Bride(113)

“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 even more traumatized, so—”

“She’s half Were and half Human,” Lowe says. I watch him curiously 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.”

“No,” he commands brusquely, in his Alpha voice. His muscles coil, like he’s getting ready for a fight. Then he must realize the ridiculousness of his reaction, because he scrunches his eyes shut, throat working.

I tilt my head. “You used to be okay with me taking baths.”

“It’s different. There is a lot going on.” He points at his head, but then looks down at his body. A lot going on inside me, he means. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to let you out of my sight for a couple of days. Or weeks.” He sounds unapologetic and remorseful—a combination I did not think was possible. “And right now, you smell like me. Like you wouldn’t believe it, Misery. You smell like me from the inside, and every damn cell is screaming at me that making you that way is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, maybe the only good thing, and I can’t let you—”

“Lowe.” I shift up to my elbows and lean forward to kiss him on the mouth, stopping the torrent of words. “Will you come take a shower with me?” I pull back and smile. “That way, you can replace the scent right away, and you don’t need to let me out of your sight?”

The tension instantly leaves his body. His eyes soften. “That, I can do.”

He carries me to his bathroom, and the warm jet of water soothes me as much as his hands following every drop’s journey on my body. I close my eyes, tip my head back, and let him touch me in that compelled, absorbed manner that appears to be his new normal. He seems to have accepted this—us—effortlessly, unconditionally, but I cannot help but wonder.

“Lowe?”

“Mmm?”

“Since I’m your mate, and since I don’t really plan to, you know, let go of you . . . you’ll never be able to do this with a Were,” I say without opening my eyes. “You’ll never get the hardware experience.”

His soapy palms lather my skin, lingering too long on my breasts. “Any idea of doing any of this with a Were died the night I met you.” I hear the dismissal in his words. What he adds is a murmur, more for himself than for me. “There wouldn’t be anyone else, anyway. Even if you didn’t want me, I couldn’t.”

“But the fact remains that I have way more limitations than you. Is it going to be weird, that we’re never going to go for a run in wolf form together? That we’ll never take a walk in the sun? Have a meal together? We’ll even have to figure out a sleep schedule that fits for both of us.”

His thumb and forefinger close around my chin and raise it, gentle but determined, until I’m forced to meet his eyes. “No,” he simply says. It’s a more potent reassurance than any long speech or vehement denial. Then he pushes a strand of hair behind my ears, and leans forward to suck at one of those spots on my neck that seem to be his magnetic north. He hums and softly begins to scrape over it with his teeth.

“You can go ahead, then,” I tell him.

He nips softly. “Mmm?”

“Bite me, if you want.” I feel his broad chest stiffen against mine. “Like all the mate scars I’ve seen.”

A deep, resonating rumble rises from his chest. For a brief moment, his grip tightens on my waist almost painfully. Then he lets go, looking as though he’s made of steel and restraint. “No.”

“If you think I’ll change my mind—”

“I don’t. But not now.”

“Not now.”

“There are rituals. Customs. Things that mean something to us. To me,” he adds. “I want to see you in those obscene ceremonial marks again. I want to put them on you. Alone, this time—I don’t fucking need anyone around to see you like that and get any ideas. And when I finally bite you, it won’t be on your neck.” He lets out a rueful laugh. “Nothing as dignified for us, Misery.”

Oh. “Where?”

His palm rounds my throat. Cups my nape. The pad of his thumb traces down my spine, just one or two vertebrae. “Here. I think I’ll bite you here.” He says it like it’s a secret, filthy plan he’s been working on for a while, and then lets out a rueful, frustrated sound. “You’ll wear your hair up, and people will see it, and they will know that I took my beautiful Vampyre bride the way wolves do, and that she loved it. And you will be good for me and let me, won’t you?”