Page 48

How could Jaxon be so mean? How could he so easily choose to kill an innocent person? He may not have thought Felix was innocent, but how could he be judge, jury, and executioner without getting all the facts? Felix is weak; for God’s sake, he was out cold!
I hate to say it, but the thing that makes me the most angry is not that he killed my warlock friend so quickly, but that he didn’t respect me. He sent his goons to carry me out kicking and screaming while he got blood on his hands for no reason. He did this because he hates all coven members.
I had to threaten him with something serious. Something that would show how serious his actions were. When Skyler told me about marking, I thought I would bring it up when we were close or when I thought it was the right time, not when I was angry to stop him from making a bad choice.
When I turn around to look at Jaxon, his eyes are black, which is what they always do when he’s mad about something. He’s been angry a lot, and I’m usually the one who calms him down. Not today…
The space between us is so quiet. The only sound is our breathing: mine comes out in short puffs and his in long, shallow breaths. I start this fight because he doesn’t say anything.
“Are you not going to say you’re sorry?” I glare at him and cross my arms in front of my chest. He just laughs in response.
“I should say I’m sorry? How about you say you’re sorry for threatening me and not letting me finish a werewolf tradition? And all because I was trying to protect you!” He screams, and a vein in his neck sticks out. His eyes were black and steel, but they finally settled on black.
“I had to threaten you because you were going to kill my friend! A friend who, by the way, saved my life? He’s not going to hurt me!”
“He could have—”
I stop Jaxon from talking again. Now it’s my turn to be mad.
“You were going to throw me out of there like a prisoner? You sent your little guards to grab me and force me out of the room! Do you know how scared I was?” My vision gets blurrier by the second as tears fill my eyes. The tears are salty, but they won’t fall for a second.
He furrows his brows as he looks at me with fear. He reaches out to me with his fingers, as if he knows that when I’m upset and vulnerable, he should hold me.
“Calla, you should know that they would never hurt you—”
“I wasn’t afraid of them,” I say in a low voice that I knew he could hear. “I was scared of you.” Now my mascara is running down my face, and tears are falling down my cheeks and chin. I probably look like a crazy raccoon right now, but I don’t care what I look like.
You can tell everything from Jaxon’s face. Before the tears can fall, he quickly wipes them away with his fist. He looks at me with regret and guilt as he opens and closes his mouth, trying to find the right words to say.
He whispers, “You were scared of me?” and I almost don’t hear him. I slowly nod my head and watch how he reacts. He lets out a quick breath and then grabs his dark hair between his fingers and pulls hard. He walks around the room, turning left foot, right foot, and left foot. Turn your right foot, then your left foot. He stops pacing to come over to me, but then he stops reaching for me and starts pacing again, almost as if he remembers why he was pacing in the first place. I’m so used to seeing Jaxon in a strong, confident way that I can’t stop watching this weak side of him.
He turns to the wall behind him and makes a fist. He turns to me, and I can finally see his face. His canines are longer, and his nose looks more like a snout. I take a step back from him because his eyes are so black. At this point, he looks more like an angry beast than a man.
“Don’t even punch the wall, because you’ll be more scared of me than you are now!” He growls more to himself than to me. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” He keeps saying he’s sorry, mumbling words I can’t hear. I don’t know what to do when the person you care about is in pain.
His nose is starting to look more like a human’s, and now he looks like my Jaxon. His eyes turn into two beautiful blue balls, and if he didn’t look so sad, I would say he looks normal. He walks slowly over to me, never taking his eyes off mine. He slowly reaches out to me and holds my hand gently, as if it could break in his hand with just one touch. He looks like a puppy that is sad right now.
“I’m so sorry, Calla. I never meant to scare you. I really hope you can still see that I would never hurt you. Never. I might get angry and punch walls or people, but I would never hurt you in any way you don’t like. I love you too much.”
When I hear him confess, I freeze. Did he really just say that he loves me? I look up at him, and as he rubs my hand up and down in a soothing pattern, I start to feel better. Does Jaxon love me? I question his words more and more the more they echo in my head. Did I hear him right? I knew he cared about me a lot, but I didn’t know it was love. No one has ever loved me who isn’t family…
“Y-you love me?” I say in a whisper, my voice shaky and unsure. He smiles at me and holds my hand a little tighter.
