Hauling himself back from the metaphorical ledge, he brushed his lips over her forehead, trailing a line of kisses along her proud brow and up to the dampened hairline. The moisture cooled his lips and ardor enough to refocus on the beautiful woman quivering in his arms and everything he needed to do to fill her Heat with mind-bending pleasure.
Lowering his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “You invite me in, then I come into your nice, clean nest and do some very dirty things.” Her resulting shiver rippled under his fingers. “The only question is”—snagging the hem of his borrowed shirt, he lifted it up and over her head, baring her skin to his impatient hands—“are you gonna beg for my cock like a good little Omega, or are you gonna pretend you don’t want me to use this tight little cunt any fucking way I want?”
A breath hissed through her clenched teeth, her shoulders quaking in response to his coarse words. Would she even be able to respond, or had she already descended too far into Heat delirium?
Working a hand between them, he tangled his fingertips in her curls and lingered at the top of her slit, stroking and teasing the mix of soft and wiry textures. He could get plenty addicted to that sensitive little spot. Sighing, Della sagged against his supporting arm as more of her honeyed perfume released into the air. Slowly, her hips began to squirm and twist, seeking stimulation deeper into her sex. She liked it, too.
Stifling a groan at the wantonness on display, Cal chuckled darkly and flicked a tongue along her dewy hairline, savoring the salt-enhanced burst of her flavor. “Yeah, I know what you want, little queen. You’re too stubborn to say it, but here’s the thing.” Abruptly, he stilled his fingers, and a woeful whine broke through her daze as she wiggled in protest. “You have to invite me into your nest, so I’m gonna need to hear you say it.”
Fisting handfuls of his shirt, she raised her eyes, defiance slithering behind the arousal sheen. “An Omega would know what to say, but I can’t say I do.”
And goddamn if that resistance didn’t make his dick approach dangerous levels of hardness. With a thumb on her petulant chin, he tilted her face toward his. “You say, ‘Come in my nest and fuck me, Alpha.’”
She slipped her soft, pink tongue out to wet her lips, and he had to stifle another groan. “Come in my nest and fuck me.”
He held back, waiting for her to complete the phrase. She didn’t, responding with silence and another flare of sapphire-blue opposition, offset by a sensuous curl of her lip. Was she fucking with him? “Come in my nest and fuck me,Alpha,” he corrected, accessorizing the phrase with a warning tone. He slid his hand from her chin to her neck, circling his thumb over her galloping pulse.
Not to be outdone, Della reached for his aching cock and gave it a good firm squeeze through his straining pants. Caught off guard, Cal grunted, and smugness twisted her pink mouth. “Are you going to knot me with this big Alpha cock?”
An unrestrained growl erupted from his chest. “Yeah, I am.” Cal firmed his grip around her throat. “And you’re gonna come so hard they’ll hear you screaming for miles.”
A thick swallow rolled down her neck, and her husky voice vibrated against his palm. “Then come in my nest and fuck me,Alpha.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Della
For the second time, Della followed the slope of Cal’s perfectly formed back as he tromped through the woods at a brisk pace. After two days spent alternately fucking and sleeping, with occasional breaks for eating, being upright brought a much-needed change.
Strange, this Heat business. A bizarre mash-up of puberty and menopause all rolled into one horny, never-ending hormonal blur. The Heat dulled her wits. Her sluggish, distractible brain clambered to hold on toanythought more substantial thanI’m ready to fuck again now, which left her little time to process this whole Omega business.
The fresh air helped clear some cobwebs from her logy, sex-addled brain, and her thoughts strayed back to her last notable “female” milestone: menopause, when menses finally ceased. She never knew if it was brought about by natural causes versus a side effect of inadequate and inconsistent availability of food and then multiplied by the unfathomable stress of navigating the time after TheEnd. By that time, fertility ranked so far down on her list of concerns that her only feeling was relief that she wouldn’t have to improvise menstrual supplies any longer. One less need to take care of.
Common knowledge presumed that Heat cycles marked a time of enhanced Omega fertility, but for a newly transformed Omega at a very advanced age, the chance of a pregnancy struck her as remote. How could her dusty ovaries have any viable eggs kicking around after all this time? A pregnancy now would be nothing short of a miracle of saint-like proportion. Despite her dubious fertility, with the onset of this Heat, she could no longer deny the reality of this Omega transformation. Certainly, she’d never experienced anything like that before. What that meant for the rest of her life, she had no idea.
So, she dutifully marched behind, ignoring the battered soreness between her legs and the fact that she’d not put up a single word of protest when Cal ordered her to put her shoes on. Had she sunk so far into her Omega nature—still weird to admit that, even to herself—that she acquiesced to his casual dominance without a second thought? Where were they going again?
Oh, right, to check on the net. What was it with men wanting company on fishing trips?
The parallel to her former life struck her fast and hard. When Rakesh developed a fly-fishing obsession, he’d also cajoled her to come along as he trudged through Montana or Wyoming or wherever-the-hell-else to find some epically mythical spot.
“Can’t you enjoy your rich-guy hobbies and leave me out of it?”she would grouse every time he proposed another trip.
And, every time, Rakesh would take her in his arms, flashing his wide, brilliant smile, so white and beautiful against the deep bronze of his skin. “Not very patriotic of you to turn your nose up at experiencing the vast natural beauty of this fine country, Congresswoman,” he would tease.
“I fail to comprehend how standing waist-deep in water for hours qualifies as experiencing beauty,”she would say, and then poke his nose, a playfulboopthat never failed to stretch his grin even more.
But she’d done it. Hating every soggy, boring minute, she’d done it for him.
Uneasiness leached into her reminiscence. Rakesh would never begrudge her taking a lover, but as her eyes roved over the contours of Cal’s body, the feelings stirred up were far more tangled than simple lust.
And that was a problem. A big one.
After Rakesh died, she vowed to survive. For him, for the memory of him and the short time they shared on this earth. It was the least she could do to honor him as, God knew, there were no funerals and memorials and gravestones and twenty-one-gun salutes in the years following TheEnd. They hadn’t evenburied the dead most of the time, choosing instead to burn them in great, heaping, stinking piles.
At the time, she’d been grateful for the loss of her smell.
So, for Rakesh, she survived. Even when she’d been so terrorized by depravity and violence she thought she’d never sleep again, she’d survived. Even when she’d watched women get dragged off to be raped or killed by bands of feral men, she’d hidden and survived. Even when she’d scavenged for moldy food because her body neared collapse, she’d survived. Even when her womb expelled the early pregnancy and she’d said goodbye to the last piece of Rakesh left in the entire world, she’d survived. For him.