Flame of the Alpha (11 page)

She groomed herself daily as custom dictated, but this morning she hadn’t had time, between waking up in Dante’s bed and meeting with the insistent Captain. For a moment, she worried about the appearance of her neatly-trimmed curls. Steeling herself for Dante’s inspection, she pulled the robe back and allowed it to drift over her arms to pool onto the floor.

“Stunning, isn’t she?” the captain said, his gaze raking her body. A shiver crept up her spine, though the emotions it stirred in her weren’t what she’d expected.

She was used to men’s appreciative stares. She’d encountered them for years, ever since reaching the age of majority and taking her place among the other priestesses.
This
, however, was different.

She felt exposed.
More so because baring herself hadn’t been her decision.
She’d been ordered to do so, and for the first time in her entire life, she’d obeyed someone other than her patron Saint.

Sucking in a breath between her teeth, Sophia felt her nipples harden under scrutiny. Heat swirled around her breasts, as though invisible fingers coaxed strands of arousal and bound her with them, until she was hyperaware of every trembling nerve ending coming to life across the surface of her skin.

She was about to surrender control of her own free will. The knowledge frightened and confused her, but it also excited her beyond belief.

Dante had agreed that in order to keep the captain from becoming interested in what went on at the Academy -- and why they’d insisted on keeping him locked in the training room while on the premises -- they had to distract him. Fast.

They’d known the captain would want to train Dante…and what better way than to provide him with a willing submissive on whom to practice?

Sophia had argued she was the best choice. No man was allowed to touch her without her express permission. More importantly, no man was allowed to fuck her except as part of strict rituals performed in worship. Everyone knew that -- even the captain. She was certain that despite his insistence that she submit to Dante, he wouldn’t --
couldn’t
 -- force her to betray her patron Saint.

But, oh, how she wanted to. The slick wetness between her legs spoke volumes about the inner torment clawing at her soul. She’d spent her life doing what was expected of her. Just once, she wanted to give in to the desperate need that filled her, threatening to send her over the edge.

Yet, if she tumbled, she took Dante with her. As long as he couldn’t fuck her or watch her be fucked, she hoped he could call on every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from relenting to the bliss of a shuddering orgasm. He had to keep a tight leash on his inner beast, and it was her duty to make sure he didn’t give in and doom them all.

She only wished she could share some of her own self-control with him. Hell, she hadn’t shifted in years. It had been so long, she wasn’t sure she even remembered how. And yet…there was something about the feral grace flexing Dante’s muscles as he strained at the peak of climax, when his body rippled with the rampant need to transform, that had stolen her breath.

Envy had pierced her heart for a brief moment as she’d watched him in the throes of his release. She’d never been that free, that accepting of who -- or
what
 -- she was. She was master over her inner beast, not the other way around. Never in her entire life had she felt the stir of a shift without consciously initiating the change herself.

“Look at her,” the captain instructed.

Sophia swallowed hard as she lowered her gaze, no longer able to handle the fierce scrutiny in Dante’s eyes.

“See the way she’s ducking her head, ever so slightly? The Priestess has a genuine submissive tendency, like all good pleasure servants.”

“She’s not a servant,” Dante growled. She almost smiled at the possessive way he rejected what the captain had said.

“Sure she is. Just a different
breed
, but created in a laboratory along with the rest of them and instilled with the same traits as any other servant.
Docile behavior, an eagerness to please, and the ability to find pleasure in pain.”

As though to punctuate his words, the captain strolled behind her and gave her ass a solid smack. She jerked upright, her spine stiffening as pain blossomed in her right cheek. Wetness flooded her core and along with it, the unmistakable aroma of spicy female arousal.

“What did I tell you?” She couldn’t see the captain’s face, but she could hear the pride in his voice. “She loves it. Just like the rest of them.”

Sophia stifled the urge to roll her eyes. Oh, if he only knew just how different she was from the pleasure servants they trained on Academy grounds. Thanks to Saint Valentine’s ritualistic demands, she’d been born of a priestess mother and an Alpha father, formed from conception with the traits and abilities that marked her as a deviant on Earth.

