Page 135 of Bonds of Hate

I hold my hands up in front of me as the most pathetic shield imaginable. “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m not going to do anything to you,” he chuckles, shaking his head as if laughing at some inside joke. “At least, not until you beg me for it.”

Cillian makes a high-pitched sound of distress, swaying on his feet. “Alpha…”

Logan swoops the smaller man up in his arms and nimbly descends the stairs as if he barely carries any weight at all. He deposits Cillian’s limp form into the nest more gently than I expect, though I don’t miss the calculated irritation in his gaze as he surveys me.

“His nest is practically drenched in your slick, Maya.” His voice taunts me with a dark note that sends a curl of unwanted pleasure straight to my center. “My my, what have the two of you been up to?”

Alpha is angry, the needy Omega part of me thinksdesperately. It takes an effort to suppress the innate reaction.

“I don’t want you,” I bite out, wishing I believed in my own conviction.

His expression is mocking as he regards me with a heavy-lidded gaze. “Are you sure that really matters to you right now? Why don’t you ask your cunt and see how it feels?”

“You already have a mate.”

“Do I? Wouldn’t know from the way he acts.” Logan shoots a glance at him, one full of a mix of disdain and longing that Cillian is much too far gone to notice. “Though maybe I’ll revise my opinion after tonight. He did let me in here like the good Omega he pretends not to be.”

As if the words spur him, Cillian begins to recover from his haze. The need triggered by our artificially induced heat must energize him. He pushes up on his knees, cheek still pressed into the pile of blankets, presenting himself for mounting like any true Omega would in the presence of their Alpha.

“Alpha, please,” he whimpers.

Logan bends over him and presses his nose to Cillian’s neck, deeply inhaling. “I forgot how much I missed the way an Omega smells in heat. Fucking delicious. Helps that he is absolutely drenched in you, too. The two of you must have been rolling around together for a while before I showed up.”

Shame rises in me, even as a flush heats my cheek and my belly clenches with remembered pleasure. “What are you going to do, Logan?”

“I’d think that was obvious. I’m going to take backwhat’s mine.” Logan lifts his upper body with a broad hand on Cillian’s back, forcing the smaller man to arch his hips higher until his backside presses obscenely against the front of Logan’s hips. I must make some sort of desperate sound because he flashes me a mocking smile. “But I’ll make you a deal. You stay in your cute little nest, not even one toe set outside of it, and I won’t lay a single finger on you through your heat, even if you beg me for it.”

I grab the nearest blanket and wrap it around myself like a shield. “You won’t be touching me.”

His smile is practically a snarl. “We’ll see.”

I huddle deeper into my blanket cocoon, desperately trying to ignore the scene unfolding mere feet away from me. The room feels like it’s shrinking, the air thick with pheromones that make my head swim and my body ache with unwanted need.

Logan’s hands are everywhere on Cillian’s body, possessive and demanding. Cillian responds with desperate whimpers that pierce straight through me, triggering my own Omega instincts. I press my thighs together, ashamed of the slick pooling between them.

“Look at him. You can’t imagine how good he feels,” Logan taunts, his eyes finding mine over Cillian’s shoulder. “This is what happens when an Omega submits like they should.”

I tear my gaze away, focusing on counting the cracks in the ceiling. If I could just make my mind go somewhere else, then I can resist the lure he casts. Maybe I can even forget for a few minutes that I desperately wish it was me wrapped up in the arms of an Alpha.

“Maya,” Logan croons. “Come and play. You know you want to.”

Cillian moans as Logan’s teeth graze his neck. The sound makes my insides clench with yearning and something darker I don’t want to name.

Jealousy feels like a distant thing, but it’s there all the same. Twisting and churning inside me like a living organism. Heat might make it impossible to ignore the feeling, but hormones aren’t the true source of that initial pain.

The sharp gasp Cillian makes as Logan finally enters him is so evocative that I might as well have watched it happen. The distinctive sound of flesh slapping in a rhythmic pattern has my body curling in on itself as I fight the urge to push to my knees and present myself.

Logan’s whispered praise and Cillian’s groaned response feel simultaneously like a punch to the gut and a jolt of electric pleasure to my dripping cunt. Need and envy coil inexorably together until it’s impossible to tell one reaction from another.

I bury my face in a pillow that smells disappointingly of no one’s scent but my own. My hands cover my ears, but it isn’t enough to stop me from hearing them. Scenting them. Feeling the vibrations of the floor as they rock back and forth, shaking me with them so I have no choice but to feel like I’m part of it.

Heavy fabric slaps against the back of my head. Cillian’s scent surrounds me as I raise up to see the sweatpants Logan just tossed into my nest, still damp with pre-cum from earlier.

I shove it away with a desperate sound as Logan’s laughter drifts over me.

I force my eyes to squeeze shut, willing it all away.

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