Page 35 of Omega's Virtue: Part One (The Hartwell Sisters Saga 2)
“That is all?”
“Ha. Yes,” I said and knew I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my voice. A brother. Yes, I’d been their elder brother for the longest time. Even when I looked at Beatrice and knew she belonged to me in the most primal way an omega can belong to an alpha. I had held back. We were too young to give into instinct. Until that fateful day when I’d delivered some books to their home. Only Beatrice had been in—clearly on the brink of her heat. It had happened so quickly. One minute I was telling her to get into her room and lock the door, the next I was waking in her nest, my mark on her mating gland, her body warm against mine. But I wouldn’t tell Pax that. Not tonight. “As you know, at nineteen I mated a young omega… And then I could no longer be an older brother to them.”
“Your mate died.”
The words so final, but how else could I explain why other omegas did not attract me like an unmated alpha should? How I didn’t respond to their heats, how I hadn’t experienced a rut in ten years? Even when I shared a beta with Pax, I didn’t go into rut. So I’d explained that my mate had died. Living with that lie for ten years, I’d begun to believe it. Even when my mate stain pulsed with pain, or I found myself rubbing it, I denied that it was because Trix was miles away.
“We were young,” I told him. “In losing her, I lost part of myself. Beatrice Hartwell, like a haunting, reminds me of a time when I had no faith in myself. Well, Pax, now you have all my secrets.”
“You saw the Lovers’ Circle… Do you know who her mate is? Was?” he asked, his voice tight and angry.
“Do you really want to know?” I turned on my side to better parse out his face in the shadows. “Would it make it easier? Better? If you knew who the alpha is or was?”
“I’d kill… What is wrong with me?” he groaned. “Why am I jealous of… someone else’s mate? I shouldn’t respond this way. It isn’t natural.”
“Packs exist for a reason. Multiple alphas drawn to a single omega—it is natural. Perhaps if you were to meet her mate…” My words trailed off. The pieces came together. Of course, he might respond to her like this. I was her mate… And I… I had wanted Pax for long enough to know sharing an omega with him, sharing Trix would be something beautiful and addictive. “Well, maybe you are compatible with that alpha.”
He sat up. Abrupt and precise, he turned his back to me. “Get this damn jacket off me. My shoulder is stiff as my cock when I—” He cut off but a fool would know what, or rather who made him hard.
I tugged his coat off and tossed it on the floor. He lay back with a sigh.
“Why didn’t you bring Meeker?” I asked. Now that I was sitting up, the blankets pooled around my waist and created a tantalising weight on my semi-hard cock.
“He talks too much.”
“You don’t want him meddling?”
“I don’t want him meddling.” He grunted.
“Benedict.” I let his name hang between us. His name acted as a talisman, reminding him of the world outside of his command, brought his full attention to me, only me. When I spoke his name, nothing mattered, his focus turned on me, intent and unwavering.
“You only say…”
“I’m about to warn you. Meeker learnt how to meddle at your side. You egg each other on. And I can’t for the life of me understand why you wouldn’t have him here. It is plain as the nose on my face that you want her. Badly. And not just to dip your wick—“
“You are being vulgar.”
“I’m trying to get through to you, Benedict. You think to make her yours.”
“She has a mate.”
“And I don’t see that stopping you. We agreed, Pax. We agreed that she was wrong for you. But then the first time you meet her sister, instead of walking away you become embroiled in that farce. You… you knew.”
“You could have done something. Stopped me.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Pax.”
“Fine,” he snarled. “Fine. I want her. I am going to make her ours. Do you hear me? Ours. You aren’t allowed to ignore the fact that you want her. And damn her mate for a fool. We will replace the alpha that dared leave her vulnerable.”
“Just because—“
“No. I won’t permit you to tell me to check my own motives and permit you to ignore your own. You want her. Have always wanted her. You smell of her. I can smell her all over you. Do you realise how maddening it is? How I want to tear from you all that you spoke of on the terrace? How hard it is to keep my nose out of what I know is my business? I’ll give you both space to sort out whatever devilry and demons you must address. But I want her between us.” He growled. “The feel of her about me, squeezing my cock.”
Pax’s scent deepened, and I heard him fumble with his breeches. Then, impossibly, his scent became richer—pine clouded my senses. I gritted my teeth against the urge to turn my head and look. But then again, his body was as familiar to me as my own reflection. I didn’t need the soft candlelight of his candle to know he was thick and long or that his erection flushed red at the flared head. Or how his cock drooled precum. I swallowed back the urge to taste. It drove me mad with curiosity, but to touch him and be rejected? I’d never heard him speak or look at another alpha with the same consuming desire he held for the betas we’d fucked.
I blinked at the ceiling, trying to understand his motive. We’d never done anything like this before. Always a beta between us, even if our eyes locked and held the entire time. The temptation to look at him, with his hard cock in his hand and the knot at the base, swollen and ready to fill a tight hole… I squeezed my eyes shut as a phantom image reformed into a fantasy. How would he feel inside of me? How would it feel to have him squeezing down on my cock while I fucked into him? Would he let me? Or was his alpha too dominant?
“You want her too. I can smell you. You want to fuck her as much as I do.” He grunted, and I knew he was fisting himself, dragging one of his large thumbs over the flared head, smearing the precum to better ease his way.