Claimed by the Alpha

by Laxmi Hariharan

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I glower.

  She raises her finger and trails it over the outline of my nose. “That’s the first thing I noticed about you. Your hooked nose.”

  “You mean my patrician nose.” I glare down said nose at her.

  “Hmm.” She bites down on her lower lip. “Ego much?”

  I grunt, then grab her ass and adjust her position. My shaft thickens. The ridges pulse against her inner walls and a frisson of lust crawls up my spine.

  I groan.

  So does she.

  For a second, I stare at her, taking in her flushed appearance, her still dilated pupils, her red hair caked with sweat and my drying cum.

  “You are glorious.” The words are out before I can stop them. I’ve never complimented any omega as much I have her.

  A flush steals over her cheeks.

  Interesting.

  After everything I’ve done to her body—I’ve invaded her, knotted her, fucked her—and still she blushes.

  “Are you for real?” A sense of foreboding tugs at my mind and I push it away.

  “What do you mean?” She firms her jaw.

  “Why did you agree to kill me?” Something prickles my subconscious.

  “Now you ask.” She stirs, then wriggles in my grasp. Her body begins to slide, and I squeeze her waist and hold her in place.

  “Answer me.” I lean up, close enough for our noses to almost bump. For our breaths to mingle. For me to see that dimple that furrows her cheek as she grimaces.

  “Why did you sneak into the warehouse with that pathetic excuse of a weapon? You stood little chance of hurting me, let alone killing me, and you still did it?”

  “Your timing sucks, you know that?” She wriggles in my grasp.

  I slide my hands up her back and yank her closer. Her breasts graze my chest, and my cock pulses inside her.

  She moans, and the color of her eyes deepens to an emerald green. “Fascinating, your eyes. Do you know that when you are aroused, they dilate enough for the black to bleed out, and when you are about to climax, gold sparks flare in them?” And I am waxing poetic. For fuck’s sake.

  She stills, and the blush deepens down her throat, creeping toward her breasts. Her nipples pebble, their diamond-hard edges drag over my skin. Blood rushes to my groin and I want to fuck her all over again. No, not yet.

  I clamp my lips together and wait.

  Her gaze skitters away. “Kayden is holding my clan hostage. I agreed to his plan because I didn’t have a choice. I knew when I walked in there, there was a good chance I would be either killed or worse—”

  “Knotted to me?” I move my hips enough for my knot to slide and bloom inside her once more.

  Her eyes dart to my face. Her breath quickens, and her cheeks flush. “When you do that…I…” She swallows. “I—” She bites her lips.

  I grip her chin so she has no choice but to meet my gaze. “Tell me. What does it do to you when I knot you?” I lick her lips.

  Her breath hitches. “It’s overwhelming and so filling.” Her chest rises and falls, matching the tempo of my breathing. “It compels me to want you even more.”

  Our pulses are in synchrony, and it’s the hottest, most intimate thing I’ve ever felt.

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” As soon as the words are out, I curse myself. Wrong question.

  She frowns. “You didn't give me a choice, alpha mine. You were too busy satisfying your hunger.”

  “I couldn’t stop myself from jumping to your command. After all, you did ask me to fuck you.” I smirk, knowing it isn’t completely right, and yet, hey, I am not above bending my facts to fit the situation. Know what I mean?

  “So you’ll do anything I ask you to?”

  “Hmm.” I narrow my eyes. “Not sure I like the direction of this conversation."

  “I need to get out of here and save my people.”

  “Your problems are mine now. You don’t need to worry about your clan. I’ll rally my troops, and we are going to attack Kayden. It’s about time. And we’ll free your people.”

  “What if it’s too late?”

  “It won’t be.” I set my jaw.

  “How do you know that?”

  I pause, wondering how much to tell her. “Just know that it will be okay.”

  “You are watching Kayden? You knew he put me up to this and that he was holding my people hostage?” Her features crumple as the full understanding of the situation dawns on her. “You were aware that he intended to surprise you with his sham of a gift?”

