Bride

She tastes the way she smells.

I expected a twenty-hour road trip in the hybrid parked in Lowe’s garage, or maybe a shorter plane ride in economy class with cotton discreetly stuffed in my nose to avoid being bombarded with the smell of Human blood.

I did not expect a Cessna.

“Honey,” I ask, lowering my sunglasses to the tip of my nose, “are we rich?”

His glance is only mildly blistering. “We’re just banned from most Human-owned airlines, darling.”

“Oh, right. That’s why I’ve never flown before. It’s all coming back to me.”

It’s hard to overstate how little Mick, Cal, and Ken Doll Ludwig like Lowe’s decision to take his Vampyre bride to Emery’s home. In the waning light of dusk, they practically throb with tense concern and unspoken objections.

Or spoken, maybe. I slept most of the day, and it’s entirely possible that while I was stuffed in the closet for my midday coma, they went through several rounds of screaming matches. I’m glad to have missed them, and just as glad that my time awake has been spent organizing tech stuff with Alex.

“If someone tries to kill Lowe,” he told me, showing me a USB Rubber Ducky, “it’s your duty to give your life for your Alpha.”

“I’m not full-body diving between him and a silver bullet.” I held the GSM interceptor against the light to study it. Nifty. “Or whatever it takes for you guys to be killed.”

“Just a regular bullet. And if you marry into a pack, the pack’s Alpha becomes your Alpha. You marry an Alpha, he most definitely becomes your Alpha.”

“Uh-huh, sure. Can I see that microcontroller over there?”

I’m not sad Alex didn’t come see us off at the little executive airport, because the others exude enough existential angst. Tight-lipped, bouncer-posed, frowny. Mick repeatedly shakes his head while holding Sparkles like a burping child—because, yes: Sparkles is, according to someone who’s been scolded multiple times in the past two hours for stuffing Play-Doh into outlets, “a valued family member” who “really loves to watch planes go whooosh.” Juno is the least opposed to the op, which is nice of her. The real happy camper, however, is Ana, and only because of the promises she extracted from Lowe: presents, candy, and, in a required logistical effort that far overestimates his abilities, stealing an L from the Hollywood Sign.

“L for Liliana,” she whispers at me conspiratorially, because her faith in my alphabet skills is shaky at best. Then she skips away to subject Sparkles to unspeakable cuddly things that have him purring his heart out, but would earn me permanent disfigurement.

“Let’s go,” Lowe tells me after bending down to kiss her forehead. I follow him up the steps, waving back at Ana before disappearing inside. It looks less like a one percenter’s luxury jet, and more like a cross between a nice living room and first class on an Amtrak train.

“Is the pilot Were?” I ask, following Lowe to the front of the plane. It’s not a particularly cramped space, but we’re both tall, and it’s a tight fit.

“Yup.” He opens the door to the cockpit.

“Who—”

I shut up when he lowers himself into the pilot seat. He presses buttons with quick, practiced movements, puts on a large pair of headphones, and talks to air traffic control in hushed tones.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I roll my eyes. I’m tempted to ask when, between leading a pack and becoming an architect, he got a small aircraft license. But I suspect he wants me to, and I’m too petty to oblige. “Show-off,” I mutter, bumping my right hip into half a dozen protuberances on my way to the copilot chair.

His smile is lopsided. “Strap in.”

Like everything else, Lowe makes flying look effortless. Being in a giant metallic bird in the sky should be terrifying, but I press my nose against the cold window and gaze at the night sky, the sprawling lights interrupted by long stretches of desert. I only reemerge when we get permission to land.

“Misery,” he says, softly.

“Mmm?” From up high, the ocean is unmoving.

“When we land,” he starts, then takes a long pause.

So long, I pry myself from the cold glass. “Ouch.” I’m stiff from not moving for hours, so I stretch my neck in the narrow cabin, trying to avoid accidentally pressing an ejector seat button. “Everything hurts.” When I straighten after arching my spine, the way he’s staring at me is too intense to not be judgmental. “What?” I ask, defensive.

“Nothing.” He turns back to the control board. Too fast.

“You said, ‘when we land’?”

“Yeah.”

“You realize that’s not a sentence, right? Just a temporal subordinate clause.”

His eyebrow lifts. “You’re a linguist now?”

“Just a helpful critic. What happens when we land?”

He roams the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He nods. “I need to send Emery and her people the message that you’re part of my pack and no violence against you will be tolerated. Not just the verbal message.”

“You said you’d do that by marking me, right?” Whatever that is. The blinking lights in the landing strip are approaching, and the turbulence is making me nauseous. I shift my focus to Lowe. “I don’t need to speed-read Architecture for Dummies and pretend I can tell Gothic and art deco apart?”

He turns to me, stone-faced. “You’re joking.”

“Please look ahead.”

“You can, right? You are able to tell apart—”

“Husband, darling, deep inside you know the answer to that, and please look at the road when you’re landing a plane.”

He turns back. “It’s about scents,” he says, clearly forcing himself to change the topic.

“Of course. What isn’t?” He’s been a champ. He doesn’t seem to react to my scent anymore. Maybe it’s all the baths. Maybe he’s getting used to me, like Serena when she lived by the fish market. By the time her lease was ending, she found the eggyness almost comforting.

“If we smell the same, it’ll send that message.”

“Does it mean you should be smelling like dog breath?” I joke.

“I’m going to do that.” His voice is raspy.

“To do what?”

“Make you smell like”—the plane touches down with a graceful bump—“me.”

My hands tighten around the armrests as we race down the runway. I’m horror-stricken, scenarios of us splattered against the building at the end of the strip blooming in my brain. Little by little, we slow down—and little by little, Lowe’s words settle like dust.

“Like you?”

He nods, busy with some final maneuvers. I notice a small group of people gathered by the hangar. Emery’s welcoming committee, ready to slaughter us.

“That’s fine. Do what you want with my body,” I say absently, trying to guess which one of them is more likely to throw a clove of garlic at me. “Fair warning, Serena often bitches about how gross and cold I feel. Those three degrees make all the difference.”

“Misery.”

“Seriously, I don’t care. Do whatever.”

The maneuvering is over. He unbuckles and assesses the Weres waiting for us. There’s five of them, and they look tall. Then again: so am I. And so is Lowe.

“If they attack us—”

“They won’t,” he interrupts me. “Not now.”

“But if they do, I can help—”

“I know, but I can take them on my own. Come on, we don’t have much time.” He takes me by the wrist, pulling me into the main sitting area, which is larger than the cabin, but too small for the way we’re standing in front of each other. “I’m going to—”

“Do whatever.” I crane my neck past him to catch a glimpse of the Weres through the portholes. Some are actually in wolf form.

“Misery.”

“Just hurry and—”

“Misery.” I jolt back to him at the command in his voice. There’s an angry V between his brows. “I need your explicit consent.”

“For what?”

“I’m going to scent you the traditional Were way. It entails rubbing my skin against yours. My tongue, too.”

Oh. Oh.

Something electric, liquid, pools inside my body. I deal with it the only way I can: by laughing. “Seriously?”

He nods, as serious as quicksand.

“Like a wet willy?”

His hand lifts to my neck.

Stops.

“May I touch you?” He’s asking for permission, but there’s nothing insecure or tentative about it. I nod. “Weres have scent glands—here.” He brushes the pad of his thumb against the hollow on the left side of my throat. “Here.” The right side. “And here.” His hand wraps around my neck, palm flush against my nape. “Your wrists, too.”

“Ah.” I clear my throat. And resist the urge to squirm, because I’m feeling . . . I have no idea. It’s the way he looks at me. His pale, piercing eyes. “This is a, um, fascinating anatomy lecture, but—Oh, shit. The green markings, at our wedding! But I—”

“You don’t have scent glands,” he says, like I’m more predictable than taxes, “but you do have pulse points, where your blood pumps closer to the surface, and the heat—”

“—will augment the scent. I’m familiar with the whole blood thing.”

He nods and holds my eyes expectantly, until he understands that I have no clue what he’s waiting for. “Misery. Do I have your permission?”

I could say no. I know that I could say no and he’d probably just find another way to protect me—or die trying, because he’s that kind of guy. And maybe that’s exactly why I nod and close my eyes, thinking that it won’t be a big deal.

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.

My blood sings. My ears roar. I’m melting.

“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.

The roar in my ears is getting louder—because it wasn’t in my ears at all. A car is driving across the tarmac, toward our plane.

Emery.

“I’m sorry.” Lowe sounds like a rake has run through his vocal box. His fingers twitch at his side, a reflex. Like my hand lingering on the damp spot at the base of my throat.

“I . . .” My hand shifts to massage my nape. I can still feel his touch. “That was . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

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.

This might be new to me, and I may not be a Were, but whatever just happened between us went beyond let me disguise you real quick and straight into something different.

Something sexual.

And if I know it, there is no way he doesn’t.

“Lowe.” We should talk about this. Or never mention it again.

The way he’s looking, he’s opting for the latter. “I’m done,” he says to himself, eyes glassy. “It’s done.”

“Is it better?”

His lips press together. As though there is a flavor he wants to hold in his mouth a moment longer. “Better?”

“My smell. Do I smell like . . . ?”

“Mine.” It’s a rumble in his throat. “You smell like you’re mine, Misery.”

Something charged shimmers through my body.

It is, after all, exactly what we were going for.