She slid her hands around his waist, clenching him to her in silent assent. Assent or surrender, Della succumbed to both the inevitable and the so-apparent-it-hurt acknowledgment that right here, right now,thiswas what she wanted.
He parted his sensuous lips, panting puffs of hot breath against her cheek. “That’s good, isn’t it? You’re asking yourself why you’ve been fighting me all this time, aren’t you, Della?”
The taunts drove into her with the same searing power as his cock. Even in the throes of his lust, he mustered the arrogance to needle her. But, for whatever sick reason, the mental and physical twisted together in her body and strung her along another building crest.
A broad palm found its way to her breast, kneading and pinching until pain mingled with pleasure. Mouth set in a tortured grimace, his open palm abused her tender mound in a series of sharp, forceful slaps that batted every exposed inch of her breast. The strikes zinged through her body straight to her sex, shocking, exhilarating, and close to overwhelming in the midst of all the sensations bombarding her in this crazy, unreal moment of her life.
“Nothing to say to that? No sassy retorts?” Burrowing his face in her neck, he mouthed over her skin, growling and snarling like a beast as the rhythm between her thighs slowed to a deep, deliberate punch that only served to stall her pursuit of the next much-needed peak. She ground her hips upward and clawed at his back and the hard curve of his ass, desperate to hasten the pace and bring her relief. “It’s all right. You can say whatever you like with that acid tongue of yours, you don’t scare me. Ilikeit.”
Her breath turned to cement in her lungs. While Cal feasted on her neck, shoulders, and breasts, his taunting invitation ripped her wide open. Della squeezed her eyes shut as if that would help her hide from him as he faced down the prickly facade she’d curated for decades.
Every year the mask grew more and more comfortable because it became more and more true. Her hair faded, grey mingling with copper, and lines took up permanent residence on her face. Anyone who looked at her saw not a woman but anold womanand, therefore, of even less consequence. Not respected as a wizened crone or wise woman, but an obsolete, expired model not worth fucking and therefore not worth anything at all. In truth, she didn’t mind. Her age became another layer of protection, another way of gliding through the world unnoticed, under the radar from the worst of humanity.
Except this man, thisAlpha, didn’t give one single fuck about any of that. As he reared back and rose to his hands, his face contorted with aggressive fire, desire, and x-ray vision that blasted through all she was and laid her bare in every possible way. There was no doubt in her mind he wasn’t just fucking a wet or available hole buther.
“I see you,” he said as if he could hear her reeling thoughts, “taking my cock and loving every hard inch of it.”
She formed theyeswith her lips, but nothing emerged. Too overwhelmed to speak, his declaration invaded her soul with each powerful thrust. “I see you... I see you... I see you.”The hard set of his lips contrasted with the shining appreciation in his firelit face. Each punch of his hips drove the meaning deeper into her heart, making it harder and harder to escape. Like a tug-of-war between pursuit and retreat, desire drove her pelvis to lift toward his while all her finely honed survival instincts screamed caution. She couldn’t hide, and what if... what if... she didn’twantto?
“Flushed cheeks and hard nipples and your tight, soaking cunt.” His guttural voice tore through her wordless moans. Grunting in pleasure, Cal accelerated his hips to a head-spinning pace, and her climax neared. After all this time, hiding from Alphas and burrowing deeper and deeper inside herself, this exposure felt good and necessary and right. Every stroke of his cock, every greedy caress, and every coarsely uttered word towed her farther out into the light, and Della basked in it the way only a woman who’d been imprisoned by fear could celebrate. Overcome, a single poignant tear breached her emotional defenses and began its insolent slide down her cheek.
Dropping down to his elbows, Cal swept it away with his wide thumb. The small act of tenderness ruined her completely. Undeterred by her emotions, he brought their lips together, his tongue snaking into her mouth and claiming it like he’d claimed every other part of her inside and out. As if to say,Yeah, I see that too, and I’ll relish whatever you want to throw at me.She moaned from deep in her throat, the sound vibrating from his lips to hers, and he grunted in approval, pulling back to whisper, “There’s no part of you I don’t want, Della, and you’re gonna give it all to me, y’hear?”
Not waiting for an acknowledgment, he unleashed his growl, the preview of which had crumpled her knees earlier. Now deployed against her lips and chest, it snapped her climax into existence like the strike of a whip. Convulsions shuddered out from her core to every last sinew of muscle holding her bones from blowing apart completely. Pleasure burned through her defenses, laying waste to everything she thought she knew about herself and him and their situation. She shook in his arms, a scream locked behind her teeth, as Cal held her tight and fucked her through every unending surge.