  “I am the General." I jut out my chin. "I know everything that happens in my country, in my enemies’ domains, and definitely what goes on in Kayden’s space.” It seems arrogant, but what the fuck? I can’t hide who I am. Dominant. Alpha-hole. Yep. That’s me. She knows it already, so why is she so surprised?

  “I didn’t anticipate he’d smuggle an assassin into my stronghold. Except the killer turned out to be the biggest surprise of all. She turned out to be mine.” I tighten my grip around her.

  She pants a little. “You are squeezing me.”

  “Good.”

  “I can’t breathe.” She gulps.

  “I’ll share my breath with you.”

  “My muscles ache.” She wriggles her hips, and of course, my dick twitches.

  “I’ll stretch them out for you.”

  “You have an answer to everything?” She pouts.

  “Finally, you are getting to know what I am?” I smirk, knowing I have won this round. Knowing I have her where I want her. In my arms, almost submitting to me. Almost.

  “Did you mean it when you said you’ll help me save my clan?”

  “I don’t repeat myself.” I stare at her.

  She leans down and kisses me. For the first time, it is she who licks my lips.

  I part them, and she fastens her mouth around my tongue, then sucks on it.

  The tug ricochets all the way to the tip of my cock.

  Without pulling out of her, I flip her over so she’s under me. Raising her hips, I pull back, then plunge into her.

  She screams, and the sound turns me on further.

  The warmth of her inner walls clamping around my dick is more than I can bear. A deep purr rumbles up my chest, and her pussy clenches around my shaft.

  My groin tightens. My balls grow heavy.

  Slick flows out of her, and the scent of her is everywhere around me.

  “All mine,” I glide my hand up the outside of her thigh, wrapping her leg around me. I angle her hips enough to slide in deeper.

  Her head thrashes to the side, and her eyes roll back. Those mewling noises whine out of her. My dick pulses. My groin hardens. I pinch her chin and lower her head.

  She cracks open her eyelids, the black of her pupils having bled out enough for me to know she is losing herself in me as I am in her. “Who do you belong to, Omega?”

  Her shoulders go tight.

  “Tell me.”

  “I—” She shakes her head.

  She’s trying to clear her mind, to get a lock on where she is, but I can’t let that happen. I want her to tell me now, while she is in the throes of a sexual high, as I am going to knot her. I need her to tell me the one thing I want to hear. If that means I am an asshole, so be it.

  I thrust into her, just enough for my cock to graze the slippery walls of her channel.

  She moans.

  And again.

  This time, her breasts tremble, and color sweeps over her shoulders up to her face.

  “Tell me.” I pull out, all the way, and stay poised at the entrance of her channel.

  “Please, I need you inside me.”

  “And you’ll get what you want. Tell me who you belong to.” I rub the swollen head of my cock up and down her slit.

  “You.” She shudders. “I belong to you.”

  I pound into her before she’s completed the statement. She opens her mouth to scream, and I am already there, absorbing the
sounds that are torn out of her. Every breath, every cry, her every moan of ecstasy belongs to me.

  Sliding into her, deep inside, deeper than I have penetrated before, my knot clicks into place. I tear my mouth from hers. “Come for me, Omega.”

  A low scream rends out of her, then her body trembles as the tremors weave up her legs, her thighs, over her quivering waist. Her breasts tremble. She throws her head back and breaks under me, just as her wet, moist core clamps on my dick and milks me.

  My balls draw up, and then cum shoots out of me again.

  I collapse over her, making sure to keep my weight off her tiny body, but my arms are too weary to support myself.

  I find myself falling on her and try to move away.

  Her arms come around me, holding me in place. I sink down on her. Hearing the sound of my own heartbeat, the harsh in and out of my breath, the echo of her pulse at her temples, her breasts flattened against my chest—I’ve never felt so close to another. My heart hammers. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

  Something is wrong.

  The sound of an explosion rips through the air.

