and—unless you've been naughty—I will make you love what I do to you. I will make you beg me for it."

  Zerk was emboldened by the responses she was giving him and he meant every word he said. Each groan or sigh or sizzled in breath was just that much more arousing to him because he knew how much she wished she wasn't feeling anything at all from his attentions. But she would soon come to love it, or love to come, either way. He could overwhelm her resistance, simply by touching her and by encouraging her body to do the work for him, which it was only too eager to do.

  She was still lying with her back to his front as he felt the tremendous heat from her well lashed bum and thighs, combined with that which radiated naturally from her swollen folds. As he turned her onto her back, making her gasp from the pain that naturally resulted from that position, his fingers traveled down to replace the thigh she had been riding. Anticipating that she might try to close her legs again, he used that same damp leg to part them again merely by claiming the closest of her small thighs, looping his leg around hers and holding it captive.

  "Spread your other leg for me, Cat," he ordered quietly, and as gently as it was issued, his command tone shone inevitably through his words.

  "Never!" she responded with nowhere near the vehemence she'd intended.

  "Your namesake is about five feet away. I wonder how many strokes it would take on the fronts of your thighs and that pretty lower belly of yours to get you to obey me? And then I would have to whip your naughty little bits, too, of course."

  Groaning and blasting air out of her mouth in deep frustration, Cat reluctantly separated her right leg from the left one he had ownership of at the moment.

  "Bend it at the knee and keep it firmly against the mattress at all times. Despite how I'm going to make you feel in a few minutes, I won't hesitate to use the cat on the very same area, and I assure you that it will hurt twice as badly if you've been pleasured beforehand."

  She almost scoffed. Pleasured. Yeah, sure. There was no such component in the proceedings for her. But when his hand rested atop that humiliatingly wide open and overwrought area, she could almost begin to believe him, but not quite. It took all she had not to raise her hips and press her most private self into that big paw of his.

  Zerk felt her check the move, though, smiling to himself and knowing that there was a good chance he was going to get exactly what he wanted from her. It would take time and probably more patience than he could rightfully claim he possessed, but in the end, he was determined that she would be his—body, mind, and soul.

  And she would be more than worth the effort and the wait, he'd already decided. What children the two of them would make, of warrior stock on both sides!

  But he tried not to get ahead of himself. Driving her out of her mind by playing up—and playing with—her own needs and desires needed to be foremost on his mind at this moment.

  So, he deliberately took his time, letting her body pave the way for him, knowing it could only help his cause. She was drenched down there, and his entire hand was slickened immediately, but he contented himself with teasing her—issuing only the most delicate of touches and never really where she wanted them—not that you would know it by her. He could tell that Cat had steeled herself against him again and was determined not to let him know that he was getting to her, but he couldn't miss the signs her body readily showed him, however subtle.

  He heard her emit another frustrated sigh that he didn't even think she knew she'd made, but he had attuned himself to everything about her. Amping up the volume and frequency of his purring earned him another, but he felt her relax almost immediately afterwards, too.

  Nothing she was trying was helping her get away from him—even if it was just into her mind. He was driving her crazy with those tentative, tepid caresses as he held her open for his exploration of her most intimate places
, but she refused to let him know how he was making her feel.

  She couldn't want him to cup her, couldn't possibly want to beg him to let his fingers slip between her folds, and she definitely couldn't stand the idea that he might find again that spot he had before, in that special spot only he seemed to know about that had made her feel entirely too good. No, she didn't want any of that.

  But, at the same time, her body was making her feel as if she had to have it or she might die! Her heart was pounding, her skin—even the unscourged parts—was hot and tight, and she had an almighty, distressingly unavoidable craving to be touched there, which was bad enough, but it had to be by him, for some wholly unacceptable reason! She couldn't think about anything else!

  It was as if he was reading the remnants of her mind as his low, rumbling voice seeped into her ears. "I'm going to touch you there now, Cat. You know where." He put actions to words as he spoke. "I'm the only man who will ever do this to you—where my fingers are now is mine. More mine, even, than yours."

  He was all wet and slippery, and she didn't even care as he slid them over her.

  A long, satisfied sigh seeped out of her as his fingers began to stroke that very special bit of her, much as they had before.

  "I know you don't believe me, but there is something wonderful in our mating for you, too, that only I can bring to you. Something that will make you crave it even more than you do now, that will help put that busy mind of yours to rest and will make you behave much better than you have, because you won't want to leave me and what I can give you."