Page 37 of The King's Omega
She slipped off my high bed and padded over to where I sat on my single chair. I had only ever needed one. No one ever came in here. Now, I wished for another seat, so she might have a place here. Her fingers wrapped around my forearm.
“You’re ashamed because…?” I placed a hand over my eyes, and mimed peeking out between two fingers, then made an exaggerated motion of a crown being put atop my head.
“You’re sorry you let King Rigol spy on me.”
I nodded, unable to look at her innocent face.
“I don’t know why you did,” she said slowly. “But I think you are a good man. I can’t pretend it didn’t hurt me. And I don’t know how I can trust you now. But I think you must have had a reason. You were trying to do something.”
I nodded again.
“It didn’t work,” she said tartly, “if you hoped he would be nicer to me. In fact, he seemed ill, flushed and sweating. His face was ruddy, as though he’d been sitting too close to the fire.”
My heart stuttered. Oh, fuck. Suddenly, I understood why the king had reacted so harshly, so unlike him. Alphas passed through a period called rut when they first came into their nature near the age of eighteen, and every few years from then on. Every Alpha I knew spent a week fucking anything he could grab when their rut came on.
We’d unwittingly sent Rigol into rut by exposing him to the girl’s scent and forcing him to watch with no release. The king hadn’t fucked a woman in months, except Selene. Worry for Rimholt had consumed him, and he had exhausted himself with strategies and troop maneuvers. Why had I not seen it?
From his very first scent of Vali, Rigol had begun to swing toward his rut. I saw it now. His even temper had become more volatile, his behavior less polished. Rigol had always been one of the most honorable Alphas in our kingdom, never cruel. Not the sort of man to try and force a woman, or steal her tiny kitten. The brother I knew would never have done such a despicable thing, spoken such vile words.
Rather than calming Rigol, her presence had driven an already-fractured king into a state of frenzy. And I had been a part of his downfall. Guilt swamped me yet again as I considered my unforgivable error.
Alphas had powerful sex drives at all times. Even I had to turn to whores with clever lips and hands no less than twice a week to assuage my natural lusts. I had learned to channel my frustration better, though, and had a reputation for iron control, which was why I hadn’t broken as Rigol had.
After my first rut, when my brother had chained me and sent in women with guards to keep them safe, I’d learned to curb my urges. I had never had a true outlet for my lust as none of the Beta whores could accommodate a man of my size without injury. Omegas were the only ones who could, according to the legends.
Would this little Omega laugh to learn that I was a virgin if it came to the final act? Or would she welcome me, open to me?
I gritted my teeth as I felt my cock stiffen against my pants. Who was I kidding? She would never let me close, not now that I had tricked her.
Vali peeked down and giggled. “That’s such a trial, isn’t it? There’s no hiding when you’re feeling happy, is there?”
I shrugged, then set my harp back on my knee and picked out a merry tune I’d first heard in a bawdy house years before. She knew the lyrics, and sang along, her voice surprisingly melodious.
The wenches come and the wenches go,
and they come and they come if their laddies know
how to make them come so they’ll never go,
a hey a diddle-dee-oh!
She burst into peals of laughter. “I didn’t understand this song for a long time,” she confided, scrambling back to my bed and curling up on the blankets. Her hands moved the sheets and pillows around, arranging them. She asked about other songs I knew, and I continued playing, while she worked unconsciously on the bed.
When I played the final chord of a jig, she blinked.
I blinked as well. She’d built a nest out of the bedding, a beautiful collection of cloth and softness that ignited something inside me.
Omegas had vanished centuries ago, but some ancestral memory in me recognized that nest, even without reading that damned book.
An invitation. An acceptance.
She wanted me in her nest, and her dark eyes, half-hidden behind her fluttering lashes, spoke of that desire. She wanted me in her nest, and my body in hers.
I purred, and her eyes closed while her fingers toyed with the laces at her throat, untying the top ones. Her chest was rosy, flushed with blood and arousal.
My cock jerked.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
