That initial estrous was still seared in her memory. She had barely made it home before the heat cycle peaked and she became a quivering mass of sweat and slick, so desperate to mate that her family had to lock her in her room for three days before the nightmare finally ended.
She had continued taking the alterants, even as it became more and more difficult to find a reputable dealer and they were forced to turn to the black market more often when the registered apothecaries had been exhausted. It had not been necessary for her to suffer a heat cycle after that first, but the possibility of another always loomed over her like a terrible shadow.
Ianthe turned to take in what little of the room was visible in the low light. An uncorked bottle of champagne sat in a bucket of ice next to two glasses. She filled one and sipped at it, more out of a desire to calm her nerves than a taste for the alcohol. Her hand shook so that it was impossible to bring the glass to her lips without spilling some.
So lost in her own thoughts, Ianthe didn’t realize the door had opened until it slammed closed. The sound startled her enough that she jumped, making champagne slosh out of the glass and splash the back of her hand.
It was too dark to see him clearly, only a large silhouette visible against the closed door. She froze in place, waiting for him to make a move forward or in some way reveal his intentions.
The silence lengthened by excruciating degrees. She felt the heat of his gaze on her, even though she couldn’t see it, which made his silent presence that much more difficult to bear.
Her legs trembled, the pressure of his silent regard simply too much. She sank to the floor on her knees and the glass of champagne in her hand hung from limp fingers.
Ianthe did not understand what drove her to speak, but her voice came in a breathy whisper.
“Please, sir.”
“Good girl.”
His voice was unexpected even for an Alpha, smooth and hard like steel dipped in chocolate, but completely without emotion. A shock went through her at the sound. He stepped forward then, moving completely into the small circle of light.
Ianthe had spent her entire life avoiding the attention of Alpha males. And now she was trapped in a room with the largest one that she had ever encountered.
His face was like that of the old statues in the historical park, all chiseled features and harsh lines, softened only by full lips and lashes as thick as butterfly wings. But there was no softness in the rest of him as he loomed large above her with bulging muscles and Alpha aggression. She didn’t have words to describe anything beyond the threat that he posed to her. He wore a dark and fitted suit in the classic style, a sign of the leisure class, but that did little to temper the pure aggression in his form.
“Tell me that you are here to serve.”
His words resonated with something deep inside her. The idea of serving him — whatever that meant — made the muscles of her belly tighten, leaving her gasping.
The Alpha growled. She lowered her body closer to the floor in response, the action borne of some innate response.
“Do not make me repeat myself, little Beta. Or you will suffer the consequences.”
Her heart thudded in her chest as she spoke the words that he wanted. “I am here to serve.”
The Alpha bent towards her and her breath caught in her throat on a harsh gasp. But he only reached to her side and removed the half-full champagne flute from her unresisting fingers.
“No more of this,” he murmured, voice heavy with command despite the low tone.
Ianthe could only stare up at him, unable to breathe much less speak. Waiting.
His fingers touched her face, turning it from side to side, almost clinical in his movements, as his thumb traced the curve of her bottom lip. Her mouth fell open, practically a reflex, and his thumb dipped ever so slightly inside. The intensity of his regard was like basking under the glow lights that mimicked the heat of sun in the slums during the day.
“Quite lovely.” It was too dark to see the color of his eyes but they flashed with a dangerous light. His voice, by contrast, was cold and emotionless. “You will follow instructions without question or hesitation. Is that understood?”
“Yes.” There wasn’t anything else for her to say. Too many credits were on the line for her to play at hesitation. All she could do was pray that this would be over quickly. He simply stared down at her, face expressionless, so she tried again. “Yes, sir.”
He rose and moved past her to sit on the edge of a couch on the far side of the room. She waited, frozen in place and still on her knees, as he settled himself comfortably against the cushions.
“Take off your clothes.”
Ianthe struggled to her feet, embarrassed by the coltishness of her own movements, feeling more exposed than she ever had before. The full sleeves of her negligee jacket were already falling off of her shoulders. She let it slip off completely and drift to the floor.
Faltering, she risked a glance up and found the man staring at her, his gaze hard and unwavering. She immediately dropped her own eyes, able to feel the furious blush blooming on her cheeks. She cursed herself for feeling embarrassed. This Alpha was the one with the deviant desires. He should be the one to feel embarrassed, if Alphas were even capable of such a thing. For her, this was simply a transaction.
The straps of her babydoll negligee were so thin that a hard pull would snap them in half. Her shoulders contorted into an awkward position to get the strap off completely while keeping the bodice from falling and revealing her bare chest.
Ianthe repeated the movement with the other strap and the nightie slid down her body to the floor. She hesitated then, with her arms crossed over her chest in some parody of modesty, lace pooled around her feet.
“Do not stop!”
Abandoning the pretense of virtue, as it would do her no good, she dropped her hands to the waist of her panties and quickly shoved them down her legs. She kicked the scrap of fabric away and stood before him, completely nude.
