Page 137 of Bride

“I don’t know,” he repeats, hand coming up to push my sweaty strands back. “The way I feel, I can’t imagine that it won’t.”

“Because we—” I stop when I notice his hand. Most of it is still in Human form, but his nails are halfway to turning into claws.

“Sorry,” he says, sheepish. I watch him make a concerted effort to retract them, amazed by his body. The way it feels inside mine. The things it can do. “I’m not as in control as I should be. It’s all really...”

“New?”

“Good. Like nothing else, ever.”

“Is there something Weres usually do? Something I should be doing?”

He laughs in silent astonishment and shakes his head. “If there were, I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t want it. You are perfect, and I...” His fingers slide between us, past the sweat of our bellies, making me twitch with more pleasure. My muscles flutter around him, and in response, I feel more liquid flood inside me. And when the new wave of pleasure is over, and I’m gasping on top of him, I realize that Lowe is touching me where we’re joined. Where hiscock has locked inside me. Like he needs tactile proof that this is really happening.

When he turns us on our sides, one of my long legs hiked on top of his, I can feel his come drip outside of me even past the seal of our bodies. The mess we’re making, of the bed and of each other. Somehow, it seems like a good thing.

Outside, the waves crash against the lakeshore. Lowe’s fingers wrap around my cheek. I feel the pleasure rise inside me once more, and I settle in for the long haul.

It’s still the middle of the night when I wake up. I’m lying face down on the bed, my cheek buried in a pillow, feeling limp and wrung out, as though a lifetime’s worth of sensation has been crammed into and then squeezed out of my body.

It’s surprisingly lovely.

Lowe is next to me, propped on one elbow, touching me all over in a way that seems half distracted, half compulsive. Traveling the dip that joins my shoulder blades. Following the round contours of my ass. Combing his fingers through my hair and tracing the tip of my ear. Cupping right between my legs, uncaring, or maybe excited by the slick mess he left there, eager to push his spend back inside me.

I let my eyelids flutter open and observe him observing every curve and angle and slope of my body, entranced by the entranced look in his eyes. He is focused, lost in the simple touch, and several minutes pass before he glances up at my face and finds me awake. His smile is at once reserved and hesitant and proud and luminous.

I want him—I wantthiswith him—so much, so forcefully, it’s equal parts terrifying and soaring.

“Hi.”

I smile back. With fangs. “How long did it take for it to...?”

“About thirty minutes.” He leans over to trail open-mouthed kisses across the line of my shoulder. His hand curves around my ass as he murmurs into my ear, “You did so good, Misery. It can’t have been easy, but you took me so well. Like you were made for it.”

Blood rushes to my cheeks. I shift, savoring the rich soreness within my body. “Considering how busy you are with Ana and your pack, we might have to schedule sex.”

It’s meant as a joke, but he nods solemnly. “Pencil me into your calendar.”

“What about early Sunday mornings? Before ten a.m. though, or I’m going to crash on you.”

“Fuck that. Save two hours, every day.”

I laugh and stare at the green flush that lingers on his sharp cheekbones, marveling.Mine, I think,happy, covetous, greedy. It’s a new feeling, belonging. Owning.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks softly, and I laugh once more.

“Do I look like I hurt?”

He hesitates. “It lasted a long time, and it worked... maybe it worked a little too well for me. I nearly blacked out for a while there, and I doubt I was at my most observant.”

“No, I do not hurt, Lowe.” I hold his eyes and ask evenly, “What about you?”

His look is withering, and I feel like laughing again. He and I. Together. The greatest thing of all time that never should have happened.

“Serena might come looking for me,” I say. “I don’t want her recently traumatized self to stumble upon an interspecies sex moment and get evenmoretraumatized, so—”

“She’s half Were and half Human,” Lowe says. I watch himcuriously until he continues to make his point. “Unless a whole lot of hybrids pop out of the woodwork, she’s only ever going to have interspecies relationships.”

“Oh.” I try to think through the implications of it, but I have to give up. My brain is mushy, mellow with remainders of pleasure, and a loud sort of quiet, and the scent of Lowe’s blood. “Either way, I should shower.”

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