Page 15

“I don’t understand why I can’t see her.”

The elevator doors opened with a ding, and he strode out into the corridor.

I began to feel a little queasy upside down.

I hadn’t eaten anything since Sloane had been taken, and I’d barely slept last night.

I felt like a train wreck, and if that weren’t bad enough, his scent, his mere presence, sent my libido rocketing.

I thought he might go to the couch or stand me before the window so that he could have a serious talk with me about this supposed transgression I’d made.

Maybe I had been a little forceful when I turned up at the gates.

My sister was here somewhere and I needed to see her, but he didn’t go to the couch.

Nor did he stand before the window or even the kitchen area to the side.

No, he strode straight through to his bedroom and dropped me down on a bed empty of everything but a clean bottom sheet.

“Uff.” I blew all the hair out of my face and scrambled to sit up. I didn’t get a chance.

His hands were on my ankles, tugging my right sneaker off. He all but ripped it from my foot and tossed it to the other side of the room, where it landed with a thud.

“What are you doing?” I thumped him. He was solid, and I was sure it hurt me more than it hurt him. Meanwhile, his hand was on the other sneaker. Those big capable hands held me still as he ripped the other one off as well.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he said. “I’m stripping you naked. Ready for discipline?”

That was when my pussy clenched and my brain turned to mush.

“What? You can’t just discipline me. What have I done? You’re the most unreasonable person I’ve ever met.”

I punched him again. He carried on, tackling my night shorts. I squealed as he yanked them down. The ensuing battle nearly ripped me from the bed.

I fought and kicked, but the only thing I was doing was wearing myself out.

“Oh, what the fuck are you—Uff”

A big square hand landed in the middle of my belly, pinning me to the bed while he grasped my panties, tore them down my legs, and tossed them across to the other side of the room.

He stopped, chest heaving, eyes lit with a kind of feral hunger as he stared at what he’d exposed, and that fast, a switch flipped inside me.

Heat pooled in my belly, and then everything seemed to jump back to reality.

Big hands grasped the bottom of my T-shirt, and he ripped it straight over my head, leaving me naked.

An intimidating alpha with determination in his eyes stared down at me.

“Do you know why you’re going to be punished?” he asked ominously.

I shook my head. I didn’t have a fucking clue.

“I can’t imagine what madness is going on in your mind or what ridiculous perceived thing I’ve done wrong. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

I crossed my arms, which only had the effect of squeezing my small breasts together.

His eyes went straight there. He licked his lips before his face smoothed out to that deadly stillness I’d come to associate with the man, and he met my gaze.

“Coming to the alpha zone and banging on the fucking gates like a crazy woman. You’re lucky I spotted you. Well, Art saw you and notified Dane. Anybody could have come down there. They’re not all like me, you know?” he said.

“Like you? You mean they wouldn’t take me to a room, strip me, and threaten to punish me?”

“It’s not a threat, baby.”

Damn, my pussy clenched at that. Stupid traitorous thing.

“They’re not all like me. Most of the alphas here will take you back to their home and rape you repeatedly, then they’ll give you to their buddies. Then they’d rape you some more and keep doing so until you were nothing but a shell.”

It was like a cold splash of water. Fuck! I started shivering. I hadn’t thought through what I was doing. I hadn’t thought through anything at all.

He was right—I did understand what it was like here. I understood that Inked was different from much of the strip, and even so, when the gates opened on designated access days, it likely had a different feel. But when the gates clicked shut again, anything could happen.

He gathered me up into his arms, heaved me to the back of the bed, and settled me on his lap.

He purred, his big hands smoothing over me, but not in a sexual way.

Instead, his caresses were comforting, as his hands moved over my back, my hips.

He drew my face close, so that my cheek was pressed to his chest, where that deep rumble emanated and his beautiful scent was so rich.

“Breathe,” he said. “Just breathe. You’re here, you’re safe.”

But I wasn’t thinking about being here and being safe.

I was thinking about the image of that riot when we came to collect Sloane.

The gate had slammed shut as feral alphas charged against the fence.

What on earth had I been thinking by coming back to the gate, to do what? What madness had taken over me?

“You’re safe,” he said.

Was I? Was I really safe?

Yet I felt safe here in his arms, surrounded by his scent, and concluded that this was the safest place in the world.

“Is Sloane really here? Is she really mated? Promise me. Promise me everything you said is true.”

