And yet, the words she blurted were plaintive. "So why are you ignoring me?"
"Do you really believe I don't want you?" he thundered. "Even when you've taken that poison, even when you're smothering your nature, it's taken every ounce of my will to keep my hands off you."
A rush of heat soaked Stacy's panties, and she squirmed at the sensation, rubbing herself against the chair cushion. At the same time, she wished the floor would swallow her.
"You're lying," she whispered.
Vonn's hands tightened into fists, but otherwise, he might have been made of stone. "You tried to kill yourself on my own fucking land. So maybe you can cut me some slack for thinking you might need some time and distance to adjust to your new life."
Stacy shook her head, her heart pounding so hard she was sure he could hear every beat. He was wrong—he was also right. She was convinced now that his instincts really were as impossibly strong as he said. Still, everything else seemed like a puzzle with no answer.
She wanted him to step back, to put some space between them so she could breathe. But she couldn't seem to tell him. The words were lodged in her throat.
And meanwhile, her nipples were hard against the soft flannel of her shirt, aching to be touched. Her legs had fallen open without her even realizing it. And her mouth, still swollen and bruised from that kiss, twitched with the desire to take him inside, to run her tongue around that huge swollen bulge in his pants, just inches from her face—
What was wrong with her? Was this some brain misfire caused by the interaction of her nature and the suppressant and this alpha being way too close to her? Had Fulmer lied to her about the workings of the chemicals?
"Vonn—" she gasped, not even sure what she was trying to say, what she was asking him for.
But it didn't matter. He knew. Even though her own mind seemed filled with a sensuous fog, Vonn seemed to have no trouble seeing through it.
"I was wrong to give you space," he muttered, almost to himself. "You're already in a war between your natures. What you need is for me to show you."
"Sh-show me what?" Stacy asked, her body arching up toward him of its own accord, the churning deep inside her refusing to be ignored.
"What you really are."
Vonn reached out his hand and slid it around the back of her neck, his touch lighting fires along the way. Then he swept her up into his arms and stood, gazing down at her in the dappled sunlight slanting through the windows.
Stacy didn't fight. What was left of her professional self—a self honed and sharpened by all those years of brutal, unrelenting work—rationalized that she was still in shock, that she didn't know what she was doing.
But that was a lie. Stacy didn't struggle because she didn't want to.
And as if drawn by a magnet buried deep inside her, Vonn saw her yearning and crushed his mouth against hers.
Chapter Thirteen
She kissed him like a woman dying of thirst, and for a few brief glorious seconds, Vonn found himself exactly where his restless journey had been meant to bring him. Since the first time he caught the scent of an awakening omega earlier that spring, an event that had changed the entire purpose of his life, he felt not just peace but pure, shimmering joy.
It didn't last.
Stacy pulled away so abruptly that she left him gasping and breathless. She looked stunned, as though she'd not just seen a ghost but been briefly inhabited by it, her body and will taken over by an unseen force.
But nothing they'd done had been against their will. Vonn knew it to the marrow of his bones. In fact, the look she was giving him now—fear mixed with horror—was the true lie, the weight of years of indoctrination from a government that cared so little about her that it was willing to sacrifice her without so much as a backward glance.
Vonn wanted to roar with frustration but didn't want to cause her any more distress than she was already feeling. The two of them had just shared the greatest kiss either had ever known.
That wasn't fantasy or wishful thinking, either. He had been ready to rip a door off its hinges and fight a brother to claim another omega for whom he'd felt only a fraction of what he felt for Stacy.
They were meant to be together. And the only thing standing in the way was the wall she had built up around her as a result of the beta government's campaign of brainwashing.
Still, something had changed about her resistance. She was back to pushing him away, but this time, there was no passion behind her efforts.
Stacy was a highly-trained soldier, a warrior who had brought Vonn to his knees more than once, something no other human had ever come close to doing. He knew the bottomless well of resolve housed in her deceptively slender body. Saw the workings of her sharp, intelligent mind. If Stacy wanted to escape, she would have done it already; Vonn wasn't holding her back.
But she hadn't. Unlike last time, she neither struggled nor lashed out. Vonn didn't even bother to protect his nuts, somehow confident she wouldn't try that move again.
He breathed in her scent, holding her gaze as he did so, wanting her to know exactly what he was doing. This time, her fear existed only as a faint background note, overshadowed almost completely by a provocative mix of frustration, shame, desire…and curiosity.
It was the latter that struck a new realization in Vonn. While his attraction to the other omega was purely instinctual, his desire for Stacy went beyond that. Her curiosity could remain at the fore even in a situation that tested her beyond anything she'd experienced or trained for—that was proof of mind lively enough to keep Vonn interested forever.
There was something about Stacy that kept him guessing in a way that let him know that there would always be something new to discover about her. And he was going to do everything in his power to make sure he had that chance.
And so, if he had to play the long game now while suffering from blue balls, it was a small price to pay. He took a deep breath and considered his omega's reaction in a new light, imagining what someone with her history would need to change her mind.
All he knew was that it wouldn't happen suddenly. There would be no big revelation, no moment of clarity, for Stacy.
