"Is this just how you would keep things organized in any space, or do you have it this way to suit this cottage's size specifically?"
Brigid flashed me a narrow-eyed look over her shoulder, and I was a little embarrassed at the pang of desire that sharp look conjured in my loins. "Why are you asking so many questions?"
I shrugged. "I like to watch you."
Her lips pursed. "It's just…it's just how things were organized when I came here. I suppose it's this way just because that's how it can be in such a small space. I don't know how I would change it, now that it is what I'm used to."
"It was your mother's cottage?"
Brigid nodded. "My mother left my father's house so he could take another omega, and came here where her own mother, my grandmother, was still living. She was lucky in that way, that she didn't inherit the property until after my father had dismissed her."
"How old were you?"
"Four," Brigid said softly. "They had me between ruts. And then when another rut passed without my mother bearing a son, their union was dissolved."
"Did you see her often?" I asked, frowning.
Brigid shook her head. "Rarely, in truth. And she was so…" Brigid paused in her path through the cottage, blinking into amirror and then laughing ruefully before turning back to me. "Well, I suppose she was what I have become—a bit roughened and countrified. At the time she seemed rather wild to me, and raggedy. I didn't mind my father's new omega, Janet. She was young and sweet and treated me like a little doll. It wasn't until after my union with Malcolm that I saw more of my mother."
Brigid helped herself to my lap, and I tried not to preen as her arms looped around my shoulders, her legs folding around my own. I wasn't sure if I was imagining that her ease was greater with me here in the cottage, but I was certainly relishing the change.
"If I'm honest, she terrified me," Brigid said softly, tucking her head down beneath my chin. "I thought if I wasn't careful with Malcolm, I would end up in her position. I…" She sighed. "Well, needless to say, after she passed, after I had enough of the life I'd chosen, I came here. It was a punishment for myself at first, until I realized what independence she had. I wish I'd had the same accord with her while she was alive."
I planted my feet firmly on the floorboards, rocking the chair beneath us, cradling my omega. Any inclination I'd had to order Brigid back to the keep with me vanished. This place was her sanctuary. She would return to the keep when she was sure it was safe, and as long as she did not bar the doors, I would meet her here where she was comfortable.
Chapter Twenty-Three
BRIGID
Torion's breaths were rough against my cheek, a contrast to the sleek roll of his hips, the fluid stroke of his fingers between my legs as I trembled in the cradle of his body. The loft was too high for Torion to lay between my thighs without scraping his wings against the beams of the ceiling, so at night we found each other on our sides, my leg over his hip as we kissed, or like this with him curled around my back. It forced us to be slow and patient with our pleasure, made urgent need turn tender and gentle.
Torion's pinky finger stroked against the scar on my inner thigh, and my breath hitched at the strange response, the way the small touch pulsed like fire in my blood. I shook, nearing the edge, clawing at Torion's hand as he slowed his rocking.
"Please." My voice was harsh, but I melted as his mouth found the pulse of my throat, kissing and sucking softly.
"I can't believe I bit you," he said, chuckling, fingers abandoning their post on my throbbing sex to walk over to the mark he'd left on me during the rut. "Well, I suppose I can. I am always ravenous for you."
He had stopped moving, his hard cock resting peacefully inside of me, and he was only tracing circles around the bitemark. There was no earthly reason why such a simple touch ought to drive me so mad, make me so feverish, so?—
I cried out as he pressed into the scar, my core clamping down in a sudden and shocking orgasm. I covered my face with one hand, squeezed my fingers over his until he was digging into the scar, and came with a release that seemed to go on and on in waves of heat and sweetness. By the time I settled, Torion's arm was wrapped around me and he was thrusting, sheathing himself deeply, purring and growling into my ear.
"Witch," he rasped, and I shuddered once more, gentling my grip on his hand and moving it away from the baffling scar and back to my swollen lips and pulsing clit. "Yes, that's it. Again for me, darling Brigid."
I whined and twisted, and Torion read my mind as he always seemed to in these moments, his mouth slanting over mine, tongue thrusting in time with his cock, quick to swallow my whimpers and cries.
We'd already reached for one another twice in this night, although the first time I'd pushed him down to the rug by the fire and taken him with a rough quickness that left us both winded.
He would have to return to the keep in the morning.
We'd spent the day flying to the nearest village and shopping together. I'd greeted familiar faces not as the local woods witch or healer, whatever they called me, but as the alpha's omega. Still, I'd given my instructions to find me at the cottage, or the keep if I was not at home, ignoring the puzzled expressions I'd received in response. It had felt like a kind of defiance, although the effect was lessened by Torion's easy manner at my side.
"I want you back at the keep," he'd said as we'd walked slowly back to the cottage, shrugging and meeting my gaze. "But if you want to be here, I will make time to come to you."
In an absolutely contrary fashion, it had been on the tip of my tongue to declare that I would return to the keep with him. I'dswallowed the impulse, stubbornly clinging to the cottage, to my solitude, to bitterness.
"Brigid," Torion gasped, mouth gaping over mine as he panted. "Oh, come with me. Come with me again."
The words would've been an empty plea if not for how well Torion knew my body. He claimed my breast in his hand, molding and gripping and pinching, orchestrating my climbing pleasure, a finger tucking inside my body to stretch me for his knot as two others rubbed urgently over my clit. He planted himself inside me as I came with a wail and a brief thrash of my body, arching my breast into his rough grip and trying to skirt my hips away from the touch that tortured and teased me so effectively.
