Page 8 of Bewitched

J axon steered her into his bedroom. His cinnamon and musk scent was oppressive there, covering her like a blanket. A large bed took up most of the room, and Layla shied away from it. She wasn’t ready for that yet. She was just coming to grips with other things.

His hands on her. His mouth.

As long as Layla had known him and as much as he talked, she still knew little about Jaxon’s personal life. She knew he worked for Damian Sorreto since he was young. He had a brother that he didn’t like. He was Mina’s best friend. Now she knew he collected glass dogs and broken swords, and little kids wrote him birthday cards that he kept with his other precious possessions.

She didn’t know if all that was good enough to trust him.

She bravely tried to meet his gaze, but she could only do it for so long before the impulse to look away and submit overwhelmed her. There wasn’t much room on the floor to make a nest if he even had the materials. It didn’t look like he had anything she could build to make a nest like Helena’s bright, fluffy beds.

Jaxon continued to the closet and opened the sliding door. It was big, a walk-in filled with boxes. It was dark and claustrophobic.

Layla wrapped her arms around herself. “Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“Where am I supposed to make the… nest?”

He grinned and pointed to the closet. “I’ll move the boxes, don’t worry about that.”

She glanced inside, strangely reassured by the door and darkness. “I thought nests were in the open, like a pillow bed.”

He laughed. “That’s kids playing at being grown up and showing off. You can’t protect a nest when it’s out in the open. Omegas want a real nest in the dark. Never had one that didn’t.”

Like her little spot under her bed, it couldn’t be a nest. She scratched at her arm. “Have you been with an omega when they were… when they needed you?”

He snorted at her choice of words. “Yes. I know what I’m doing.”

She looked up at the ceiling, unsure if she wanted the answer to the question that itched at the back of her mind. “Did you steal them?”

He growled, lifting his lips from his teeth before controlling himself. “No, I’ve never stolen an omega. I’m not my brother.”

Layla looked back up at his towering form. She was stolen. He stole her. Couldn’t he see that?

“Don’t believe me?” he asked. His voice was rough and grinding. “Ask Kaiser. He knows what I’m capable of, in the nest and out of it.”

Her breath caught. A strange jealousy wrapped around her insides. Kaiser? Not just a random omega he took home from a bar. Kaiser! A man she’d known for years. A mated omega. Oh, God.

She wrung her hands together, breath short. Whore. Homewrecker. “Kaiser’s mated. He and Georgia…”

“I’m not a poacher,” he snapped. “He wasn’t mated then. Georgia came later. He wanted a pretty lady alpha, not a mongrel.”

Layla chewed at her bottom lip. He wasn’t a dog, except that he was. He didn’t do anything to improve himself, and she couldn’t blame Kaiser for not wanting to tie himself to Jaxon.

She stamped hard on the spike of jealousy and anger. She needed to think clearly. She let out a shuttered breath. “You took care of him. He doesn’t hate you.”

Jaxon laughed. “I guess not, not very much, anyway.”

She stared at the swollen bump of the scent gland on her wrist. She’d scratched at it so much there were red lines going up her arm. “You didn’t bite him.”

He said nothing, but it was a fair guess. Jaxon wasn’t the kind to let someone go once he had his teeth in them.

She looked up, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You can’t bite me.”

He grimaced, his mouth pulling at his scars grotesquely, and glanced away.

“You can’t bite me,” she said louder. “I have to go home after. My mom—”

“I heard you,” he snapped.

Slick trailed down her leg to her ankle, and she had to close her eyes or scream. She really wanted to scream. She agreed to this. She agreed to him — to let him… help her? Be her Alpha? No, not an Alpha. Just. Experienced help. Small steps. “Okay. We can… we can do this.”

His shoulders relaxed. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “It’s nice to pretend we have choices, doesn’t it?”

Layla kept her glare leveled on him. This was her choice, even if it wasn’t much of one. She’d hold on to it as tight as she could.

Jaxon finally turned away from her and made himself useful by taking the boxes out of the closet and carrying them to the living room.

Layla watched him leave, her arms wrapped around her torso in a hug. If she thought being in his den and defenseless would soften him, she was sorely mistaken. She should have known better. At least he wasn’t Garret. She couldn’t imagine what he would have done to her if Jaxon hadn’t found them.

She let out a small bitter laugh. She never thought Jaxon Harlow would be the lesser of two evils.

The heavy scent in the room overwhelmed her, distracting her from thinking clearly. It stank, but it made her hungry deep down in her stomach. She wanted to sink her teeth into something and chew. Devour. Her mouth filled with saliva, and she swallowed it down with a grimace.

She glanced around and spotted the main culprit of the heavy scent — dirty laundry in a tall hamper tucked beside a bureau. She put her hand over her mouth. She shouldn’t. She wasn’t like that. She was a good girl. Proper. Her mother would be ashamed. What was wrong with her?

Layla’s face was red as she pulled a shirt from the hamper. What was she doing? She held it up to her nose. Cinnamon. She laid it over her arm and pulled out another shirt. Cinnamon and fresh blood. Mina. She grimaced and tossed the shirt away.

