Why wasn't he mounting her? she wondered. The past two times, it had been damned painful—agonizing, really—and uncomfortable and awful and horrible for her, but at least he had gotten to the worst of it quickly. What was he waiting for? She couldn't imagine, but she hated how he was touching her. It was much worse than the act itself, especially for her sense of self, which was teetering precariously on the brink of being conquered by him—not because of the terrible punishments, which she didn't like but she at least understood his reasoning for, or the excruciatingly intimate act of mating, which she acknowledged there was a natural drive for, too. It was this tender treatment that she couldn't stand!

His hands on her were gentle and soft; he was caressing her now, touching her as if she was something precious to him, and it was driving her crazy! She knew that could not have been further from the truth. Oh, she supposed, if what he had labeled her as was really what she was, he might consider that she had some value to him. She knew that omegas were very highly prized by Alphas.

But she had yet to come to grips with that, since everything had happened so quickly. And that didn't negate the fact that there were no true feelings behind what he was doing—he didn't love her.

No one ever had. Why would he be different, just because he considered himself to be her Alpha? No one had ever done anything for her. She had spent her life trying to stop people—men—from doing things to her. Everything she'd achieved, she'd done so herself—every single bit of it.

And now, he was flat out telling her that all of that was gone and couching it as if that should be something she was proud of—that her body had risen up against her and gotten her a mate she'd never desired. She didn't want—or expect—him to do anything for her, except that which she knew he would never do, which was to let her go.

And yet he persisted with that annoyingly relaxing purl of his continuing to emanate from deep in his chest, reverberating such that she could feel it against her back because of the way he was holding her. She was surprised to realize that he was trying not to touch her breasts, which were still throbbing and stinging badly in the aftermath of that horrible chastisement he'd put her through, as was the rest of her. It wasn't a punishment. It wasn't discipline—she'd seen both in her days in his service.

Despite how ruthlessly he had conducted it, the undertones he gave it had made her feel as if she was a naughty, misbehaving child, and she hated that almost worse than the strokes of fire that he had laid viciously across her skin.

And now he was enticing her, with his sounds and his words worming their way into her consciousness and his hands tantalizing and teasing her with that which she didn't know, that she was sure was a fool's pursuit that would get her nowhere but further under his thumb. But her body—and her mind, by now—were tangled up within themselves, and she felt adrift, with no way to right herself, as he lay there, coercing her into giving herself to him, so that she wouldn't have to think or worry about any of that.

She would simply have to submit to him, as her Alpha, to give him the power to spank or whip her whenever he preferred, to give her rules about how she would act, to take away her freedom and plant his seed within her very body—or try to at every given opportunity.

All of this seemed designed to his advantage. There was very little to nothing in it for her.

But as his hands began to travel over her, touching here and there, always stroking softly, imparting absolutely no pain to her whatsoever, she could feel resolve to resist him beginning to weaken, to seep insidiously away from her. The will to get away from touches that coaxed her desires to the forefront as easily as his did was a hard thing to maintain, especially as he very carefully began to caress just the swollen tips of each of her breasts.

When she finally lost control and cried out at that—not in anger, not in defiance, but in deep frustration—she unconsciously crossed her thighs tightly together to try to stop the terrible throbbing between them that seemed to get worse by the second. And, in that moment, Zerk knew he had her well on the way to where he wanted her to be. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't be fast with her. It couldn't be, and he felt he understood that about her. He couldn't support her opposition to his dominance of her, of course, but he knew why she did what she did.

But he was confident that he would win, in the end. She couldn't hold out forever, and he was more than patient enough to wait her out, to unleash a deluge of attentions—some very pleasant, some very much not so, some she might grow to want, some she would probably always wish to resist and resent, whether or not she did—that were designed to bind her to him in other ways, besides breeding her. Being as confined and restricted and utterly dependent upon him as he intended to keep her wasn't going to set well with her, especially at first, but he would do his best to make sure that she was distracted while he was with her and well controlled when he wasn't.

