by L. V. Lane
Chagrin suffused me. If Ethan noticed, he ignored it, and his lips lowered over mine. It was a hungry kiss, he didn’t seem to know any other kind, and my body reacted like the well-trained Omega I was becoming.
As I became convinced he meant to fuck me again, or spank me and then fuck me, he released me. “You get a reprieve,” he said. “I’ll spank you when we get back.”
I nodded, grateful to receive this small concession.
And how far had I sunk to feel grateful for scraps?
Too far, I realized.
I paused at the door to the en-suite and looked my fill of the man sprawled out on my bed. His hair was rumpled where my hands had raked through it, his big body lay in a relaxed pose, with the bedding a stark white contrast against the tan of his skin. He was uncovered—and still semi-hard.
His hand closed around the thick length of his cock, and I stared mesmerized as he gave it a slow pump before leaving it to jerk in happy anticipation of attention.
“If you keep staring at my cock, I’m going to think you need an appetizer before we head out.” My cheeks flamed, and my eyes shot to his face to find a wicked grin. He could be surprisingly playful at times.
Ryker was playful all the time.
Ethan let out a long sigh. “What is it, Princess?”
I wished he wouldn’t call me that. I was a long way from a damn princess. He could make it sound intimate…and like an insult. It was an extremely versatile word.
“He let me ask about you,” I said softly. “Even checked with Command for me.” My question was a calculated risk given I knew my mother would be waiting. I hoped there would be limits to Ethan’s methods of discipline under the circumstance. I thought it might be the one and only concession I would receive against his wrath.
But I could be wrong.
As the silence stretched, I convinced myself I had made a grave mistake, and he was about to punish me severely, possibly prevent me from seeing my mother.
“He’s fine,” he said, and when I risked a glance, his expression wasn’t as stony as I expected. “Don’t worry, I don’t want the bastard to die either. That pleasure is all mine.”
“That sounded like Ryker’s jokes about killing people,” I said.
He smiled again. “Baby, Ryker doesn’t joke about killing people. If he says he’s going to kill someone, he’s probably going to kill them.”
“Exactly,” I replied.
He surprised me by laughing and waved me to go and get ready.
Usually, my mother would have visited me at my apartment, but I presumed Ethan had vetoed that. Instead, we were meeting at Raffles, arguably the finest seafood restaurant in Chimera.
As I entered the restaurant, there was an awareness of time passing. I was sure my mother had selected the location because she knew it was one of my favorites. It offered stunning views across the harbor where cruisers and yachts nestled. And the last time we came here had been for my twenty-fifth birthday. A week later, I had revealed, and a few months after, they transferred my research division to Tolis.
I had fond memories of that night. Life had seemed simpler back then, and little did I know of the changes about to unfold.
My mother had once been a ballerina of some renown, and she now taught private lessons to the Empire’s elite. She still moved in those circles and was a regular guest at Chimera’s dance academy. “Darling!” she swept me into her arms the moment we arrived, and I was entombed in a familiar cloud of perfume and a warm embrace that instilled a notion that everything would be okay. She was taller than me, lean and graceful with a dancer’s build. “I was so terrified, my precious.”
She leaned me back so she could inspect me. “You look tired, darling.” Her warm hand cupped my cheek before her critical gaze passed over Ethan—who I had to admit, had quite a presence in any environment. “Your tyrant father insisted I couldn’t contact you until you were settled with a Controller. Is this the beast your father selected? Is he treating you well? I have friends who can help, darling, if Daddy’s choice doesn’t work out.”
“Maybe I could introduce your friends to my friends,” Ethan said, not missing a beat.
My mother’s lips twitched, and she patted his arm affectionately. “Darling, I think I like him,” she said to me.
The meal turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. My mother wanted to know the details of my capture and subsequent escape. She might put on an air of frivolity, but I could see fresh lines of worry on her face.
