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“Will you be as wet for me as you were for Oberon? I cannot get the scent of you on him the day you returned. Did he make you come as hard as I can?”
“He—”
“You let an alpha touch you, something you swore would never happen. I think you can permit me to ask you for a little understanding.”
“You think? You think?” I cut myself off before I provoked an argument. “He shot a man,” I said at last as if the truth had just occurred to me. Hopefully, it would end this conversation. “I think I should go to bed.”
“Not before we have finished this conversation. This morning—”
“Actions speak louder than words,” I snapped. To my amazement, he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.
“You are a fool. Goddess, the number of times I would have told you. And to what end? However you learnt I was an alpha, you would have been devastated. They say alpha’s bane kills within two years. I have been taking it for five. I thought perhaps the goddess had blessed me. A peasant’s faith for we are the not as cynical as people of your class.”
“Yet you chose to tell the truth.”
“When I thought I might save you from their clutches. Of course I would tell the truth. And look how I bungled that.”
Bungled? I wanted to scream the word at him but my omega swayed, instinct relishing how he had been prepared to kill himself to be my protector and lover.
“I hate being an omega.” The words were ripped from me. Too many years of giving him all my thoughts and feelings could not be banished in a couple of weeks.
“And I hate when you hate yourself,” he snapped. He squeezed my arms tight and pulled me closer until my front pressed against his. Old feelings crammed through the crack in my anger. I had accepted affection, intimacy from this man when I had kept everyone else at a distance. I couldn’t help how bitter my scent turned. Or the way my heart ached. Then, sweet goddess, but he purred for me. A low, rumbling I had longed to receive from him when I had believed him to be a beta.
Could there had been a more powerful moment than the first time an alpha purred for an omega? Weak as I was, I gasped his name, biting into his shoulder to tether myself to this wild reality where I craved an alpha’s commanding intimacies.
“By the goddess and all that is holy, you must understand. You will believe how sorry I am. There is nothing I would not do to gain your forgiveness.” From another, even another alpha, those would have been pretty words uttered to seduce but when Jude uttered them, I found myself retreating for his voice was too raw and even in the near dark his eyes reflected mirrored gold.
“Don’t—”
He pushed away from me. Each line of his being stiff and the fiery passion extinguished. “Every time you say ‘don’t’ I want to press you and ask why. Then I remember there is no point. I went too far. I lied. And should accept my place.”
“Oh, shut up!” I growled and against every good sense or instinct for self preservation, I fisted my hands in the lapels of his coat and pulled him close. “You should know better than to give in to thinking around me.”
Then I kissed him. Goddess, I kissed him as if it was to be the last kiss I ever have and it tasted good.
Sinful.
Precious.
And heartbreakingly perfect for we only had this moment together before we had to accept our places in each other’s lives. The finds that would keep us apart.
His hand cupped my face, and faint calluses brushed against my cheek. For a moment I wondered what he had ever done to build them up. But only a moment before he sucked me back into the torrent of desire that erupted in the hollow cavity where my heart had been before Jude had robbed me of it.
Too soon, we broke apart each panting and no doubt I looked as wild and unfocused as he.
“I must go.” Like a coward I fled to the safety of my cage but even as I stripped off my gown, I could not give up the scents that lingered in the expensive material. I could toss it out the window but to my shame, I stuffed it under the mound of pillows in my cage. As I lay my head down, their scents were too potent and slick gathered between my thighs.
“No.” I tossed the pillows aside and threw the gown out of my cage. Panting, I hid under my blankets, praying for a dreamless sleep rather than one filled with omega desire or the prickle of heat I felt gathering in my sex.
21
Oberon
“You should have known better!” Jude bellowed. He’d surprised me in my room when Puck and I had come to bed. “You should have known one of those fops would go after her. To take what is ours.”
I wondered if he heard himself say “ours” or not. Did it matter? My answer would infuriate him more. “I did. I wanted it. Planned on it. Waited for it. Would have provoked it if they’d not have the balls to do it.”
“Why?” This was Puck, equally furious but more used to my tricks.
