Chapter 8

Chapter 8

JASPER

T he floor shook with every bass line from the club’s music, the beat so strong you could feel it in your bones. Jasper moved to the rhythm of it, weaving effortlessly around Sid—the other Wolf bartending tonight—to grab another bottle.

He lived for this. Lived for the almost deafening roar of the music, the burn of alcohol in his blood, the tipsy haze that descended on him at this point in the night. He was always careful to never get drunk at work, not really drunk, but on nights like this he enjoyed walking that fine line between buzzed and messy.

This was exactly what he needed after that unexpected visit from his niece. She had pulled out every trick in her book to delay him and convince him to let her hang out at the bar with Alastair and Fey. By the time he’d finally managed to get back to work, he was running late for his shift and Ferus had been pissed off enough to make him work at the VIP bar instead of downstairs.

Not that Jasper cared much either way. Slinging drinks up here with Sid wasn’t much different from slinging them down there. The patrons were just as drunk, just as horny, and the music was just as good.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea for Vivian to work here, actually. Hell, at least he could keep an eye on her if she was here, make sure she wasn’t getting into too much trouble. Half the time she was meant to be with her Nan, Jasper suspected she was actually out with her friends, causing mischief.

Her mother had been like that when they were kids.

So had Jasper, come to think of it.

Is this how Nan had felt when she was trying to raise the two of them?

Goddess help her, Jasper and Alicia had likely been even worse. It’s any wonder Nan lived long enough to see her granddaughter take up the mantle.

But thoughts of Vivian and Nan all felt distant now that he was here, in his element. Here, where he belonged. On the other side of the VIP bar, Sid popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly for a group of university students, celebrating the end of their exams. Their merriment was contagious.

A Demon with wicked eyes and feathers weaved in his hair ordered a round of shots for his friends, and Jasper filled them to the brim after he’d lined them up, adding an extra one for himself. He flashed Sid a wink as he downed it, and the other Wolf returned it with a laugh. This was the life. Good booze, loud music, and the scent of lust heavy in the air.

The Witch currently trying to catch his eye wore that smell of lust like a heavy perfume. She leaned over the bar far enough that her breasts threatened to spill out of her top, biting her lip when he finally came over to get her order. Jasper gave her a flirty grin as he poured her drink and wasn’t surprised when she slipped her number across the bar toward him before she left.

The slip of paper went into the trash the moment her back was turned. The motion was so automatic, Jasper didn’t even question it.

Not that the Witch wasn’t attractive. She was stunning, and those curves were to die for. A couple of years ago, she wouldn’t have had to slip him her number at all. He would have already been leading her to the stockroom, with one hand snaking up her skirt to feel those delicious curves, excited to show her a good time.

But something had changed. And with the music and the booze and the wonderfully numb drunk he had going tonight, he didn’t want to think too hard about what it could be. Didn’t want to think about why he couldn’t seem to bring himself to enjoy his random hookups anymore.

For now, he didn’t want to think at all. He wanted to have fun.

He wanted to be a little numb.

When a familiar face appeared in the crowd, coming from the back hallway and making his way toward the bar, Jasper’s grin widened and his good mood rose even more. Right on schedule.

“Evening, boss,” Jasper shouted over the music as Alastair leaned an elbow against the bar top, his eyes skirting over the crowd. Jasper was already pulling a bottle of whiskey from under the bar—the boss’s favorite.

“Good crowd tonight,” Alastair remarked, drumming his fingers on the wooden bar. He looked relaxed. Hell, he wasn’t even wearing his tie.

Jasper grinned in answer and set a glass in front of him, glancing at the crowd as he poured. It was a good crowd tonight. Hell, business had been phenomenal lately. And it wasn’t just the recent changes Ferus had started instituting, either. It was also the sudden surge in patrons from the Witch Faction. With any luck, this could be their best year yet. They were on track to make record profits this season, and?—

Every cell in Jasper’s brain stopped firing.

Mine .

The smell had been lost to the crowd, overpowered by the hundreds of other patrons who smelled like sex and lust and desperation. But when Alastair leaned closer to touch his glass, the scent hit Jasper like a bolt of lightning. A delicious, mouthwatering smell of sex and power.

Fey.

But not just her. He could smell both of them, their scents tangled together. Arousal and strength and heat. He groaned, every nerve in his body firing, every instinct inside him coming to life. That smell reached into his chest and pulled something there, something he’d been trying so desperately to ignore.

