Silenced, page 12
23
Blinking, the fuzzy glow inundating her line of sight began to slowly diminish. Belly to the warmth of another body, cradled in powerful limbs, Wren’s world came into razor-sharp clarity.
Too sharp, the light streaming in through the room’s windows glaring.
Under her, the musculature of an Alpha shifted—the male registering a change in the limp woman splayed and held over him.
He drew in a rib-expanding breath.
Wren, in tandem, exhaled, the pounding behind her eyes growing.
Her lashes swept down again, attention running over the muscled torso of her living pillow, past his naked hip to a hair-dusted thigh, to see that nothing was right beyond.
Nothing in that over-bright space looked familiar outside of a few sparse pieces of wooden furniture.
The big room.
It had been stripped down to the cement floors. The couches gone, the purple bunting and pillows gone, the garbage gone, the offensive smells… gone.
But one familiar scent did perfume the air, the Alpha markers that undoubtedly belonged to Kieran.
Far more viscid than the mud she’d waded through to enter the waterworks, her mental fog swirled murky, thick, and cloying.
The last thing she recalled was warm water, too much soap, and persistent hands scrubbing overly sensitized flesh. Then this, this stripped room, this extended contact with Kieran who only invited attention if he were the one being cradled. He never cradled, just like he never kissed.
Male lips pressed to her crown, reminding Wren of another time the Second betrayed his character. Her house; how he fucked her in the graveyard and kept her warm against the night’s chill.
How he’d covertly given her boy the healing boost and threatened to kill her if she ever told.
This male had threatened her life often, had purposefully given her pain, had degraded her. So what had happened; what had he done? How had she gone from shower to gap in memory? How had the room gone from chaos to vacant?
The beat of his heart under her ear, the constant, sleepy thrum of an Alpha purr untangled her growing rush of adrenaline. Lifting an arm that weighed about a thousand pounds, Wren found moving far harder than it should have been. In fact, the wobbly effort upset her balance and almost sent her slipping bodily off Kieran’s chest
Increasing the pressure of his hold around her body, Kieran gave her a warning growl. One that went unheard once Wren realized how incredibly dry her mouth had become.
Sticky, with a metallic residue slightly underlined by the taste of Kieran.
Lavender eyes flowed to the bedside table where a glass of crystal clear water collected enough condensation to drip down and mark the wood.
She wanted to reach for it with a fervor, but her body felt so heavy.
Even so, her arm extended, missed the mark, and almost knocked the whole glass of precious, clean water onto the floor.
Before she might try again, Kieran stroked a hand down her back, traveling the length of her spine until a meaty grip palmed her ass.
Jerking, a raw yelp wheezing from a parched throat upon unexpected pain, Wren shot up. Palms to his chest, eyes wide, she looked down to see Kieran cock a brow.
Relaxed and languid, he wore an expression as naked as their touching flesh. “Didn’t you learn your lesson not to eat or drink things you found lying around?”
What the hell was he talking about?
Another firm grip of male palm squeezed her cheek, and again, a pained noise escaped her lips. Instinct moved her to look back, to see just why his hands brought about such pain, and Wren gasped to see the bruising all over her butt.
“You look so innocent, so put upon, for someone so guilty. Are you going to pretend that you don’t remember?” The male who’d asked the question sounded entirely reasonable in tone, even though he continued to manipulate the black and blue globes of her ass specifically to cause discomfort.
Vague flashes of his cock down her throat, that nectar she could swallow forever running like honey into an empty belly.
Memory of unexpectedly gagging, a wet cough following the sudden extraction of the throbbing flesh pulled from her throat. Wren would have chased after it, had she not been restrained by the very man who’d pushed his way into her mouth.
A mix of want and mortification, flushed her skin pink, and Wren remembered so much more.
Kieran was pair-bonded to the doll.
He had fed her his nectar, over and over, despite her protests, and she had eaten food left in the room in an attempt to protect herself from his urges to feed her more.
The food had been drugged, and he had saved her life by forcibly extracting it from her stomach… then spanked her like a child.
“I don’t care if you don’t want me.” Abandoning her ass, a warm caress moved up her spine until Kieran had gathered the hair at her nape in his fist. Drawing her close, his point razor sharp, he growled, “Do you understand that? You can say no, and I will still make you lie here. I’ll still knot you until you beg for more. I’ll use tricks that will leave you panting and on the brink of madness only I can soothe. I’ll put my children in your belly.”
The man was deluding himself. He was bonded to another. A full bond. Going against his urges to nest with his mate would torment him with every thrust he put in her body.
And children… no. Wren would not raise babies in this hellhole.
So she shook her head to make her point clear. It did nothing but add to the fire in the Second’s green-eyed gaze.
In fact, her negation seemed only to excite him, the cock pressed between their bodies kicking with that first rush of blood. “If you ever disobey me again, if you stupidly put yourself in danger, I’ll give you so much more than a bruised ass to worry about.”
