Bride (Bride, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

This marriage, it’s going to be a problem. She is going to be a problem.

He cages me, pins me, and stares down at me like he forgot where he is and I’m something to be consumed. Like I’m prey.

The scent is growing into more than just a problem. It invades. It swirls. It travels. It sticks to his nose. It concentrates, sometimes. They rarely touch. When they did, her wrist accidentally brushed against the front of his shirt, and he found himself tearing off the piece of fabric where her smell was most intense. He slipped it in his pocket, and now carries it everywhere. Even as he leaves to avoid her.

“My smell. Do I smell like . . . ?” “Mine.” It’s a rumble in his throat. “You smell like you’re mine, Misery.”

She’s not like he imagined. She’s more, in every possible way.

“You think, but you don’t know. You don’t know anything about what it’s like to find your other half,” he continues, voice low and sharp. “I would take anything she chose to give me—the tiniest fraction or her entire world. I would take her for a single night knowing that I’ll lose her by morning, and I would hold on to her and never let go. I would take her healthy, or sick, or tired, or angry, or strong, and it would be my fucking privilege. I would take her problems, her gifts, her moods, her passions, her jokes, her body—I would take every last thing, if she chose to give it to me.”

His touch seems to comfort her, and the thought fills him with pride and purpose.

“Of all the good things I’ve felt in my fucking life, you are the best.”

He shakes his head, eyes burning into mine. “You’re not a problem, Misery. You’re a privilege.”