Good Girl by Sam Hall
Chapter 23
“Rhys…”
I shifted within the constraints of his embrace, his arms locked around me as tightly as his knot. Had I ever said his name this much before? I couldn’t stop saying it. I liked the way it rolled on my tongue, the sound of it in my ear.
“Looks like someone’s a bit knot drunk.”
Brendan moved closer, slowly and carefully. Rhys spared him a brief sidelong look, but his focus snapped back to me, always me. He smiled so sweetly as he nudged my chin up, running his lips up and down my neck, making me squirm. Well, as much as I could do anything right now.
We were locked together, the feeling so different now. All the pesky human consciousness that was on a constant hamster wheel of thinking, querying, worrying, considering had been shoved to one side, and there was only this—a contentment and satisfaction so deep, I couldn’t find its edges. Instead, I dove into it, the final surrender of an omega, but really, it was Cyn’s. I pulled away from Rhys’ questing lips and teeth and met his eyes without pain. Now the pain came from looking away. I needed to see him and be seen, and his gaze found mine without a second thought.
“My omega. My Cyn.”
And there it was, the perfect response. Just four words delivered in a tone so completely sincere, it felt almost intrusive to hear it. I reached up, studying his face, searching for every little micro expression to tell me what those words meant, but I knew really, because an answering feeling rose in me. They called it omega love, a seemingly fickle, fleeting thing brought on by cascades of dopamine and oxytocin that never lasted beyond a heat, not unless the couple spent some time and energy building that relationship.
Right now, it didn’t feel fickle. I traced the broad planes of his face, the hollows of his cheekbones, the strong decline of his nose, complete with a bump on the bridge where it had probably been broken. I pushed the sweep of sandy hair back from his face because it felt like feathers between my fingers and because I needed to see him, all of him. And those eyes, always an eerie pale blue, I watched the icy depths melt so completely, I melted along with them.
“Cyn…”
There was something intense, desperate there, and while his cock moved in small motions inside me, making my eyes feel the need to roll backwards, that wasn’t it. Or rather, it was just a symptom of this.
“He wants to mate you,” Marcus said, crouching down beside us, Orion joining him. But Marcus knew exactly what was going on, a reverent expression tinged with melancholy on his face as Orion stared, wide-eyed. “I think he’s always wanted to mate you. He went wandering off into the forest, trying to track your scent. You’d walked through a couple of streams, killing off your trail, but it didn’t stop him from searching.”
He looked down at his hands as he continued to speak.
“It feels inevitable, when he reaches out to you. Like you’ve been waiting for this for your whole life, and there he is. He’s like a planet and we’re his moons, sucked into his orbit by forces you can’t fight.”
His eyes met mine, his gaze so intense, it felt almost tangible.
“Don’t fight it, Cyn, not if this is what you want. You don’t have to take us as mates.” A small rustle of movement from Orion. “You don’t have to become our omega, if that’s what holds you back. If you want him like he wants you, don’t put us in the way of that.”
“But you said—” Brendan started to say.
“I feel his fucking pain like a knife in my heart, and I can’t bear it.”
When Marcus’ hazel eyes met mine, I felt like I was seeing him for the first time. No catlike smiles and wheels within wheels, for just a moment, he had surrendered too. To his bond with his mate.
“You can do this, big guy, with our blessing.”
Rhys’ eyes rolled closed when Marcus’ hand landed on his shoulder, just rubbing a couple of small circles there before pulling away. When his eyes opened again, Rhys’ focus was on me.
“Cyn.”
Deeper, more resonant now, his voice felt like it vibrated through me. His movements became longer, his cock moving in and out as far as the knot would allow, but the downstroke destroyed me. My cunt sucked at his knot, holding it fast, gripping him with everything I had, and his pull against it created the most delicious of stretches.
“Cyn.”
My spine lengthened, my body sinuous and catlike with pleasure, but this was so much more than that. I’d never made love, had barely had sex by omega standards. The betas I’d been with had been a source of curiosity for the both of us, each wondering what the big deal was about the other. But not now. I was a big fucking deal. Rhys looked at me like I was his whole fucking world right now, even with his three other mates in the room.
