Page 11 of Omega Forged (Hartlock Omegas #2)

Lloyd’s strokes were accompanied by short, harsh puffs of breath. I imagined him on his neat bedspread, his hand clasped around his hard length. The scent of his lust. We penned a wet, desperate symphony and nothing had ever sounded so sweet.

“I need you loud,” I gasped as I pressed down on my clit, closing my eyes in readiness.

No orgasm in my life felt as good as this moment. Teetering on the edge of ruin. This would be my first orgasm shared out loud, and Lloyd’s throat better hurt afterward.

We weren’t together, but every time he spoke, he’d feel me in the pinch of his wrecked voice. Lloyd grunted, growled, and swore. Heat pricked behind my eyes and I squeezed them shut. I let Lloyd’s voice carry me to the infinite edge of pleasure.

“Fuck, you’re gonna make me come, Tahlia,” Lloyd panted.

“Tully,” I gasped, “my real name is Tully.”

My vision blackened around the edges as my back bowed from my release.

Forget Fenella, my parents, and my damn name I’d never earn.

I lost myself to an orgasm that shot through my body like lightning.

It fried my nerves to jelly. Slick soaked my thighs, scorched a path I wished Lloyd could have tasted.

Lloyd groaned low as he rolled through the ebbing pulses of pleasure, like I did.

I reached down and turned off the camera, but kept the phone call connected.

I told him my real name.

The pleasure changed in the space of a breath. The soft, warm tendrils grew into sharp edges, and my insides stung. My stomach cramped, and I swallowed the sharp acid that burned off the velvet bliss of the orgasm even as my clit throbbed with sparks.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

This was risk enough. Why had I given him my name? The voice came back, no longer dizzy with passion. And judgment fell like a weight on my chest. There had to be more than one Tully in Starhaven. He wouldn’t make the connection. He wouldn’t . But panic invaded my chest and constricted my breath.

“Tully,” Lloyd repeated, hushed with awe. “Thank you for this gift.”

Knowing my name was scarier than Lloyd seeing my pussy splayed out in front of his screen.

My lungs shrank, and each desperate breath did little to calm the rising panic.

Honey and fig drenched the room, curdled and sour.

It burned my nostrils. What had I been thinking?

Lloyd heard the change in my breathing, the quick, panicked breaths.

“Honey girl, breathe. I knew it the moment we spoke. My heart belongs to you. Stay with me, let’s breathe together.”

I burrowed under the covers, and a wave of heat made my skin feel tight and wrong. How easily I’d folded to my body’s base needs.

Stupid.

Now the voice was vengeful, proved right.

Hadn’t I thought Chase loved me? Was it love I’d felt for the alpha, or giddy lust?

I thought it was love. But the aftershock of pleasure drilled deeper than anything Chase had ever coaxed in me.

Lloyd knew parts of me that no one else did.

Now he knew my name as well. I wanted so badly to sink into his arms and have him look after me.

I was so tired of being alone.

For once, logic won out. I tossed my foolish heart into a box and locked it. My throat closed, knowing there was nothing more to say. I wanted to feel alive, and I had. But it was too much, too fast. To go down this path was to lead to my ruin.

I’d told Lloyd my first name, but not my last, and there was no promise in the world he could give me to make me feel safe if he found that out.

“I-I have to go.” I canceled the call before Lloyd could convince me otherwise.

The phone was a hot brick in my hand, and my ribs tightened around my bruised heart.

I curled into a ball, scrunching my legs tight into my chest. Like I could disappear if I tried hard enough.

My breath was hot and claustrophobic under the dark confines of the bedspread. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave.

I turned my head into the pillow and screamed, open-mouthed.

For a moment, I touched the sky. My fingertips tingled from my dive into oblivion, and I wanted to go back. But reality dragged me by the ankle, kicking and screaming. I was a Hartlock, even if I didn’t deserve the name.

I unlinked the WWED bracelet and nudged it away. Esta wouldn’t have fallen for a stranger just because their voice was husky, and they promised not to hurt her. She’d braved wild deserts, humans, and the great unknown. I, as her descendant, couldn’t even protect her heart.

The sooner I earned the money to leave Starhaven, the better.

My stomach rolled, a violent protest. Leaving everything I knew had never mattered before. But what about Lloyd? What if his promises were real? My heart fluttered in my chest just as my phone lit up with a notification.

Alphareadyorknot: What we shared was priceless to me.

Alphareadyorknot: Please, let me be there for you.

Alphareadyorknot: With all your light, and your dark, you can trust me.

Trust?

I’d allowed myself this moment. Let the mask fall and euphoria flood through me. I bloomed, a flower too used to the shade. But the sun burned too. Reality scorched my petals, leaving me parched.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The word became a throb in my temple. I hovered my finger over Lloyd’s message.

My stomach roiled with nausea, and I screamed into my pillow a second time.

My eyelids burned hot with unshed tears.

I was a foolish omega, desperate to be loved.

My parents never understood my neediness, and it had driven me into someone else’s arms the moment they died.

A mistake. I had to kill that instinct in me. I had to find peace in loneliness.

There was nothing else I could do.

I pressed the block button.

The second I did, a loud crash reverberated through from outside and my name bounced off the walls of the apartment. A terrifying screech.

“Tully, get out here right now.”

Fenella was back, and she’d stored all her fury up, ready to flatten me with it

“Start packing your shit.”