“I thought it was clear. I’ve loved you since the first time we met at Cafe. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up. I don’t want to wait to tell you anymore. Even if you don’t feel the same way yet, I’ll wait forever until you-”
“I love you, too.” I smile a lot and tilt my head up to look him in the eye. He naturally moved closer to me as he opened up to me.
As soon as I say the words, Jaxon’s smile gets bigger than I’ve ever seen it. He hugs me and spins me around the room. The sound of our laughter fills the room, and I couldn’t be happier than I am right now. This sweet, caring, and sexy man loves me, and I love him too!
He holds my b**t with one hand and steadies me with the other, without lowering me. As our lips meet halfway, my legs naturally wrap around his body. The sparks spread all over my body, and they felt like little fireworks going off under my skin. The kiss means so much more to me now that I know he loves me. Just thinking about those three little words makes me giddy.
When my back hits the mattress, I’m only half paying attention. My thoughts are more on how my lips move and the fluttering feeling in my stomach. My core tightens again every time his tongue touches mine. I need Jaxon and a way to let go.
He knows I need a break to breathe, but he doesn’t seem to need air because he keeps kissing, licking, sucking, and biting his way down my neck. If my neck was bright purple tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised. “Jaxon,” I moan when he touches the sensitive spot between my neck and shoulder. He keeps kissing and lightly biting the area, which makes me go crazy. My body can’t help but squirm because I’m so sensitive.
His big hands keep me in. He is still attacking my neck, but only part of his weight is on me. He lets more weight fall on me to keep me from moving and to keep my legs from finding the friction they need to calm the rising intensity between them.
He groans, “I want to mark you so badly,” and then he bites my neck again. I can’t help but let out a loud moan. I want him to mark me too, in a way. Would it make me a wuss to let him after our big fight? I don’t want him to think that what he said and did was okay, but I really want to be closer to him because I love him.
“Wait,” I say softly, pushing on his arms. He stops what he’s doing right away and lifts his body off of mine so that all of his weight is on his elbows. He is literally doing a plank position on top of me, and he doesn’t seem to be out of breath at all. Does he have abs on his abs? Calla, stop getting sidetracked…
“We need to finish talking about what happened earlier. You can’t just send your guards to physically remove me from somewhere you don’t want me to be. And you can’t listen to me. You know that Felix’s my friend, and you were still going to kill him!”
He lets out a breath through his nose and then puts his head on my neck. He nods and says, “I know,” into my neck.
I ask, “What do you mean?”
He lifts his head back to me as he moves so that he’s lying next to me instead of over me. “I’m not used to listening to other people. In the past, what I say goes. Now I have my little Luna to think about. It was wrong of me to go against you. I promise you that it won’t happen again.” He seems sincere when he says this, and I really want to believe him. But how can I be sure he’s not just saying what I want to hear so that I will let him mark me? I still have a part of me that isn’t sure why Jaxon would want to be with me in the first place. Would he even look at me if we weren’t mates?
“I can almost hear those gears turning in that cute head of yours. Tell me, baby.” He looks at me in awe and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. The way he looks at me makes me feel embarrassed.
“I just… the way you were acting before… I’ve never seen you act like that.”
He nods, showing that he understands why I was hesitant. “I know you don’t fully understand, but werewolves are possessive and protective—way more than humans. We make decisions based on instinct way more than we do on logic. When I thought you were dead,” his eyes dilate slightly as he remembers, “I almost went mad. I was about ready to kill anything in my path. I’m actually surprised nobody got hurt. I couldn’t think straight. When I saw that f*****g warlock with you, knowing he was the one who kidnapped you right under my nose, all I wanted was blood. I couldn’t listen to reason. I couldn’t listen to you, because all I was thinking about was getting you away from him—to keep you safe.”
I tease him about how he said, “He didn’t kidnap me,” and the corner of my mouth goes up in amusement. He is making a big deal out of nothing.
“He took you away from your guard in a portal. I think that’s kidnapping.” He gently cups my cheek with his hand and strokes my skin with his thumb. His hand is so warm that I let out a small sigh of relief.
“I’m not going to lie to you; I don’t trust him. I never will.” I open my mouth to say something, but Jaxon’s thumb gently presses against my lips to shut me up.
“But,” he says, stressing the word, “I won’t hurt him unless he gives me a reason to. I’ll try for you.”
I can almost feel how honest the man I love is when I look up at him. He must have felt bad about admitting he was wrong. He trusts my judgment and listens to what I want, even though everything in him is telling him to cover the walls and floors with Felix’s blood.