He wasn't a man to make the same mistake twice. She would be well secured before he set foot outside his quarters.

Zerk didn't allow her to keep her legs crossed, inserting just his foot between her calves, insistently at first, her strength no match for his so she couldn't help but yield to him. He kept her legs open to him—in one way or the other—from that point on, seeing it as an important way to demonstrate that she was no longer in charge of even such a simple thing about herself.

Cat tried to close them again around his thick thigh, but that just created the unwanted effect of pressing that hairy, muscular appendage up against the most delicate and mindlessly greedy part of her, christening his leg generously as she leaked her fluids constantly onto it. She couldn't stop that from happening, which was something she was incredibly mortified about, and his deep chuckle didn't help.

"That's a good little girl. You should always be leaky and wet for me, but even more when you're in heat, when you need to be bred by your Alpha."

"No! I'm not going to let you do that horrible thing to me again!" She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, especially since they just made him laugh at her again.

"Please continue to try to stop me, my tiny kitten. Very little would delight me more than that."

She knew that—not that the knowledge had stopped her from making an utter fool of herself in front of him, quite consistently trying to free herself since he'd abducted her. So, Cat resolved to simply not respond to him, in any way. She'd played dead on occasion, when the need had arisen, and she was quite good at it, she thought. She could go away, to a much more pleasant place in her agile mind, completely divorcing herself from what was happening around her.

But when she'd done that, she'd had her body under her control, and the combination of her own frightening, undeniable desires and the way he was touching her—encouraging her body to follow his lead rather than her own—rendered her plan damned near moot.

She quickly found that she couldn't concentrate while his hands stroked over her body as if he was playing some kind of instrument that he knew very well, and she couldn't keep herself from whimpering softly as he rubbed the callused tips of his fingers over nipples he'd already sensitized and that were swollen to twice their normal size just because of his presence near her.

Her resolve not to acknowledge what he was doing to her lasted a shamefully short amount of time, once his thumb and forefingers first gently pinched then began to slowly tug at her tits.

"Stop—please!" she whispered, biting her tongue when she realized how pathetic she sounded to her own ears, never mind his! It wasn't a plea; it was a groan of aching desire!

"No, baby. This is how it should be for you—and mostly will be. Your body wants me, and I will have it, any time I choose. You welcome me and entice me with your scent and the pungent honey between your legs. I will be at you, day and night, and—unless you've been naughty—I will make you love what I do to you. I will make you beg me for it."

Zerk was emboldened by the responses she was giving him and he meant every word he said. Each groan or sigh or sizzled in breath was just that much more arousing to him because he knew how much she wished she wasn't feeling anything at all from his attentions. But she would soon come to love it, or love to come, either way. He could overwhelm her resistance, simply by touching her and by encouraging her body to do the work for him, which it was only too eager to do.

She was still lying with her back to his front as he felt the tremendous heat from her well lashed bum and thighs, combined with that which radiated naturally from her swollen folds. As he turned her onto her back, making her gasp from the pain that naturally resulted from that position, his fingers traveled down to replace the thigh she had been riding. Anticipating that she might try to close her legs again, he used that same damp leg to part them again merely by claiming the closest of her small thighs, looping his leg around hers and holding it captive.

"Spread your other leg for me, Cat," he ordered quietly, and as gently as it was issued, his command tone shone inevitably through his words.

"Never!" she responded with nowhere near the vehemence she'd intended.

"Your namesake is about five feet away. I wonder how many strokes it would take on the fronts of your thighs and that pretty lower belly of yours to get you to obey me? And then I would have to whip your naughty little bits, too, of course."

Groaning and blasting air out of her mouth in deep frustration, Cat reluctantly separated her right leg from the left one he had ownership of at the moment.

"Bend it at the knee and keep it firmly against the mattress at all times. Despite how I'm going to make you feel in a few minutes, I won't hesitate to use the cat on the very same area, and I assure you that it will hurt twice as badly if you've been pleasured beforehand."

