With a wanton moan, she came, still calling out obscenities, full of coerced rapture until only his name was on her lips.
"Shepherd..."
The knot grew, his cock forced as deep as it could go the instant her muscles began clenching rhythmically to draw out his seed. Watching him grunt like a beast, Claire felt the thick spurted ropes of cream, lost in the rapture of her greedy pussy milking his cock until she was pooling with the stuff.
While the knot persisted, Shepherd looked into disoriented green eyes and demanded roughly, "Whose name did you call as you came?"
Claire could hardly breathe, was on the ebb of a powerful climax that shook her to her bones. She whispered, trying not to cry, "Yours."
"Because I am your Alpha." It was almost a roar. "You want to be fucked by me! Do you understand?"
Shaking her head, her lower lip quivering, Claire spoke the truth. "I don't understand."
Unfazed by the challenge, Shepherd coldly said, "Then allow me to show you again."
Once the knot subsided, he took her gently, coaxing and stroking, his thrusts slow and calculating. He played her body like a violin, drew out every possible sound a pleased female could make, gave her the type of orgasm that builds slow and burns long, watching her as a cat watches a mouse hole.
It continued for hours, as he stripped away all her petty convictions until she was too exhausted to fight back, until her hands began to reach for him in a sex-induced daze, to stroke his back and trace the lines of his horrid tattoos. When his point had been thoroughly made, Shepherd held her against him and purred as he petted, rewarding the wayward Omega for coming to heel.Chapter 3Shepherd could call it whatever he wanted—animal impulse, compulsion of biology, necessity of the bond—to Claire, it was still rape. She hated herself every time he coerced her to softly murmur his name in the dark, or reached out a hand to stroke the bulge of his muscle.
It was the same every day. He was almost constantly buried inside her womb. He took her when she woke, after she ate, roughly if she seemed irritable. And he always made her climax... simply to prove that he could. It left her boneless and complaisant, shut off the mind screaming at her to remember herself.
And the damn purr; Shepherd exercised it expertly when she paced in frustration or fussed.
Time became irrelevant. Claire was not even sure how long she had been underground, if it had been days or weeks. Anytime she wanted to know the hour she had to ask, and it eventually grew confusing. Night was day, day was night—everything was turned around.
Even the arrival of meals followed no set pattern, though she was never hungry for long. Shepherd was feeding her so much, in fact, it seemed sacrilegious when she could not always empty her plate. The man was fattening her up.
Random things arrived in the room for her use: products for her hair, a brush, clothing of a sort—all dresses worn only by the elite women housed at the warm levels nearest the top of the Dome—but no shoes or underwear. When Shepherd was gone, she slept; almost the instant she woke, he returned. It was odd—like he knew—like he felt her cycles on his side of the thread. And always, before words were spoken, he took off his clothing, came to the bed, and lay with her.
Claire knew nothing about the man but had memorized every inch of his body, the random placement of scars, the smoothness of his skin. And she knew how every inch of him tasted. None of the attention was out of affection—it was just part of the spell he would build. Though her tongue might lick his flesh, Claire never once returned any kiss he tried to press against her mouth.
That was one thing he couldn't take and couldn't force.
His expressions were another study; Shepherd conveying much with his steel eyes. Claire was learning to read his moods by their subtle shifts. When he arrived angry, eyes blazing and nostrils flared over something she had no knowledge of, he almost always mounted her from behind—hard and fast—roaring when he came. When he seemed his version of mellow, it was slow touches while he watched her face. What she saw then; the calculation, the intense concentration—it frightened her more. He was dissecting her piece by piece. A little pressure here, a little tug there... and poof, no more Claire.
Their schedules were markedly different. They never shared meals; in fact, she never saw him eat. The only thing he seemed keen to share with her was his bathing ritual; washing her being an act Shepherd enjoyed and took extensive care with. Once she was clean, he would rut immediately. Sometimes against the wall in the shower, as if he could not wait another second to put his scent back on his Omega.