Alphas came in copious amounts. Jacques seemed to have extra pride in what he could produce.
Orgasm turned to cramping, Brenya’s forehead to the sweating tiles as she groaned and felt another belly expanding gush.
So taken was he with what took place between them, when she whined and looked over her shoulder to see how much longer this might last, she found Jacques with his eyes squeezed shut, his head thrown back, and his mouth gaping.
She began to mentally count, watching the play of his complete distraction to her discomfort. Caught up, utterly enraptured with his cock in her ass.
Sliding his hand from her hip, he took his knot and squeezed it with a strength that should have caused him pain, treating this as if it were natural.
And came, and came, and came.
While Brenya counted, felt a pressure too uncomfortable to name.
Fifteen minutes. To the second. That was all she could take before she screamed and struck out.
It wasn’t so hard to unseat him, gripping his knot as he was. Despite the water and the slippery tile, despite what leaked from her open ring right down her leg, she ran to the toilet. Releasing so much more than just his come.
Brenya released real anger at how the world could fill her up—mouth, cunt, anus, heart—perverted by another’s charisma.
She released. Warm cream, frothy from the exuberance in which it had both entered and exited her. The scent of semen so strong in the air it almost completely obstructed the scent of blood.
Purging rage, disappointment, frustration, guilt, Brenya did her best to push every last drop of him out of her, knowing exactly what he meant now. His mark had been shot so deep inside it would be leaking out for hours, maybe days considering estrous altered the digestive tract.
This had never been about anal penetration, or sexual gratification. Had it been, Jacques would not have made her endure such copious seed in so unnatural a place.
He was marking what he considered his territory. Marking deep—even though it caused his beloved Omega harm.
And that was telling.
Jacques was threatened by Jules.
An outsider he had tricked into fucking her in the first place.
A foreign dignitary who had a Rebecca.
Who must be suffering even more than she at the cruelty of being bound against his will, severed from the female he called out for on the ship, and tied to her.
Tied to Jacques.
Who was a bastard, though he might be beautiful and have all the power in her world.
Epiphanies were not a worthy word for the thoughts that crossed her mind as she sat on that toilet and ignored Jacques refilling the tub. Vendettas did not fit either. Unsure what these feelings were or why they ransacked through her scattering thoughts, she reached out for them. Gathered them close to her heart like a shield.
They were fragments, she considered, of what it must feel like to be a whole person.
The Betas of Bernard Dome had no idea how truly blessed they were.
Unmedicated humanity was hideous. The ways in which she fanaticized about harming a living being brutal.
Burying her head in her hands, another wave of come splattering the basin on a cramp, a final offensive thought broke through all the chaos. One she had to ask before she might throw up. “Are you going to make me have sex with him again?”
That. That one blunt question of her mate made him freeze. Every naked muscle flexed as if the creature might burst from his skin, the devil inside seen for what it was.
Alpha anger seasoned ugly air. Yet his back was still to her and his answer had not been given. He asked her a question instead. “Do you wish for the Beta to fuck you?”
Brenya’s initial question had in no way signified desire for the Beta, but again, the Alpha who controlled her life spoke with such a snarl it was clear the idea enraged him.
“It would be rape.” Of the Beta. But again, Jacques was not understanding the basic level at which she communicated. Brenya wondering again at what she missed here. Unsolved puzzles in a mind like hers would never stop trying to piece together.
Obsessive behavior would follow. It’s what had made her an extraordinary grunt.
The toilet began its cleansing function, washing her as it washed itself, the bowl full of filth-spattered come flushing down to the waste process levels to be made into fresh water for drinking, cooking, washing....
“Come to the bath, Brenya. I’ll wash it all away.”
And so she had, feeling anger, such a raw emotion birthed deep within. And it felt so much better than fear, or helplessness. It got her through that second bath, one where the Alpha wisely kept his cock to himself. It got her through the attention he paid to her every hurt. How after he’d dried her with the softest towels one might imagine, after he set her naked on the bathroom’s settee, how he bandaged where two men had bitten her deep enough that the wounds had yet to fully scab.
One bite was clean, one was vicious. The scales between them as if one a scholar and one a madman. One in control and one possessed. Each with their own brand of venom.
Over bruises and sore muscles went silk. White, because Jacques always dressed her in that virginal shade. Hair combed by the deft fingers of a man with longer locks of his own, he spoke to her of mundane things as if they were friends, as if she cared what he might say.
Brenya listened, picking out what might matter—the things between pointless gossip. She listened, because she was enraged, retreating so far inside herself so he could not buoy her up to the calm he preferred… that she found a single quiet corner that even Jacques could not invade.
In that silence, she was not alone.
4
Greth Dome
“Show me.”
Skin instantly pricking to the point it stung, the worst sort of unseen, unheard predator emerged from the shadows. Tired of the constant surprises, Maryanne snarled, “For fuck’s sake! Why do you have to sneak up on me like that every goddamn time?”
Isolation had done her few favors. But she breathed, which was more than she could say about the poor saps in Thólos. If they weren’t dead now, they would be soon. And those who might still linger? They probably wished they’d died quickly in the siege.
Most of them had been assholes who’d had it coming. She didn’t owe them a goddamn thing.
Didn’t think about it.
Look forward. Stay alive. Stay in place…
Always in the same three rooms.
This keeping place, this prison, the accommodations were larger than her crappy dwelling back in Antarctica. But no windows. Her vitamin D came from specialized lamps and a daily dose of healthy food. She was little more than a tended houseplant.
Unless she suffered punishment, she was ordered to exercise—the regime boring, exhausting, pointless when there was nowhere to go and no city to explore. Not unless she used the faculties left for her amusement.
And by amusement… her only amusement… Shepherd really meant occupation.
Occupation.
On a multitude of levels.
She, an Alpha female of considerable talents, was in prison just as the entire Dome of Greth was unknowingly imprisoned by a tyrant. Yet not once had she tried to escape.
Because she knew exactly what would happen to her. Shepherd had explained it in gory and glorious detail. In a voice so chillingly calm that every hair on Maryanne’s body stood on end… and remained so for several days afterward.