When it was time to leave, she asked for a few words with Ethan. I humored her and took myself off to the restroom. When I returned, my mother was her usual bright self, and Ethan’s face was neutral.
As we took the skycar back to our apartment, I asked Ethan what my mother had said.
“She thanked me for saving you,” he said, his lips curving in a smile. “Then she threatened to castrate me if I allowed it to happen again.”
Seeing my doubtlessly shocked expression, Ethan hauled me onto his lap like this was perfectly normal. Perhaps it was. I was becoming desensitized to being handled, which worried me because it felt a lot like I was losing my sense of self.
Pinching my face between his strong fingers, Ethan inspected me. “Ryker will be here tomorrow,” he said. My shocked gasp was swallowed as he covered my lips with his. The kiss was harsh, almost cruel, and filled with his domination. I wanted to ask him if he was leaving, but I was frightened I might break down if he said that he was.
When we returned to the apartment, I embraced everything he needed from me. Took my punishment like it was a gift, and relished each deep stroke of his cock like it might be the last. His mood reflected mine, intense and raw, and heated with the same hunger that gripped me.
I welcomed the spanking because it gave me an excuse to cry.
I felt cold after, like there was ice buried inside my heart. I was sure he would leave tomorrow. Could feel it in the wildness of our coupling.
I had to leave. I understood this. If I stayed, I would completely lose myself. I was already falling for him, his control, and for the security it represented.
And while Ryker presented a different kind of challenge, I was halfway in love with him too, and I did not think my heart had the emotional capacity to endure more.
Ethan had saved me from the enemy; plucked me from the cage on the ship and taken me to safety.
Ryker had protected me from Erison, threatened to snap his neck when he’d found me on the medical bed where my former research partner had been playing his sick games.
There would be no safety in drugs this heat, and one of them would likely claim me.
And if they didn’t, if they left me to someone else, another Alpha who would rut me through the heat. I couldn’t think of a worse fate.
I couldn’t have both of them, and so I must choose neither. And if I couldn’t have both of them, then I wanted no one.
Erison was waiting and planning, I had known him too long to think he would cease his torment for good. Even if I left the program, which would be a different kind of sorrow, Erison would find ways to ensure I was available for testing.
And I couldn’t live such a life—didn’t want to.
Over the last three years, there had been so much change, and none of it had been for the better.
Once more, change was upon me, but this time I would not be a passenger, I would be the one to decide. I should have taken action sooner, I could see this now. I would not make the same mistake twice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING continued with the usual routine, and Ethan made no further mention of Ryker. He escorted me to the research center, and hung around for Erison’s session, before disappearing again.
When he arrived later, Ryker was with him.
A hot tide swept over my body as I cataloged the damage, the bruising around his jaw and eyes, the split, swollen skin, and his stiff posture.
His right eye was bloodshot, but the other was whole—a familiar
hazel with obscenely long lashes. A sob escaped my lips. His grin was impish. “It looks worse than it is, babe.”
Despite his somewhat dubious treatment of me, and his questionable emotional manipulation, I wanted to cry as much as I wanted to throw myself at him.
Ethan caught me around the waist before I could take more than a step. “Don’t even think about it, Princess. If you touch him, I’m going to have to beat the shit out of him again.”
Noticing the bruises on the back of Ethan’s hands where his arm circled me, cold bloomed in my chest.
My eyes lifted to meet Ryker’s as Ethan’s hand closed over the front of my throat.
Grinning, Ryker rolled his eyes. “And they call me a psycho,” he said cheerfully.
We took the skycar to my apartment. I sat on Ethan’s lap. Ryker sat opposite. I kept my eyes averted because looking at him made Ethan growl.
What would happen next? Was Ethan leaving tomorrow? Was he staying?
When we arrived at my apartment, Ethan took me straight to bed, stripped me, and fucked me with barely suppressed aggression. He growled and snarled as he fucked me, and I fell into a perpetual state of flush.
