A Werewolf’s Guide to Seducing a Vampire (Glimmer Falls, #3)

by Sarah Hawley

“I’m thirty-eight and single and haven’t dated in nearly a decade. My business takes up all my time, and I like to knit, and I’m not even a properly rowdy werewolf, and who could ever love someone who feels this anxious most of the time? I should like all the howling and biting things, but I just feel out of control, and no one else likes sweater vests even though they’re wrong about that, and what if nothing about me is attractive and I die alone in a ditch?”

Gods, she was tired. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

What would it take to find the one person whose expressions she could trust? The one person who would never harm her?

Would she ever be able to look at a person and think: I am safe with you?

“When pride is that fragile, it’s just aggression papered over insecurity or cruelty. It becomes a liability.”

Ben had always been a crier. At sad movies, when his family and friends were upset, when he was overwhelmed…He’d

This was who he was, and he’d rather love deeply and cry than feel anything less for his family.

And really, every good couple should have a soft one and a stabby one.”

“So how do I best protect Ben? Besides gutting his enemies.”

she had created an entire werewolf care package to send him into the forest with.

“I have panic attacks, but it’s more than that. It’s why I stay so busy—if I’m always working, my brain has so much to think about that there’s less room for bad thoughts.”

“I often think I’m a fraud or a failure,” he said through a tight throat. “Like everyone hates me or there’s no point to my existence. Or that I’m not enough of a man or a werewolf, that there’s something wrong with me for not enjoying brawling or hunting or one-night stands.”

“If I’m not exhausted when I go to bed,” he continued, “I end up lying awake in the dark for hours, worrying about everything from the Emporium to stupid things I did twenty years ago.”

On nights like that the past was paved with regret, while the future spread out before him in a tangle of twisting paths, any one of which might drop him off the edge of a cliff.

His brain had always been like that, even when he was a child. He’d worried about the thousand horrible outcomes that were po...

“And no one hates you.” “Cynthia Cunnington does.” She waved a hand. “She probably hates the clouds for raining on her. I’d be more worried if she liked you.”

“The world is too large for everyone to be the same.”

I work constantly to wear myself out so I can’t think about the wrong things. It’s my way of controlling my brain.

That’s how my thoughts spiral. I start seeing the absolute worst outcome, even if it’s ludicrous.”

“Smoke adder, eh?” he said in a voice like a creaking floorboard. “One of those bit my testicles once. Not fun.”

“Tell me where she is,” she hissed, baring her fangs. “I will rip her heart out, eat it, and floss my teeth with her veins.”

It was like discovering a lost art—the ability to weep. When hate had been her armor, there had been little room for tears.

If there’s one constant across the years, it’s that people love getting drunk and stuffing inappropriate objects up their bums.”

This was the passion she’d always known was inside him, the one she’d tasted in his blood that first day. Ben Rosewood was a gentleman, but he fucked.

Ben was in his prime—if he’d been a whiskey, he would have been top-shelf—but rapid-fire orgasms were normally harder to attain after the intense sexual chaos of youth.

“I don’t think you understand how inspiring eating your pussy is.”

He always asked. If her nipples were sensitive, how she liked her clitoris to be touched, how she wanted to have him. Eleonore appreciated it.

It didn’t matter how much an abuser said they loved someone—or even if they truly believed they loved that person. An abuser would always consider themselves the hero or heroine of their own story.