As she was between his spread thighs, there was little leverage she could use to sit up without pulling away, and it would seem he was not in a charitable mood. When she pressed against his chest, Kieran showed his teeth, eyeing her neck as if tempted to rip right into it.
Caspian had already marred that spot. Much of her flesh would forever be decorated by the First’s attention. Looking to it brought the First Alpha to Kieran’s thoughts. “Caspian would have hurt one of your boys, badly, to make a point. Keep that in mind next time you’re tempted to disobey. Be grateful that I am not going to tell him what took place here.”
Her disobedience had not been intentional, Wren had just been so hungry, so frantic to stop falling into the spell of the fluid Kieran kept flooding into her belly. Not at all in her right mind.
“Had I not returned as quickly as I had, you would have died. Do you have any idea what an overdose on Bliss Powder looks like? Bloody foam spills out your mouth, bulging eyes, the skin turns a mildew shade of green in less than a few hours.”
How could she have known all that food had been drugged? He’d pointed it out to her. And why the heck had he been feeding it to the new little girl? All the females here wanted Kieran. He didn’t need to—
“I found dear ol’ mom like that. Dress up around her waist, mouth gaping, and reeking of whatever pimp she’d got the drugs from. Man probably works for me now. I wouldn’t have any way of knowing which one of my pushers was there with her when she took it too far.”
Inner rant cutting short, Wren felt the real-world weight of those words. She felt them, imagining finding her own mother in such an awful state, knowing that the person partially responsible probably called him boss. That Kieran knowingly had his men concoct, push, and sell designer drugs despite his history.
The feelings that came with all of that were so ugly she didn’t even know what to call them.
What if Alec had seen her that way? What if they had shown Mikael? What if either of them were ever tempted with this shit. Heck, Alec might be upstairs, but he was and always would be a member of The Syndicate. Part of his job would be to push their interests.
Sometimes it was easy to forget just what these males were really responsible for.
Trying to clear the sand from her throat, Wren found she couldn’t meet Kieran’s eyes. He’d see the judgment, the pity, all the things he hated most. So she rolled into him in the only movement he’d allow, the meat of her palm to her eye, and he settled her frame where he wished.
And she purred, as much to comfort herself as to appease him.
Gentle fingers combed through her clean, dry hair. “If you think purring over me is going to make this better, you’re wrong.”
The censure of her glare behind her hand, the silent not-everything-is-about-you look, she kept them to herself. Yet the way her purr magnified as if in defense of her feelings, didn’t stop him from batting aside her hand and drawing her mouth up for a kiss.
Chaste, lingering. Soft and gentle.
A lover’s kiss.
Fingertips burrowing against her scalp in a way that left her tingling, he pulled her small body ever nearer. Thighs parted, legs moved with ease, until he’d rolled her under his mass, all the while his mouth working magic, his purr infiltrating, and his cock growing ever harder.
Silken lips moved to her ear. “I could have fucked you the whole time you were high. You begged for it with those pleading eyes and parted lips. It was all I could do just to restrain you. Remember that. I could have fucked you raw, done anything. But I didn’t.”
On that score, he wasn’t lying. Wren’s memories of the past hours were nothing but flashes of slick and aching need. She’d been a bitch in heat, rubbing this man, squealing and whining in frustration as he denied her.
Is that what estrous would feel like?
A brainless need for physical release no matter who was near? An embarrassment of invitations and a drooling mouth?
That’s what Alphas were eager to enjoy? It seemed so mechanical, passionless in every important way.
The tip of Kieran’s tongue flicked between her lips, a small grunt coming from the male when his cock spilled on her belly in invitation.
When more fluid burst from him, more than was normal to entice a female, when it began to run down her sides and pool on the fresh sheets, Wren realized he’d cum fully. Just from a kiss.
He’d denied himself a knot, would be in aching discomfort unless pressure was applied, but did not draw her hands down. He didn’t make her do anything but continue to bear his mouth.
Breathless, a hair's breadth from her parted lips, Kieran caught her eyes before she might be wise enough to look away. What confused her most was reflected in those envy-green eyes. Affection.
“Drink the cup of water, it’s safe. There is more in a pitcher under the table. We’ll build a nest when you’re finished. When it’s done, you will invite me to share it.”
He had not offered any threats. There had been no bet or temptations. These direct orders without caveats were so unlike him.
But welcome.
“Are you hungry?”
Always. The wry smirk that came with the thought was enough to explain. The rumble of her stomach sealed it.
Climbing over her body to straddle her face, Kieran slipped halfway into the creature he’d been in the shower. Cock already pumping nutrient substance so that it dangled like a thick dollop of cream, he smeared her lips before she could protest. “Then open up.”
He was down her throat before Wren even registered the turn.
More than he had offered her yet drained from him to nourish her, to cut off her air, to set her sex to dripping. As with every other time he’d forced himself on her this way, he had to fight her off to retrieve his member, and left her panting, red-faced, and confused.
When she scooched back, fighting her breath and her body’s reaction, her feet slipped on the copious slick unintentionally spilled.
Easing back, Kieran took her chin and looked over her blush. “Did you think I offered you food?”
