Page 78 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

“Come with me,” said Corentin. “Let’s go now.”

I hugged my elbows even tighter. I didn’t know what to do.

“Hey,” whispered Corentin, his voice soft and velvet. “I get it. He’s, um, he’s…”

I looked at him. “He’s what?”

“I mean, he gets me going, too,” said Corentin. “Before I was an alpha, I don’t know if I was as turned on my submission and dominance, but I am now. It takes a powerful alpha to make me want to submit, and he’s that powerful. When he barked, it made me all jelly. As an omega, I can hardly imagine what he’s like to you.”

I let out a breath. “He’s… he’s…”

“Yeah, I know, but that’s just sex and instinct. You have hot sex, okay, fine, but that’s not a basis for happiness.”

I lifted my shoulders. “W-well, it doesn’t feel like it’s just sex. When I submit to him, Corentin, it feels like submitting to something bigger than both of us. It feels like everything good in the world. It feels so right. And we are in love, and it’s not just because of sex—”

“You’re in a state of heightened chemical connectivity that’s induced by your complimentary designations,” Corentin said. “It’s not love. You and me, we’re in love, and we know it’s real because it happened before all this alpha-omega shit.”

I mean, that did make sense to me. “But I don’t know that it’s real,” I said. “Because you left me, Corentin, without even saying goodbye, and you hurt me—”

“Right, I know,” he said. “And, on top of that, you don’t even know if we can have hot sex, because we never have. So, I’m asking you to run off with me and leave him, but you don’t have a good reason to do that.”

He was not wrong. I didn’t want to agree with him out loud, though, for some reason. It seemed needlessly cruel to say that our one sexual experience had been nightmarish, even though we both knew that.

“Let me,” he said, “show you that it can be different.”

“You’re asking me to let you fuck me?” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Now? On the night before my wedding?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Corentin—”

“You heard what he said,” said Corentin. “He told you that you could have me as one of your alphas, but then he told the others that he didn’t like me and didn’t want me part of it. He’s trying to whisk you off to that castle in the mountains so that I can’t get to you. He’s trying to separate us. Even if you don’t decide to leave him and come with me, is that what you want? I’m back in your life now, don’t you want me to stay there in some capacity?”

I wavered. “Would you consider being one of my alphas?”

He shrugged. “I mean… maybe.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re just saying that to get me to let you have sex with me now, aren’t you? You think if we have sex, it’ll change everything. You think I’ll leave with you on the strength of it.”

“What if we could have sex that good?” he said. “What if it could be that amazing, and you don’t agree to it, and then you never get to have it. One thing is for sure. If you marry him tomorrow and you submit to him, you’ll be his property and he’ll always be part of it, probably watching everyone who ever knots you. It’ll be his rules, like he said. Don’t you want to have sex with me, just once, on our terms, you and me?”

I did, that was the thing. “He won’t like it.”

“He never has to know,” said Corentin.

I considered it. Truth was, even if Dmitri did find out, he wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on here. He’d already told me that I could have Corentin as a sexual partner. We hadn’t worked out the details yet, true, but he’d have to admit he was lying to me about it if he was going to get angry.

It seemed wrong, though, the night before my wedding.

Especially when Dmitri had asked me multiple times to wait until after the wedding for sex with other men.

The wrongness added some other level to it, though. It made it more exciting, because Corentin was forbidden.

Corentin had always been forbidden, of course.

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