She almost scoffed. Pleasured. Yeah, sure. There was no such component in the proceedings for her. But when his hand rested atop that humiliatingly wide open and overwrought area, she could almost begin to believe him, but not quite. It took all she had not to raise her hips and press her most private self into that big paw of his.

Zerk felt her check the move, though, smiling to himself and knowing that there was a good chance he was going to get exactly what he wanted from her. It would take time and probably more patience than he could rightfully claim he possessed, but in the end, he was determined that she would be his—body, mind, and soul.

And she would be more than worth the effort and the wait, he'd already decided. What children the two of them would make, of warrior stock on both sides!

But he tried not to get ahead of himself. Driving her out of her mind by playing up—and playing with—her own needs and desires needed to be foremost on his mind at this moment.

So, he deliberately took his time, letting her body pave the way for him, knowing it could only help his cause. She was drenched down there, and his entire hand was slickened immediately, but he contented himself with teasing her—issuing only the most delicate of touches and never really where she wanted them—not that you would know it by her. He could tell that Cat had steeled herself against him again and was determined not to let him know that he was getting to her, but he couldn't miss the signs her body readily showed him, however subtle.

He heard her emit another frustrated sigh that he didn't even think she knew she'd made, but he had attuned himself to everything about her. Amping up the volume and frequency of his purring earned him another, but he felt her relax almost immediately afterwards, too.

Nothing she was trying was helping her get away from him—even if it was just into her mind. He was driving her crazy with those tentative, tepid caresses as he held her open for his exploration of her most intimate places, but she refused to let him know how he was making her feel.

She couldn't want him to cup her, couldn't possibly want to beg him to let his fingers slip between her folds, and she definitely couldn't stand the idea that he might find again that spot he had before, in that special spot only he seemed to know about that had made her feel entirely too good. No, she didn't want any of that.

But, at the same time, her body was making her feel as if she had to have it or she might die! Her heart was pounding, her skin—even the unscourged parts—was hot and tight, and she had an almighty, distressingly unavoidable craving to be touched there, which was bad enough, but it had to be by him, for some wholly unacceptable reason! She couldn't think about anything else!

It was as if he was reading the remnants of her mind as his low, rumbling voice seeped into her ears. "I'm going to touch you there now, Cat. You know where." He put actions to words as he spoke. "I'm the only man who will ever do this to you—where my fingers are now is mine. More mine, even, than yours."

He was all wet and slippery, and she didn't even care as he slid them over her.

A long, satisfied sigh seeped out of her as his fingers began to stroke that very special bit of her, much as they had before.

"I know you don't believe me, but there is something wonderful in our mating for you, too, that only I can bring to you. Something that will make you crave it even more than you do now, that will help put that busy mind of yours to rest and will make you behave much better than you have, because you won't want to leave me and what I can give you."

He chuckled. "I hope it doesn't make you too docile, though. I thoroughly enjoyed disciplining you—not that I will ever need a reason to spank you."

Those words should have made her furious, but it seemed that—when he was touching her there—nothing could faze her, not even that outrageous statement. She was already providing him with the evidence to back his words.

Very quickly, nearly all of her bravado and bluster and rebellion and resistance left her, and the only thing she cared about was that he wouldn't stop what he was doing, even though he had driven—was driving—her out of her mind.

And then he stopped, and, had she been free to do so, she would have grabbed for him, for his arm, at the very least. As it was, all she could do was mewl and writhe pitifully as he purred at her to calm her while he rearranged himself so that he was lying between those beautiful thighs of hers, the weeping head of his cock already nuzzling the dripping entrance to her body.

But Zerk felt her stiffen and try to pull away from him when he did that, the hypnotic spell he had carefully crafted around her dissolving in the face of the pain she knew he meant to inflict on her again as she tried—however futilely—to close her legs to him, but it was much too late for her. It had become too late for her the moment in his office that he'd recognized that she was coming into heat.