After all, she hadn't developed her hatred of alpha civilization overnight. No, it had taken years of biased education followed by intensive indoctrination in the service to wear down a mind as intelligent as hers, to convince her to accept as fact things she had never experienced for herself.
To convince her of what was real—to make her recognize and accept her true nature—Vonn was going to have to do more than hold up a mirror, hoping she could see the change in herself. He was going to have to undo the insidious lies little by little, chipping away at them shard by shard, until eventually, all that was left was a pile of dust.
While he was thinking all of this through, Stacy had been trying half-heartedly to extract herself from Vonn's arms. Now he abruptly released her, and she stumbled backward and might have fallen if Vonn didn't take her hand.
The look in Stacy's eyes suggested that nothing made sense to her anymore. But Vonn was ready for that.
"The only thing you've ever been taught is how to fight, isn't it?" he said softly.
The fire in her eyes surged, the way a pile of burning tinder briefly blazed when he blew on it. But then her resistance gave way to uncertainty. If Stacy wasn't aware of how much she wanted him, then she was the most accomplished practitioner of denial he had ever met.
"I chose to learn how to fight," she said in a firm voice. "No one made me. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do."
Point taken. Before he could concede it, however, the scent of her slick rose up to his nose, and Vonn had to swallow down a growl of need.
Arguing wasn't the same thing as fighting…but even this verbal conflict turned her on. Vonn suppressed a wolfish smile, knowing he had to proceed cautiously. If he sent her into true panic again, he risked giving up all the ground he'd gained.
He watched Stacy move unconsciously closer to h
im, drawn by the same invisible force that was sending all that blood to his cock. Her lips were parted and wet, her chest rising and falling with her quickened breath. And yet she would not yield, not all the way.
The woman was tempered steel. She forced herself to get up when men twice her size would have stayed on their knees. She attacked when any other beta would have surrendered.
But Vonn had been given a glimpse of her single weakness, the one she was trying so hard to ignore. Gently and slowly enough to provide her with every opportunity to stop him, he returned his hand lightly to the back of her neck. She didn't so much flinch when his fingers made contact with her skin.
He felt her fear melt under his touch, the way two raindrops melted into one as they trailed down a windowpane.
Vonn didn't move for several moments, making her wait, making her wonder if he would ever deepen the touch. She wouldn't be the one to initiate, but underneath his fingertips, Vonn could feel the coiled intensity of her desire at war with her reason. He pulled her toward him little by little, waiting until she relaxed to go further.
In this game of cat and mouse, as he continued to give her chance after chance to stop him, he was rewarded by the tension building inside her to an unsustainable level.
Oh, how his little warrior wanted to fight—and he would let her, in time. But first, he meant to establish that no matter how many wins she had racked up in the past and how many egos she had crushed, there was one person she would never defeat completely. That even if she spent her life trying—and God, Vonn hoped she would—the fiery dance between the two of them would always end with him on top.
"Tell me what makes a woman want to be a warrior," he murmured when there was only a matter of inches between them.
Stacy's eyes seemed glued to his lips, the scent of desire steadily simmering inside her, pushing its way to the surface. She blinked, and her eyes cleared briefly as she summoned an answer. "Because someone has to take a stand against monsters like you."
Vonn arched one eyebrow, amused. "You think I'm a monster."
It was a challenge she couldn't rise to. They both knew she was lying, reciting the words she'd absorbed over a lifetime.
Stacy's words hadn't been for his benefit but a last-ditch attempt to convince herself that she didn't want his touch. Now she doubled down. "You are a monster. You kill people."
Vonn frowned, his body answering that provocation with its own heat—not to make her take back her lies but to overwhelm her with the truth. "The only people I've killed were those who tried to kill me first. But I didn't ask why you hate alphas. I asked you what makes you fight."
Another infinitesimal step forward, her feet betraying her. If Stacy came any closer, he would feel her heartbeat through her skin as well as in the air, in her scent, through the vibrations of the floor and walls.
"You don't know me," she declared, in the tone of a gauntlet thrown. "I do plenty of other things."
"I never said you didn't. None of them matter to you anywhere near as much as fighting, though."
"I teach," she insisted.
"At an army base. Teaching other soldiers how to fight."
She bristled, and every nerve ending in Vonn's body thrummed in response. "I read."
"The book in your pack is about historic beta battles. You're making this too easy."
That remark had the effect he'd been hoping for, a lightning flash of fury tightening her muscles and priming her for the fight he was sure she was almost ready for. "Where the fuck do you get off, calling me out for being aggressive? You're a goddamn alpha. All you do is destroy."
It was time. Vonn moved toward her, not touching her but making sure he took up as much of her personal space as possible until she had no choice but to take a step back. But he kept going until her back was flattened against the stone fireplace.
"I haven't destroyed you," he growled. "And God knows I could have. When I had you on the ground, the only moves you made were the ones I let you make."
Stacy sucked in a ragged breath, her eyes widening and her scant beta slick soaking into her clothes. But Vonn didn't relent.
"Last night, when your hands were tied to my bed, you made sure your ass was on display, up in the air like a fucking welcome home sign. But I didn't even touch you."
