Mate (Bride, #2)

by Ali Hazelwood

He didn’t think she could be more perfect. Then she offered him her bite.

“As in, my smell brings all the Weres to the yard?”

From the same mug. His lips touch the same water molecules as mine.

“I can’t believe you take your coffee black but sweeten your tea,” I say. “I don’t drink black coffee.” “What? Since when?” “Since I started drinking it, during the High Middle Ages.” “But…I’ve been giving you black coffee.” “And I have been hating it.”

His mouth brushes my fingertips, and the memory of it imprints against the pad of my thumb. The scrape of his teeth. An impression of heat.

“The truth is, if you decide to spend your Heat with someone else, they’ll have to chain me at the bottom of a well and seal its mouth with concrete.”

“Serena. If you’re not going to let me bullshit an answer, just stop asking questions.”

“You smell incredible right now.” “Like…how?” “Like you’d let me keep you here and fuck you for the next six months. Like you need me to.”

“You can keep me forever,” I mumble into his throat, and his cock twitches under me. “Is this okay? I’m making a mess of you, and—” “Do more of it.”

“My entire life is made of fucking lines. And you’re blowing past all of them.”

“What if I’m doing all the work? What if you’re just my…Mine.”

“No, Serena. You can’t. But I can. I want you to tell me what you need, and I want the privilege of giving it to you. I want you to use me.”

“Sweetheart.” He nips at it.

“The first time I saw you, I thought that of course the universe would deliver someone with the most perfect pair of tits I’d ever seen and then yank her away from me.”

“It’s hard to keep my hands off you, killer. And you never wear anything under my shirts—”

My afterlife will just be me, watching you move around my house in nothing but my clothes. Knowing that you’re warm and fed and safe and so damn soft.”

“I’m going to bury my face in them the second you go to bed, killer.”

“I know that you took an oath. And I know that this is doomed. But…Koen. There is very little that I wouldn’t do for you, if you were to ask me.”

“I would throw away my pack, my life, and my entire world for you. Which is the exact reason I cannot have you.”

Your scent destroys my focus. It’s better if we’re not too alone.”

He is so handsome, I have to close my eyes against it. And I like him so much, I’m going to have to close my heart, too.

There are more than half a dozen people in the room, but his gaze falls on me instantly, like I’m the center of mass of his universe.

“When I say that I would do it all over again, I also mean that I would go through what he did all over again. If it brought me to you.”

Our mouths are touching. I feel as though we’re made of the same stuff. Me and him, set apart from the remaining matter of the universe.

This is it, then. What he was born for.

“You always smell like you were made specifically for me. To fuck. To be around. To worship. But right now, you smell like you’d give me anything I asked for.

“In a matter of days, you’re going to leave, and I’ll spend the rest of my life as your fucking servant. Whatever you ask me for, you’ll have. But here you are. Defenseless. Mine for a short time.”

I feel him rearranging my cunt, my soul, my entire damn life, and lose control of my body.

“Take it.” He shoves deeper. “Be good and take my knot.”

How could I ever think of fucking anyone else, when you take it so well?”

I wonder if he’s storing every little touch for later. If he’s even aware of what he’s doing, staring at me with a faint half smile that is just… Lovesick.

“Do you think…After this is done, do you think it’ll be harder for you to go back to not having it?” “Serena,” he says, deliberate, level. “None of this is about sex.” “Then what—” “You. This, all of it, is purely about you.”

“I hope you never find out the things I’ve done while thinking about them.”

“You are my mate. I would have wanted you no matter what. I will want you no matter what. But you are also…” He licks his lips. “If someone had given me a piece of paper and asked me to list everything I liked, everything I dreamed of, everything that I was sure would make me happy, you would have been the final product of it.”

“There could never be disappointment, because there were never any comparisons, or expectations, or hopes, or standards to meet. There’s only…” He casts a glance around the room, searching. Then his eyes settle on me. “There is only you, Serena.”

Girls in Heat only get what they ask for if they finish their water.

“Since it’s obvious that your mouth is not nearly busy enough, you’re having another glass before we continue.”

“This is it. How I want to wake up for the rest of my life.”

His duties, the one to his pack and the one to his mate, should be tearing him in two. And yet he has never felt more intact than he does right now.

Koen’s inner circle is very happy that Mommy and Daddy got it on.”

Pretend his scent doesn’t feel like home, like a blanket, like he’s holding me already,

“You are the heart of this pack, Koen.” He nods. Even as he says, “And you are mine, Serena.”