Page 23 of Their Alpha

Except he hadn’t said it aloud. He’d only thought it. His inner alpha had thought it…and I had heard it...through our bond.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Gideon

Ihad no idea what was going on. Between Fletcher’s heat, my own heat, and Artemis helping both of us, I could hardly catch my breath. I was terrified. I was aroused. My heart bled for Fletcher, and my insides screamed for what I now knew only Artemis could give me.

I knew Fletcher was not only hurting, he had reached a crisis point. After that first wave that Artemis took him through, he turned anxious in a way I’d never seen before and strangely withdrawn. Even when he took me through my next heat wave using the Heat Lightning system, even though everything inside me urged me to be brave enough to request that Artemis take me personally.

I couldn’t ask for what I needed, as much as I wanted to. Hours and two more heat waves had passed, but I couldn’t shake the agony I’d felt at the look on Fletcher’s face when I’d called out for Artemis instead of him. That feeling wasworse than anything I’d ever felt when I was trapped in the house of the alpha my father had picked out.

That was the other reason I couldn’t just ask for what I needed, even when the third wave after Fletcher’s heat started and I knew it would be a bad one. Fletcher had also had three waves in the hours since then, and watching the way Artemis serviced him in those waves was…overwhelming.

I couldn’t think of any other words for it. Watching them stirred all of my old fears. Artemis was brutal with my husband. It was like he was an entirely different alpha. He was hungry and lustful. He tossed my strong, brave, wonderful husband around like he was a rag doll, thrusting into Fletcher’s mouth and hole like he was possessed. He embodied some of the more erotic episodes of my omega fairy tales so vividly that…that I came more than once just watching them.

I couldn’t tell Fletcher. I couldn’t let either of them know how aroused watching them fuck made me. Because as fierce and potent as Artemis was, Fletcher loved it. I knew my beloved well enough to know when his screams were because he felt pleasure. I knew him like my own soul, so I could see that his grimaces and facial contortions as Artemis pounded into him were ecstasy.

I was so happy for him. I was so miserable. I could never do that for him. I could never cause him to make those faces.

And Fletcher could never cause every fiber of my being to throb with desire the way just watching Artemis did.

But my heat still dragged on, pulling me into that crazy abyss where I knew everything I needed but was too afraid to ask for it, and where keeping my need to myself was breaking my heart and Fletcher’s.

It was probably breaking Artemis’s heart, too, actually.

“This isn’t working,” he said in an exhausted and far too defeated voice near the end of my second day and Fletcher’s first.

“We’ll be fine,” Fletcher said. “Everything will be fine.” His words rang hollow, and the haunted look in his eyes as he glanced at Artemis was even worse.

We were all in bed together, although the bed had become so mussed and disheveled that it wasn’t more than a sticky, crusted pile of sheets and pillows. Fletcher sat with his back against the headboard and I was curled into his arms. He stroked my arm absently, but as affectionate the gesture was, I could tell he was beaten. Going into heat had broken the last of his resolve to be strong for me.

And there was something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

“I respect you, Fletcher,” Artemis said, shaking his head. “You know I do, but everything is not fine.”

He glanced at me and I squirmed. My next heat wave was building already, and again, I could tell it was going to be a hard one. Each one since Fletcher had gone into heat had been more intense and harder to get through than the last.

“The Heat Lightning system isn’t enough for you anymore, sweetheart,” Artemis told me, compassion in his eyes.

He reached out a hand to my foot, which was the closest thing to him. Instinctively, I jerked it away from him.

Seconds later, when Artemis sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, I wished I hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sniffling to hold back my upset. “It’s an automatic reaction. Here.”

I extended my foot cautiously to him again.

Artemis stared at it for a moment, then sent Fletcher a weary, questioning look.

Fletcher nodded stoically, and Artemis continued to reach.

I gasped when he rested a hand over my foot. My womb tightened, and a gush of slick seeped from my hole. But my heart also raced with fear, even as my next wave raced to crash over me.

“I need it,” I said, not completely certain what I was saying.

I needed Artemis’s touch. I needed him inside me. All of him, not just his seed. I needed to feel the friction and the force. My womb cried out to be breeched and bred. I wanted a baby, and despite the promises of the Heat Lightning system, that hadn’t happened yet.

But my memories of being forced and abused rang loudly in my head even as I felt the pull to submit. That’s what had been so horrific with him. My body had bowed to him, reacting with base need, while my heart and head had howled at the violation.

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