She'd obeyed the rules. She'd stayed true to God and loyal to her family. Loyal to all of them. So much so that she'd been the only one willing to risk her life to save their fallen sister.
This conniving, cruel alpha had to be lying to her.
Faith would rather be dead than be an omega…and she was willing to prove it.
"Liar," she spat at him, using all her strength to yank back her hand. She wanted to smack him, and she did her best. But he was too quick and caught her wrist before she even got close.
With both of her arms in his grip, the demon alpha crushed her against his body, then leaned down and kissed her mouth.
Faith gasped as his tongue, hot and wet, swept against her lower lip. Her body reacted with a rush of sensation instantly, flooding with heat, betraying her will. Her heart raced, and her blood rose in her veins.
Faith heard a moan—low and needy—escaping from her own lips. The rough fabric of the alpha’s shirt scraped against her nipples through her thin dress and bra, sending splinters of pleasure radiating straight down to her most private places. Still, it wasn't enough to slake her sudden, frightening thirst. She felt her hips tilting back, her legs opening to press herself against this monster in a sinfully intimate way.
Faith had never touched a man this way before. Not even Peter, her fiancé.
The pressure on one particular spot grew keener as she rocked, these astonishing new sensation multiplying so fast she could barely keep up. It felt so good.
Too good.
Faith suddenly remembered that it had to be wrong. Shrill warning alarms blared in her head, commanding her to pull back. To reject this sin and save herself.
But there was another force—even stronger—that kept her writhing against him.
When Faith opened her eyes, she had the horrifying realization that it wasn't the alpha making her behave so indecently. He had released her, his hands no longer pressing her body against his. She was free to pull away from him.
She was pressed against him of her own free will, kissing him wantonly, grinding against him. Feeling the sinful rush of the devil's own touch.
Shame rocked Faith to her core. She wrenched herself away with an animal cry, shaking all over.
She was free—but she didn't run.
It was as if her body couldn't bear to stray too far from the lure of his heat, his touch.
Faith's hands flew to her mouth, attempting to smother the ragged sob that erupted from her. She'd give anything to deny what she was feeling, but she couldn't. Even now, she could feel her shame running, hot and slick, between her legs.
"Fuck," a growling voice from the porch behind them rumbled. One of the other alphas—the darker and meaner looking of the two. "No sign of an omega for twenty damn years. Now they're showing up by the busload."
"You're just pissed you didn't grab her first," the second alpha said.
"And you're just cocky 'cause you've already got one waiting for you at home."
Faith tried to block their squabbling from her head. She didn't know what they were talking about, and she didn't care…just as she didn't care about the searing kiss or electric shocks of pleasure or the need dampening her thighs—and certainly not about the man who'd done all that to her.
She was here for something else entirely.
Faith closed her eyes and summoned all of her strength. She used the sheer force of her will to block everything from her mind but her mission. When she opened her eyes again, she stared the alpha straight in the eye.
"Take me to my sister, devil."
The alpha's eyes narrowed, her demand glancing harmlessly off their ice-capped seas.
"Fuck that."
In the space of a heartbeat, he hoisted her up and over his shoulder.
Faith screamed. She kicked and punched, pummeling his back and chest, but the alpha didn't even flinch. Why would he? She was as insubstantial as a gnat to him, nothing but a minor annoyance.
"Put me down!" she yelled as he started down the porch steps, and the other alphas went back inside the bar. Her voice was swallowed up by the swirling snow, the only other sound the alpha's boots crunching through the icy crust. "Where are you taking me?"
"First to my truck," the devil answered. "Then to my bed."
* * *
Troy had never given much thought to the subject of omegas.
Up until last year, he'd never had to. They were rare creatures...or so he and the rest of his alpha brothers had all been told.
The truth was that no one really knew how many omegas there were in the world. Unlike alphas—whose natures became obvious around the age of sixteen—omegas only changed once they felt the touch of an alpha.
And since beta society did its best to keep females scared and close, there weren't tons of women flooding over the boundary line.
There were some, of course. Nicky and her girls, for instance. But they were all confirmed betas. Then there were always a few fanatics who were driven to find out if they were special, their heads full of dangerous misconceptions about alphas and the lives they led.
But for the most part, women stayed as far away from the Boundarylands as they could.
Troy could remember the bullshit propaganda the teachers had fed kids' brains when he was growing up. They taught that alphas were animals, bloodthirsty and murderous. If they weren't killing, they were screwing, and they could split a beta woman clean in half with the force of their cocks. They didn't use that kind of language, of course—the lessons were presented in the same dull prose that made Troy want to throw his textbooks across the room—but he got the message nonetheless.
That was the crap the woman sitting in the passenger seat of his truck had been raised on. She probably got to hear it all over again at home, from her religious-freak parents and their church.
Troy tried to dig back in his memories for anything specific Hope might have said about her family, but he was too distracted by the scent of the ripening omega. It was all he could do to keep his hands on the steering wheel instead of pulling over and ripping that ridiculous ugly sack of a dress off her body.