  11

  Lucy

  The ground around me seems to shake. I’ve never had a climax like this. Bits of plaster rain down on us from the ceiling. Huh? So it's not just my orgasm that's rocking the space, but the explosion I heard is real?

  His knot loosens, and he starts to pull out of me.

  “No.” Panic twists my guts. “Don’t go.”

  A sudden tension grips my body. Terror squeezes my guts.

  My pulse rate ratchets up, and I am sure it’s the pounding of my heart in cadence with his that I am hearing.

  I dig my heels into the back of his thighs and lock my arms around his neck. I clamp my inner muscles around his cock and he groans.

  It’s not lost on me that I am going through the very actions I’d accused him of doing to me a while ago. "Don't leave me." I clutch at his shoulders, hauling myself closer to him, thrusting my breasts into his hard chest.

  “Shh.” He leans his forehead against mine.

  The delicacy of his gesture, the sheer gentleness of his embrace, sinks into me. My throat closes.

  The mating bond thrums between us, and an inkling of fear bleeds through it. “What’s happening?”

  “I really don’t want to leave you, Lucy, but I fear we have company.”

  The hair on my forearms rises. He called me by my name for the first time. My pulse rate ratchets up. I know then there is danger surrounding us, that he means to protect us, and I don’t…can’t let him go.

  If he leaves now, I’ll never see him again. Things will change, and I don’t want that.

  Just as I’d begun to get a sense of how it could be between us, everything is being torn away from me. This isn’t fair. It isn’t. “Don’t go.” The words bubble up out of me. Tears prick the backs of my eyes.

  His body stiffens, and his shoulders go tense. He’s already pulling out of me. His shaft slides out with a wet sound and another shiver of apprehension tightens my skin.

  I reach down and clasp my fingers around his semi-erect dick, then tilt up my pelvis to take him back inside me. “No, don’t go. They’ll kill you, Alpha.”

  “I’d like to see them try." His forehead creases and a slow smirk curls his lips. "Nothing and no one gets to me or what's mine.”

  I swallow.

  He leans back on his knees between my legs. The light from the open door pours over his shoulders, haloing that thick, dark hair that flows around his neck. The sculpted planes of his chest ripple, and the muscles of his forearm flex as he holds out his hand to me.

  Sheer dominance pours off of him. The confidence and the primal strength implicit in every angle of his body is a turn-on.

  I drink in the sight of him greedily, committing every single detail to memory. That burned pine scent of his mixed with that lighter sugary smell of my arousal, that tang of his cum that bleeds through the air, the deep blue of his eyes with the indigo fires that flare in them and call to me. Those strong cords of his neck that I want to kiss and lick my way down to where the massive shaft of his stands still semi-erect.

  “Take my hand.” The tattoos on the side of his biceps flex as he holds out his arm.

  I place my palm in his, and he pulls me up so I am balanced on his thighs.

  “Listen to me, Lucia. You are going to get dressed, and then you are going to stay here and not come out, no matter what happens.”

  “No, Alpha, don’t go.” Fear compresses my chest, and a ball of emotion grows bigger in my throat. “They are going to hurt you.”

  He bares his teeth, “Nothing can harm me, not when I know I have you waiting for me.”

  I swallow at the intensity in his voice.

  This is when I tell him it’s a trap, that everything that’s going to happen is my fault, but still, I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.

  The fear for him is a living thing in my chest, clawing at me to get out.

  The bond twinges and shudders. And then a slow cloud of heat comes down the connection. It’s filled with strength and possessiveness and something else. Love, so much love, the intense kind of want that promises me that he'll never let anything happen to me. And I love him for it. This monster who’d claimed me and rutted me, I’d trusted him from the moment I’d set eyes on him. The mix of sensations calms me more than anything else. In this instant, I know that come what may, he’ll find a way to resolve this situation. I will find a way to resolve it.

  “You will wait for me, Omega.” He raises his head.

