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To Thao and Sarah. I could knot do this without you, and I wouldn’t even want to.
This marriage, it’s going to be a problem. She is going to be a problem.
I square my shoulders. A small distance separates us, and I let my eyes pin his as I close it, which is how I see it all happen in real time. Pupils, widening. Brow, furrowing. Nostrils, flaring.
Bros imprinting
His hand comes up lightning fast to close around my upper arm, and the warmth of his skin is a shock to my system, even through the fabric of my sleeve. His pupils contract into something different, something animal.
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?”
“It must have been a moment of confusion. She cannot be your—” The string music suddenly soars, and I inch closer, just one step down the stairs.
Your mate??? Cant believe i missed all the clues
“I smell like sewers or something?” It cannot be easy for him, being this close to me. He stiffens. Then relaxes. I think he won’t reply until his terse “Or something.”
“And they say romance is dead,” I say, pleased not to sound as dry throated as I feel. He hesitates for a moment, and I could swear he inhales again, deep, storing up…something. His hand tightens on my back for a second before finally letting go.
She is resilient. He tries to imagine how he’d feel if he were in her position—alone, removed, used, and discarded. He has nothing but reluctant respect for her, and that angers him.
I stop, because Lowe’s eyes are closed. He’s inhaling deeply, as though gathering every possible air molecule within the room inside his lungs. And he looks… Tormented. In pure, absolute agony. He straightens his expression when he notices that I’m looking, but it’s too late.
Being gone is a relief. And sheer agony.
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.
A heavy silence stretches, broken only by Lowe coming to stand in front of me. I’m ready to say my final words, but all he does is take off his zip-up hoodie, wrap it around my shuddery shoulders, then admire the result for a beat too long.
“She’s my—” Lowe’s hand jerks up to clutch Max’s jaw. “Apologize to my wife.”
His voice drops to a half whisper, meant only for my ears. There’s something tortured to it, like he’s in physical pain. “Why did my bed smell like you slept in it?”
“Sorry,” I breathe out. “You should be,” he says to the air between our lips. I wonder if my heart has ever beaten this loud before. This close to the surface of my skin.
He huffs out a laugh. “Neither do I. But at times, there are decisions that feel right, deep in the marrow of my bones.” He wets his lips. “You are one of them.”
He puts the food back in the fridge, with one glaring exception: the peanut butter. My gluttonous brain must be strained by the biological possibility of Were-Humans, because it dispatches my hand to scoop up a little glob from the rim, right to my lips, and it’s been so long, it’s so fucking good— “What the hell?”
LOL
Some nights, when he’s walking past her door, he has to whisper to himself: “Keep going.”
I love these little excerpts @ the beginning of the chapters
“I promise I’m not trying to make his life more difficult. And I feel so shitty about the mate thing.” Juno’s eyes widen. “He told you about that?” “No. I’m not supposed to know, but a friend of my father’s mentioned at the wedding that she was who I swapped with. I know his mate is the Were Collateral. Gabrielle.” “Gabrielle?” Juno’s look shifts from confused, to blank, to understanding. “Yes. Gabi. His mate.”
For a vampire misery sure is dumb lol
It’s been nearly a week since the full moon, and the cumulative time I’ve spent with my husband since then wouldn’t be enough to bring a kettle to boil. But Juno came to visit one night and brought a deck of cards, and came back two nights later and brought a movie and Gemma and Flor and Arden, and both evenings felt similar: odd, but fun. I’m with Alex all the time, and Cal’s daughter Misha asked to meet me to see “a real-life leech,” and a couple other seconds stopped by because they were in the area, just to introduce themselves, and… It’s unexpected, especially after my rocky start. I
...more
They have to met the alphas mate!
“And you don’t…” He clears his throat. “Use them?”
Lowe is dying for her to use them on him
“You’ll be able to be with your mate, and you’ll live bitingly ever after. There’s biting involved, right?” “Yeah. The bite is . .” His gaze flickers down to my neck. Lingers. “Important.”
Heheheeehhe
“If you come with me, Misery, you’ll have to be marked.”
