With a flex of his abs, he sits up from underneath me and presses his palm back to my mouth, a silent shut up with this nonsense and take all you want. So I do. Until my blood-drunk, glazed eyes fall on his lips, and I realize that there’s something I crave even more than his blood.
I pull back. He watches me lick what’s left of him off my lips, and his moan is pure agony. “Fuck,” he mutters, raspy, enraptured.
“Am I— Do you— Can I kiss you? I might taste like blood, so if you don’t want to—”
He closes the space between us, and his mouth strokes mine, slow, sensual, deep. I feel his groan of pleasure exhaled against my tongue. The cut on his palm has already repaired itself, and one hand travels to my ass, my breasts, my hips, while the other tightens at the back of my neck. We both gasp, bodies melded together as close as they’ll go.
This is messy and uncoordinated and unlike anything else. The feeling of touching and being touched by someone who knows me and whom I know. Someone who likes me and whom I like. Someone I could fall in love with and who would love me back.
The sweetness of it roars through me, and I savor it.
“You are so beautiful right now,” he says, his large body dragging against mine, and I feel a tingle in my spine, the desire to reach for more, to have his skin rub against mine.
That’s when it occurs to me that we didn’t discuss any of this. I just . . . I jumped him. I literally tackled him to the ground, and . . .
Crap.
“We don’t . . .” I start. And then: “I’m sorry. You just offered me blood, and I may have taken advantage, and we don’t have to do anything. I can stop if you—”
He turns us around until I’m underneath him, and it’s the loudest, most silent fuck no I’ve ever heard. The floor should be painfully hard, but I’m liquid underneath Lazlo, pliant and malleable, and if the feel of having me pinned makes him lose his mind a little, it has the same effect on me. A knot of heat and friction grows inside me, drags past rational thoughts, and then we’re pulling clothes off each other and he’s touching me everywhere, at once violent and reverent, frenzied and worshipful.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, please—”
He brushes against me. The head of his cock is beaded, leaking. It hits my clit, parting me where I’m already wet. “Okay?” he asks.
I nod, and then he’s inside me, big, a little too fast, incomprehensible. At once, everything recedes. The world slows down. All I can feel is the beat of his heart against mine. His fingers tremble in my hair, and my thighs shake around his hips.
At this age, I thought my body would hold no more surprises for me. No new feelings.
I was wrong.
“Holy shit,” he whispers, mostly to himself. Then he begins to move, the thrusts burning and buzzing inside me, my belly still full of the best blood I’ve ever had, his mouth against mine as he tells me how perfect I am, how long he’s wanted this, that he already knows he’ll need this forever. The thick length of him fills me, bringing me closer and closer to the edge until I whimper and clamp around him in long, pulling contractions.
He comes right after, with a deep grunt muffled into my throat.
And then I tighten my arms around him as he regains his breath, feeling the kisses he presses against my collarbone, my breasts, the soft flesh under my chin, and . . .
I start laughing. And laughing.
And laughing.
Lazlo lifts his head to glare at me. “Glad to see that you find the most meaningful moment of my life hilarious.”
“No, no, I . . . It’s not—” I try to stop chuckling, in vain. “I was just thinking, we need to commission a commemorative plaque. Put it up right there, on that wall.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . A slayer and a vampire. Doing it. It has to be a first in all of history, right?”
He bends down to kiss me, but not before I see the grin on his face.
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Epilogue
We are still working on building our routine, Lazlo and I, but that’s okay. It’s early days, and for now it’s all about finding out what we like—and then doing it over and over and over again.
Together.
We talk. We kiss. We touch. We travel and we stay put. We dance. We fight. We cook. We choose books and movies and good poems. We watch plants grow and flowers bloom. We visit nature and big cities and rural farms, share crossword puzzles and coffee shops and museums.
We avoid other immortals, slayers and vampires alike, but discover that it’s not too hard to become friends with human neighbors and stray cats. During the winter, we go up north, where the sun barely rises. In the summer, we move south. Chile and Argentina. Halloween, though . . .
For Halloween, we return home.
We sit on our stoop. Welcome trick-or-treaters. Watch the festivities. Early in the night, Lazlo will have a candied apple; later, I’ll have a sip of his blood, and it’ll taste sweeter than it does the rest of the year.
“Are you a vampire?” I’ll ask a boy in a beautiful velvet cape, handing him a full-size candy bar.
He’ll nod, happy.
“And I’m a vampire hunter,” his friend will tell me.
“Weird, huh?” Lazlo will whisper in my ear, pulling me back into his solid warmth. His long arms will close around my torso, and I’ll smile and think to myself, Weird. But weirder things have happened.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my agent, Thao Le, as well as my fantastic editors, Maria Gomez and Lindsey Faber, and everyone else who has helped me work on the novella, including the production manager (Jen Bentham), the cover designer (Elizabeth Turner Stokes), the copyeditor (Michelle Hope), and the proofreader (Nicole Thomas). Also, many thanks to all the other authors included in the anthology. Above all, thanks to Jen for the stakes line: You’re a genius, and I don’t deserve you.
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Other titles by Ali Hazelwood
The Love Hypothesis
Love on the Brain
Love, Theoretically
Bride
Not in Love
Deep End
Problematic Summer Romance
Anthologies
Loathe to Love You
Novellas
Under One Roof
Stuck with You
Below Zero
Cruel Winter with You
Two Can Play
Young Adult Novels
Check & Mate
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About the Author
Photo © 2022 Justin Murphy, Out of the Attic Photography
Ali Hazelwood is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels and novellas, including Bride, Mate, The Love Hypothesis, and Love, Theoretically. Ali is also a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy.
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Ali Hazelwood is back with the highly anticipated companion novel to the New York Times bestselling Bride.
Serena Paris is orphaned, pack-less, and one of a kind. Coming forward as the first Human-Were hybrid was supposed to heal a centuries-long rift between species. Instead, it made her a target, prey to the ruthless political machinations between Weres, Vampyres, and Humans. With her enemies closing in on her, she has only one option left—if he’ll have her.
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