As Cal plunged deeper to find his own peak, pulsing yet pounding from her release, Della startled as an accelerating pressure built inside her entrance. His knot. Her hips wiggled as if to shy away, but that was the whole point of the knot, wasn’t it? Seated behind her pubic bone, it locked them together for some indeterminate amount of time. What she didn’t appreciate before this exact moment was the incredible sensation triggered by that deep swelling. Her peak crested, and the pressure grew, rubbing against and lighting up new parts of her already-sensitized canal.
Spreading her legs impossibly wider, she welcomed it, the physical sensation a blessed relief from the emotional devastation the sex had wrought. This was good. She could focus on this, on her body clenching tight around the invasion and the second, spiraling climax that skated close to the surface. Fasten herself to her physical existence and forgo the inclination to expose every last bit of her emotional core for his plundering.
Between panted breaths, his deep, twangy timbre cascaded over her eardrums. “There you go, taking my knot nice and deep like I knew you would.” Voice thick and gritty, he crooned erotic approval, detonating a kink she hadn’t even known existed as she reeled to find some stability in this hurtling insanity. Cal’s head fell forward, his hair swishing over her brow like a kiss as he met her gaze. “That ain’t so bad, is it? How ‘bout a bit more?”
His hips rolled forward, wedging the knot deeper still and shoving her headfirst into another staggering, free-falling orgasm. The intensity sucked her into an undertow of ecstasy, leaving her gasping and stammering words without meaning. Covering her lips with his, Cal swallowed her delirious cries like a pleasure-fueled monster, and as Della fell completely apart, she knew that he was right about one terrifying thing: there’d be no escape.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cal
Knot lodged deep, Cal collapsed to his back, dragging Della’s limp body to cover him like a blanket. She nosed into his chest, stealing a taste of his scent as he let himself savor the utter perfection of the moment.
After the events of the past two days, culminating in his massive release, his body hinged on the brink of satiated exhaustion. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had satisfying sex before, but fucking Della made everything that came before her look like clumsy, adolescent experimentation. Claiming bite or no, he’d come so hard he wondered if he gave himself a concussion.
Humming a quiet note, Della brushed her lips over his skin. Hard to believe this sedate kitten held a knife to his throat not one hour prior. Upon reflection, the reminder of their agreement bothered him less than he might’ve thought. After what just transpired, he had no doubt she belonged to him. The claiming could wait if delaying it meant something to her. A fair concession, his way of giving her some power back after she’d so bravely (yet ridiculously) tried to threaten him with his own knife, a way of apologizing for stealing her away like a thief in the night. Not that he was sorry. Fuck, no, not in the least.
Gathering her tighter in his arms, he craned his neck to press a kiss to her sweet-smelling hair before letting his heavy head fall back to the bunched-up clothing he used as a pillow, smiling. For a half second after making their bargain, he’d worried that she’d hold herself back and resist the physical attraction that sizzled between them. But, no, he’d primed her body through their elaborate dance, his deliberate machinations aided in no small part by her emerging Omega nature. Her lips espoused denial of her nature, but her body told another tale altogether. One she’d have no choice but to heed, for how could she deny the significance of their connection?
Apparently done sniffing, Della rested her ear over his heart. “How long does...itlast?”
“Depends.” Cal rubbed his tired eyes and fought back a yawn. “Not so scary after all, is it?”
“The knot? No, it doesn’t hurt.” As if to prove her point, her hips wiggled, jostling his dick and forcing him to release a half-tortured, half-grateful groan. At this rate, his knot would last all damn night. When they’d resettled their sticky bodies, she propped her chin on his chest, a thoughtful crease in that noble brow. “How old are you?”
“Not exactly sure,” he said through another yawn. “Close to fifty, I reckon.” Cal stretched one arm behind his head, chuckling softly. “Are we resuming the inquisition? Thought maybe I’d earned a bit of a break from all that.”
With a half-hearted scowl, she laid her cheek back on his chest and muttered, “I’m old enough to be your great-grandmother.”
Absently, his fingertips explored the silken skin of her back, enjoying and luxuriating in the impossible softness of her skin as he pondered the implications of her age. Old enough to be his great-grandmother, yet never claimed by an Alpha. Odd. In his life, Cal had traveled from the Gulf of Mexico all around the former western USA and now up to this stretch of northwest wilderness. Nowhere had Omegas outnumbered or even numbered close to the population of Betas or Alphas. As a result, plenty of Alphas took Beta mates, deciding they’d rather have something than nothing. Even if the Alphas Della lived among failed to recognize her Omega nature, why hadn’t she been claimed as a Beta? Hell, as awoman?
“I know you’re one of the Old Ones,” he said, “don’t bother me none.”