He did not speak for several excruciating moments as she stood there, naked and exposed. She could hear his breathing — slow, steady and perfectly controlled. As she watched silently, he shrugged out of his suit jacket, folded it neatly in half and laid it on the couch beside him.
“Come here.”
Ianthe walked forward on unsteady legs, wondering what he would do if she collapsed at his feet in a dead faint. He didn’t seem like the type to get off on an unconscious body, but what in the seven hells did she know about it.
Coming to a stop close enough that their legs just barely touched, she wasn’t quite taller than him as he sat, even in the stiletto heels that matched the lingerie. Although it was close enough that their eyes were nearly level, making her legs shake at the intensity in his. Her ankle felt like it would snap in half at any moment.
His gaze roamed down the curve of her body and up again in a slow examination. If she blushed any harder, her body would spontaneously combust from the heat of it so nothing would be left of her but a pile of ashes.
A large hand rose to trace the outline of her hip, close enough that the stir of air from his movement felt like a caress without quite making true contact.
“You will end every sentence with the word ‘sir’. You will call me nothing else.”
He waited, obviously expecting a response.
“Yes, sir,” she breathed.
“In this room, you will do exactly as you are told, precisely when you are told to do it.”
Her voice came on a shaky, hitching gasp. What had she agreed to? “Yes, sir.”
His hand stopped to rest on her stomach, stroking a small circle around her belly button with the tip of his finger. The shock of his touch was a lightning bolt that struck her heart and blazed a trail downward.
“What sort of girl are you?”
She swallowed past the hard lump forming in her throat, barely mustering enough air to speak. “I don’t know, sir.”
“There are only two types of gi
rls — good ones and bad ones.” He palmed the skin just above the curve of her bare mound, touch electric. “And in my experience, one will often disguise herself as the other.”
Ianthe couldn’t respond, words trapped in her throat. Too many things danced on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to shove him away and demand a skycar back to the lower levels, credits be damned. And she also wanted to ask what magic he worked on her that caused the tiny shimmers of heat curling in the pit of her belly. She imagined this sensation was similar to standing on the edge of a tall drop, stomach rising as she imagined the fall.
But mostly, she was just sick with fear that he would discover her true nature and her life as she knew it would end.
None of this was what she had expected it to be.
“What kind of girl is it — do you imagine — that would sell her body to a stranger?”
Her heart pounded so hard in her chest that she wondered if he could see it. “A bad one…sir?”
“And bad girls need discipline above all else, wouldn’t you say?”
A flaming pool of need settled in the core of her body, lapping forcefully at her senses. She wanted to scream at him, rail until he did something — anything — to break this horrible tension and put the torture to an end.
“I don’t know.”
She realized as the look in his eyes sharpened that she had forgotten to add sir. He spoke again before she could rectify the mistake.
“You’ll pay for that as well, I think.”
Chapter Four
In a movement too quick to follow, the Alpha seized her around the waist and pulled her across his lap. He was so much larger than her that her whole body fit across his thighs, with only her forearms and the lower part of her legs left dangling. She struggled against him but the circle of his arm might as well have been made of iron.
“I am going to spank you,” he informed her as if discussing something as commonplace as the weather. “I do not expect you to enjoy the pain, little Beta, but the more you resist then the more discipline you will receive.”
I don’t expect you to enjoy the pain.
He couldn’t mean it, she thought frantically. Is this what got the Alphas in the Astropolis to blow their loads…physical abuse? She had expected a bruising rut from an oversized Alpha, and a little pain was to must accompany that, but this was something else entirely.
Panicked, Ianthe squeezed her thighs together and pushed hard against the arm at her waist. The steel vise of his grip did not shift so much as an inch.
“You’re about the size of an Omega, perhaps you have some small bit of their natural instincts as well.” He stroked her flank with the back of one hand. She tried and failed to suppress a shiver. “Regardless, let’s pretend, shall we? That’s what this is all about, after all.”
The first strike on her bare ass was more shocking than it was painful. She had never been hit, even as a child, so the surprise of being struck was enough to make her jump. She cried out at the next swat which was delivered with considerably more force. Her legs flailed, trying to find purchase on the floor. He slapped each thigh punishingly hard, enough that she was sure it would leave a mark, until she stilled.
His chest pressed hard against her back, pinning her to his thighs with just the weight of his body. She felt the stiff length of his erection press painfully into the soft flesh of her belly.
Her last coherent thought was that no one had ever spanked her before, not even when she’d drawn on the floor of their apartment with a neon pencil as a child. She had expected sex, even to feel humiliated, but nothing like this.
The blows rained down, sharp and unrelenting. The pain mixed with fear and adrenaline pushing her to the edges of reason. She had to force herself to think through the onslaught. Emotional highs and lows upset the delicate balance achieved with the heat suppressants. If she were to lose control of herself, even in the smallest way, her secret would be revealed.
Ianthe cried out with each crack of his hand against her skin. She begged him to stop, choking out the words through her tears. If he heard her, the Alpha took no notice. Alternating sides, he covered every inch of her backside with slapping shocks in a tempo that never faltered even a beat.