How ironic, then, that the submissive tendencies that made pleasure servants so valuable had been part of her genetic make-up as well.
A natural addition, or the Saint’s way of toying with her?
She didn’t know. Until today, she wouldn’t have thought of her patron Saint as a cruel deity. Now, knowing the captain would be able to draw on her innermost desires and use them against Dante, she was no longer sure that her patron was as benign as he seemed.

“Come here,” Dante said.

Another order, delivered in that same sultry, expectant tone. How could she resist?

She moved away from the Captain and met Dante halfway across the room. Keeping her gaze level with his had become a task too difficult to complete, and she lowered her head until she was staring at Dante’s bare feet.

Sliding two fingers beneath her chin, he raised her face to his. She watched him expectantly as he lowered his mouth until it gently brushed her lips. “I’d never hurt you,” he murmured against her mouth a split-second before kissing her with a savage passion mirroring her own raging torrent of need.

“Enough of that.”

Something metallic rattled off in the distance, too far away for Sophia to discern what it was. Dante pulled back first, leaving her with nothing but the ghostly impression of his lips and the taste of him lingering on her tongue.

“Bring her here,
then
cuff her.”

Cuff her?
He couldn’t mean…

Oh, Saints
.

Sophia suddenly felt light-headed. Dante grabbed her wrist and pulled her along after him until they stood beside Captain
Jolen
, who held a pair of antique handcuffs in his hand. “I’ll bind her. You need to finally take off those pants.”

Dante looked like he was about to argue then thought better of it. Shedding his linen pants quickly, he tossed them aside, not caring where they landed. As luck would have it, the material got hooked on the bulbous tip of Saint Valentine’s massive cock and hung from the bronze sculpture like a defiant reminder of what was to come.

Captain
Jolen
yanked her wrists and pressed them behind her back with much less force than she’d expected. Sophia’s breath halted in her throat as she stared at the cage stretched out before her. The handcuffs closed with a snap. The captain adjusted them, tightening until the metal edges bit into her skin.

She knew every instrument in this room intimately. She’d been bound in most of them, and she’d used every one on the servants she’d trained. The cage, however, had always been one instrument of pleasure/pain she’d avoided at all costs.

Sophia’s head
swam,
confusion and slivers of terror zinging through her veins.
“N-no.
No,” she repeated, louder this time.

She might as well have been talking to one of the bronze statues. No one answered her plea, but she thought she heard a low chuckle.
The captain, no doubt.
Dante would never laugh at her discomfort.

Funny, how she was so certain of that, though she had no real reason to be. She’d only known him for a couple of days, yet every mutated cell in her body screamed at her to trust him.

She peered down at the alarming proportion of the cage. The entire purpose of the tool was to reinforce the slave’s loss of control. Trapped between slender metal bars, the slave had no room to move, no ability to free
herself
from the tight constraints.

Dante’s palm at the small of her back brought some much-needed courage into her quivering limbs.

“Do it, Sophia,” he whispered in her ear. “Let go.”

She shook her head. She didn’t want to let go. She wanted to remain in full control, to be the one uttering orders and watching as men rushed to obey them. And yet, the idea of allowing herself to be at the mercy of two impossibly determined, arrogant men made her limbs grow weak.

“This was your idea, Priestess,” Captain
Jolen
reminded her. “You’re welcome to leave at any time. I’m sure Dante can keep me entertained in your absence.”

A fresh wave of panic flooded her body, tightening her throat. She couldn’t leave Dante alone with this man. She
wouldn’t
.

Inwardly reciting a prayer to Saint Valentine, Sophia sank to her knees,
then
slid forward across the metal bars of the cage.

The enclosure had been created for a woman of her approximate size: average height, with full breasts and a narrow waist. Her curves molded to the unyielding metal. The bars dug into her skin. Her nipples peeked through the slender bars of the curved shapes created to accommodate her breasts, while thicker bars closed around her thighs.

