Chapter 23: : Chapter 22

Imust have fallen asleep again, because when I open my eyes it’s a little before midnight. Dragging a T-shirt and leggings on is a feat worthy of a thousand armies, and I barely manage. I haven’t fed in a week, and my body must be well enough to demand sustenance, because my stomach cramps painfully.

I stagger downstairs, trying to recall if I’ve ever gone without blood this long before. The closest was when I first moved back to Human territory, before Serena found me an under-the-table seller I could afford. By the time I got my hands on a small bag it had been three days, and I felt as though my internal organs were feasting on themselves.

Maybe it’s because my body is shutting down, but I stumble into the kitchen without noticing Lowe and Alex. I stop like a deer in the headlights, wondering why they’re huddled in front of a computer. It’s a bit late for a meeting.

“Is Ana okay?” I ask, and they both look up at me in surprise.

“Ana’s fine.”

I relax. Then tense again. “Did Owen find that footage?”

Lowe shakes his head.

“You both look really serious, so— Wait, Alex, what are you—”

Alex has stood from his chair and is currently hugging me.

This is a nightmare. Maybe Vampyres do dream, after all.

“Thank you,” he says. “For what you did for Ana.”

“What did I— Oh.” This is weird. “You know that I didn’t ingest that poison voluntarily to protect her, right? I just happen to be disgracefully into peanuts.”

“You would have, though,” he mumbles against my hair.

“What?”

“Protected her.”

I gently push him away, too hungry to argue over whether I’m a good person. I might like him better when he’s terrified of me. “Listen, I’m going to feed before I’m tempted to bite one of Ana’s stuffies or—” I gasp. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Sparkles. Serena’s damn fucking cat. I forgot about him! Did someone feed him? Is he dead?” How long can cats go without eating? An hour? A month?

“He’s safe with Ana,” Lowe informs me.

“Oh.” I press my palm to my chest. “I’ll need him back if—when I find Serena. Though at this point he’s been with Ana longer.” I take a bag out of the fridge. “Maybe they can work out some joint custody—”

“Misery, I found it,” Alex tells me excitedly. “Serena Paris!”

“You found Serena?”

“No, but I found the connection.” He leads me back to the table and we both take a seat next to Lowe. “That search we were working on before you . . .” He gestures at me.

“Almost croaked?”

“Yes. I continued it while you were . . .”

“Almost croaking?”

“And it was surprisingly difficult. So difficult, I figured we were onto something.”

“How so?”

“The identities of the Human-Were Bureau workers were nowhere to be found, which is odd for that kind of government employee.” I glance at Lowe, who stares back calmly. He’s already been briefed. “So I looked . . . harder, let’s say. And stumbled on a list with a very familiar name.”

“What name?”

“Thomas Jalakas. He was the Human—”

“—comptroller of public accounts.” I nod slowly. I’m not sure what that even means, but I do know that it has to do with finance and the economy, because: “Serena emailed with his office. For an article that she was writing. And then she met him in person.”

“Yup. She interviewed him, though the article was never published.”

“But I background checked him. I checked everyone she talked to—I found nothing about him being in the Human-Were Bureau.”

“Precisely. His CV is all over the place, but there are no mentions anywhere that he was at the Bureau for eleven months, eight years ago.”

My head spins. I cover my mouth.

“Now,” Alex adds, “you’ve both been very withholding, and I don’t fully understand the significance of any of this, but if you tell me why I’m looking into this guy, I could—”

“Alex,” Lowe interrupts gently. “It’s getting late. You should go home.”

Alex turns to him, wide-eyed.

“You did a great job. Have a good night.”

Alex’s hesitation is negligible. He stands, bows his head once, and clasps my shoulder on his way out. Lowe’s eyes hold mine the entire time, but I wait until the kitchen door locks in the frame to say, “Thomas Jalakas must be Ana’s father. I mean, could this be a coincidence?”

“Yes.”

I scoff, skeptical. “Fine. But is it?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe so, no.” He navigates through the browser tabs and shows me a picture. “This is Thomas.”

“Holy shit.” I study his wide mouth. The square jaw. The dimples. The resemblance to Ana is undeniable. “This means that Serena met with Ana’s father—and I never realized it, because I assumed it was for her financial stuff.”

Lowe nods.

“He has to be the person who told her about Ana. We have to talk to him.”

“We can’t.”

“Why? I can get answers from him. If you help me, I might be able to thrall him and—”

“He’s dead, Misery.”

Dread crawls up my spine. “When?”

“Two weeks after Serena disappeared. A car accident.”

