He removed my bandages. He knows what they did to me. He fuckingknows.
“No, I’m not,” I say through glistening tears.
Olly says nothing. He just squeezes my arms and waits.
He’s waiting for me to tell him what happened, but I don’t want to tell him anymore than I want to remember. I know I need to. He won’t let me out of this lab without briefing him first. I know that.
“They threw me in a cell. Tried to force me to breed omegas.” I shake my head. “I didn’t because I’d never do that to anyone, but certainly not to my mate.”
Olly nods for me to continue. I hold my arm out. “They shot me full of some chemicals. I don’t know what they were. They made me hot and really fucking hard and wet. Then they threw the omegas in with me, and I barely escaped them…” My jaw tenses. “Then they tranquilized me, and when I woke up it was to a scalpel on my dick.”
“Holy shit, Em—”
“They took my knot,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. The sobs soften, and I can’t look him in the eye. He’s just a beta, but…I’m no longer an alpha.
How can I look at anyone, knowing what they did?
Olly lets out a soft sigh as he places one hand on my thigh. “It’s still there,” he says softly.
I shake my head. “No, it isn’t.”
He carefully unties my dressing gown and opens it. The cool air rushes against me, against my nakedness, and I shiver with fear, with shame, with guilt.
I close my eyes.
Olly carefully runs his cool fingers over my cock, and I grimace. It hurts. It hurts like hell.
“Does that hurt?” he asks smoothly. I nod, sucking in a breath. I want to die. I wish they had killed me.
“Scale of one to ten, how bad does it hurt?”
“Seven,” I say, swallowing hard.
“Can you feel that you’re hard right now?” he asks in that calculating tone that is somehow smooth and wonderful and soothing all at the same time. His touch is soft, cool. He doesn’t stroke me or squeeze but rather runs his fingers along my shaft gingerly.
“Sort of…” I answer, because it’s hard to describe. I know I’m hard. I know I’m getting wet, too, and I know that I want to knot, but…
When I try, it hurts.
I grimace, my breath coming in fast.
“Take it easy,” he says. His fingers stroke my head, carefully running over my slit. Precum trickles out, but I suck in air through my teeth because it stings. “Can you feel that?” he asks, slipping his thumb through my precum. He gently massages the spot, and the stinging lessens a fraction. I nod.
He stops touching me, and the pain returns.
“It hurts,” I cry. His fingers slide over the raised wound where they cut me. Where they mutilated me. I cry out a whimper as his thumb smooths over the long, raised scar that used to be a ring. “It’s gone,” I croak out. “I can’t knot, I can’t—”
“It’s still there,” Olly assures me. “If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to feel me touching you right now. You wouldn’t be able to feel pain.”
I look up at him, seeing the truth in his eyes. He lets go of my cock, wiping his hand on his lab coat. His heady rain and forest scent hits me again, and I have the weirdest desire to fucking kiss him and breathe him in again.
What the fuck? Maybe I’m just all warped and fucked up from what happened to me.
Yeah, that’s got to be it. Getting your meat mangled will do that to a person.
“I’m broken,” I say. “I’m an alpha with no knot, Olly. How is she ever—”
“Hey,” he says carefully, setting down a pile of fresh clothes next to me.