Omg! Theyre gonn be mates! Oh theyre gonna b mates
“Because.” My knees are buckling, so I lock them. I still feel like I might lose my bearings, so I blindly reach up. Find Lowe’s shoulder. Grasp it for dear life. “I know you don’t like my scent.” “I fucking love your scent.”
hot
“Is this as weird for you as it is for me?” I ask, trying to make light of the flutters of pleasure in my stomach.
“No,” he growls.
“It’s not weird.” Lowe lifts his head from my neck. I’m so close to begging him to come back and do it some more, but he’s just switching sides, and I almost yelp in relief. This time, his palm cradles the entire back of my head, and for a few moments he thumbs the tip of my ear, exhaling slowly, reverently, like my body is a precious, beautiful thing. “It’s perfect,” he says, and then his mouth lowers again.
HOT
“Okay?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around the base of my throat. I say yes as fast as I can, well before the word is fully out of his mouth, and he doesn’t waste time, either: he lifts away the heavy mass of my hair. Clutches my hips in his palm. Presses my body against his. And once he has me how he wants me, he bends down.
His teeth close around the back of my neck, hard this time, and I am flooded with a filthy, instant kind of pleasure. The cry that I managed to leash earlier burns out of my throat. There’s pressure inside me, heady, scalding, and I can’t bear for it to grow. Lowe’s hand travels down to my stomach, settling me more tightly against him. The curve of my ass finds his groin, and he lets out a satisfied, guttural sound that jolts my nerve endings.
Phew the tension
“Fuck,” he mouths. He runs his tongue over the knob at the top of my spine one last time, as if to soothe the sting of his bite, and suddenly I’m cold. Shivering. When I turn, he’s standing several feet away from me, eyes pitch-black.
My fangs ache, itch, want like never before. I trace them with my tongue to ensure they aren’t on fire, and Lowe watches me do it, every second of it, lips parting. He takes a small, involuntary step toward me, then retreats again, appalled at his lack of control.
whatever just happened between us went beyond let me disguise you real quick and straight into something different. Something sexual.
“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.
She’s not like he imagined. She’s more, in every possible way.
c: took my second read to realize hes talking about imagining his mate lol
There is one bed, which will luckily not lead to any weird sharing situation, because I’ll disappear into the closet the second the sun is up.
Kind of one bed trope??? lol
Lowe chews on his lower lip, pensively staring at the bags of blood. “Maybe. But there are sides I want to be part of, and others that I do not.” He looks up, pale eyes just inches from mine. “Do you need to feed?”
Just ask her to bite you dude
“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.”
“But I won’t take from her.”
“Above all, I won’t take her freedom. Not when so many others have already done so.”
Ya i dont think hes talking about gabi
He’s been picturing her during her baths. He’s been having filthy, unspeakable thoughts. He’s too tired to keep them at bay.
So I like looking at my husband who’s a different species and fated to be someone else’s mate. Whatever. Take me to court. Impound my nonexistent assets.
When his grip slips, he turns his wrist to adjust it, and it transitions into something that’s more in the realm of a caress.
“I don’t care. I’m not taking the chance, not with you.”
I immediately unhook a pin from my nape and drop on my knees in front of the lock, letting my dress bunch up my thighs. A few seconds later I open the door with a butler-like flourish. “What?” I whisper, noticing the upturned corner of Lowe’s mouth. He slips in first, scans the room, then gestures me inside. “Just picturing you doing the same…” He closes the door behind him and turns on the light. I see a fireplace so large it could comfortably sleep a midsize family—and a suspicious amount of antlered wall decor. “To break into my room.”
Lowe you dirty, dirty boy
That you’re very…” He pauses. Wets his lips. My heartbeat skips. “Very beautiful to look at. Always so beautiful. And that—”
The past year notwithstanding, he was always comfortable with sex and everything that came with it. He knew what he liked, and he knew how to get it. He was content. Now he can’t remember what satisfaction felt like.
His blood tastes like his scent, and his smiles, and his hands lingering on my skin.
