Corrupted (Alpha's Claim Book 5) Read online

  Yes, he’d known she had not understood this request. Yes, he’d manipulated her. And yes, another round of anal penetration had given her pain when there was no estrous to dull it. But his strokes had been cautions, methodical, and slow. And because he loved her more than breath itself, he’d kept his knot outside her sphincter when his excessive ejaculations had rinsed a pathetic rival out of her body.

  He’d been exceedingly careful, and she had braced through it like a champion.

  Because he’d offered her anything she wanted in exchange. And she had chosen Annette.

  And now she wanted to hold the Beta’s baby. Jacques pulled her closer and wasn’t sure if he could love her more. Precious, brilliant, virginal, and innocent. His mate. “Shall I have Annette bring him here now?”

  “Now?”

  Finally, he’s startled her out of her malaise. Watched her tuck the edges of her robe tighter around her bandaged throat and adjust her sore bottom on the soft seat. “Yes, mon chou. Now.”

  Golden eyes darted to the windows, to the night view of his city. They measured, that mind of hers ticking until the feelings that had left her in misery were washed away with logic, with calculations, and with what an Omega should rightfully feel. Appreciation.

  He thought to please her further. “Upon your next estrous, I’ll give you a baby of your own if you want it.” He carded his finger through her too short hair. “I suddenly find the idea very appealing.”

  The idea was ignored, his mate choosing to answer the initial question. Embarrassed as she tried again to use the robe to cover her excessive marks. “Babies sleep at night, do they not? I’d prefer to see him tomorrow.”

  “First thing. I’ll escort you to the nursery.”

  “Annette will be there?”

  “Tending the nursery is her duty. Yes, she will be there.”

  Like an impenetrable iron wall falling between them, that blossom of hope he’d sensed in his Omega slammed shut. She went utterly cold, eyes fading into unfocused distance. Alpha annoyance reared up to take her enthusiasm’s place. “This isn’t a fight you want to pick with me, mate. I would have set aside my wife for you in an instant. Don’t begrudge any Alpha for loving the other half of his soul.”

  Irritation. He’d take any emotion over vacancy, and she fed it to him in spades. “You don’t have a wife.”

  “But I do.”

  Was that jealousy? By the Gods, Jacques latched onto that hint of perfection in his love and held on for dear life as he licked at her ear.

  “She’s old enough to be my grandmother. We were married when I was fifteen, and the hag never bore children. Bloodlines, and negations, and the prevention of civil war… I wasn’t favored heir then, only valuable enough to offer in peace to a rival for my father’s power. Once I took that title, she was banished.” Sagging breasts and breathy night sighs, Jacques was still repulsed by fair-haired women. “I’ll have her removed from the records. You’ll be my first wife. Our offspring will rule.” Laughing at the inevitability of what would follow, he said, “After they kill one another off for the honor of keeping a hundred-million people alive.”

  The Omega’s face went ashen, her feelings curdling to hear the truth of Bernard Dome’s politics. Another thing he’d slowly ease his timid love into.

  “It was a joke, mon chou.” He kissed her nose, pulling her fully into his lap. “I’ll make sure the birthing contracts are so solid there can be no usurpers. Our children will know their place and be all the safer for it. Had my father been more cautious, my brother might still be alive.”

  3

  Access to Annette had been bought with an act, unnatural and uncomfortable. Painful.

  Estrous had been something unworthy of memory. Something to lock in a box in her mind and never think of, lest she drown in shame.

  A bit more pressure in just the right place and she was going to spilt right down the middle.

  Yet this male demanded so much. And so soon.

  And she was foolish and unprepared for the desires of a Centrist Commodore.

  The way Jacques’ hand wooed it from her, how he’d murmured and worked to seduce warned her sensibilities to reject such touch. But she could see inside him now in a way that was blinding and overwhelming. And though he asked, cajoled, and purred, no part of him was willing to allow her to deny whatever it was he desired.

  On a spiritual level, that’s not how he’d been reared.

  Unlike her, who’d lived all her years, developed into a perpetual servant of the greater good.

  “There are things that can soothe that ache,” he’d said. “I don’t want his seed inside you. If you let me wash it out, I’ll give you anything you want… within reason.”

  Reason? Logic. Mathematics. Physics. Languages of science constantly blooming in her mind. They had no home in Central or this bond.

  Shivering despite the heat of the bath, Brenya latched on to the only thing in this awful place that had ever made her feel good. “I want to visit Annette.”

  The Alpha’s internal debate was loud, though she could make out none of the words. It was loud in his poorly concealed displeasure, in his craving to have his way, in his delusion that all he desired was to please her.

