Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            Which, I soon realize, might not be the case.

            It starts with heat, drifting over me as he shifts closer. The faint, pleasant scent of his blood climbing into my nostrils. After that, his touch. First his hand on my jaw, holding me still, angling my head to the right, and then . . . his nose, I think. Nuzzling down the column of my throat, moving back and forth over the place where my blood flows the strongest. He inhales once. Again, deeper. Then travels back up, the scratch of his jaw tickling my flesh.

            “Okay?” he asks in a low rumble.

            I nod. Yes. It’s okay. More than okay, though I wouldn’t be able to qualify how, or why. An “I’m sorry” stumbles out of my mouth.

            “Sorry?” The word vibrates through my skin.

            “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.”

            “So the baths did work— Oh.”

            When he said tongue, I expected . . . Not that his lips would part at the base of my throat, and then a soft, drawn-out lick. Because this feels like a kiss. Like Lowe Moreland is kissing my neck, slowly. Grazing it with his teeth and finishing off with a light nibble.

            I nearly moan. But at the last moment, I manage to swallow back inside my body the whimpery, throaty sound, and . . .

            God. Why does what he’s doing feel so phenomenally good?

            “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. Because this thing spreading like spilled water below my navel, it’s arousal, and it could explode into wildfire very fast. It makes me think of blood and touching and maybe fucking, and as things are happening to my body, I’m terrified that he’ll be able to smell them.

            Smell me.

            “No,” he growls.

            “But—”

            “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.

            First a delicate bite on my earlobe. Then the swipe of his tongue at the base of my jaw. Last, right as I’m thinking that this is different from what I thought scenting would be, he moves to the bottom of my throat and sucks.

            He grunts.

            I gasp.

            We both let out staggered breaths as my hand creeps up to press his face deeper into me. He pulls gently at my skin, open-mouthed, and the stimulation is like electricity, flooding me with warmth. Weres’ body temperature is much higher than Vampyres’, and his body is a scant inch of air and possibilities away, and the heat of him . . .

            My breasts ache, nipples hard as gems, and I want to arch into him. I want contact and flesh and skin. Lowe is solid, and I feel so soft, and his thundering heartbeat—his delicious beating heart—is a hazy, indescribable wonder pulling me to him. I squirm in his arms, trying to press against him, rub just a little, but no.

            Because Lowe pulls back. His hand closes on my shoulder, spinning me around until I’m facing away from him. My breath catches as I clasp a headrest for balance.

            “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.