The flush wasn’t for him, but he drunk generously anyway, while Ryker sat back against the couch and watched.
He had been rough with me in the past; this time was rougher. He paid Ryker no heed, but I was sure we were both aware of his presence. I wanted to comfort Ryker—and let him take my blood.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed what Ethan was doing, but I’d be lying to myself if I said this wasn’t turning me on.
I came harder than I could remember, frequently, noisily, screaming and begging him for more, and barely recognizing myself.
It was dark beyond the window, and subtle lighting filled the room when Ethan, after wresting another violent orgasm from me, dragged me from the bed.
Disorientated, I found myself put on the floor at Ryker’s feet.
Ryker had been slouched back, relaxed, but he jerked upright at my arrival. My gaze dropped to the bulge between his legs where his pants tented. It jerked vigorously under my watch.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Ethan snapped, still looming behind me.
Their combined scents swirled about me—rich and spicy, wild and earthy. Alone they were delicious, but together they sent me a little high.
Ryker jerked his hands back to his sides. He huffed out a deep breath. “Are you trying to fucking kill me? Asshole!”
“Maybe,” Ethan said, but I detected a tendril of amusement in his tone. “Take his cock out and suck him off.”
Ryker’s eyes were hooded and lustful. He hissed as I closed my hands over his belt and slipped the buckle free.
He cursed when I eased his pants down, exposing his swollen cock. It was thick and blueish-red, and pre-cum trickled in a thick stream from the tip. I glanced back to where Ethan still stood. A spectator. His dark eyes found mine. “Better make it good for him. This is all he’s getting tonight.”
My head snapped back to where Ryker watched, waiting, tension radiating from every line of his body.
Gripping the thick, hot length in one hand, I lowered my mouth and licked.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” He jerked like an electric current had passed through his body. His fingers bit into the couch at his side as I took the tip into my mouth. “Fuck!”
I was determined then, to make this the absolute best blowjob of his life. I swirled my tongue around the piercing, and then sucked it right back into my throat.
“Fuck, babe, you’re going to hurt yourself!”
I gagged, swallowed and eased off before plunging straight back down.
His back bowed, his hands reached as if to grab me off before they clutched once more to the material so fiercely it was a wonder the sofa did not tear. “Jesus. Fuck!”
I hummed around his cock and slowed my pace after my little tease woke him up. Ryker groaned. Ethan growled.
I worshiped him. Drawing his wonderful spicy scent into my lungs as I demonstrated how much I had missed him. Licking, sucking, running my tongue over every inch, maintaining eye contact as I did. Working my hand up and down the parts I couldn’t reach with my mouth, while gently cupping his balls.
The couch groaned under his fierce grip. “I’m going to come, baby.”
And he did, like an explosion, a river of cum flooding my mouth and shooting deep down my throat. I choked on it there was so much, but I was determined, and I swallowed and licked up every last drop.
When I glanced up, Ryker’s chest was rising and falling on gusty breaths, and he had a broad grin on his face. “I want to touch you, babe, but Sasquatch doesn’t know how to share, so we’ll have to work up to that.” His cock hadn’t completely softened, but he tucked it back into his pants. He winked as he grabbed a cushion, shoved it behind his head, and lay down. “Thanks, gonna sleep like a baby now.”
The soft growl from behind was all the warning I got before Ethan gripped my arm and hauled me over to the bed. He fucked me noisily. Then he draped his heavy arm and leg over me, and I fell into a fitful sleep.
The next morning I woke up flushed…and suffocating under the hot weight of Ethan’s arm. His legs were tangled with mine, and his body curved around me. One big hand cupped my breast. As he shifted, his fingers plucked absently at my nipple. I sucked in a sharp breath as the touch ignited the sensitive flesh.