Instead of getting angry, though, he cupped her cheek gently in his hand. "Shhh, little girl. It should be easier for you to take me this time as you get used to being bred and your body learns to conform to my size more easily. Yes, there will be pain when I hook you and when we are knotted together, but I promise that even those things you dread now will only enhance things for you later."

She stared up at him through lust filled eyes she could no longer focus, trying to decide whether or not to believe him, and then Cat realized that it didn't really matter whether or not she believed him. He was going to do that horrendous thing that her body craved even more this time than ever before, again. She was more helpless and less able to defend herself than she had been since she was the little girl he kept teasingly calling her. And she hated that almost worse than any other part of this whole bizarre turn of events.

This time, though, he didn't just shove himself into her and fuck her in a manner that seemed designed to be as uncomfortable for her as possible. Instead, he eased himself into her bit by bit—and it wasn't good and it wasn't pleasant; it was excruciatingly fantastic and she never wanted it to end. That overwhelming feeling of those sensitive folds being forced open around him, of being invaded and claimed and taken—even though it was everything she would have railed against at any other time—had her actually canting her hips beneath him, trying to get him to move more quickly.

Of course, that drew a short, sharp chuckle that splashed a bit of cold water on her excitement, but it didn't abate for long.

"Someone's gotten quite eager, hasn't she?" he teased, not moving any more quickly, and in fact, holding her hips down so that there was no chance that she was going to have any say in how quickly he took her.

Cat nearly shrieked in a deep frustration she knew she shouldn't want to feel, but he simply grinned down at her in that insufferable manner he had, and she gathered whatever shreds of will and dignity she still had around her and forced herself not to struggle to do that which she would have sworn a few minutes ago that she never would.

But she couldn't stop herself from releasing a long, satisfied groan when he finally claimed as much of her as he physically could, even though he was bumping up against something within her that actually hurt her a bit every time he did it.

Still, it was wondrously magnificent to have every inch of herself utterly filled, which only added to her passionate arousal, to the deep aches he seemed to conjure effortlessly within her and not relieving any of them.

Then that palm was on her cheek again, and he tilted her eyes to his. "Take a deep breath."

She could barely understand what he meant before all of that too good to be true pleasure dissolved as if it had never been, and she found herself caught again, in that agonizing way he'd done every time. He pressed himself into her, and her greatly increased sensitivity to him made Cat feel as if he was trying to tear her apart from the inside. Tears flooded her eyes again, much more readily than they would have before.

Zerk saw her eyes fill then overflow, seeping down into her hairline and beyond, since she didn't have much in the way of hair to stop it. That had a strange, unexpected effect on him, making him want to soothe her almost as much as he wanted to fuck her. And he knew just how to best accomplish both of those things.

Big fingers found their way back to where they had been before he'd possessed her, to where he could christen them and apply them to a clit that he was becoming deliciously familiar with, and that—despite her obvious pain—he could tell was nonetheless much larger than it had been when he'd left it. Flicking the rough tips of two fingers over the very tip of the nose of her clit had her moving beneath him in a way that had to be hurting her, considering the sharp anchor he'd embedded within one of the most sensitive parts of her body, but she didn't seem to notice.

He felt as if he'd discovered a very valuable treasure as he began to move slowly within her, the tip of his cock nudging her cervix with each motion. That had her groaning and trying to move away from him at first, but eventually, she began to enjoy even that, panting nearly as hard as he was as he held himself back in order to increase her pleasure.

Zerk continued to brush and rub and pluck and tease her where she most wanted him to, even if she could never admit it, as his cock moved, and thus, the barb she'd suffered through him seating in short, sharp thrusts. He knew she was much more caught up in her heat—in the web of need and desire and passion—than she had been with him. It was a transformation unlike any other he'd ever seen, played out on her face and in the unmistakable responses of her body.

Even being pierced by him aroused her to no end now, even if—or perhaps because—it still had to hurt her on some level, while it stimulated her body's already greatly increased hormones to receive his seed and prepare itself to breed.

