Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            “What you are?”

            “Were.” His hand wraps around my rib cage, but halts right underneath my breast. A silent reminder that we can always stop. “Alpha.”

            Ah. “I wouldn’t want you to be not you.”

            “Can I . . .” His teeth close gently around the ball of my shoulder. “I’m not going to draw blood, or hurt you. But can I . . . ?”

            I nod into the mattress. “It seems only fair.”

            He grunts, grateful, and licks a long stripe up my spine and into my nape. He’s vocal in his pleasure, vocal in his praise, and even though I don’t fully understand it, this is a thing for him, something important and consuming and maybe even necessary. His hand pins my wrists again, above my head, as though he needs to know that I’m here to stay. I struggle against his hold, just to test it.

            “Be good.” Lowe clicks his tongue. “You’re all right. Aren’t you, Misery?”

            “Yeah,” I breathe.

            “Nice. Very. I am profoundly obsessed with these.” I feel hot air against my skin, and realize he’s talking about my ears. “Are they sensitive?”

            “I don’t think—”

            His teeth close around the tip, and it’s like a current passing through me.

            “I see that they are,” he drawls. His cock presses harder against my ass, and his lips drift back to my nape over and over again, like he cannot help himself, like it’s the center of gravity in my body. I remember the plane, how close he got to losing control when he first touched me there. “Do Weres have a gland there?” I ask, words muffled into the sheets. I’m more wet than I can remember being. If this is the hottest thing I’ll ever experience, I’d love to know why.

            “It’s complicated.” He sucks a mark into the knob at the top of my spine and I make a guttural sound. Then he does. There’s some fumbling behind me—his belt, unbuckled, the zipper of his jeans, lowered—and after a few seconds of rustling, his cock splits the cheeks of my ass, pushing between them. It’s wet and hot, rubbing up and down for the right amount of friction.

            Lowe makes a stupefied sound.

            “Condom,” I gasp. Not something Vampyres ever use, but maybe Weres do? “Do you have one?”

            He goes back for one last nibble before turning me around. “No.” His eyes glow with determined, reflected light as he takes off my leggings. He stares down at me with a transfixed look that strikes me as the culmination of many things I’ll never hear about, and when he bends down to lick my collarbone, I feel how hard he is, leaking against my stomach. The heat of him feeds my hunger for blood in a confusing, beautiful buildup.

            “But do you want to use something?” I ask.

            “We don’t need to,” he says, pushing up my shirt. This time his bite is on the side of my breast. His tongue circles around my nipple before pressing flat against it. Then he sucks, mouth wet and electrifying.

            “Stop,” I force myself to say.

            He instantly pulls back, holding himself up on his palms, peeling his gaze from my chest with some difficulty. “We don’t have to,” he pants. “If you—”

            “I do, but.” I prop myself up on my elbows. My shirt slips to cover the upper curve of my breasts. Lowe’s eyes wander down again, until he tears them toward the window. “Why don’t you want to use contraceptives?” If Weres and Humans can reproduce, nothing is off the table.

            “I don’t— We can, if you’d like. But we can’t have sex.”

            “We can’t?”

            “Not like that.”

            I sit up, pulling down my shirt, and he shifts back, sitting on his knees. We stare at each other, breathing heavily, like we’re in the middle of a Regency-era duel. “Maybe we should discuss this.”

            His throat bobs. “We’re not compatible like that, Misery.” He says it like he knows this to be a fact. One he’s given a lot of thought to.

            My eyebrow lifts. “If Ana exists . . .” It must be feasible.