It was too much to hope for my reaction to escape his notice. Covers were ripped aside as he hauled me onto my back, and his lips closed over the abused flesh of my nipple. A breathy moan escaped me when the first pull was as painful as it was arousing. My legs parted, and his fingers probed the slippery petals, pinching and rubbing gently over my swollen clit. I was sensitive everywhere, the stimulation too intense, but when he demanded I come for him, I tipped straight over the edge.
“Are you going to spank her now?” My bleary eyes opened to find Ryker standing at the bottom of the bed, eyeing the apex of my splayed legs where Ethan’s fingers played. He had removed his shirt to display those arresting tattoos that spanned over perfectly sculptured muscle.
Where Ethan was savage; Ryker was raw, masculine beauty.
Ethan growled as he pumped two thick fingers in and out of my dripping pussy.
“Yes.”
“Can I watch?”
My pussy clamped around the fingers buried deep inside. Ryker smirked when my eyes flashed to meet his.
Mortified that he caught my blatant perusal, my lashes lowered. I fought to steady my breathing, feeling the weight of two Alpha men studying me intently. I was confident nothing in the Omega program could prepare me for this.
“Yes,” Ethan said, his tone the implacable one that brought goosebumps to my skin. “You can hold her while I do it.”
My pussy clenched again, and a flood gushed out.
“Fuck, I can smell her,” Ryker said. “I used to tell her you would take your belt to her if she was naughty, that you would make me hold her while you spanked her with it. Have you used the belt on her yet?”
“No,” Ethan said, and the implied threat hung between us until he confirmed it by saying, “Not yet.”
The thick fingers withdrew, and I was flipped over.
My mind was floating, I was frightened and aroused, and desperate to find a mental shelter to cling to. There was no opportunity to retreat, no place to hide.
“Tell me what to do,” Ryker said.
“Over the side of the bed,” Ethan said. “Hold her hands above her head and the center of her back. She knows better than to try and kick.”
It was the first time Ryker had touched me since he had been back, my lips around his cock, notwithstanding. Ethan growled softly in warning as Ryker gathered my hands.
“We should get some restraints,” Ryker said without a hint of inflection. “A nice spanking bench.”
“Maybe,” Ethan said. There was a pause. “I like seeing you hold her.”
“Yeah? What about w
hen she was sucking my cock?”
“I wanted to rip your heart from your chest,” Ethan said seriously.
Ryker chuckled like that wasn’t a deadly threat. “Thanks for not sharing that thought with me last night.”
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN I ARRIVED at the therapist, there were two hulking Deltas already waiting in the sunny reception area, smartly dressed in black pants and shirts. They looked out of place against the hot-pink walls and awkward on the sky-blue reclining seats. You can tell when another man has combat training, and these two had that look. Private security forces maybe, not military anyway. And I knew they were Deltas because they had an Alpha build but without any scent.
The psychedelic setting wasn’t Abby’s regular office. Her regular office was going through an extensive refurb, and this temporary one used to be the consulting rooms for a gynecologist of all things—go figure.
I sprawled in the chair opposite, which was more comfortable than appearance might suggest. Beside me, a luminous orange lamp emitted weak lighting and clashed with—everything as far as I was concerned.
The two Deltas gave me an eyeballing. Blondie on the left was a bit older, with a short beard and hair down to his shoulders. I know people called me a psycho, but he looked like one, with those cold, gray eyes. Dark-haired side-kick was fresh-faced and built like a fucking tank.
I smirked back because I couldn’t give a fuck what their problem was in my present mood. I still couldn’t open my right eye more than a crack after Ethan had beaten the shit out of me under the guise of a ‘training session’ yesterday.
Then I’d had to suffer hours of listening to him fucking Lilly, and her screaming as she came all over his cock.
Repeatedly.
I rubbed restlessly at the stubble on my jaw. The blowjob had been fucking amazing, but the naughty little Omega had known her gift had only made me feel worse. There were beautiful women, and then there were goddesses. Lilly on her knees with my cock sliding in and out of her mouth was like experiencing a revelation.