Other mates.
“Cyn, baby, this is it. Not if you don’t want it to, not if you’re not ready, but…” His face was mobile, his expression a dizzying montage of pain, need, pleasure, and lastly, love. “I think you are. Now, Cyn.”
His voice grew ragged from the effort it took to hold himself back, but he would. He would keep doing so through heat after heat until I said yes, even if I never said yes. I didn’t know Rhys, my human mind insisted, but I wasn’t human, not really. I wasn’t a beta to be wooed and slowly wind myself around a person through a thousand moments, conversations, gestures. I was an omega.
His omega.
I saw exactly why each man had been drawn to him, because there was something about Rhys that you just wanted to fall into, spinning and spinning in his endless depths, knowing he’d always catch you.
When I closed my eyes, when I stretched my neck out, when I bared it to him, I saw that bear tattoo of his I’d seen that day.
“Now,” I agreed.
It wasn’t precisely that moment. He worked his cock until I was delirious with ecstasy again, the other men moving in, stroking my arms, my torso, mumbling soft words of encouragement as we moved. So when his teeth found my throat, when I felt the prick of his fangs in my flesh, it carried with it that same sharp stab of pleasure-pain that throbbed inside me. But when his jaws locked down, when my hips jerked up, sheathing him deep, when my cunt snapped down, there was only this.
I couldn’t describe it really. Imagine that really intense moment of pleasure, the absolute peak of an orgasm, or the sharp mind-blowing blast when something amazing happens out of the blue, and then weave all those moments together into something so much bigger and stronger, so much so, it dwarfed everything else going forward. When my eyes snapped open, when I searched the room for some sort of clue as to what the hell this was, they met them, Orion, Marcus, and Brendan, nodding in perfect agreement, because they knew what it meant, what I’d just become. I’d joined their number, and they were witnesses to this life-changing event.
Coming was almost an afterthought, his seed jetting into me, my cunt wringing every drop out, forcing his knot to deflate and pull free, but he didn’t. I was swept up into his arms, held so fucking tightly until I reached up and touched his cheek, capturing the small glistening crystal of a tear on my fingertip and holding it up the light.
“My Cyn, my Cyn…” he kept murmuring over and over, my arm going around his neck to suck in his scent. I didn’t want to breathe anything else ever again.
I’d run out of that forest that day, home to Mum, home to her fear and anger, and hadn’t stopped running since. Even my training with Kai, my therapy sessions, somehow fed into that. But a tremendously odd feeling filled me as I tried to hug him as hard as he hugged me. When you were always running, stopping still was the most alien of sensations.
Hours or days passed,I didn’t know how long. I was in a daze of warmth, tucked up in my nest, welded to Rhys’ side. His mates brought up food and water because Rhys wouldn’t leave me for even a second, only dragging himself out of the pile of fabric when a call of nature hit. It must have been one of those that resulted in me waking up alone.
My heat had broken. Usually, it lasted a few days, but if you took a mate, that brought things to a close. So I felt clearheaded and curiously light when I crawled out of the nest into an empty room, then an empty playroom, an empty corridor, the sounds of muffled voices dragging me forward. I padded up to the office on silent feet, the voice getting clearer as I got there.
“This was not the plan, Orion,” a voice said, one I knew, but which one? I was still a little foggy, a bit wobbly, but I crept closer on the same mouse feet that had carried me out of my room, out the window, down the tree, and into the forest. And just like then, I saw something, blundered into something I wasn’t ready to see or hear.
Benson stood there, face like a thundercloud, arms crossed.
“She’s mated to Rhys—” Orion started to say.
“Which wasn’t the plan. You think that your ‘mates’ will stand by you, but they were not born a Ratcliffe, they have no loyalty to the family. They impair yours.” Benson’s eyes narrowed as he looked his son up and down. “Benson Industries needs Miranda Rhodes’ battery design if it’s to survive the money pot you’ve been draining to play at club owner.” His eyes flicked around the office, taking in the décor with a sniff.
