“This isn’t about choice,” I said. “It’s about necessity. And I will give you what you need. Because you aremyOmega.”
Her eyes widened. She opened her mouth, likely to spit another venomous protest or a denial of my claim. I didn’t let her speak. I closed the distance and crashed my mouth down on hers.
She stiffened for a fraction of a second, and then she shattered. She made a desperate, keening sound in her throat and surged against me. I caught her by the waist and drove her back until her spine hit the rough bark of the apple tree. A frantic whine slipped past her lips, her scent instantly sweetening from bitter defiance to desperate arousal.
The kiss turned rabid instantly, a starving, frantic exchange of breath and teeth. I groaned as I felt the soft, yielding pressure of her breasts against my chest. The heat of her body seared through her thin tunic.
It was overwhelming. I remembered the night we met, the heavy, cloying magic of Thais Bellamy and the pheromones of House Aphrodite that had filled the air. They were nothing compared to this. This was raw. This was chemical. Andromeda Cross was more intoxicating than any spell, more addictive than any winefrom House Dionysus. As she dug her nails into my shoulders, I knew I would burn the world down just to keep her.
The ground came up to meet us, a tangle of limbs and desperation crashing into the orchard grass. The impact knocked the wind out of me. But I didn’t let go, and she didn’t pull away. If anything, the fall only fused us closer together. The scent of crushed plants and damp earth mixed violently with the intoxicating sweetness of her pheromones.
There was no finesse, no gentle seduction. We were past the point of romance. We were in the realm of survival. Her hands were frantic claws on my chest, gripping the collar of my shirt and yanking. My buttons popped, scattering into the darkness like hail. I didn’t care. I needed skin. I needed the barrier gone.
I grabbed the neckline of her tunic and tore it down the middle. The sound of ripping linen was loud in the quiet grove, a sacrilege that felt like a prayer.
“Alexander, yes, gods, touch me,” she gasped, the words fracturing into a sob.
“I’ve got you,” I growled, rolling my weight over her, pinning her hips to the earth with my own.
I buried my face in the curve of her neck and traced the line of her pulse with my tongue. Her skin tasted of salt and the phantom electricity of the storm I carried. When I closed my mouth over her breast, she screamed. The raw, shattered sound vibrated against my lips. Her nipple was a hard, aching pebbleagainst my tongue, swollen with the unnatural demand of her biology.
She arched her back, offering herself to me with a fervor that would have terrified a lesser man. Her fingers tangled in my hair, pulling, demanding more pressure, more pain. Or maybe more of anything that could drown out the noise in her head.
I worshipped her with my mouth, suckling hard enough to leave a mark. My hand slid down the flat plane of her stomach. She was trembling, every muscle pulled taut as a bowstring. I shoved my hand between her thighs, seeking the heat of her, needing to know just how deep the curse had dug its claws.
She was utterly ruined for me.
As my fingers brushed her entrance, I found her weeping. She was soaked in slick, heavy fluid that coated my fingers instantly. It was the wetness of a heat without the cycle, a biological imperative that had turned her body into an open wound waiting to be filled.
“Please,” she moaned, her hips bucking instinctively against my hand. “Please, it hurts. It’s too much.”
“I know,” I murmured, sliding two fingers deep inside her tight, clinging heat. She clamped down around me instantly, a velvet vise. “I know, Andie. I’m going to fix it.”
I kept my thumb on the swollen pearl of her clit, circling it with a relentless, maddening pressure. As my fingers pumpedinside her, she started weeping and keening. This wasn’t enough to sate her hunger or the viciousness of the curse. Her inner Omega wanted to be knotted and claimed, not just touched by my fingers.
“Stop!” she suddenly snarled, her voice unrecognizable. She twisted beneath me, trying to shove me away. “Stop playing with me! You’re mocking me!”
Just like that, she was no longer begging for release. She was fighting it. She thrashed, her legs kicking out, her face twisted in a rictus of frustration and feral aggression.
I withdrew my hand and surged upward, catching both her wrists in one of my hands. I slammed them into the grass above her head, pinning her flat. The sudden immobilization shocked the air out of her. I loomed over her, forcing her to look at me, to see her Alpha, not the enemy.
“Fine,” I growled. “You want my cock. You’ll have it.”
I didn’t wait for her to agree. I didn’t wait for her to breathe. I knelt between her spread thighs, freeing myself from my trousers. My erection pulsed with the same violent energy that crackled in the air around us.
I lined myself up at her entrance, the head of my cock pressing against her slick heat. When I grabbed her hips, her eyes went wide, the pupils blown black. I drove forward, burying myself to the hilt in one single, devastating thrust.
Andie screamed as I stretched her open, filling every inch of her. She was incredibly tight, the heat of her insides scorching me. It felt like she was trying to consume me whole.
I held still for a heartbeat, letting her adjust to the invasion. But she was impatient again, and she bucked her hips, demanding movement. Her inner muscles spasmed around me, her slick-drenched core instinctively trying to coax my release.
I withdrew almost completely and then slammed back into her with a punishing force. The rhythm I set was brutal, animalistic. There was no gentleness here, only the hard, wet slap of skin against skin and the friction of our bodies.
“Alexander!” she gasped, her head thrashing from side to side in the grass.
I pounded into her, each thrust grinding against the sensitive bundle of nerves deep inside her. As I fucked her, I watched the aggression bleed out of her eyes, replaced by a glazed, euphoric focus. I was fucking the madness out of her. I was replacing the paranoia with the undeniable, physical reality of my cock claiming her, over and over again.
With every brutal thrust, I coated myself in her slick, answering her frantic Omega need with pure, unrestrained Alpha force. The pressure inside me was building to a breaking point, a storm surge crashing against a dam. I wrapped my arm under her shoulders, lifting her slightly, burying my face in the curve of her neck. Her scent was overwhelming here—concentrated, sweet, and crying out for a mate.