Leaning closer, he took a deep breath of her, allowing his eyes to close as he purred. “I am a Beta. And I protect you. Even if that means making you do things you’ll hate me for now and then.” A kiss to her forehead. “Are you feeling better now?”
Her stubborn silence made him smirk as he kissed her temple, her cheek, rocking her gently as he coerced her to relax into him and let him lead.
“Maryanne is a very capable woman, and someday she may save your life. But I warn you, her methods are unorthodox… though highly effective.” A half-truth, a bid for understanding, wielded by a male who was determined to gain ground.
And the tension returned, Brenya stiff and frustrated. “I think the Alphas in Central are doing bad things to those women.”
“She saved millions.” His hands passed over her throat, stroking upward until her pretty face was cupped in his palms. Thumbs tracing her cheekbones, so very proud of his stabilizing mate, Jules murmured, “And she likes you, Brenya. It’s important that you know that. She struggles to make friends, so be kind if she’s brash.”
A little, “Likes me?” came from his shy mate’s mouth.
Earning her a kiss on the top of her head. “Yes, she’s been watching over you. She’s the one who started the electric fire in the hall the night you came to rescue me. I know you noticed it on the way to… becoming my wife. She wants you to succeed, and she will keep you safe. That’s why she’s here. To keep you and all our people safe.”
Our people, the words chosen and weaponized.
Effective.
The words and the sway had her caught in Jules’s rhythm once more, his mate lowering her eyelashes as she fell into his influence. And they danced, the Omega slowly mesmerized aslong minutes of silence slowed her thoughts to the point she dared murmur, “What were you reading earlier?”
“My journal, and all my secret thoughts about a pretty Omega named Brenya. I love her, and I don’t want her to be sad or scared. I need her to trust that I will take care of her. Even if she gets mad and calls me Havel.”
A soft laugh, a bit sad and a bit uncertain. “I wish you were a nicer man.”
“If I were a nicer man, you would still belong to Jacques. Nice men are not effective men. They are only nice because they want something and expect payment for their behavior. What you need is a man who loves you, and I do. And I don’t need to be nice to get what I want. But that does not mean I am unkind. I will always be kind to you. And sometimes kindness looks vicious, but it’s deeply misunderstood. Such as this morning when I forced you to see Jacques…” Drawing her to rest her head at the crook of his shoulder, Jules took up her hand, holding it to his heart, and slow danced his female to music only he could hear. “So you could heal.”
As she calmed, as she melted, he pressed his cheek to her hair and whispered, “Tonight doesn’t have to be miserable. I want your pleasure to come from me before Jacques starts with Lucia. Let it be my cock you feel tonight. Choose me.”
Stubborn silence.
“Trust me to take care of you.” His feet stopped, the dance over, Jules pulling back to enjoy her pretty face. “But first, a shower. You will feel much better clean, and it would be sweet of you to tend my shoulder.”
He grinned, sensing her new flash of irritation as he added, “I know you didn’t bite me on purpose, and that it wasn’t a gift. But I cherish it all the same. Thank you.”
17
Watching water bead on Brenya’s tan skin might be Jules’s second favorite pastime. The way it ran over her perky tits, droplets dangling from her nipples… delightful.
In all the days and nights they’d shared the Red Room, not once had he intruded on her in the bath. His wife had needed her space while she was healing. Needed to know she could relieve her body and bathe without a man rushing in to use her. Was learning that every time they were naked together, it didn’t have to be sexual.
It could be intimate.
It could be playful.
After all, Jules had studied the footage of Jacques’s particular bathing rituals with their shared Omega—the perfect primer to recondition Brenya. Armed with that data, he would differentiate his body, his intentions, his lust from the Alpha’s—who’d been pushy, demanding, and rough when he’d bathed the sweet Omega.
Treated her like a paid whore, with orders to wash him, to bend over, to suck.
To perform.
When Jules’s fingers had gone to pull down the zipper of her jumpsuit, his wife’s reaction had been outrage.
She hadnotforgiven him for the morning.
Yet her affront was snipped, all that energy redirected, when he’d rushed toward the bathroom after a wink, stripping off his bloodied shirt, laughing, while a baffled Omega had been too distracted by his antics to be furious or horrified. “Race you!”
Her jumpsuit hanging open, the look at her face flummoxed, she’d stood there a solid minute after he’d already climbed into the shower and began to scrub. Knowing his darling would fall for his ploy and creep in out of startled curiosity alone made his grin authentic.
Knowing she’d see his shoulder and would be compelled to fuss, pleasant.