The hinges of the cage squeaked as the captain lowered the lid. Sophia’s nails dug into her palms. More metal encased her back and torso, leaving only her head, her ass, and her pussy bare of restraints. The structure of the cage had her on her knees, bent at the waist, facing the door.

Had the room begun to spin? Her vision wavered, the statues rippling and undulating before her eyes. And still, despite the hysteria lodged in her chest -- or perhaps, absurdly enough, because of it -- her pussy grew damp and sticky. A trickle of cream dripped down her inner thigh, her body betraying her with every breath.

She’d wanted to participate because Dante needed her, but she hadn’t imagined the captain’s tastes would run to such extremes. The feeling of being encased from all sides, trapped to the rampant desires of two men, neither of whom cared much about obeying Saint Valentine’s wishes and treating his High Priestess with the respect she deserved…it was almost too much.

Her gaze jerked up from the floor and she found herself staring at Dante’s thick shaft. His hand was closed around it, sliding from tip to base, pulling on the delicate skin with each smooth stroke.

It was close enough that she could almost reach the head with the tip of her tongue if she tried. She could make out every nuance of the perfect rod, from the blue veins snaking up its length to the drop of
precum
dotting the tip.

“She’s earned a taste.” The captain’s palm flattened across the curve of her ass. She stiffened, preparing for a blow that didn’t come. “Go ahead. Let her take you in her mouth.”

Dante smoothed a strand of her hair behind her ear then cupped the back of her head. She glanced up at him, meeting his eyes. They glimmered, turning into gold-speckled feline orbs for a fraction of a second before smoothing back to their pale green color.

Sophia’s heart hammered so hard against her breastbone she was sure even the captain could hear it.

Hold on, Dante
.

Saints, how she wished the Alpha mutation came with telepathic abilities. She desperately wanted to reassure him, but the only thing she could do from her spot in the cage was stretch her neck as far as the metal bars would allow and sweep her tongue around the fine skin of his scrotal sac.

Dante sucked in a breath and tightened his fingers in her hair, drawing her closer. His shaft flattened upward, trapped between his belly and her face. She pressed her lips against the underside of his cock, then ran her tongue along the firm length from the bottom to the top, sliding back and forth just beneath the head.

She didn’t want to take his entire length in her mouth. If she did, there was no way she could expect him to hold back his natural urge to release his seed and let it spill down her throat.

“Pull her hair. Hard.”

Sophia heard the order a moment before her head was yanked back. Her pussy
clenched,
an instant reaction to Dante’s aggressive behavior.

Dante thrust his hips forward, sliding his cock up and down a fraction of an inch along the seam of her lips. She opened to him, slipping her tongue along his length, pausing to dip into the tiny slit and sweep a drop of salty
precum
into her mouth.

She licked a path down the flat base of his stomach, dipping into the coarse curls and burrowing her nose in the blond thatch. As she inhaled, she allowed his scent to drift inside her, imprinting itself on her senses. Musky and slightly spicy, tinged with the unmistakable aroma of masculine sweat and arousal, it seemed to burrow deep into her core and pulse outward, drenching her already slick nether lips in more heat and sticky cream.

His muscles tensed, corded. She could feel the amount of self-control he expended, knew what it cost him to hold back.

Rubbing her cheek across his shaft, she felt her breasts grow heavy with need. Her nipples stiffened, sharp little points dipping through the metal bars. She wished she could squirm to alleviate some of the pressure building in her body, but that only dug the metal deeper into her skin, bringing another level of discomfort to the pleasurable sensations coursing through her.

A hand brushed across the lips of her sex, drawing her up short. Her breath caught in her throat.

“Very good.
Move back.”

Dante did as he was told. Sophia strained forward, hunting for the lost warmth of his body pressed against her face.

“Addictive, isn’t he?” It was the first time the captain had addressed her since putting her in the cage, and Sophia started, taken aback. She’d begun to believe he’d forgotten about her, choosing to treat her as nothing more than an instrument of pleasure just like the other tools in the chamber.