“Shepherd!”
She had not called his name on the transport ship.
Hearing it drew a growl of approval, a large Alpha prowling over her to urge that sound again. Where she shied, he forced his way, his erection heavy against her thigh. That first taste of her mouth, the flavor of her pussy still on his tongue, was bliss.
He surged in, hips snapping to sheath fully in one swoop. Claire’s breath hitched.
He fucked in again. She gasped.
“Touch me, little one.”
Her body was twisted, one leg straight, one hooked on Shepherd’s arm. She was pinned where they fit together, unable to rock her hips or wriggle away. Green eyes remained locked on the veined rod, seeing it disappear inside her, watching it retreat wet with her fluid. At its base was the bulbous hint of the coming knot.
She didn’t move. She stank of fear.
Shepherd took her hand, aware she had not heard him, and put it on his face. “Touch me, little one.”
Her attention left his cock to find him excited, silver eyes burning and so very in love. His cheek had been shaved, was smooth under her fingers, the scar in his lips puckered near her thumb. His neck was still thickly muscled, but what caught her attention, what made him hers, were the claiming marks she traced while Shepherd fought himself not to rear and pound harder than her weak body could tolerate.
“Claire, kiss me there.”
She wanted to, wanted to scrape her teeth on her mark. She also wanted to run away, to hide.
“You’re mine, little one. I’m yours. Bite me as hard as you like. Hurt me if you need to.”
A heat grew in her belly, a sense of possession that tightened her cunt and made her want to do all those things. As if Shepherd had read her thoughts, he set her leg free, rewarding good behavior with swirling grinds of his pelvis where friction would only make her croon. The second her teeth locked onto the marks she’d left in his shoulder, Claire came, lapping at the taste of him, breaking skin so she might know the taste of his blood again.
The male roared. Jets of come, the swelling knot, the Omega’s back arched and Shepherd cried out like a dying man. Everything inside him wanted to fill her up. Another rush of his seed bathed her insides, Claire so tight around him that for the first time in a year, he felt whole.
His tongue moved to her ear, Shepherd demanding as that last rush of fluid poured from him to fill her up, “Tell me you love me, little one.”
Breathless, still clenching around an organ offering pleasure she’d forgotten, Claire panted, “I love you. I’ve missed you…”
Shepherd kissed her shoulder, peppering the scar he’d given her with affection.
This time, when Claire began to cry, it was not from pain.
While his Omega sobbed, he flipped them over so she might own the position she loved most—so she could rest her ear to his heart while the knot held her tied. So he could tell her things he knew she would not want to hear where she was most comfortable and unable to get away.
“You have a schedule here, Claire, a responsibility to pick up where you left off in your recovery.”
He had her in the mating high, he had her drugged on his seed and opiates. He did not have her compliance. “No.”
“In the morning hours you’ll meet with Dr. Osin.”
“No doctors.”
“Afternoons may be spent as you wish, but therapy is not an option. I have given your doctor leave to enter this house at will, even this room, should you think to avoid the work you must do. You will find that she is not a woman who will allow you to slack.”
Feeling anger toward Shepherd was something far too familiar. It felt right, and it felt ravenous. “You are still a bully, but you have nothing you can force me with now. Who are you going to threaten to kill if I disobey?”
He gripped black tresses tight in his fist, pulling her head back so she might meet his eyes. There was no softness in his words, and no mercy for the sting in her scalp. “I love you, but you need to recover. You cannot live your life hiding in this nest. I won’t allow it.”
She wanted to make a cutting remark about his hypocrisy, but those eyes held hers and old guilt came instead to make her lip tremble. Memories of Thólos—of grief, loss, pain, and failure, took the steel from her spine.
Claire wilted.
No quarter was given. More commands were issued, Shepherd outlining the life she would have should she recognize all he offered.Chapter 7Bernard DomeThere was a chair nestled in a corner near the bed. A Louis XV, beautifully preserved… a treasure. He’d had it brought into the room the very day he’d seized his Omega off the Beta Sector streets. The amount of time Jacques sat in that chair, the hours upon hours in the dark where he’d watched her sleep…