Troy didn't know who the fuck she thought she was fooling under all that rough homespun. Faith Johansen could play the modest little virgin all she wanted—Troy wasn't buying it. It didn't how matter how pious she pretended to be, her head bent over her clasped hands as she muttered unintelligibly to herself. Praying—that's what she wanted him to believe, anyway.
"Stop that," he growled in frustration as he turned onto the dirt tracks that wound through his densely forested land to his cabin. Troy took better care of his drive than most alphas—he wasn't about to let a loose rock or branch fuck up his undercarriage—but Faith still bounced around as he went too fast over the ruts. "Nobody's buying that saintly shit—not after you took a couple of shots at an armed man. Not me, and definitely not God."
She pursed her lips, finally silent, but her knuckles were white with strain. After a moment, she couldn't keep herself from speaking up.
"The devil's spawn doesn't need a weapon to be dangerous," she said tightly, addressing his dashboard. She wouldn't even look at him, something that only angered Troy further. "His existence alone is a threat against the righteous."
Troy burst out laughing, the sound making her jump. "’Devil's spawn?’ That is some serious bullshit there."
Faith’s expression hardened, but she still refused to look at him. "Are you trying to tell me you're not dangerous?"
"No," Troy admitted. "I can be very dangerous."
Far more dangerous than anything she'd ever come up against. Even one of those charging elephants she was so impressed with.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye and saw a muscle at the corner of her mouth twitch. She believed him.
"Have you ever killed anyone?" she asked after a moment, dropping the holier-than-thou act and lifting her head.
Troy pretended to consider her question for a moment. He could smell the still-warm ashes of t
he fire he'd made that morning. He hoped the house was still warm because he sure as hell didn't plan to spend a lot of time on chores tonight.
"Something tells me you really don't want to know the answer to that," he said. "But even if I told you I wiped out a whole city by myself, that wouldn't change why you're praying."
She glanced at him, her face tight with anger. "I don't have to explain myself to you."
"And you don't have to explain to God why all that slick is soaking through your panties. Because God already knows."
That did it. Faith wheeled around in her seat, eyes wide and burning with indignation, sputtering. "You're a—a vulgar, lying demon! And I refuse to let you drag me into your pit of sin."
Troy hit the crest of the hill too fast. He slammed on the brakes to avoid skidding into the turn, coming to an abrupt stop at the end of the drive. His headlights shone beams of yellow light over the pristine fall of snow and reflected eerily against the wide bay doors of his garage. To the left, his cabin was little more than a dark shape separated from the garage by the snow-laden branches of the row of trees he’d planted.
The omega stared out the windshield at the sight, her mouth hanging open, her fury dimmed by sudden apprehension. Apparently, she was only now realizing that he meant what he'd told her.
"You’re wrong," he said. "I may be vulgar, but I don't lie, little girl. And I've got some bad news for you—you're already here."
Chapter Four
Panic gripped Faith as the alpha's compound came into view. Her heart raced. Blood thundered in her eardrums. What kind of terrible place was this?
Directly in front of the truck's front bumper was a huge boxy building with steel doors that gleamed in the powerful headlights. To say it was a garage would be like saying that the vicious snarling dogs the church elders kept behind the chain-link fence that guarded the arsenal were house pets.
It was true that the alpha's enormous jacked-up truck would require a larger-than-normal garage—but what did he do with the rest of that space? She didn't want to know.
Instead, Faith focused on the alpha's house. Set slightly behind the garage on the left, it was modest by comparison. All in all, it looked like a fairly ordinary, rectangular wood house, with a porch on two sides and no curtains in the windows.
The only light came from the truck's headlights, and Faith struggled to make out any other details. But all she could see was a snowy roof and a couple of deck chairs covered for the winter. Outwardly, there was nothing frightening about this house.
But Faith knew better. It wasn't the rough wood exterior she was afraid of. It was what happened inside that had her trembling.
She might not know the details of what the alpha planned to do with her...but she could guess.
All the devious acts that she'd been warned about since her first Sunday school class—lust, lechery, carnal sins of all kinds. All the horrific stories her pastor had preached. The miserable life of a fallen woman.
Faith refused to submit to such a fate.
She'd rather die. She'd rather race headlong into the dark forest and fall off a cliff or be devoured by wolves before she allowed herself to be sullied by this demon.
"Don't even think about running," the alpha said before Faith could reach for the door handle.
"How did you—"
"Your poker face is crap," he said. "You're shaking like a damn leaf. And you reek of fear."
He could smell her fear? Faith knew that alphas' senses were exceptionally strong, but this—this made him seem like a dog. A vicious hell hound.
Faith forced herself to face him directly and enunciated carefully, despite the quaver in her voice. "I refuse to go into that house with you."
"Here's the thing," the alpha said in a bored voice. "I'm not really asking."
He reached out to unbuckle her seat belt, and Faith screamed. His fingers grazed her hip and—even through her dress and coat—brought back the rush of feelings he'd provoked earlier.
It was as though a switch had been flipped in Faith brain. As if, having been touched by him once, her body would never be rid of the memory. How good she'd felt. How secure. How right.