Mine .

Had anything ever smelled so amazing in all of creation? Was there anything?—

“What the fuck, Jasper!” Alastair snapped, leaping back from the bar and the growing spill of whiskey. Jasper jolted back to life with a start. Liquor cascaded over the brim of the glass in front of him. He’d been so distracted he’d kept pouring into the already full glass until the bottle was nearly empty, and the boss’s top shelf liquor was suddenly flooding the bar top.

Alastair flicked drops of whiskey off his fingers with a dark scowl.

“Sorry, boss.” Jasper winced, grabbing a towel and trying to mop up the spill. Fuck, he was a mess. “I’ll pay for it.”

“What you just spilled probably cost more than your monthly salary, puppy,” Alastair told him, watching Jasper’s desperate attempt to mop it up.

When it was clear one measly bar towel wasn’t doing the trick, Jasper gave Alastair an apologetic smile and ducked further behind the bar to grab some more.

Sid came over as he grabbed a handful of bar towels and chuckled sympathetically.

“At least he washed his hands,” he grinned.

Jasper barely spared him a glance. “What?”

Nodding toward where Alastair stood, still wiping whiskey off his fingers, Sid’s grin widened. “The boss. At least he washed his hands, you know? Trust me, it was worse earlier. He smelled so much like her pussy there wasn’t a soft cock in the bar.”

A growl started in Jasper’s chest, lost to the music.

“You weren’t here for it, were you?” Sid asked, laughing and shaking his head. “I forgot you were late for your shift tonight. They were, uh… not quiet about it. It was quite a show.”

Jasper straightened, the spill forgotten. His hands flexed.

“You wouldn’t believe the sounds that Witch makes,” Sid continued. He threw back his head to groan, hand reaching down to grip himself over his pants. “I had to head to the stockroom to relieve some of the tension, if you know what I mean.”

“What the fuck did you just say?” Jasper hissed.

Sid’s smile slipped. He glanced at Jasper, and whatever he saw there left him pale.

“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Sid said quickly, holding his palms up between them. “But you’ve seen her. You know how hot she is. I mean… fuck, the things I would do to that woman…”

Jasper shot forward to grab Sid by the throat. He slammed his back against the wall hard enough that the liquor bottles above the bar shook.

“You don’t get to talk about her like that,” Jasper snarled. Sid’s eyes went wide with fear. Someone at the bar shouted. Someone else screamed. The music kept going, the heavy beat echoing in Jasper’s skull. “You don’t get to think about her like that. Do you understand me?”

Terrified, Sid nodded.

“Sorry, Jas, I-I wasn’t thinking, I?—”

“She’s not yours to think about,” Jasper continued, canines elongating. He was too close to shifting, too close to losing control. The hand tightening around Sid’s throat began to grow razor-sharp claws. “She’s not yours to fantasize about. She’s?—”

Mine .

The word rolled through his head and toward his lips with so much certainty it shocked him back to his senses.

Where had that thought come from?

What the hell was he doing? Jasper loosened his hand from around Sid’s throat. The other Wolf immediately twisted to show more neck, submitting fully and whining in apology.

“I…” Jasper started.

“ Drop him ,” a furious voiced commanded.

Alastair. Jasper let go of Sid immediately and took a step back, eyes on the ground and his heart pounding. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He could feel Alastair there, standing next to him, but he couldn’t look at him, couldn’t meet his eyes.

Mine . The word still echoed in his mind.

But Fey wasn’t his. Wouldn’t ever be his. Why had he felt that so strongly in that moment? Sure, they flirted; who wouldn’t flirt with her? Like Sid said, she was gorgeous. It was just dumb fun, and that’s where it ended.

Wasn’t it?

“Sorry Jas,” Sid murmured to Jasper. “It won’t happen again. ”

“A free round for everyone,” Alastair shouted, voice rising above the din of the crowd. The announcement was met with cheers. In a lower voice, he added, “Sid—get Ferus to pull someone from the lower bar and get enough liquor into this crowd to make them forget what they just saw. And Jasper?”

Licking his lips, Jasper fought through the haze in his head and managed to meet his stare. Alastair’s face was tight with rage.

“My office,” Alastair said, anger filling his voice. “ Now .”

Fuck .

Alastair didn’t wait for a response. He just turned around and walked away, fury coming off him in waves.

Jasper took a deep breath. Then another. He managed to huff an apology to Sid, who graciously accepted it, before he dragged himself out from behind the bar and toward the back hallway. Toward the smell of them.

