Sugar Coated

48

Emil West

"I'm not fucking dragging her out," Jax was about to heft the bed onto its side in the next ten seconds over the fact that Delaney had blacked out. "And it's fucking sad that this is what she's decided was her safe space in this whole damn house, under the spare bed, Jackson. I won't have her waking up somewhere else when she's in distress."

Jax's fingers gripped the bed frame right in front of my face and it groaned.

"I will bite that fucking arm again if it gets any farther under this bed!"

He still thought about it, but after a second thought he managed to fight off his demons and I heard the feet of the bed click back down onto the hardwood floor.

"Now be a good boy and go grab sheets from your rooms for me," Jax grumbled as he stomped into the other room.

I turned my attention to Andres, "You both should have known better. Or at least talked to me." I wasn't pissed that they'd done it without me per se. I'd been all for the lust slinking down their end of the bond. I was upset that they didn't consider this possible response from her. Omega or not, getting knotted could be an intimate emotional experience. They'd been too focused on their own selves to consider the aftercare Doll might need, nipping included to soothe the nature of ours that would get wounded when we didn't come out of it bonded to the others.

"You're right," Andres at least looked sheepish and it mollified me. Jax would grouse because of that noble streak that told him he shouldn't have bitten her and he'd die on that hill, dropped dead next to a flag in the name of honor.

I chewed the inside of my cheek like it was a rawhide and I was a rabid dog, "But even if she's pissed she'll still want your scent in here," I visibly eyed his shirt – one that I'd been after for a while, but he'd been keeping it close enough that I couldn't sneak it away from him.

He pulled it off in a heartbeat, affording me the opportunity to admire his chest and the long line of his arms that cushioned his head on the floor. I snatched the fabric from him, pulling a drag of his lime zest into my nose and mouth before I rolled and tucked it around the Delaney fabric burrito.

When Jax finally came back with a wad of sheets so large I'd half believed he'd pulled everything off of the beds in the entire house. It was about time for laundry anyway. The mound of sheets dropped onto the floor a second before Jax dropped cross-legged again in front of the bed, his instincts probably were riding him hard, pushing him into guarding his vulnerable pack.

I snatched the sheets and dragged them into her little den. I had to stop my hands from adjusting. This isn't my nest, it's hers. Let her decorate.

I choked back the snort. There wasn't much to decorate under a bed, but I'd been there before as well. She could choose what layers the sheets would go around her at the very least.

It took a few minutes but when she did finally come to, I was brushing the wild curls around her temples back into place, just so I could keep my hands on her, lest I end up wringing them over the worry that she'd kick me out. "Hello, Doll,"

Her warm eyes were huge in her face. She looked like a wounded animal torn between the desire to flee and to lash out and I was the one that had cornered her in this situation. Insinuated myself into the space she'd felt she'd been allowed to claim in all of the pack territory. While it ripped at my heart, I had to tell myself this wasn't the time for me to feel wounded. It was her that we'd treated unkindly.

My throat closed up with the fear of it though, so tight that I couldn't even offer to leave her space, to give it back to her so she could rebuild it. Instead, I inched backward, towards Jax who I was certain still lurked just past the bright light of the room and the strip of space between the bedframe and the floor.