All of it, the devil's work. Those feelings were lies that went against everything Faith believed in. They made a mockery of the years she'd spent preparing herself for a pious life, of the very difference between right and wrong.
The devil was trying to confuse her. Just as the church had warned, he was using the alpha as his instrument to spark the most sinful heat inside her. A longing that she knew was neither righteous nor godly. A need that was carnal and earthly.
Faith never wanted to confront that kind of evil temptation again. That was why she'd been praying for deliverance ever since the alpha had thrown her into his truck.
As the seat belt buckle released, she threw open her door and leaped down onto the frozen ground. Her plain brown shoes sunk into the snow, freezing her ankles, but Faith barely noticed. Instead, she turned and sprinted as fast as she could toward the tree line.
The cold air bit into her cheeks and seared her lungs, but she welcomed the sting. The pain meant that she was fighting. That she was doing the right thing.
And the pain also obliterated—if only for a moment—the blinding need that nearly paralyzed her when the alpha touched her.
Or came too close to her. Or even looked at her.
She had to get away from him. So far away that he could never find her. Faith gulped frigid air and tried to ignore her hammering heart. She urged herself to go faster and faster. Every step she took sunk into the pristine snow of the clearing between the alpha and the forest.
But she wasn't fast enough.
She'd barely made it into the center of the clearing before strong arms lifted her off the ground from behind, constricting her lungs and stealing her breath. She kicked ineffectually and tried to pry the alpha's arms from her body, but she might as well have been trying to lift his truck.
And even as she fought, Faith could feel his heat against her back, traveling through her clothes and into her body. His breath seeped beneath her collar, and her treacherous body relaxed into the warmth, craving more.
She stopped fighting. It was useless.
"I told you not to run," the alpha muttered, every syllable a caress against her skin.
"Let me go, devil," Faith begged, trying to muster the strength to resist his seductive heat.
"So you can bolt again? I don't think so." The alpha's hard chest rumbled with amusement. "Unless you get off on being chased. Is that what you want? Does being pursued and captured make you hot?"
Faith shuddered, and her head lolled back against the alpha's shoulder as he moved his palm to caress her belly. There was something about the way he said the word hot that turned up the heat inside her.
Dark magic—it had to be.
"So that's your thing," the alpha said. The satisfaction in his whisper made Faith shudder again for reasons she didn't understand.
Slowly, the alpha eased his hold on her. Faith slid down the front of his body, her backside intimately pressing against the full, hard length of him until her feet were buried in the snow once again.
She struggled to catch her breath before turning around to face him. "What are you doing?"
"I'm giving you a choice." There was a dangerous gleam in the alpha's eye that only confused Faith. Part of her wanted to turn and bolt, but the stronger urge had her rooted in front of him, waiting to hear what he had to say. "You can either come inside, lie down on my bed, and accept me as your alpha—or you can run again."
Faith frowned. The choice he was offering her was a no-brainer…which meant it had to be a trick question.
"And what will you do if I run?" she asked.
A smile so wicked it would put Lucifer himself to shame lifted the corner of his mouth. His tongue snaked out, wetting the top of his bottom lip, making it crystal clear he thought this the far more delicious of the two options.
"Th
en, I'll chase you," he said, murmuring in an impossibly low register. "And when I catch you, I'll wrap my arms around you and pull you down into the snow. And then I will kiss you so hard that you'll let go of all this stubborn resistance. You'll beg me not to stop."
Faith felt her cheeks begin to burn. She tried to look away, to hide how unsettled she was, but she couldn't tear her gaze from the alpha's stormy blue eyes.
More of his dark magic.
"Then, I'll slide my hands up your thighs," he continued, "and wet my fingers in all that slick that's been driving me crazy for the last half hour. "
He could smell that? Oh God.
Mortification threatened to swallow Faith whole. What he called slick, she called shame. She'd been doing her best to hold it back, clamping her knees together to hide the worst of it.
Faith backed up a step, trying to give herself space to think, but the alpha wasn't having it. He moved with her, closing the distance between them.
"But that won't satisfy me for long," he continued. "Not when you smell so damn good. Once I rub your slick all over my hand, I'm going to want to taste you. I'm going to need to. And I won't be able to wait until we get to my bed."
Wait—what did he mean…taste her?
There?
No. Faith shook her head. She couldn't believe that was something people did on purpose.
She would be the first to admit that her education on the subject of sex was scant, but there was no way that a man would want to put his mouth on a woman's most private parts.
"Why on earth would you do that?" she asked without thinking.
"You really don't know?" The alpha's smile grew, somehow becoming darker and more alluring. "God, I can't wait to show you."
"I'm never going to—"
The alpha cut her off with a rumbling growl. His words had an edge now, and Faith knew he was running out of patience. "The only thing you're going to do right now is choose. Come with me or run? Nice and easy, or hard and rough? You pick."
How could he expect her to decide when both options were horrible? There was no way she could win. No chance to get what she wanted—which at this point was just to slink back home with her tail between her legs and pray that her family and community forgave her.
Troy (The Boundarylands Omegaverse Book 5) Page 3