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He dropped his forehead against my temple, his hot breath on my cheek. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Sweet, boy. They are art. You must admire them.”
I think if he had not just come, not just kissed me like a man possessed, he might have refused. But he was as weak as I was and soon I felt his flushed cheek against mine. Puck lavished Polly’s bare cunt and luxuriated in her cries of pleasure.
The tableau called to me. Watching had always caused my blood to run hot. Now a darker, more perverse need stabbed like thorns into my heart.
She was mine.
He was mine.
The man lying boneless in my arms was mine.
They were my puppets, I the master.
A cruel smile twisted my features. It had taken five long years to orchestrate this night, and it had gone better than expected.
A long ago midsummer night’s dream begun as idle amusement had come to fruition.
But the games had only just begun.
2
Polly
Three weeks earlier
With the blankets pulled over my head and my lover’s gentle snoring in my left ear, I had to strain to hear the lark’s morning song—the herald of a new day. Pushing away the down filled coverlet I drifted to the window and pulled back the curtains to let the sun in. This deep into the autumn, the garden was not in full bloom but to around the corner of the house, the small orchard was beginning to bear fruit. The trees were one hundred years old and had seen more than any human in creation. If one chopped one down, pulped it, and turned it into paper, what kind of tale would you write on it?
And despite the history those trees had silently observed, I loved my home.
“What are you looking at?” Sarah’s sleepy voice grumbled. She was not an early riser but anyone as sweet as she could charm the heart regardless of bleary eyes and her hair as tangled as a crow’s nest. When she sat, the sheet fell away to expose her naked body. Truly a sculpture of Aphrodite at her most beautiful. Firm breasts with a cinnamon coloured mole just above one pert nipple drew my attention before I, almost guiltily, drew my gaze up her body to the prettiest, most mischievous face one could imagine. “Do you like what you see?”
Rolling my eyes, I took the threadbare curtain in my hand, running my fingers along the fraying material. “Thinking of my home.”
“Tell me its history?” she asked, a little more awake now that she was upright, and she’d begun to finger comb her hair.
The story was not particularly interesting but this morning sentimentality rode me hard so I did not mind the telling.
“To begin at the beginning.” I scooted onto the bed next to her. “The square red brick house set in a surprisingly large and excellently maintained garden had been built in the last century.” I skipped the politics of the time as Sarah cared nothing for the masincations of alphas. “The number of windows is of its first owner’s wealth and power. No doubt an alpha who’d just come into money or made it through abusing betas, omegas, and alphas weaker than himself.
“Then forty years ago Mr Markham, a Cit who had built his fortune through almost legitimate means, bought it. He’d married an omega of much higher status. But the stink of shop was too strong for her pedigree to overcome and they rarely went out into polite society. On his death six years ago, his widow moved to a house on the margin of fashionable London where she was happy to raise her beta daughter. Loathe to let the house of her happy marriage stand empty, she’d given it to me to hold in trust until either she or her daughter desired to take it back. ‘There are too many happy memories for me to continue living there,’ she had said in her typical practical manner. Typical for on this date I’d known her a good ten years as a friend of my omega father’s and my older sister’s godmother. But while her memories were happy, mine were darkest I’d known. She was very generous and I remember how she’d instinctively understood that a house like this would suit my needs. She’d said, ‘No doubt your interest in Faltin Lodge makes it far more useful to you than as rented lodgings to some stranger. I cannot abide the thought of some unknown living there.’
“I’d been naturally sceptical of her generosity when the only money I had was through ill-gotten means. ‘You don’t wish to know why I want a house when I’m not yet of age?’ Even then I had the lightest fingers and revelled in relieving wealthy alphas of jewels. T’was the only thing that made society tolerable.
“‘Oh, Hippolyta.” Mrs Markham had reached out to stroke my hair as if I was a child not yet out of leading strings. You can imagine the effort not to flinch. ‘Of all your sisters, I trust you know your own mind and abilities best. Shan’t push you on your motives. But, and indulge me since I am keeping your confidence, what shall you name it? To date, each new occupant has christened this house something new.’
“There had been no hesitation when I’d said, ‘Omega House.’”
Sarah smiled. “See! You can be poetic when you choose. What a most lovely story.”
I dipped in for a brief morning kiss. “Hush, pretty girl. Tell me. Where do you go from here?”
“To see Puck.” This close I could see how her eyes glittered at the mention of the alpha’s name. No doubt she would enjoy his amorous response when she arrived smelling of omega slick. “They plan to capture Stimpson, the alpha who has threatened Beatrice, after the fight.”
I didn’t need reminding. Stimpson, still in his minority, had kidnapped Mrs Markham’s daughter—a failed elopement to steal her fortune. When Beatrice had hunted them down, Stimpson had shot my sister. She’d barely survived. Since then, he’d been lurking about London making my sister anxious and pushed her mates to take the drastic action to, ah, be rid of the villain. Conspiring with London’s most notorious alpha, Oberon Drexler owner of a gaming Hell, they’d settled on a boxing match between one of her mates and a prize fighter—the very Puck Sarah was off to see. According to Oberon, Stimpson who wouldn’t be able to resist just an event. But something so public was bound to go wrong yet alphas were stubborn creatures. None more so than Puck, whom I tolerated because he made Sarah happy. Jack Fordom was no less stubborn, however he was one of Beatrice’s mates and therefore his existence must be born with good grace. At least I was the one in charge of my sister’s safe keeping. No alpha knew of my Omega House or the secrets within.
“Polly! Do not get so lost in your thoughts! Focus on what you can control in the present.”