She felt more than heard Jaxon return. He was quiet when he wanted to be. A predator. She tensed, but she didn’t stop her pursuit through his laundry. She felt him behind her, his warmth encroaching on hers.

Layla let out a small hiss, and he chuckled. “Looking for something?”

She stared into the basket in annoyance. There were far too many articles of clothing that didn’t smell just of him. Other alphas and omegas had been touching him. “No.”

He put his hands on her hips, lifting his shirt and dipping his fingers under the knotted towel to her bare skin. Her muscles jumped under his fingers, and as she moved aside, he kept ahold of the towel, stripping it from her body.

Layla grimaced. His large shirt fell low enough that it covered all the important parts; besides, she was on a mission. “Rude,” she mumbled.

He laughed, the sound more fond than cruel.

She picked out another shirt, ignoring the boxers that were soaked in his scent because she was not a deviant who sniffed an alpha’s underwear. That one smelled only like him, so she draped it over her arm for the nest. The next shirt smelled like him, but there was also another scent on the sleeves, like blood and wood smoke. It smelled almost like Mina, but the notes were off — wood smoke instead of charcoal. She didn’t hate it.

Jaxon seemed to pick up on her hesitation and tugged the shirt from her hands for a sniff of his own.

He glowered for a moment. “Axel. Of course, you’d like Axel.”

“You’re brother?” She said in horror. Axel was the worst. If there was a worse alpha in all the world than Jaxon Harlow, it was his brother. The way he treated omegas… How could she like someone like that? She got a whiff of something pleasant, and suddenly, she was panting for the most vile man she’d ever met. Everything her mother said about omegas was true.

Her lip trembled.

Above her, Jaxon growled, tugging the shirt away from her. He tossed it into the growing pile of discarded clothes.

The next shirt smelled like him, but there was a layer of sickly, sweet honeysuckle along the back. Kaiser. She threw it across the room as hard as she could. The next shirt also smelled like Kaiser and the next. The fourth smelled like rich chocolate. Omega. She threw that one in frustration. So many fucking omegas in her nest. How dare they.

Jaxon’s hands were on her bare stomach. She hadn’t even noticed him pulling up her shirt. “Not a fan of omegas right now?”

Layla bared her teeth right in his face, then shook her head. She shouldn’t care that much. It shouldn’t bother her, but it did, deeply. She brushed her fingers over the collar of one of Jaxon’s black button-ups. Something was wrong with her — unnatural. “It’s weird. I was fine with them this morning. Helena smelled off, but I thought it was just her perfume.”

Jaxon grunted.

“Is that normal?” she asked.

“No.”

Her hands trembled. “This isn’t supposed to happen to me.”

“Supposed to doesn’t matter much. It’s happening to you.”

She shook her head. “Was it like this with Kaiser?”

“No. There isn’t a bit of this that’s like it was with Kaiser.”

There was another stab of jealousy, and it twisted with shame. She couldn’t even go through a heat correctly. “What was it like?”

Jaxon shrugged. “He’d show up. We’d fuck like rabbits until he was dripping spunk. He’d leave.”

She grimaced. That was too much. She didn’t need to know about that. She didn’t want to hear about them… doing things like that. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s true.” He shrugged. “Don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer.”

“I just expected some propriety. You could have said it nicer.”

He cupped her stomach, right over her womb, and slick dripped from her core again, staining her legs. “Should I apologize for being a rude heathen? I’m not one of your tame betas or neutered alphas. I’m a beast, same as you.”

She was disgusting. “I’m not an animal.”

“What are you doing now, then?” he asked, nodding his head at the clothes draped over her arm. “Animals make nests. We can leave all this aside and fuck around on the bed if you want. Like the little betas do.”

She shoved his hands away and took her pile of pilfered shirts to the closet, tugging down a few more shirts from their hangers.

He chuckled as he watched her.

She glared at him again. She didn’t want to hear any more about other omegas or smell them. Or deal with Jaxon’s superior alpha attitude. For a moment, she wasn’t even afraid of him, just mad. She had cruelties of her own to deliver. “Got anything else with Axel’s scent on it? I have some room in the back.”

It was the exact wrong thing to say because suddenly she was on the floor, her head held still by the hand in her hair, her legs spread around Jaxon’s hips, her hands shoved against his massive chest. She whimpered.

She could feel his bulge against her core, slacks rough against her sensitive lips. A hand was at her throat, then on her breast, down her ribs. “You shouldn’t tease, kitten. I am a jealous man.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She tried to take a breath that wasn’t full of his scent. How could she be so stupid, baiting him like that? She knew better.

Just because he was being friendly didn’t mean he was. Just because she agreed to be his… his didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

His fingers went between her legs, slipping through the excess slick. She hissed and tried to kick at him as his fingers found her entrance, petting threateningly but not pressing inside.

“Jaxon, please,” she begged, her heart thundering, making her chest ache. Get off.”

He pressed down on her even more, driving the breath from her lungs. “What do you say?”

“Please?” She met his dark, uncompromising eyes. He’d already told her what he wanted. She looked away. “Alpha.”

Jaxon kissed her forehead and stood.