  The water surrounding them rippled, the Alpha easing closer. “It’s a deal. Now, mon chou, brace your hands against the side of the tub and try to relax. Trust me to make it feel good.”

  This was too easy by half. “I let you touch me and I get to see Annette?”

  Reaching for one of the many items ready for his use on the side of the tub, Jacques purred all the louder. “I’m going to do much more than touch you. I’m going to teach you. I’m going to help you know you are mine.”

  Tiles sweating from so much steam, Brenya put her hands to their slickness and braced.

  How mistaken she was.

  When his finger prodded the last place she ever wanted to be touched again, it was slimy with something the water did not wash away. Something soothing, slippery, and chemical.

  Fingers stretched, swished, massaged, and opened her anal opening.

  “This was not what I believed you offered.”

  Soft lips placed a sucking nip on her earlobe, a male chest warming her back. “Is Annette not worth it? I ask so little, you’ll see. Relax. I need this. You need this. You just don’t understand why.”

  She didn’t need sensitive tissues stretched. She didn’t need the reminder that another—a foreign stranger—had been manipulated to penetrate her. All because she was a stupid fool and had not guessed the one called Jules would be sleeping on his ship and not serviced in the palace.

  Heart aching for the harm she had caused the Beta, she cried while Jacques cleaned her inside and out. She wept for her mistakes all the while staring at the drips of condensation gathered on the tiles. When his touch retreated and she thought it was over, a sigh left her lips. Only to be chased by a yelp when something thicker, more menacing, and slimed up with that same goo pressed forward. He caught her hips before she might move out of position, and slid his cock through a burning ring despite her squeak of alarm.

  “Washed out,” he’d said. She should have known better.

  Slow, measured thrusts completely opposite of the manic pounding the Beta had given her while her estrous pheromones had drugged him into little more than a rutting animal. Kissed and caressed while Jacques sought his pleasure, he taught her another lesson in what it meant to be Omega.

  His pleasure was her pleasure. Her pleasure was easy to cultivate by one as experienced as he.

  Climax was unlike the agony of estrous, or the mind-bending false nirvana of vaginal sex. It was something new, incomplete, yet more. Followed by a strong urge to empty out what he flooded her with on a roar.

  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.

  And those downy hairs still rose each time the Chancellor of Greth Dome appeared from the shadows like the monster he was.

  Prick always liked to sneak up on her. Make his demands. Criticize mistakes. And Gods help her if there was so much as a piece of discarded laundry on the floor.

  She couldn’t even live in her own rooms! What was the point of crisp corners on bedding when it was her bedding and she didn’t care?

  Who scrubbed their bathroom from top to bottom every single day?

  No one. No one anywhere did that. And she’d know. She had visual and auditory access to every bathroom in the whole fucking city.

  An entire room of her prison was nothing but monitors, feeds, supercomputers, wires, access to anything she might want to l
ook at or hear. But not taste or touch or feel.

  Ever.

  Lunch had been tomato soup with crackers. Breakfast a bowl of unsweetened oats. Dinner would most likely be some kind of meat, unsalted, unseasoned, unappealing.

  While out in the city, there were exotic fruits, local dishes that made her mouth water just to imagine the spices. There was laughter, and drinking, and sex, and fun.

  Things meaningless when made to document it all.

  Analyze, report. Analyze, report. Analyze, report.

  Before she might give the necessary report, a large hand reached forward, the male pointing to one of the many displays of the city. To a market. Adjusting the feed to suit his whim.

  Light caught on the gold of his wedding band.

  Light dimmed from his eyes.

  What he saw in that image. How his expression said nothing. The thoughts that might be going through his head. Maryanne knew better than to guess.

  She’d seen that lack of look on his face when she’d been imprisoned in the Undercroft. Foreboding, godly, calculating.

  And not for her to question.

  He had saved her from the worst prison imaginable. She had saved him from Thólos.

  And what did she get for it? This perpetual purgatory and fucking tomato soup.

  Stuck with an endless surveillance job. Locked away from the sights and smells of an exciting new place.

  At least this prison was safe.

  No one ever touched her. Not even Shepherd had brushed against her once in all the hours he came and went.

  Slave labor, she’d called it, when Jules first dragged her into this… whatever this room was. The bastard Beta had coarsely laughed at her fit, named it salvation.

  A sentence with an end date.

  Another reason—the reason she pretended to keep her twitching hand off the door—she had not tried to escape.

  A girl needed some self-esteem.

  Or as Shepherd would preach: a purpose.