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“She’s got you, old man.” Puck clapped me on the back and the door closing signalled his departure, leaving me with the omega.
“Well?”
“My dear, if you think to put me off you’ve mistaken me.”
“It would be a boring sentence if you were so easily dissuaded,” she replied.
“Until tomorrow then.”
We enteredthe drawing room where the baize-topped tables were scattered in a seemingly random pattern, but in truth one designed to force the gamblers circulate through the room in such a way that drew them towards the games of risk and chance. Servants cleaned–far more than was necessary but all the better. Let them spread the word: The omega, Hippolyta Hartwell, was my guest and playing cards with me and without visible restraints.
We’d gifted Polly some new clothes that didn’t quite fit her–the dress was too tight for her bountiful bust and the skirt too short revealing an ankle that was… the opposite of dainty. I wanted to catch it in my hand and examine this sturdy limb, run my hand up her calf and explore what I’d yet to see. I bit off the urge to compliment her hair. Washed and dried it dazzled in the afternoon sunshine which poured through the windows. The gold threads highlighted the richness of the colour which heated my blood, causing my cock to twitch. So easy to imagine my hand gripping the strands tight while fucking into her. Mouth, quim, ass it would not matter. She’d be a wild, willing, and demanding lover. Yes, that pleasure would be worth waiting for.
“Soon,” I promised myself.
“Soon?” she asked with a slight frown as she sat across from me.
“Soon, you’ll be perched on my lap, knotted and weak from pleasure, while we play cards with Puck and, if he is a good boy and learns manners, Jude.”
With seductive and deadly purpose she withdrew the dagger from her sleeve and placed it on the table next to her. “I’ll knot you before touching your cock,” she snarled.
I closed my eyes to better savour the picture she painted and my nose did not lie but our three scents heightened with arousal. “Puck would be jealous,” I breathed at last. He growled in confirmation. “But if you truly wish that, I am sure we could provide you with the necessary toys.”
“Fear not, sirs. Should I decide to take you in such a way I have my own tools to make you come like an unschooled virgin being fucked for the first time.” Her eyes flashed and I wondered if she knew that they shone an alpha’s mirrored-gold. Would her heats be stronger? Would she experience the raw need to breed and claim that an alpha felt during a rut? What would it be like to be mated to such a woman? The theoretical desire to make Hippolyta Hartwell my mate was fast becoming eclipsed by the wild and reckless desires she inspired when she was in scenting distance.
The soft clearing of a throat broke the tension. A footman stood a few feet off. “A pack of fresh cards as you asked for.”
“Give them to the lady.”
Polly took them and began shuffling with quick, practised movements. I didn’t know how skilled she was but her hands were certainly dexterous. “Piquet?”
“Naturally.”
The first few hands were accomplished in silence, each accessing the measure of the other. She did not hesitate with her discards, was neither reckless nor overly cautious. Competent if I had to pick a word.
“A question,” she said as she counted the points from the last hand. “Did you know Stimpson was a threat? That he was linked with an omega trafficking operation?”
I kept my eyes trained on the cards stacked on the table, allowing me to gather myself before I spoke. Omega trafficking was a capital crime but an increasingly common practice as the fashion for packs waned. Some strange puritanical nonsense about omegas remaining chaste except with their mate—the implication being that there could only be one mate. There were whispers that Polly’s people had begun a crusade to destroy the traffickers. Whispers though and I knew to keep my nose out of her business—had known better. Now I wanted to make her business mine and her my business too. “I knew Stimpson and Eliza Browning were threats to omegas. But I did not know Eliza Browning was a threat to your sister.”
“But you knew Stimpson was,” she confirmed and made a quick work of shuffling the cards. “You know, then, that omegas are being trafficked and you do nothing about it. And permitted the alpha who you imprisoned to escape for your own gain. To extort my brothers-in-law? To force me to submit to you?”
“There was nothing planned,” Puck snapped. “We do not know the details for Sarah is dead but I swear on her soul, we are not responsible for his escape.” She had forced us to acknowledge that we had been in the dark that night. Puck rested a hand on my shoulder giving it a hard squeeze. “I am no hero to omegas, Polly.” Puck continued. “Though I presume that your spies in our household have gathered information through—”
She cut him off with a commanding growl, and her scent, full of aggression, filled the room. The betas whimpered and gathered together. Apex omega. How much I had to learn and how little time. We none of us had acknowledged her heat was near. The sweet smell of her slick, the fact she permitted us to be near her. All of it pointed to the near inevitable. In not very many days, a week at most, Puck and I would knot and mate her. She might not have accepted the fact yet but in the wild passion of a heat, she’d beg for our knots. No omega could resist.
“I’m ahead.” She smiled, her fingers twirling the pencil.
“Your next question.”
“Your nephew. I’ve yet to see him.”
I clenched my jaw. She knew of Tod and that he was missing. It ought not surprise me but her sharp eyes unnerved me. Since the moment I’d first seen at Tod as a babe and been flooded by the instinct to protect him, I knew—no matter the cost—I’d throw the woman before me to the devil before letting any harm come to that boy.
“Still missing,” I ground out. She hummed and made a reckless discard which I capitalised on. “But we shall find him. My only hope is that he has not taken it into his head to visit Scotland or Ireland.”
Despite her distraction with some heavy thoughts, Polly smiled. “He would of course take after his mother.”
“How did you know Sophia?” Puck snapped. This was new information us both. My sister had never breathed a word of knowing Hippolyta Hartwell or any other well-born omega.