“I promise, baby,” he said. “But alphas and omegas are different from everything you know. She needs to be with Jace as much as he needs to be with her. They need to strengthen their bond, and the heat…it’s a strange thing.

You’re not in control of yourself. I hate to say this because I know you love her and she’s your sister, but we’re not rational at such times. ”

I swallowed. “Are you mated?”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t be with you if I were mated, would I?”

“You’re not exactly with me,” I said, and that thought cut far deeper than it should’ve.

I didn’t know him. We’d shared one night together, and not even all of that.

We hadn’t even had sex. He’d helped his friend save my sister because they were an alpha and omega and because they needed each other, but he didn’t owe me anything.

“If I had an omega, if I bonded to her,” Ryder started, “I couldn’t be around another woman.

Not like this. Not a naked woman on my lap.

I wouldn’t be able to stand it myself, for a start.

Also, omegas are possessive of their mates.

She would rip you to pieces. Me too, if she found out.

So, no. There’s no omega that I’m bound to. ”

“But you’ve been with omegas, right?” I didn’t want to ask that question or acknowledge this rage that had started to consume me at the mere thought of him being with somebody else.

Yet I didn’t imagine the man had existed in a bubble before I crash-landed into his life.

He was mature. I’d been with other men, so it stood to reason that he’d been with other women and, given he lived here in the alpha zone, omegas.

Plus, the way he’d spoken about the experience of heat and rut wasn’t clinical.

It was personal. “And you’ve rutted one through her heat. ”

There was a pregnant pause.

“I have,” he said.

Something cold and dead settled in the center of my chest. Did Ryder care for them, I wondered?

“We have omegas here,” he said. “We look after them. It’s not a good way for omegas to come into the world.

Often, they get passed off to unscrupulous alphas.

Where we can, we get to them. They have a choice here to decide who they invite into their bed.

We don’t force ourselves on them, and when the heat comes, we help them through it. ”

“You rut them,” I say, feeling sick to my core. “You fuck them and knot them?”

“Yes,” he said. “And we mark them too, so that everybody else knows that they belong to us.”

Feeling nauseous, I pushed at him. He didn’t let go. I shook my head. “I need the bathroom!”

He released me instantly. I’d never been in his bathroom, but I guessed where it was. My feet made a patter against the wooden floor as I ran straight to the toilet, where I lifted the seat and emptied my stomach of bile and water.

“Go away.” I didn’t look back, but I could feel him standing in the doorway.

“I’m not going anywhere, baby,” he said.

My stomach roiled, and I heaved up nothing.

“No.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I didn’t feel right still, but he was there, gathering me up, lifting me. He sat me on the broad counter in front of a full-length mirror and brushed the hair back from my face.

“Are you done, baby?”

I nodded. There was nothing there, anyway.

He pulled a toothbrush out of the cupboard, squeezed some toothpaste on it, and passed it to me. Then he filled a nearby glass with water and gave me that to swill.

“Whose toothbrush is this?” I asked suspiciously.

He shrugged, and his lips tugged up.

“It’s mine. I’ve had my tongue down your throat. I figured a toothbrush isn’t too much of a leap.”

“I don’t want you to mark them,” I said. I could feel my lips trembling.

“I won’t,” he said honestly. “Not again.”

I shoved the toothbrush in my mouth and scrubbed until I felt better, then I rinsed my mouth out and spat it into the sink. He cleaned the toothbrush off under the tap and put it on the side before passing me a towel.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” I said, unable to meet his eyes anymore.

Using his fingers, he tipped my chin up, forcing me to look at him.

“I’m choosing not to,” he said.

“You’re an alpha. You should be with an omega.”

“I should be with whomever I want, and despite your level of crazy, I want very much to be with you. Now,” he said, “you’re going to be disciplined in a way that makes sure you never do something that stupid again.

If they’d gotten hold of you… I can’t even think about that.

It would fucking destroy me. Take better care of yourself, for me. ”

I didn’t understand what was happening, but I felt unsettled in my belly and in the center of my chest. There were wounds, raw and open, about what had happened with Sloane and our parents’ death.

I was a little broken on the inside. All of it would take time.

Even then, some things never settled back the same.

“I’m ready,” I said. “Punish me. I accept it.”

“Good girl,” he said.

He picked me up and carried me back into the bedroom.