“Draining? If you took even two seconds to look over the reports I’ve sent you, you’d see how fucking much we’re propping you up. Apothecary is bringing you in millions,” Orion spat.
“From drug dealing and gambling and whoring. You won’t make it onto the Fortune 500 list with a fucking club. This is your birthright, your future.”
“They are my future,” Orion growled.
“Not for long. Mating bonds can be broken. The therapy is brutal and not everyone survives it, but who’s going to worry about McCallum or the big lunk if they disappear? The son of a whore and some nobody from the suburbs… They don’t have anyone that will miss them, and I’m sure a suitable bribe will silence the other one’s family.”
Benson strolled closer, reaching out and brushing an invisible piece of lint from his son’s T-shirt.
“I never should have sent you to the camp. I made sure that counsellor was sacked, recommending a child of mine to go to a place filled with ingrates. You stepped away from your responsibilities then and haven’t picked them up since.” His eyes, a paler, more watery version of Orion’s, bore into his son’s. “You need to now. Mate that omega, take her as yours, and I’ll overlook your other connections. You can have the pack you always wanted, and I’ll have that fucking invention that threatens to destroy every single thing I’ve built.”
Benson pulled back, all his menace and animosity smoothed away like it had never been there in the first place.
I was proud of myself, for staying hidden, for slipping back and into an empty room when Orion’s father strolled out of the office, for staying hunched down in the dark until he left, then when I heard them calling for me, running up the halls, searching.
For their investment.
I was up and out the door as soon as I watched Rhys and his mates run past, barking orders at their betas, calling out much more softly to me. Every step I took away from them felt like fucking agony, but I forced my legs to move and keep moving until I found a fire escape, shoving the door open and staggering out.
I must have been a picture, a bedraggled omega clad in only a long T-shirt, and perhaps that was why the police car pulled up, officers getting out and approaching me slowly, a lot slower than them.
“Omega!” Marcus barked. The fire escape door slammed open, but it wasn’t louder than his alpha command. He used every scrap of dominance to try and stop me, but nothing any of them could do would have that effect anymore, not even that. I stared into Rhys’ eyes, saw that cruel boy that had jumped off the top of the wrecked car overlaid over the man now, and it went some way to distancing me from the destroyed look on his face.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” one of the officers asked, moving between me and the alphas, hand going to his belt where his stun gun hung.
“No,” I said with absolute certainty. “I’m not.” I could see the forest in my mind, but that wasn’t a safe place. None of it was.
Why me? Why then? Why did Orion draw me so swiftly and surely into his world? Why was Benson so keen for me to meet his son? What was Orion’s mysterious plan, and why did we never get around to talking about it? All the fucking questions I should’ve asked but didn’t.
Stupid omega. Little passive thing sucked in by all the seductively scented alphas, led along like a sheep to slaughter, bleating happily.
“Cyn, don’t do this. We can explain,” Rhys said.
Explain. Not ‘what the hell.’ Not ‘what is going on.’ No shock or surprise, only pain.
The pain of being caught.
“You knew,” I said, but I didn’t wait for an answer, my focus flicking up to the men in uniform. “I need to go home. Please take me home.”
Because that was the thing about omegas—our innate vulnerability was easily exploited, but we could also use it to suit our own purposes. I didn’t hold back the shake in my limbs, the tears in my eyes, the fucking pain, because I couldn’t, and that was all I needed.
“Of course. Come this way. We’ll look after you.”
Mum was at the door,her cool composure cracking slightly as she saw me stumble up the front steps, but she opened the door and followed me in.
“Cyn? Are you OK? Your alphas rang me to discuss—”
I held up a hand, and for once, Mum stopped, falling silent as I ran up to my room. Just like before, I made a beeline for the shower, not needing to be told this time. I rubbed and rubbed at my skin until all traces of them were gone, then poured on the de-scenter until it burned. Then I sat there, water pouring over me, the chemicals, their scent, and my tears, all washing down the drain.