When he turns us on our sides, one of my long legs hiked on top of his, I can feel his come drip outside of me even past the seal of our bodies. The mess we’re making, of the bed and of each other. Somehow, it seems like a good thing.

Outside, the waves crash against the lakeshore. Lowe’s fingers wrap around my cheek. I feel the pleasure rise inside me once more, and I settle in for the long haul.

It’s still the middle of the night when I wake up. I’m lying face down on the bed, my cheek buried in a pillow, feeling limp and wrung out, as though a lifetime’s worth of sensation has been crammed into and then squeezed out of my body.

It’s surprisingly lovely.

Lowe is next to me, propped on one elbow, touching me all over in a way that seems half distracted, half compulsive. Traveling the dip that joins my shoulder blades. Following the round contours of my ass. Combing his fingers through my hair and tracing the tip of my ear. Cupping right between my legs, uncaring, or maybe excited by the slick mess he left there, eager to push his spend back inside me.

I let my eyelids flutter open and observe him observing every curve and angle and slope of my body, entranced by the entranced look in his eyes. He is focused, lost in the simple touch, and several minutes pass before he glances up at my face and finds me awake. His smile is at once reserved and hesitant and proud and luminous.

I want him—I want this with him—so much, so forcefully, it’s equal parts terrifying and soaring.

“Hi.”

I smile back. With fangs. “How long did it take for it to . . . ?”

“About thirty minutes.” He leans over to trail open-mouthed kisses across the line of my shoulder. His hand curves around my ass as he murmurs into my ear, “You did so good, Misery. It can’t have been easy, but you took me so well. Like you were made for it.”

Blood rushes to my cheeks. I shift, savoring the rich soreness within my body. “Considering how busy you are with Ana and your pack, we might have to schedule sex.”

It’s meant as a joke, but he nods solemnly. “Pencil me into your calendar.”

“What about early Sunday mornings? Before ten a.m. though, or I’m going to crash on you.”

“Fuck that. Save two hours, every day.”

I laugh and stare at the green flush that lingers on his sharp cheekbones, marveling. Mine, I think, happy, covetous, greedy. It’s a new feeling, belonging. Owning.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks softly, and I laugh once more.

“Do I look like I hurt?”

He hesitates. “It lasted a long time, and it worked . . . maybe it worked a little too well for me. I nearly blacked out for a while there, and I doubt I was at my most observant.”

“No, I do not hurt, Lowe.” I hold his eyes and ask evenly, “What about you?”

His look is withering, and I feel like laughing again. He and I. Together. The greatest thing of all time that never should have happened.

“Serena might come looking for me,” I say. “I don’t want her recently traumatized self to stumble upon an interspecies sex moment and get even more traumatized, so—”

“She’s half Were and half Human,” Lowe says. I watch him curiously until he continues to make his point. “Unless a whole lot of hybrids pop out of the woodwork, she’s only ever going to have interspecies relationships.”

“Oh.” I try to think through the implications of it, but I have to give up. My brain is mushy, mellow with remainders of pleasure, and a loud sort of quiet, and the scent of Lowe’s blood. “Either way, I should shower.”

“No,” he commands brusquely, in his Alpha voice. His muscles coil, like he’s getting ready for a fight. Then he must realize the ridiculousness of his reaction, because he scrunches his eyes shut, throat working.

I tilt my head. “You used to be okay with me taking baths.”

“It’s different. There is a lot going on.” He points at his head, but then looks down at his body. A lot going on inside me, he means. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to let you out of my sight for a couple of days. Or weeks.” He sounds unapologetic and remorseful—a combination I did not think was possible. “And right now, you smell like me. Like you wouldn’t believe it, Misery. You smell like me from the inside, and every damn cell is screaming at me that making you that way is the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, maybe the only good thing, and I can’t let you—”

“Lowe.” I shift up to my elbows and lean forward to kiss him on the mouth, stopping the torrent of words. “Will you come take a shower with me?” I pull back and smile. “That way, you can replace the scent right away, and you don’t need to let me out of your sight?”

The tension instantly leaves his body. His eyes soften. “That, I can do.”

He carries me to his bathroom, and the warm jet of water soothes me as much as his hands following every drop’s journey on my body. I close my eyes, tip my head back, and let him touch me in that compelled, absorbed manner that appears to be his new normal. He seems to have accepted this—us—effortlessly, unconditionally, but I cannot help but wonder.

“Lowe?”

“Mmm?”

“Since I’m your mate, and since I don’t really plan to, you know, let go of you . . . you’ll never be able to do this with a Were,” I say without opening my eyes. “You’ll never get the hardware experience.”

His soapy palms lather my skin, lingering too long on my breasts. “Any idea of doing any of this with a Were died the night I met you.” I hear the dismissal in his words. What he adds is a murmur, more for himself than for me. “There wouldn’t be anyone else, anyway. Even if you didn’t want me, I couldn’t.”

“But the fact remains that I have way more limitations than you. Is it going to be weird, that we’re never going to go for a run in wolf form together? That we’ll never take a walk in the sun? Have a meal together? We’ll even have to figure out a sleep schedule that fits for both of us.”

His thumb and forefinger close around my chin and raise it, gentle but determined, until I’m forced to meet his eyes. “No,” he simply says. It’s a more potent reassurance than any long speech or vehement denial. Then he pushes a strand of hair behind my ears, and leans forward to suck at one of those spots on my neck that seem to be his magnetic north. He hums and softly begins to scrape over it with his teeth.

“You can go ahead, then,” I tell him.

He nips softly. “Mmm?”

“Bite me, if you want.” I feel his broad chest stiffen against mine. “Like all the mate scars I’ve seen.”

A deep, resonating rumble rises from his chest. For a brief moment, his grip tightens on my waist almost painfully. Then he lets go, looking as though he’s made of steel and restraint. “No.”

“If you think I’ll change my mind—”

“I don’t. But not now.”

“Not now.”

“There are rituals. Customs. Things that mean something to us. To me,” he adds. “I want to see you in those obscene ceremonial marks again. I want to put them on you. Alone, this time—I don’t fucking need anyone around to see you like that and get any ideas. And when I finally bite you, it won’t be on your neck.” He lets out a rueful laugh. “Nothing as dignified for us, Misery.”

Oh. “Where?”

His palm rounds my throat. Cups my nape. The pad of his thumb traces down my spine, just one or two vertebrae. “Here. I think I’ll bite you here.” He says it like it’s a secret, filthy plan he’s been working on for a while, and then lets out a rueful, frustrated sound. “You’ll wear your hair up, and people will see it, and they will know that I took my beautiful Vampyre bride the way wolves do, and that she loved it. And you will be good for me and let me, won’t you?”

I would let you right this moment, I think, but don’t bother saying it. I know Lowe by now, and the things he’s accustomed to denying himself.