A large part of him wanted to run into that office, toward those intoxicating scents. Wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in his life.

Jasper forced himself to walk instead. It took him a long, long time to reach the office. And when he finally did, he couldn’t bring himself to enter it. He just stood in the doorway, head down, trying to breathe through his mouth.

Alastair sat at his desk, his palms flat on the wooden surface before him. It was a stance Jasper had seen him take many times before. A stance right before he snapped and broke someone’s neck.

When he spoke, Alastair’s voice was dangerously low. “Close the door.”

Jasper swallowed.

“With all due respect, boss,” he managed to say, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, “I, uh… I’d rather not do that.”

The idea of being trapped in this room, with these smells?

He wasn’t sure he’d survive it.

The cold fury in Alastair’s eyes only grew.

“I wasn’t fucking asking,” he said, coming to his feet. “I let you get away with a lot of shit around here, Jasper, and you know it. But assaulting one of my employees isn’t one of them. You get one chance to explain to me what the fuck happened out there. ”

Jasper forced himself to look at him. Fuck, he was really pissed, wasn’t he?

Screw it.

Jasper took a deep, shuddering breath through his nose and closed his eyes to savor it. Head back, eyes shut tight, he forced himself to say, “I made a mistake, boss. It won’t happen again.”

“Not good enough.” Alastair’s voice was tight with rage. “Try again.”

It was so hard to concentrate when it smelled so good in here. Jasper took another deep breath. “Sid said something he shouldn’t have. I had a problem with it.” He licked his lips. “It won’t happen again.”

Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter—” Jasper started.

“It does fucking matter if I’m asking you. Tell me what he said.”

“He said…” Jasper swallowed. “He made a comment about a woman. That he, uh… that he wanted to touch her.”

Alastair blinked, slowly.

“That’s it? That’s all he said to you?” he asked. From the skeptical look in his eyes, he wasn’t buying it for a second.

“And he may have jerked off in the stockroom,” Jasper murmured.

“Jasper.” Alastair tapped the surface of his desk for emphasis. “I, personally, have walked in on you fucking someone in that room on two separate occasions. Scratch that, three. Three separate occasions.”

Jasper’s lips twitched at the memory.

“I should be making one of you hose down that room once a week, with the amount of fluids that get exchanged in there. Who the fuck cares if Sid jerked off in the stockroom? What does it matter to you that he was talking shit about some woman?”

“It was Fey,” Jasper said, so quietly he almost hoped Alastair couldn’t hear him.

The Vampire went impossibly still.

“My Fey?” he asked.

Our Fey , something whispered in Jasper’s chest. He swallowed it down. Fuck, he needed another drink. It was too quiet here. He wanted the music back .

“He said he heard you tonight. You and Fey. That he, uh… got excited, listening to her,” Jasper explained.

A muscled twitched in Alastair’s jaw.

“And that’s why you lost control, isn’t it?” he asked, voice low. “You were, what… protecting her?”

Jasper nodded, slowly.

“He had no right to talk about her like that,” Jasper said, his temper rising again. His muscles itched to shift. “It was disrespectful. And… And I just lost it, I?—”

“Are you trying to fuck her?” Alastair interrupted.

Jasper’s heart stuttered. “What?”

“You heard me, puppy,” Alastair said, stepping closer. His face was blank, but a storm raged in those amber eyes. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. I’ve seen the little ways you like to touch her. I’ve put up with the flirting, and kept my fucking mouth shut throughout all of it. But you need to answer the question right now. Do you want to fuck my Witch?”

The look in Alastair’s eyes told Jasper he already knew the answer to that question.

Jasper took one last deep breath, closing his eyes to really enjoy it. He could taste her in the air. It was intoxicating.

When he opened his eyes to look at Alastair, he made no effort to hide the hunger in his gaze. Or what that smell was doing to him.

“Yeah,” he answered calmly. His lips pulled up into a cocky grin. “Yeah, I want to fuck her. And if she ever asked me? I wouldn’t even hesitate.” Holding Alastair’s gaze for a few moments longer, he added in a husky voice, “And I’d make sure it was a night she’d never forget.”

Alastair's eyes glittered dangerously as he assessed the Wolf in front of him.

If those were his last words, at least he was going out honestly, Jasper thought to himself.

“Close the door, Jasper.” Alastair said, his voice low. “I think it’s time you and I had a little chat...”