Bride(54)

His smile is lopsided. “Strap in.”

Like everything else, Lowe makes flying look effortless. Being in a giant metallic bird in the sky should be terrifying, but I press my nose against the cold window and gaze at the night sky, the sprawling lights interrupted by long stretches of desert. I only reemerge when we get permission to land.

“Misery,” he says, softly.

“Mmm?” From up high, the ocean is unmoving.

“When we land,” he starts, then takes a long pause.

So long, I pry myself from the cold glass. “Ouch.” I’m stiff from not moving for hours, so I stretch my neck in the narrow cabin, trying to avoid accidentally pressing an ejector seat button. “Everything hurts.” When I straighten after arching my spine, the way he’s staring at me is too intense to not be judgmental. “What?” I ask, defensive.

“Nothing.” He turns back to the control board. Too fast.

“You said, ‘when we land’？”

“Yeah.”

“You realize that’s not a sentence, right? Just a temporal subordinate clause.”

His eyebrow lifts. “You’re a linguist now?”

“Just a helpful critic. What happens when we land?”

He roams the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He nods. “I need to send Emery and her people the message that you’re part of my pack and no violence against you will be tolerated. Not just the verbal message.”

“You said you’d do that by marking me, right?” Whatever that is. The blinking lights in the landing strip are approaching, and the turbulence is making me nauseous. I shift my focus to Lowe. “I don’t need to speed-read Architecture for Dummies and pretend I can tell Gothic and art deco apart?”

He turns to me, stone-faced. “You’re joking.”

“Please look ahead.”

“You can, right? You are able to tell apart—”

“Husband, darling, deep inside you know the answer to that, and please look at the road when you’re landing a plane.”

He turns back. “It’s about scents,” he says, clearly forcing himself to change the topic.

“Of course. What isn’t?” He’s been a champ. He doesn’t seem to react to my scent anymore. Maybe it’s all the baths. Maybe he’s getting used to me, like Serena when she lived by the fish market. By the time her lease was ending, she found the eggyness almost comforting.

“If we smell the same, it’ll send that message.”

“Does it mean you should be smelling like dog breath?” I joke.

“I’m going to do that.” His voice is raspy.

“To do what?”

“Make you smell like”—the plane touches down with a graceful bump—“me.”

My hands tighten around the armrests as we race down the runway. I’m horror-stricken, scenarios of us splattered against the building at the end of the strip blooming in my brain. Little by little, we slow down—and little by little, Lowe’s words settle like dust.

“Like you?”

He nods, busy with some final maneuvers. I notice a small group of people gathered by the hangar. Emery’s welcoming committee, ready to slaughter us.

“That’s fine. Do what you want with my body,” I say absently, trying to guess which one of them is more likely to throw a clove of garlic at me. “Fair warning, Serena often bitches about how gross and cold I feel. Those three degrees make all the difference.”

“Misery.”

“Seriously, I don’t care. Do whatever.”

The maneuvering is over. He unbuckles and assesses the Weres waiting for us. There’s five of them, and they look tall. Then again: so am I. And so is Lowe.

“If they attack us—”

“They won’t,” he interrupts me. “Not now.”

“But if they do, I can help—”

“I know, but I can take them on my own. Come on, we don’t have much time.” He takes me by the wrist, pulling me into the main sitting area, which is larger than the cabin, but too small for the way we’re standing in front of each other. “I’m going to—”

“Do whatever.” I crane my neck past him to catch a glimpse of the Weres through the portholes. Some are actually in wolf form.

“Misery.”

“Just hurry and—”

“Misery.” I jolt back to him at the command in his voice. There’s an angry V between his brows. “I need your explicit consent.”

“For what?”

“I’m going to scent you the traditional Were way. It entails rubbing my skin against yours. My tongue, too.”

Oh. Oh.

Something electric, liquid, pools inside my body. I deal with it the only way I can: by laughing. “Seriously?”

He nods, as serious as quicksand.

“Like a wet willy?”

His hand lifts to my neck.

Stops.

“May I touch you?” He’s asking for permission, but there’s nothing insecure or tentative about it. I nod. “Weres have scent glands—here.” He brushes the pad of his thumb against the hollow on the left side of my throat. “Here.” The right side. “And here.” His hand wraps around my neck, palm flush against my nape. “Your wrists, too.”