Page 60 of Unlikely Omega

The sounds inside the room have faded to a faint roar, The only sounds I can hear with surprising clarity are those made by her. With lust riding me hard, I see red pulses where she’s kneeling close to me. I see her outline, marked in gold. I think I see her face.

My senses have been showing me things I wasn’t supposed to be able to see for months now, but it’s the first time I see her.

Her eyes, her mouth.

Transfixed, I barely notice when we’re lifted to our feet by the guards, the General and his people still talking.

Then the General says, “Tell Commander Taj to come take them and prepare for the journey to the Summer Capital. Also tell him he’s taking them there personally. They are his responsibility now.”

The words finally seep in and I choke on laughter.

“Why are you laughing?” Ariadne hisses at me as we are hauled out of the tent. “What’s the matter with you?”

“The Commander. Oh man, he’s going to be so pissed. He thought he’d washed his hands clean of us, and now he’s to accompany us and hold our hands so we don’t run away.”

“This isn’t funny, Finn! The Commander doesn’t care if we live or die. He’ll tie us up like hogs and deliver us to the spit without a second thought.”

That makes me laugh harder. I’m not used to laughing and I almost choke again.

“Finn. Have you gone mad?” Her scent has shifted from the sweetness of arousal to the sourness of fear and it clears my head a little.

Just enough to remember what has happened and what is ahead. All the ways I got lost, all the ways I failed.

As I laugh, fury fills me, such complete and utter rage, and it keeps building as we’re dragged down the path to the asshole Commander’s tent.

With a roar, I kick sideways at the guards, follow through with punches—their fault for not tying me up, for not being on their guard, as guards ought to—and fell them.

Of course, by then more guards come at me and I fight them but four of them are too much for me at this stage. I’d somehow forgotten I’m frozen to the bone and bruised and bleeding all over.

Cursing, the guards tie me up like a sausage and carry me to the Commander’s tent, leaving Ariadne and the rest to follow. They bring me into the tent and drop me to the ground without ceremony. A cry escapes me as bruised bones and open cuts hit the rugs, but I manage to keep quiet after that, panting through the pain, trying to get my bearings.

It’s been a while since I lost it like that—though since I met Ariadne, it has been happening more and more, my control a thing of the past.

I’m on my side, still tied up, when they bring her in and shove her down beside me. I hear the thud of her knees hitting the rug, her sharp breath intake.

At least the Commander isn’t here. The tent is quiet. My head fucking hurts, as much as my chest and my balls that feel like stones tied to my cock. I’m battered inside and out, fucking shattered and crushed.

I expect her to cuss me out but she’s silent long enough for me to start worrying something’s wrong. Strange how that manages to get me out of my own head. I struggle to sit up and I jerk when she touches me.

But she only helps me sit. “Why did you go batshit like that for no reason?”

“No reason? Are you serious?”

She sighs and starts working on the knots binding my wrists. “I swear, if I have to untie you one more time…” It’s a simple knot, apparently, because in no time the ropes fall off. “Look, you can’t… you go from stoic and still to a storm without transition. You were laughing, Finn, frigging laughing in there—and then you tried to kill your guards. What gives?”

That starts me laughing again and it’s such a foreign sound coming out of me that I wonder if this is a nightmare.

She slaps my chest, then, and I stop. “What the hell, Finn?”

Fuck.

I tear at the knot binding my ankles with my fingers and stagger to my feet. “What do you want from me, Ari?”

“Consistency? Some idea of how you’re feeling? What you’re thinking? Apart from the ‘I’m a priest, I don’t do sex but fight like a madman’ part. Though, I suppose those aren’t thoughts but who you are.”

“What thoughts do you want to hear about, then? About my doubts, about the urges I can’t suppress no matter how I try? How I try not to want you and keep failing?”

“Finn—”

---