Chapter 7 – Pet

(Rene)

The boy falls asleep in the car before we clear the gate, and I'm glad, because it means she has nothing to hide behind when we get to the house.

I have Cole take the kid to a room on the far side of the residence.

Angelique watches him carried away down a corridor she doesn't know, in a house she’s never been in, and her face goes the colour of skim milk.

She wants to follow.

She doesn't dare.

She's already learning.

"He's fine," I tell her.

"He's more than any child of yours with another man has a right to be. Walk."

She walks.

My quarters span the whole top floor.

She steps in and her eyes do a fast circuit.

Exits, windows, the bed, the distance to the door.

The same inventory she ran in the trailer and the car.

It’s obvious she’s spent years scanning rooms for the fastest way out of them.

There's no way out of this one.

If she tries to run I’ll chain her to a wall in the cells until she learns her lesson.

"Take your clothes off."

Her head snaps around.

"What?"

Mine. Strip her. Mount her. Now.

I lean against the dresser and let him pace.

He can want.

Wanting is all he gets to do tonight. The rest is mine.

"You heard me. Skirt, shirt, underwear, all of it. I want to see what's mine after the years you stole from me."

"Rene-"

"That's the second time you've said my name like it still belongs in your mouth. You can call me Alpha. Or Master if you’d prefer. I’ll accept Owner too."

I don't raise my voice.

"Take your clothes off, or I call Cole back in to do it for you, and he won't be gentle. I’m sure you wouldn’t want your son to hear what his mother has become?"

Of course that does the trick.

The kid is the only string I have to pull and she handed it to me herself.

Her hands immediately grip the hem of her shirt.

She undresses like a woman walking into cold water. Gingerly. Hesitant.

The cheap shirt.

The skirt Donovan had his hand under this morning, which I will be burning.

A bra gone grey from too many washes, underwear the same, and then those are gone too.

She's standing in the middle of my room with her arms not quite covering herself and her chin up like her pride is going to save her.

The air goes out of the room.

Because I'd forgotten.

That's the thing I will never admit to her and barely admit to myself.

I had years to mourn her death.

I thought about her constantly, and somehow my memory cheated.

She's standing in front of me underfed and exhausted with a scar at her hairline she didn't used to have, and she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever put my eyes on.

Men used to forget their own names when she crossed a room.

I used to want to put my fist through their faces for it.

I still do.

Donovan will be punished for his actions this morning. They all need to know she’s my pet.

Nobody else gets to fondle any part of her.

Her scent shifts.

She can't help it, the bond's wide open between us and it carries everything.

Under the fear, which I like, there's the other thing, the thing she'd cut her own throat before admitting to.

Desire.

I can smell the slickness leaking from the pink folds between her legs.

Standing naked and terrified in her captor's bedroom, and her body has already made up its mind.

"Such a horny little bitch," I say.

"Don't."

"Your mouth says one thing."

I push off the dresser.

"I can smell the rest of you calling your mouth a liar. You want to know the part you're going to hate most, Angelique?"

I stop in front of her. She has to tilt her head all the way back to look into my eyes. She always did.

"It's that I don't have to make you do anything your body doesn’t already yearn for. You want me."

"I hate you," she whispers.

"I don’t care. Hate me on your knees."

She goes down.

She doesn't decide to, that's the part I watch for, the part the bond hands me like a gift.

Her knees buckle before her pride catches up.

The wolf in her rolls belly-up for the wolf in me and takes the rest of her down with it.

By the time her brain objects, she's already on the floor at my feet, and the look she gives me from down there is pure murder, and my cock is so hard it aches.

I free it.

Take a fistful of her hair, that short ragged hair she hacked off herself to be someone else, and wrap it around my hand until she gasps.

"Open."

"Rene, please, I-"

"You used to beg better than this. And you used to beg for it."

I drag the head of my cock across her lips, slow, and feel her breath stutter against me.

"Open your mouth, little pet. Let's find out how much of you remembers. And you’ll be punished later for using my name again."

She opens.

The heat of her mouth closes over me and my awareness breaks apart into heat and static.

I have to lock every muscle I own to keep from doing exactly what my wolf is screaming at me to do.

She takes me the way she used to, like she never stopped, her tongue working the underside, her cheeks hollowing, and the small humiliated sound she makes around me when I hit the back of her throat is the single best thing I’ve heard in years.

I don't let her set the pace.

I take her head in both hands and I use her mouth, slow and deep, watching her eyes water and her hands come up to grip my thighs.

Not to push me off. To hold on. To steady herself while she takes it.

She always loved getting me off.

She's wet from this.

From kneeling.

From being made to follow my orders.

I can smell it filling the room and I want to put my mouth on her so badly it's a fight to keep standing.

I don't.

That's a thing she'd think was tenderness, and there's no tenderness left in this house for her.

When I feel myself getting close I pull out of her mouth, and she gasps in air, lips swollen, a string of spit connecting her to me.

She looks so debauched and so furious and so mine that the dark thing in my chest stretches all the way out and purrs.

"Get on the bed," I tell her, voice wrecked and not hiding it.

"Crawl there on all fours. I want you on it on your hands and knees with yourself spread open and ready for me.”

I make sure she sees how much I mean every word.

“I’m going to enjoy watching you do it. And I want you to think about how much you hate that your humiliation is making me hard."

Her jaw is tight enough to crack her back teeth, but she does it.

She crawls.

Naked, furious, dripping, her firm ass moving beautifully each time she moves her limbs.

She gets up onto my bed, puts her face down on the duvet and reaches back to open herself for me with two shaking hands, because her body won’t let her do anything else.

I start tearing my shirt off because I’ve spent years believing I’d never have this again and I’m not waiting one more-

The door opens without a knock.

"Rene."

Brynn's voice drawls, bored and proprietary.

"I need to speak with you. Leave your whore for a minute."

Angelique freezes on the bed.

And I notice, through the bond, in the open book of her scent, the exact moment the thing that floods her isn't relief.

It's disappointment. And shame.

Her face is hidden the bedding so I can't see it.

But she can't hide the smell of it from me, and neither of us is ever going to be able to pretend it wasn't there.