The difference in how her body was reacting to him—not just there, but everywhere—was incredible. She was more relaxed and pliant, and because of that, he could feel that she was taking every bit of him for the first time, really, his tight balls nudging her lips with each stroke.

The moment wasn't far away, though, when he wouldn't be able to move much at all anymore, and he wanted her to have found her release at least once before that. So, he began to flick that little nub with more purpose, watching her avidly as she couldn't help but move herself—as much as she could, which wasn't much—beneath him. She tugged at her wrists, her head rolling restlessly back and forth, eyes heavy lidded and mostly closed at first, although the closer she got to her climax, the wider they opened.

Cat looked a bit frightened as he continued to stroke her, and he knew she didn't understand what was happening to her, so he began to purl at her again, which he had eased off of while she was so involved in her own ecstasy, and the terrified look receded from her eyes. Mostly, anyway.

Zerk could feel her muscles gathering and tightening and knew she was very close. "That's it, baby. Here it is. This is for you; this is what I can—and will—bring you to every time I have you. Don't fight it—just let it happen, and I'll make it as good for you as I can."

And he made it damned good—too damned good!

She wasn't quite sure what he was driving her to, but Cat again acknowledged to herself that it didn't really matter—she was going there whether she wanted to or not. And it seemed to be quite a pleasant ride, despite the accompanying pain, and, for once, she did as he suggested and tried to just let it—whatever "it" was—happen.

It was well worth trusting him enough to do that. She was wound just about as tightly as she had ever been in her life. All of a sudden—as he surged powerfully into her, jostling that piercing quite a bit, but it was simply added into the enormous pile of sensations—he let go of the string he'd held her with. She burst within herself in devastating spasms of complete ecstasy that seemed to translate to him, too, if his groans were anything to judge by while she clamped down on him strongly with each contraction, sometimes to the point of disabling him for a long moment, until she unclenched.

Since he continued to fondle her in just the right way, somehow, even the knotting, which had been hard on her before in a different way from the other thing—felt good to her as she found herself expanding tightly around him, fit to him as closely as a second skin, the discomfort she inevitably felt as she contracted only heightening her lustful neediness.

Under the expert touch of his surprisingly delicate fingers, she careened wildly from one peak to another, and they only seemed to increase in strength. He didn't let her even begin to come down until he was nearly drained—which happened more quickly than usual because of how the strength of her spasms served to milk his spunk out of him. And he carefully, deliberately, didn't separate them as he might have but merely turned them so that he could fit her into the curve of his body. She found herself literally surrounded and still somewhat impaled by the most potent and powerful Alpha male in the known world.

Cat couldn't think—couldn't even begin to try to think—and when he began to rock her and that rumbling began in his chest again, all she could do was surrender to and even welcome how it soothed and calmed her. His hands were never idle as he touched every bit of her as if he was going to leave some sort of indelible imprint on her body that proclaimed his ownership of her, but it felt reassuring and was just what she needed at that moment. Cat might have protested—had she been in her right mind—that she didn't need any of that stuff and particularly not to be rocked by him, which he began almost immediately. But then again, no. Even if she had been sane, she wouldn't have asked him to stop that. It felt too damned good.

He was talking to her. She couldn't fathom the words yet, but the sound of his voice was almost as relaxing as the purring, so she allowed herself—just this once—to indulge in letting him make her feel good. And she did that, better than she might have wanted to, considering the circumstances.

She had no mind for protests and defiance, at least for the moment. She wished he'd give her her arms back, but she surprised herself by acknowledging why he might not, and she didn't dwell on that restriction he had placed on her. His arms were warm and strong around her, and for once, she didn't feel bad about being small. There was a veritable fortress of protective Alpha flesh around her, and for the first time in her life—in eighteen long, hard fought years—she actually let her guard down.

Zerk felt it when it happened. It truly stunned him that she had done that. He closed his arms around her gently, always cognizant of his size and strength and her lack of both, no matter how invincible she liked to think she was.