Corrupted (Alpha's Claim Book 5) by Addison Cain (read more books txt) 📕

Like the sucking kiss of the best-trained whore. The rippling grip of soft hands squeezing the life from the neck of their prey. A slick-drenched sleeve that had been shaped to accept a cock he knew was intimidating in size. The woman who possessed such powers drained his tightly drawn balls until there was not a drop left to wring out.

While she screamed his name. While she bit, scratched, undulated, and prayed.

Her body stripped him bare, forced his climax, drank his seed. Her body craved.

At long last, his little one craved.

The way they fucked in the mornings now, it wasn’t perfunctory, it wasn’t out of a sense of her fear or his duty to remind her of who she was. It wasn’t because he pressured her to enjoy sex. It was because his little one woke hungry. And Shepherd had the bite marks to prove it.

His mate was starved.

For him, for his company, for his affection, as if the cloud was finally lifting. She could see him, he could embrace her. They even… played.

He had never played before.

Men like him had not been designed for such things, yet he gave that experience to her, no matter how foreign or unlikely it might be. After all, he had not destroyed Thólos and conquered Greth—he had not carved out a new world—intending to sit on the side and watch others experience freedom while he did not.

Shepherd was going to take this life by the throat and know its pleasures, train himself to understand them. With the help of a rambunctious Omega. A healing female who had defeated her addiction to the flood of narcotics she had been given in Thólos—powerful drugs he had seen strong men fall to. And she had done it unaware of what she swallowed or why.

She wanted to feel normal, she had told him, so that she could feel his love. It was worth more to her than a perpetual high or the false safety of chemically induced apathy.

Claire O’Donnell, who fought daily to face her demons and gain ground against them.

Who was finding joy… with him.

Knowing that the Gods truly favored him—that beyond all likelihood, his Omega had been delivered to his lap on the brink of estrous. Never would Shepherd regret a single moment of forcing their bond, of taking what the world owed him.

He possessed the perfect woman because when the opportunity presented itself, he acted.

And stole her from the world.

Once he had her, he learned as all mated Alphas must, that he knew nothing of what a pair-bond truly signified.

No wonder Alphas sold their souls to possess such a thing. No wonder they stole. No wonder they rose up from the Undercroft foaming at the mouth in their craving to gather their mates.

Claire might always resent how it was done, that the females matched to his Followers had no choice in the matter.

Such things were kept from her eyes now. And the violence of Thólos had evolved into the cunning of Greth. Here, Omegas were plentiful. They registered proudly and were flagrant with their freedoms. Chosen by unbonded Followers as simply as browsing a catalogue.

Rarely were they taken by force, not when they could be wooed openly and competed for. There had been four registered fights to the death between his men. The victor claimed the Omega—who was blissfully unaware of the goings on between the males.

One of those situations had gone wrong. The Omega preferred the dead rival and found herself unexpectedly bonded. Mistakes had been made with the Follower’s keeping of her, which required diligence and effort to correct.

Shepherd understood, perhaps better than any other, and offered counsel that—had Claire heard it—would have left her weeping in rage.

Ultimately, Shepherd was correct, and the Omega was learning there was more to a match than the beauty of her partner.

A thriving pair-bond required an Alpha willing to invest the effort. To affect diligence in cultivating their mate. They required an Alpha willing to both adapt from mistakes and compel resistant Omegas.

Fuck her until she couldn’t remember her name. Watch her mannerisms and learn who secretly lived behind the façade. Feed her well. Dedicate time to the attention she may not want but her dynamic craved. At the slightest hint of progress, double down. Overwhelm her.

Claire was thriving under such ministrations. She bloomed when Shepherd obliterated her boundaries.

As her therapy progressed, the more he unleashed—teasing out her primal possessiveness, using her body, her chemistry, her pheromones against her until she was forced to meet a side of herself that she tried to forget.

The warrior who had dared defy him in Thólos.

The girl who had shared images of her naked body with her people in an attempt to incite insurrection.

The indomitable, determined adversary that she conveniently tried to tuck away now that the world had made her wiser.

Claire’s self-enforced seclusion was unnatural to her healing spirit.

Just as dancing with her to the music of his new kingdom was unnatural to Shepherd’s entire life experience. Yet he did it, pulling her to him. Drawing out her giggles as they stumbled through steps, bodies touching in a way if she ever touched another male, that male would be a very dead man.

He told her so. She was only permitted to dance with him. And that had made her laugh all the harder.

It had made her run her hands down the sides of her body, turn, and flash him a coquettish smirk. He could not be held responsible for the rug burn on her knees. Or the ruins of her clothes.

His little one knew she was toying with fire.

She was testing herself too.

Yes, there had been a great deal of fear in the air when he took her down and stole her wind. Feral, he had ripped apart her clothes, roaring until he uncovered a nipple and fell upon it.

She had told him to stop, and he had fucked her twice as hard to drive home a monumental point.

If she tempted, he would devour.

There would be no