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.

“You,” he says, voice deep, almost too low to hear. “How the fuck do you smell like this?”

“She’s my—” Lowe’s hand jerks up to clutch Max’s jaw. “Apologize to my wife.”

Ana interrupts her bedtime story to communicate to him important, time-sensitive information: “Miresy is so so soooo pretty. I loooove her ears.” He presses his lips together before resuming his reading.

Some nights, when he’s walking past her door, he has to whisper to himself: “Keep going.”

“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. He won’t admit to picturing how she’d be while he was growing up, but there was always something in the back of his head, a faint hope that maybe, one day. 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.”

“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