  It’s not a request, of course not. A command. A statement of intent, one that clearly says I belong to him.

  He leans down and sinks his teeth in at the junction of where my shoulder meets my neck. Pain twists my insides, and I scream. He tears his teeth from my skin, then kisses me, dribbling blood into my mouth.

  I suck on his tongue, then lick the blood off his lips.

  The pain pulses and arrows down to meet the ball of heat in my chest.

  “I will,” I breathe out.

  He wraps his big hand around the nape of my neck and yanks me close so my breasts are flattened against the hard planes of his chest. His shaft throbs against my still dripping core. “You are my property. Mine.”

  My heart feels like it’s going to shatter. My scalp tingles and my hands and feet grow numb. Everything I have always wanted, that I had dreamed of is in front of me and I am going to lose it.

  “Do. You. Understand?”

  His voice lashes through the thoughts rolling in my head. The dominance of his stance demands only one fitting response. I jerk my chin, “Yes.”

  He cants his head and I swallow. “Yes, Alpha.”

  “Good girl.” He kisses me again, then lifts me up by my waist and places me on the floor. “Get dressed.”

  I stare, not wanting to let go of him. He turns me around and points me toward the closet. “Wear your pants, don’t forget the shoes.”

  I stay where I am.

  “Go.” He swats my butt.

  I stumble then run to the closet, pulling out the clothes, putting them on with trembling fingers.

  “Shoes. What shoes can I wear?” I am talking to myself, and that’s okay. It’s one way to focus, to stay present. Spying a pair of sneakers that seem to be my size, I slide them on.

  By the time I turn, he’s dragged on his drawstring pants and is walking through the door. It slams shut behind him. I race to it and peer out through the window. My breath stutters.

  “No.”

  12

  Zeus

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. How did I let them get that close?

  I stalk out of the bungalow. The sand in front of the building is hollowed out. The shrubs have been torn up by the roots and a fir tree burns to my right. As I walk forward another tree shudders, there is a creaking sound, then it crashes to the ground. The vibrations rip toward me. A cloud of sand billows up and spatters over me.

&
nbsp; I clench my hands.

  I should have known it was risky to bring her here, and without any of my team on guard.

  But I had been selfish when I’d rescued her. I’d known there was no way I was willing to lose her again.

  Which meant I needed time and space away from what I was…the alpha who ruled the city. I’d wanted time to explore the depths to which I had fallen in mating her the way I had. I’d wanted to make it up to her.

  I’d brought her here, hoping to shut out the world. I should have known I couldn't stay hidden for long.

  You don't get to commit the kind of crimes I have, piss off the number of people I have, without realizing you can run but never hide.

  They’ll track you down, hunt you down, bury you alive, and hurt those who matter to you.

  Fear whips down my spine. My insides twist. I am not going to let anyone harm her. Not now, not ever. They’ll have to kill me to get to her.

  The cloud of dirt clears. I come to a halt not five feet away from my nemesis, the man who covets my power, “Kayden.”

  “Zeus.”

  The Leader of the Scots glares at me. Bet he wants to rip through me. He’d challenged me at my Ascension ceremony, and I had defeated him in front of my men. I had made him lose face and now he wants revenge. Anger radiates off of him in waves. His eyes spark with hatred.

  Had I made a mistake in sparing my half-brother's life? The band around my chest tightens. My throat closes and I wipe all the expression from my face.

  “Nice day for a walk?” I keep my voice casual.

  Everything inside me wants to shove him away, push him off the island, and lead him away from my omega. But I don’t say anything, don’t let on how afraid I really am. A cold bead of sweat slides down my spine.

  “I always did admire you for not losing your shit in a crisis.” Kayden cracks his neck from side to side, and the gesture is familiar. It’s something I am prone to do when I am angry or upset or when I want to dominate. Of course, asshole, he is your half-brother, there are bound to be similarities. And where had that thought come from eh? Fuck this conversation, what are we doing shooting the breeze anyway?