Of course that’s what she thought!
He lifted the cup, holding it out to her and helping her keep it steady so she might gulp it down. Clean water rinsed the addictive taste of him from her mouth, but it did not wash away her desire to lean forward and lick his oozing cockhead for another taste.
Palming his erection, expression blank, Kieran subtly waved his cock at her. “Do you want more?”
Yes! But she sure as hell was not going to latch on.
A shaking hand set the cup on the table, an extended troubled breath falling from her lips as she slipped from the bed as if to reach for the pitcher. The inelegant retreat was allowed. Glass refiled, drained, and filled again, she took all the water she could bear.
Next came the building of a nest. One built around the male already occupying it.
After an inordinate amount of time, long after the nest was truly finished and she was just fiddling to stall, Kieran took her hand, and shook his head as if to say no more.
Pulling her in, he arranged her comfortably on her back, her legs cradling his hips. And then, like a total stranger, he spent hours making careful love to her.
All of it was about her pleasure, every touch seeking out the places on her body that made the Omega sing.
Not an ounce of pain came even in the moments his long thrusts became more passionate. He didn’t twist her into a pretzel or mock her lack of skill. Instead he praised her with soft compliments and gratuitous attention.
Wound up beyond the euphoria of a mating high, Wren lost all sense of time. Waves of pleasure washed away regret, purified fear, and purged anger. When at long last he knotted her, she was an active participant, kissing her lover, pulling him nearer, enraptured and enwrapped in the form of a doting Alpha.
She didn’t even notice when he set his teeth to the other side of her neck, floating far away and lost in a sense of joy. The pain didn’t even register when Kieran punched his teeth deep.
It wasn’t until she woke later, still in their nest, still in his arms, to the sounds of a holo projected before them that she even smelled the blood.
Kieran, watching a comedy, had one arm thrown behind his head, laughing as if all was right and normal.
24
Fingering the tight collar of her dress, hooking fabric away from her throat as if that might make it easier to breathe, Wren plodded after the fast-moving Alpha dragging her through the halls. Kieran had her by the wrist, walking with an air of menace so unlike him, snarling at any who passed, that she could hardly keep up.
Twice she had tripped over her feet and the long skirt tangling about her ankles. Twice she had barely managed not to face-plant into the concrete.
Both times Kieran righted her, cast a glare about, and immediately continued the relentless pace.
The journey from the big room to Caspian’s den was not so far, but by the time they reached the catwalk soaring over churning waters below, Wren was winded.
Before them waited the crossing.
She hated this part, walking over the rusted metal bridge, the drop down visible and stomach-churning.
But before she could steel herself to brave the crossing, an arm swept under her. Snagged to the Alpha’s chest, breath knocked from her body, three large, male strides later and they were before the guarded portal.
And then she was back on her feet, her constrictive dress straightened by the same male who’d chosen it.
He’d spent at least ten minutes buttoning up the tiny row of seed pearls that held it closed from her navel to her throat. This was after the ridiculous amount of time he’d taken cleaning and treating the pointless bite mark on her throat.
Pointless since there was no bond between them. There couldn’t be. Kieran was bonded to another.
Yet, utterly self-indulgent, he purred grandly as he brushed back her hair to admire it. He licked at the scabbed wounds, smiled, and in the privacy of the big room, was wholly playful when he nipped.
Wren, already covered in claiming marks from Caspian and Toby, tried to consider it just another scar, but this mark out of all of them disturbed her.
Because it had meaning beyond its pointlessness.
And that meaning was wrong.
Imagining other females seeing it and laughing, knowing that no bond of any sort might give it credibility, she felt like a fraud.
Yet she still came on Kieran’s cock when he took her… again.
She still returned his passion and his caress.
And his kiss.
Culpable for her part in the charade, she’d counted down the minutes until Toby might come and take his turn. For once, she craved the Third’s presence, as if he might fix all of this, crack one of his rude jokes, and set her at ease despite his unhinged mental state.
But Toby never came.
She did. She came over and over between long naps and meals of Alpha nutrient cum.
There had been no real food, only Kieran to sustain her—the Alpha draining his own vigor to bolster hers.
Then… Caspian commanded her presence. She’d heard the summons, taken aback by the irritation snarled from Kieran’s wrist communicator.
“Deliver her, Kieran. NOW!”
That was it. Four words followed by the Second throwing an empty water glass across the room to shatter.
To say Wren was startled was an understatement.
In that moment, gone was any ease between them. In that moment, gone was the Kieran he had pretended to be.
As if he finally realized the sham. As if he felt the lack of connection register, and instead of regret, it was anger clouding green eyes.
“You shouldn’t have hid in the mud. Why didn’t you come back to me?” Sweeping tangled tawny hair from his forehead, he snarled. “I helped your boy!”
Guilt did not belong in her heart, but it snapped at her all the same. Much stronger than the guilt was her own deeply planted resentment. I want my children back. I want a place where they can grow up and not die. They are the only reason I would come to this place.
“I can’t understand you.”