He bent again to whisper in her ear, lips moving against the delicate shell, even as his hand never ceased its punishing rhythm. “You want this and just don’t know it yet, don’t you Omega.”
His words coursed through her with a roar of shock and fear. But his voice remained calm and the rhythm unhurried. She realized that this was part of the fantasy, the playacting, that he wanted to pretend that he dominated an Omega female and not some generic Beta.
She prayed again to the all-seeing gods that he would not discover the truth.
Then he was hitting her harder. She could no longer feel the individual blows because fire consumed the whole of her backside, from the aching skin under his hand to the molten center between her clenched thighs.
She was sobbing, without inhibition or restraint, tears and snot soaking the cushion against her face. No longer able to struggle against him, Ianthe focused all of her attention on trying to still her mind.
But that only made it harder not to focus on the aching flesh at her center that seemed to clench in time with each strike of his palm. She didn’t understand the sick sensation that descended over her — the urge that made her want to thrust herself back to meet his blows.
His hand eventually slowed, the severity of the spanking morphing into something softer. He rubbed her burning skin, over the swell of her buttocks and down her thighs, just hard enough that the stoked fire could not completely abate.
Her tears slowed until she took only small, hiccuping breaths.
“That was very good. I think you deserve a reward, little one.”
His palm rotated in slow circles on her back but inched down towards the curve of her ass. His touch grew light as a feather as he barely skimmed the aching spot between her thighs. The burning sensation of pain altered into pleasure.
She moaned when one thick finger pushed inside her.
“What’s this, then?”
He paused for a long moment as she wriggled to draw him closer. He stubbornly refused to move, forcing her to respond.
“I d-don’t kn-know…sir,” she said on a stuttering breath, overwhelmed by desire and shame.
“How very wet you are.” His stroking fingers lifted away, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from begging for more. “They can probably smell you all the way downstairs. It’s a rare Beta that can soak for me like this.”
She sobbed at that, unable to respond. Shame and desire swirled together into an irresistible cocktail. What was he doing to her?
He gripped her chin hard between his thumb and index finger, wrenching her head back in a painful contortion until their noses nearly touched. “Do you know what kind of girl gets wet when a man spanks her bare ass?”
“A b-bad girl, sir.”
“Not just a bad girl.” He caught her lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard until she tasted the copper tang of blood. He pulled away enough to whisper against her mouth. “A slut.”
That word was enough to snap her out of the haze of want and receding pain. “No!”
His palm cracked across the tender skin behind her thigh and she screeched.
“Say it, girl.” His hand stroked down her back and over the curve of one hip, lightly teasing. “Say what you are and I will reward you, little one.”
She didn’t like the endearments. Somehow, although she was naked and laying across his lap, that made this all seem so much more intimate.
A deep ache was building deep in her belly. Her body shifted, unconsciously trying to bring his hand closer to where she needed it, but he held her immobile.
“A slut.” She cried as she said it, both ashamed and aroused. “I’m a slut, sir!”
“Such a good girl.”
Fingers from one hand plunged between her slick folds while the ot
her hand found the little bead of flesh just above her opening and flicked it sharply.
She pushed back against his hand, her heels sliding along the floor. Her legs spread wide to allow him better access. In that moment, she felt no shame at the wanton display. Her hips moved frantically and without rhythm. She was completely overcome and unable to think about anything except how much she needed relief.
His fingers pumped in and out of her, matching speed with the punishing strokes that his palm had delivered on her skin only minutes before.
The bulge of his length speared into her stomach, even through the layers of clothing that he still wore. He seemed impossibly large and she could only imagine the size of the knot that would make him grow even bigger inside her. The thought should have scared her, but that wasn’t how her body responded. She rocked against him, her own fervor rising as his flesh responded. Her body could acknowledge what her mind would not, that she wanted to be held down and filled by an Alpha’s knot, regardless of the consequences. Just the thought of it made the muscles of her inner walls clench and spasm around his fingers.
The orgasm hit her unexpectedly and hard enough that she nearly passed out. She arched against him, unconcerned that this man was a hated Alpha, as she screamed her release. He reacted to her writhing movements, matching the plunge in and out of his fingers with thrusts of his hips. He made a low growl in the back of his throat which only sent her flying higher into ecstasy.
Tremors racked her body, even as his fingers slipped out of her to rub gentle circles on her skin. The room spun lazily around her as she came back to herself.
The Alpha shifted and his arms came around her, lifting her limp body until he held her curled in his embrace like a child. She began to shiver, teeth chattering, but not from the cold.
He picked up the suit jacket that had been laid over the back of the couch and wrapped it around her body, still stroking bits of exposed skin as if she were a lap kitten in need of petting.
She took a moment to realize that he was not making any further demands of her. He hadn’t so much as moved to expose what felt like an impressive appendage from the confines of his pants. As she slowly came down from the high of orgasm, he seemed content simply to hold her.
Omega's Deception Page 3
