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.