Her breathing was coming as hard as her inner struggle, her lust weakening the foundations of her false hatred. "Am I supposed to thank you for that? For not assaulting me?"
Vonn slowly shook his head, marveling at the lengths she would go to twist his words. "Keep trying all you want, but you'll never make me the villain here, Sergeant."
"Oh, I'm the villain?" she said in a voice strident with repressed emotion.
"A part of you is. An old part that won't let go of its hold on you. Won't let you feel anything new. Won't let you experience even a moment of rest or pleasure."
She twisted her face into a sneer. "You don't—"
"Know you?" Vonn's voice was hard. "Oh yes, I do. I can sense everything about you. And that's what you're really afraid of—that you can't lie to me like you do everyone else. You want me to fight you. You're practically begging for it. But I'm not your bad guy. You do a hell of a job being that for yourself."
Stacy blinked, and for a fraction of a second, her guard vanished, and he saw the deep well of loneliness inside. It was enough to nearly make him lose his own footing.
But then the curtain closed, and she lifted her chin and stared daggers at him. "I'm not afraid of anything."
And just like that, the tension arced and the dangerous energy flooded back. Stacy had fallen for Vonn's trap. She'd said exactly what he'd pushed her to say.
He leaned in so that his lips grazed the sensitive hollow of her neck when he spoke.
"Then prove it."
All it had taken was those few seconds of hesitation, and Vonn had picked her up like the brutal alpha he was, intent on savagely having his way with her.
That thought sustained Stacy halfway across the room, even though Vonn's strides were so long it took no time at all.
But by the time they crossed the threshold into his bedroom, Stacy admitted to herself that she was lying—again. She'd been doing her best to avoid what was right in front of her from the moment Vonn had appeared in the beta camp, clinging to the belief system in which her superiors had indoctrinated her despite mounting evidence contradicting it.
And from there, it was an easy leap to avoiding her own conclusions. Her own emotions.
Her own needs.
That was the real reason Vonn had carried her to his bed. Not because he couldn't stop his own brute nature—but because her nature had not been able to resist his command.
Prove it, he'd said, and the words—the dark promise of rapture behind them—had caused her to break.
Only a little. He'd spoken into her neck, and the heat of his breath, the stirring of the tiny hairs along her nape, had pushed her heightened arousal past the point of resistance. She gasped. She moved her face so that his stubbled jaw scraped against her neck.
She half expected him to toss her onto the bed, but he didn't. Instead, he set her down next to it, her toes touching his the only contact between them, and…waited.
He didn't have to wait long. Before Stacy knew what she was doing, she tried shoving him onto the bed.
Except he was like a giant redwood, and she didn't have the force to do anything more than push against his chest until he grabbed one of her wrists in his hands.
Electricity arced between them as they gazed at each other. She tried to tug her arm back, but that only made him grip it more tightly.
"What are you doing?" she heard herself ask in a breathless voice.
Vonn merely shook his head, his expression intense but giving nothing away.
She tugged her arm again and felt heat pooling low in her body. Everything was happening too fast to think through. For the first time since basic training, Stacy let go and let her instincts take over, abandoning the
fighting protocols she'd practiced thousands of times. When Vonn refused to release her, she punched the sensitive spot in his elbow.
Vonn laughed. "That all you got, Sergeant?"
The heat inside Stacy took over completely then. Not in anger, though it felt like a close cousin—dangerous, dark, ill-advised. It was remarkable that, for someone who'd worked so hard for so long to keep her fighting emotionless, the switch could be so immediate and so complete. She fought like an animal, and every passing second drove her urge higher.
She head-butted him, eliciting an "oof," and hooked her foot around his ankle to unbalance him further. Vonn had to grab the bedpost to keep his balance, which forced him to let go of her. Stacy used the opportunity to deliver a rain of punches, over and over, grunting and yelling as each one landed.
It wasn't that she expected to injure him. Stacy knew, even in this state, that she couldn't. But she was desperate for something, and even if she didn't know what it was, she was going to fight until she got it.
Suddenly Vonn seized her around the waist and lifted her so that her chest was pressed against his huge, rigid cock, one arm wrapped around her thighs and the other under one arm. He didn't restrain her arms, though, and Stacy continued to scratch and hit and kick.
That's what she had needed—for him to fight back. Now she needed more.
No one had to tell her that this was a dangerous game. In one blow, he could do more damage than she could do all day. Already her knuckles were bruised and her throat raw, and if she truly angered Vonn, her fate was in his hands.
But her cunt hadn't gotten that message. It was swollen and wet and aching, her nipples hard as a rock, her entire body begging to be fucked. But not like she had ever been fucked before. All she knew was that she needed to fight until—until—
Vonn grabbed her wrists in one hand, effectively immobilizing her. All she could do was writhe against him—against his cock—feeling it swell to an impossible size from the friction. Why didn't he do something? Why didn't he—
Suddenly, he threw her on the bed, straddling her with his trunk-like thighs on either side of her body.
Vonn: The Boundarylands Omegaverse: M/F Alpha Omega Romance Page 10
