And yet, she couldn’t stop.
Gently, he lowered them back to the improvised sleeping area, cradling her head so as not to knock it against the stone, exhibiting a perplexing and altogether surprising degree of consideration from a body vibrating with pent-up excitement. But she didn’t have time to process that incongruence because, with a few deft movements of his fingers, he’d undone her pants and whipped them off her legs. Damp thighs and swollen sex exposed, she gasped as the chilled air hit her heated flesh. More rough sounds rumbled in Cal’s throat. Hooking her knees, he hiked her legs up and spread them wide, wider than her shoulders, displaying everything to his ravenous regard. He’d made his intentions plain in his insouciant, unhurried way, but the full force of those desires now sprang to the surface.
“You have a needy Omega cunt that’s been neglected for far too fucking long.” The coarse words, highlighted by the gritty restraint cutting through his usual silken drawl, made her head spin and not from concussion. Each word stoked the blaze higher. Taking her hand, he tucked it behind her knee, in the same place his own had been. “Keep that there,” he said with the unmistakable tone of an order, and Della’s body lit onfire.
Positioning her other hand on her other knee, he nodded in approval, soaking up the picture he’d composed. Some distant part of her wondered if she should be appalled, embarrassed, or disgusted with herself and her unprotested, unresisted submission. Maybe she ought to be, but she had no space in her mind for that, not when Cal once again laid his palm on her sex, this time, his bare flesh against her most intimate spot for the first time. She whined, an agonized sound, feeling the building need for another,better, release.
“Look at you.” His eyes touched on hers briefly before returning to her core. Slipping his fingers along her slit, he nudged inside her outer lips, and Della whimpered with this gentle first breaching and again when one strong finger grazed alongside her clit. Then, with his fingers rubbing and circling and slipping and sliding in her extraordinary juiciness, hegrowled, louder and stronger and somehow deeper than the first time. And again, Della’s pussy clenched, another climax making her arch and squirm and wail as his clever fingers coaxed her to an even greater height.
He swore again, staring with open-mouthed awe. Slowly, he withdrew his hand, glossy with her arousal, and smeared the slick across his lips and chin. A bright, yellow ray of sunshine streaked into the cave, illuminating the erotic tableau of Cal sucking two long fingers in his mouth with a tortured groan. A single drop of slick caught the light, running down his wrist and sparkling like a drop of honey. Della watched, transfixed, as he scooped up that stray drop with a quick flick of his tongue, his expression incandescent.
“So fucking beautiful.” A flicker of a smile lodged in his dimples, and Della’s emotions shattered into a thousand million pieces at the sight. She barely knew anything: her birthday, her history, herfucking name, but she knew she wanted this man. In every single way she could have him.
Still boneless and floaty but filled with newfound purpose, Della launched herself upright, the need propelling her toward the source of this insanity inside her. Her head swam at the sudden change in position, queasiness and dizziness and nausea asserting themselves in no uncertain terms. Della reeled, her head bobbing as the room rotated around her.
“Woah,woah.” Large palms braced her shoulders, keeping her upright as she swayed backward. “Easy there now.”
He steadied her movements, yet the acceleration in her brain didn’t ease up at all. Feeling her stomach revolt with a sickening lurch, Della covered her mouth with her palm and shook her head, trying to indicate she couldn’t talk but only succeeding in making herself even sicker. She let out a little muffled wail but didn’t protest as Cal dragged her a few feet away and propped her against the nearest wall.
The stone’s chill permeated through her shirt, the contrast in temperature distracting her from the whirling agony in her brain. Her head fell back, and she rocked it gently against the stone, battling to reestablish equilibrium.
“Here,” Cal said, his voice close and strangely soothing. “Have some water.”
She accepted the canteen, taking a small, careful sip, followed by another. Now that she sat still and upright, the dizziness abated enough she didn’t feel on the verge of vomiting. Fingers fidgeting with the dangling cap, she avoided looking at the man crouched by her side. The man whose easy, comforting essence soothed her from the inside out despite her churning guts. The man whose fingers had, not minutes before, helped himself to the most intimate parts of her as if he had every right to be there while she splayed her legs like a cat in heat.
She’d never been so hungry for sex in her entire life. Flinging herself upright with the intent to rip his clothes off? This wasn’t her.
Blinking, she tested her vertigo against the light that continued to pour in through the cave opening. Once assured the room had stopped whirling, Della fastened Cal with an accusatory stare. “What happened to me?”
“You hit your head yesterday in the barn. Do you remember? Silas rammed into me, and I...” He swallowed as if fighting his own wave of nausea. “I knocked you face-first into the stable door. I think you have a concussion.” He paused. Stern, unhappy frown lines carved into his handsome face as he gestured toward the makeshift pallet where they’d engaged in their scandalous activities. “You weren’t ready for all that just yet. I shouldn’t have let you get carried away.”
“Let me?” Della’s voice rose, the unexpected volume causing a sharp stab of pain in her brain. A concussion? Sure. Fine. That made sense, but it ranked as a secondary concern to why in the hell she could suddenly smell and lust rampaged through her body. “Come on, Della, you know what this is,” he’d said moments before. Yeah, she’d heard all about Heats and slick and Omegas coming into their natures, and all of that would make perfect fucking senseifshe was an actual Omega. Which shewasn’t.
She glared and flung a disgusted hand at her lower body, her knees still flagrantly spread and moisture running down the inside of her thighs. “Youdid something to me. You drugged me. What is it? Some kind of black-market Omega pheromone concoction? Some variant of a drug, like scratch?”
Even to her sluggish brain, the far-fetched hypothesis strained credulity. No mention of such a drug ever fell from the lips of even the juiciest of gossips. Yet Della clung to it like a life raft. She wasn’t suddenly an Omega. There had to be another explanation.
“Della.” Cal’s luminous green-gray-gold eyes hardened like blades. “I’m only going to tell you this once, so listen up.” Snagging her chin, he tipped her face toward his to better harness her with his solemn expression. “I did not drug you, and I am not lying to you. Not now. Not ever.”
Ignoring the unexpected warmth coursing through her at his touch, Della pressed her advantage. “Then tell me where we are.”
“About a half -day’s ride from the settlement,” he answered simply, notably not disclosing in which direction.
“That’s not a full answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Scowling, she tried again. “Why did you bring me here?”
At this, he reached for one of the blankets she’d slept under. “I’ll tell you the whole story, but not right now.” He draped the cloth over her naked lower half. “You need to finish that water, then you need to eat, and then rest. Your poor little head ain’t quite right.”
Torment and uncertainty took up residence inside her throbbing skull. “Am I your prisoner?” she asked, her voice soft and trembly.
“Prisoner?” Cal scoffed. Tucking the edge of the blanket around her feet, he rubbed each of the bottoms in his quick, confident hands, warming them when she hadn’t even realized they were cold. Glancing up, he shot her an incredulous look. “I keep telling you, Della, and eventually, you’re gonna believe me: you’re not my prisoner, you’re mymate.”
A worrying sprig of doubt unfurled between the cracks in her certainty. What if he was telling the truth? After a century, and against all expectations, she’d inexplicably regained her sense of smell. How could she explain that? Was it any more preposterous than some Alpha showing up and proclaiming she was his? And an Omega, to boot? Reeling for reasons having nothing to do with the concussion, Della’s head tipped back to rest once again on the rock wall, closing her eyes against a torrent of confusion that would not let her go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN