Page 18 of Bewitched

L ayla lifted her head as she heard a knock on the front door. Her nose was buried in Roan’s silky curls, breathing in his winter snow scent. He had bullied his way back into the room after Nora had left, and though he couldn’t purr, he sure could growl loud enough to keep Jaxon exiled to the living room.

Roan had put her and Kaiser to bed, covering them and curling up over the covers to keep them warm. Kaiser and Layla clung to each other deep in their own misery while Roan remained a warm sentinel over them.

Layla might have slept, but she wasn’t sure. Time was a messy, bloated thing that didn’t make much sense anymore. Logically, she knew that she had only been gone for a few days, that her dorm room was still packed with her things, and that Helena might be worried but wouldn’t be quite concerned yet. But it still felt like it had been forever since she had seen the omega dorms, and she felt like if she went back now, she would find her things rotted away to dust.

Her chest bloomed with anger, and Layla winced. Through the closed door, she heard Jaxon’s raised voice, and Roan growled.

There were more voices, higher pitched, louder.

Layla whimpered.

“That’s Georgia,” Kaiser said and quickly left the bed.

Layla shuddered. She didn’t want to go out there, not while Jaxon was angry, but the argument was about her. It was always about her now. She’d rather go back to being ignored and unimportant, living her small life going to school and thinking about parties but never actually attending them. She actually missed homework. At least homework was something normal, something she was used to and knew how to deal with.

Roan followed Kaiser, and Layla reluctantly got to her feet to follow them both.

They arrived at the living room to find a tense standoff between Georgia and Jaxon.

Georgia was standing tall in her blue suit. Her blazer was loose enough to hide a weapon like she had seen Mina wear so many times. It wasn’t a good sign.

“She’s not going anywhere,” Jaxon said.

Georgia stood straighter, attempting to look taller. “They aren’t taking her from you, but her father is demanding to see to her safety.”

Layla hugged herself. Her father was here. Her Alpha. Not that he really counted as her Alpha. Her mother had never allowed it. Any hint of omega instinct was stomped out quickly and redirected to a perfectly beta response.

She didn’t know what to do now, with every alpha releasing a heavy scent of aggression. She didn’t want another fight, but she didn’t have the energy to step into the middle and stop them again.

Layla whimpered.

Jaxon growled automatically and whipped his head around to look at her. She took a step back, disturbed by the aching rage in her chest, all of it coming from him. He shoved his way past Kaiser and Roan, grabbing her arm before she could retreat, and his rage immediately calmed at the contact.

Layla tensed, trying to process the emotional whiplash, but she sank into his embrace as he tugged her closer, giving in at an alarmingly quick speed. He sniffed at her hair and rumbled in a half-purr, half-growl. She couldn’t tell whether he was truly angry, and really, she was too exhausted to untangle it.

Jaxon wiped his wrist across her cheek, and she flicked out her tongue to taste him, bringing his cinnamon-spiced pheromones into her mouth. She felt like she had gone too long without.

Jaxon hummed in approval. “I don’t have to do anything,” he told Georgia.

Holden grunted in agreement and beckoned Roan closer to his side. Roan reluctantly slinked away from Layla and fell into place under Holden’s hand.

Kaiser remained resolutely between the two tense alphas.

“If you don’t see them, they threatened to call the police,” Georgia said.

“Call them!” Jaxon snapped, and Layla flinched. He turned back to her and rubbed the scent gland on her neck. “Shh, kitten.”

“They don’t know about your brother,” Clover said. He was leaning against the damaged front door. “Or Garret. What you did is within your rights, but that takes time to untangle, and you’ll sit in a cell until they do.”

Jaxon growled, and Layla felt sick. She didn’t want to be away from Jaxon. Not so soon, not now. Panic crawled up her throat, choking her. She tapped her fingers rapidly on Jaxon’s arm, and he brushed her hair back from her face. Even then, his soothing scent and touch weren’t working, the fear too great an obstacle.

Roan sighed. “I’ll go down. I smell like her enough that it should keep Dad calm for a while. I don’t know about Shera.”

“That won’t hold them for long,” Georgia said. “Shera Nash is threatening legal action anyway. I knew this would end badly.”

“Georgia,” Kaiser admonished.

Layla could feel her breath slipping away with each attempt to fill her lungs. Air stuck in her nostrils, barely getting further than her throat. They were going to take her away. Her father had every reason to act the alpha and demand her return. Her mother would see to it. Layla would never leave her house again, trapped under her mother’s authority as much as she was trapped under Jaxon’s.

She was barely allowed out into the world the first time. Shera had always been afraid that Layla would be stolen—that’s exactly what happened. Oh gods, she was stolen. Her mother had been right in the worst way. Layla could have remained with her parents and could have been safe at home all this time, and none of this would have happened. But she’d be miserable and lonely and slowly dying—

“Omega,” Jaxon whispered. “Breathe.”

There was a Command behind his words, and for once, she was grateful for it. With his permission, she could fill her lungs, and her head cleared to a low buzz instead of a screaming roar.

Georgia growled.

Jaxon patted Layla’s cheek, “Good girl.”

“It’ll never stick,” Kaiser interrupted. “No court would separate a mated pair.”

Jaxon tried to tip Layla’s head up to look into her face, but everything sort of swam in and out of focus. She tried to concentrate on the grey pools where his eyes should be, but everything kept getting fuzzy and seemed like a blur.

Georgia huffed. “It doesn’t matter what sticks. It’s the shitshow they are trying to stir anyway.”

Georgia was right. They were going to take her away. Shera wouldn’t stop until her daughter was separated from Jaxon. Layla’s stomach was still crawling up her throat, roiling unhappily. Layla squeezed her Alpha’s wrist. “I’m going to be sick.”

Jaxon grimaced, releasing her, and Layla ran for the bathroom.

She fell to her knees in front of the toilet and emptied her stomach.

Jaxon yelled at Georgia and Clover, cursing and growling, and Layla listened to the whole host of guests shuffle out of the apartment. She wished the omegas could have stayed, but she didn’t have any right to their time.

Layla slumped to the floor, laying her forehead against the cool tile. She was hot and weak, sweat beading on her forehead. She tried to shove down the fear, lock it away so she could concentrate, but she could only think of her father’s disappointment and her mother’s wild anger.

They would hate her so much for taking a mate like this, going into heat, being a whore. They probably already did.

Shera Nash was going to be a wild animal. The same way she always was when omegas did anything outside her worldview. Layla had learned to live within it, but she couldn’t any longer. Jaxon would never allow it.

The bathroom door swung open, and Jaxon stood before her. She turned slightly to see him fully, spreading herself out over the cool tile as she did. He looked tired, too. It was the first time she really looked at him like this, assessing more than his mood. There was bruising under his eyes from exhaustion and not Axel’s fists, but those had done a number on his health, too. The skin of his chest was mottled green, purple, and blue between his tattoos. This week had been stressful for him as well. He had spent the last several days caring for her with little sleep and less sustenance.

Layla had not helped in the least, and she was still unsure how she felt about that, about how this mating came to be, beginning in violence. She hoped it wouldn’t end that way.

Jaxon sat on the floor beside her, dropping heavily onto his butt. He felt her forehead with his palm. “You alright?”

She grimaced. “I don’t like bacon anymore.”

He chuckled, stroking her back.

She reached for his closest body part, touching his foot and wrapping her hand around his ankle when he didn’t protest. His skin was soft and thin under her fingers. “We have to go down there,” she said.

He ran his fingernails down her back, lightly scratching between her shoulder blades. She could feel his frustration in her chest, smell it in the air like burning rubber. “We can let them rot.”

“They’re my parents,” she argued.

“They’re nothing to me,” he said blandly, a statement of fact.

Layla cringed and looked away. She loved her parents. They had raised her and cared for her and loved her all these long years, and this is how she repaid them, by being stolen and wanting to remain stolen. She wanted to reject everything her parents raised her to be and live with the alpha who kidnapped her off the street and bred her — mated her.

She was awful.

Jaxon slid his hand to the back of her neck, squeezing lightly. “Whatever you are thinking, kitten, enough.”

Her lip trembled, and her eyes blurred with tears. She sat up and scooted closer to him, and Jaxon quickly scooped her into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her hard, exactly the way she liked, and she tucked her face into his vibrating chest.

He readily nuzzled at her exposed mating gland, still swollen and sore from his numerous bites. He was going to bite her again; she could feel it in the bond they shared and in the scent of arousal leaching into his natural smell.

Layla shivered. Arousal licked languidly along her nerves, stirring her blood. She wanted him to bite her, flood her body with want for him. Arousal and need and dripping wet desire. She wanted him to make her feel it.

Jaxon licked at her neck, teeth pressing into her skin, but never where she wanted him. His large hand slid under her shirt to stroke her bare skin, finding a breast to cup and squeeze. He rolled her nipple between his fingers softly until it peaked, and then he pinched.

She whimpered and opened her mouth against his chest, pressing her teeth into him through his shirt. He groaned and finally bit at her mating gland, forcing a flood of chemicals into her bloodstream.

Layla squealed and wiggled in his grasp. She was wet and dripping. Not the wet sliding slick of her heat, but the normal wetness that gathered when she touched herself at night, a light tingling that was familiar and comfortable.

Her nipples tingled, and her core ached, two dueling points of an itch she couldn’t quite scratch. She spread her legs wide around him and tried to grind down on his thick cock, but she couldn’t sit still enough to work her cunt against him. She needed more.

She pressed her forehead against his chest and lifted her hips. She reached for her core, sliding her hand under the waistband of her leggings and dipping into the wetness gathered between her legs. She touched her clit, swollen with blood and sore from days of stimulation, but she couldn’t stop now.

Jaxon growled in her ear. “Didn’t I tell you not to touch yourself?”

Her hand stilled. He had said that when her heat first began, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Disappointment clenched her chest, but she couldn’t tell where her emotions ended and Jaxon’s began. “I’m not in heat.”

He grunted and pulled her hand away, replacing it with his own. “I didn’t mean just when you are in heat, kitten. I mean always.” He chuckled, but it was rough and dark. The laugh of an alpha. “You’re always finding a way around my rules.”

She almost pulled away and curled up to hide. She had fucked up all over again, but the sensation coming from him was amusement, joy. She realized he was teasing her in that alpha way of his, aggressive and rude, and she allowed herself to relax in his embrace.

Jaxon brushed his fingers through her heat, wetting his fingers before dipping one inside of her sex.

Layla hissed and rose away from the pressure and the sharp tickling pain. She grabbed his shoulders to steady herself, bringing her breasts in front of his face, and he nipped at her there, too, wetting her shirt and setting her skin to fire.

She wiggled and flinched, gasping at the new sensations she was feeling without the added misery of her heat. It was unexpectedly powerful all on its own.

“Jaxon,” she whined, needing more of him.

He chuckled into her breasts. “Settle, kitten,” he said. “Are you going to let me play?”

She nodded deliriously. She felt dizzy and distant like she had during her heat, but she wasn’t confused, just overwhelmed with sensation.

“Say, ‘yes, Alpha,’” Jaxon said.

“Yes, Alpha,” she repeated automatically, and it didn’t make her spine tense. He was her Alpha. She was his Omega.

Layla moaned as Jaxon plunged his finger in and out of her. Fucking her. The description was so base, but that was what he was doing. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, and her knees slipped across the tile floor.

She was hot and cold at the same time, trying to burrow into his heat as well as trying to get away from his hands.

He grabbed the back of her neck, forcing her to stay in one place while her hips flexed. His fingers didn’t follow her rhythm, annoyingly taking up their own.

“Damnit,” she moaned, “Alpha, please.”

Jaxon growled again, and she could feel the vibration in her bones. “Hold still.”

She forced herself to still, but her thighs trembled to hold her up. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck, breathing in his pheromones and letting them make her wetter.

He continued to fuck her with his finger, continued to tease her, pressing his thumb against her pubic bone instead of her clit where she dearly needed him. He left her wanting as she gasped. She didn’t know if she could come before she was a messy crying puddle.

“Please,” she begged.

Jaxon continued to fuck her slowly, stroking his other hand down her side. “Are you going to touch yourself again?”

She squeezed her knees against his hips. “No!”

His lips were at her ear, quiet, firm, and demanding. “Are you going to ask me when you need to be touched?”

“Yes, Alpha,” she said and thrust her hips against his hand. “Please, touch me. I— I’m sorry.”

“None of that now. You’re a perfect little omega. My good girl.”

She nodded against his neck, the praise relaxing her and intensifying the situation all at once.

“There you go,” he said. He moved his thumb to flick across her clit, and she yelped, squeezing him tighter.

He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in tight to his chest, and flicked his thumb over her clit rapidly. Layla squirmed in his lap, panting against his neck, tasting the salt and sweat of his skin. Pheromones burst across her tongue as she found his scent gland heavy with cinnamon and bitter musk.

Layla groaned and tensed and burst.

She cried out as she came, dripping slick over his hand and spilling it into her leggings. She trembled and twitched as each wave sent another trickle of slick from her body and another one of pleasure up her spine.

Layla held on to him as hard as she could, and Jaxon cradled her against his chest, nursing her through the aftershocks that didn’t feel any less powerful than the ones she had when she was in heat.

It felt so good. She felt so good. Wet and messy, but relieved and satiated.

Jaxon pulled his hand from her pants, and she sunk into his lap. She could feel his cock thick and hard under her, begging for attention. She nuzzled into his chest, listening to his rapid heartbeat, his panting breaths.

She should touch him. Omegas did that for their Alphas. She couldn’t allow him to remain uncomfortable and frustrated.

Her hand shook as she reached for his cock. He was warm under her palm, and his thick meat twitched as she gripped him through his pants.

Jaxon grunted and pulled her hand away. “Leave it; I don’t want to be slow and stupid.”

“Oh,” she said, and her cheeks heated.

Jaxon raised his slick-covered fingers to his lips to lick himself clean, and Layla sniffed at his hand. It held a different scent now, musky instead of sweet, the pheromones alluring instead of revolting. She wanted to lick his hand, lick into his mouth to chase her own flavor.

She leaned forward to taste, but the telephone rang, breaking the spell. Layla leaned back, away from him.

Jaxon squeezed her hip. “That’ll be reinforcements. Fuck.” He stood, wiping his wrist across her shoulder as he went.

Layla watched him go, but she consoled herself that he wasn’t far. She could still hear him speaking lowly into the receiver. She wasn’t alone. He wasn’t going to leave her alone. She had to get that through her head.

She pulled at her leggings and grimaced at the wet mess. Even a beta would be able to smell her, and she wondered if that was Jaxon’s objective. He meant for her to go into their meeting smelling relaxed, satisfied, and thoroughly his.

It was a nice boost of confidence to her omega hindbrain, but it was less than proper to actually go out soaked in slick and smelling fucked out.

Layla stood and opened the mirrored medicine cabinet before she could see herself. She didn’t want to deal with that again, to see what a shadow creature she had become in just a few days, but she could clean up.

Small steps.

There was a single toothbrush beside the sink, and she used it to brush her teeth before she could think much about it. Jaxon’s mouth had already been everywhere on her. He’d cleaned up her vomit more than once. He could deal with her stealing his toothbrush.

She scrubbed her face with a washcloth and a mild cleansing lotion she found on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet. She rubbed her thumb over the half-used jar. It was for delicate skin or scarring, like the ones over Jaxon’s face and scalp.

Oh.

She’d never thought about his scars as something he had to take care of. Just as another tool he used to bully and dominate everyone around him, a visible reflection of his bitter soul. But maybe the bitterness had come later, forced onto him as being perfect had been forced onto her.

They were two sides of the same damaged coin, broken inside and out.

She left the bathroom to find her bag of clothes that smelled vaguely like Mina and changed into a fresh outfit before Jaxon could stop her. She was sure he would. Despite smelling like him, he still wanted to put his stamp on her for everyone to see in every way he could.

She had always known that Jaxon would be aggressive, dominant, and overbearing — all alphas were, and Jaxon doubly so. She hadn’t expected the affection, the fondness, the tenderness. It was strangely foreign to her for alphas to act with such care.

And it was care. Most of the things he had done had been with her in mind as his omega and mate, though she hadn’t been too happy about quite a bit of it.

Layla rubbed her face. She just wanted to sleep some more, preferably with Jaxon wrapped around her. She didn’t want to think about what she had done or what would happen to her now. She didn’t want to see her parents or defend herself against them.

She hardly knew what she wanted now. She wanted Alpha now, but what if that changed? Jaxon wanted her, but what if she was too much? What if he was too much for her? It was all so ephemeral, and yet all the solutions had to be so permanent.

Jaxon leaned against the bedroom doorframe. He looked over her new outfit with a scowl, but she refused to be cowed over this decision.

“That was Damian,” he finally said. “He can’t hold them off any longer.” He snorted. “He can, but he doesn’t want to.”

Layla nodded. She knew it was coming, and she tried to shore up her nerves against it.

Jaxon held his hand out and beckoned her closer, but she shook her head. He glared, lifting his lip for a moment in an aborted snarl.

She chewed at her lip for a moment. She couldn’t just go down there blind. He said a lot of things in the throes of her heat. He may still smell like her slick, but that didn’t mean he would resist Aslin Nash when the older alpha was growling in his face or be able to withstand the sheer wild wrath of Shera Nash.

She rubbed her hands together and couldn’t quite look at him as she asked, “Are you going to give me back to them?”

Jaxon snarled then, a growl rushing from his throat, sending a quiver down her spine. “No.”

She nodded and looked away, embracing the feeling of rage and desperation in her chest. “Okay.”

Jaxon stepped closer, hovering over her, crowding her. He trailed his fingers up her arm, past her elbow, wrapping around her bicep. “If they try to take you, I’ll kill them.”

Layla shuddered and closed her eyes. Her nipples peaked reflexively at the deep possessiveness of his voice. “Please don’t kill my father.”

“He’s not going to be the stupid one.”

No, he wasn’t.

Layla pulled his hand off her arm and linked their fingers together. His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand. She leaned her forehead against his arm. “Alpha.”

Jaxon kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get this over with.”