The implications sink into me instantly. Serena, that fucking idiot, got herself involved in something incredibly dangerous. And the other person who was involved in it is now dead, which—

“Misery.” Lowe’s hand blankets mine, large and warm. “I don’t think it means she’s dead.”

It’s what I needed to hear. I silently beg him to continue.

“I don’t believe for a second that this is a coincidence, but whoever got rid of him had the resources to make it look like an accident. They would have done the same for Serena to avoid loose ends.”

I stare at his strong fingers and think it through. Maybe. Yes. It makes some sense. At the very least, it’s something to hope for.

“If not with him, we should still talk with his aides, his colleagues, his predecessor, someone who—”

“Governor Davenport.”

I look up. Lowe’s eyes are calm. Direct. “What?”

“Thomas Jalakas was appointed by Governor Davenport, Misery. Both his Bureau position and his latest one.”

“I . . . Is it even a normal career path? Going from an interspecies bureau to some huge financial office?”

“Excellent question.” Lowe removes his hand. The cool night air hits me like a slap. “You should ask Governor Davenport tomorrow, while we’re having dinner at his place.”

My jaw drops. “When did you get us a dinner invitation?”

“When Alex told me about this. Three hours ago.”

“That was quick.”

“I am the Alpha of the Southwest pack,” he reminds me, a little archly. “I do have some power.”

“I guess.” I let out a single, incredulous laugh. I could kiss him. I want to kiss him. “What did you tell him?”

“That we have a gift for him. To thank him for hosting our wedding ceremony in his territory.”

“He believed that?”

“He’s an idiot, and Humans are apparently big on thank-you gifts.” He shrugs. “I read it online.”

“Wow. You were able to fire up a browser all on your ow—”

He shushes me with his thumb on my lips. “I know you can fight. I know you’ve been taking care of yourself since you were a kid. I know you’re not part of my pack, or my real wife, or my . . . But there isn’t a single part of me that wants to take you into enemy territory. Especially days after you were almost killed in mine. For my peace of mind, please be careful tomorrow.”

I nod, trying not to think about whether anyone else has cared about my safety as much as he does. The answer would be too depressing. “Lowe, thank you. This is the first lead on Serena in a long time, and—” My stomach growls, and I remember why I came downstairs.

My organism, slowly self-cannibalizing.

“Sorry.” I get to my feet and reach for the bag I left on the counter. “I know we were having a moment of gratitude and rainbows, but I really need to feed. I’ll just need a—”

Lowe is suddenly behind me. His hand closes around mine, stopping me.

“What—?”

“I don’t want you to drink that.”

I look at my bag. “It’s sealed. It cannot be contaminated. Plus, I can smell crappy blood.”

“That’s not the reason.”

I tilt my head, confused.

“Use me.”

I don’t get it. And then I do get it, and my entire body melts into lava. Stiffens into lead.

“Oh, no.” I feel hot. Hotter than after a feeding. Hotter than while gorging myself on blood. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to.” He is so earnest. And young. And the boldest I’ve ever seen him—when his baseline is pretty bold. “I want to,” he repeats, even more determined.

Jesus. “I talked with Owen. Before the poison.”

Lowe nods. His gaze is eager.

“I think I shouldn’t have fed from you.”

“Why?”

“He said that it’s not something people should do unless they are . . .”

Lowe nods as though he understands. But then he licks his lips. “And you and I aren’t?” He’s so genuinely eager to know, it’s like electricity injected straight into my nerve endings.

I think about the last few days. The escalating intimacy between us. Yes, Lowe and I are. But. “It goes beyond just sex. Long-term feedings create bonds and tangle lives together. It’s something that is strictly done by people who have deep feelings for each other, or the will to develop them.”

Lowe listens intently, eyes never wavering. When he asks, “And you and I don’t?” it’s like a knife skewering my heart.

“We . . .” My stomach is an empty, open ache. “Do we?”

He’s silent. Like he has his answer, but he’s willing to wait for me to find mine.

“It’s just, it would be different from what we’ve done before. It’s not just sex, or fun. If we get into the habit of this, in the long term, there could be . . . consequences.”

“Misery.” His voice is soft. Faintly amused. There is a solemn shine in his eyes. “We are the consequences.”

The problem is: this cannot possibly end well. I’m not sure I’m even ready to demand someone’s unconditional love and devotion, but Lowe’s heart is occupied. And it’s reckless to see what’s happening between us as something more than the forced proximity of two people thrown together by a flurry of political machinations.

I’ve come after something, after someone, my entire life—always the means, never the end—and I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t resent Father for putting my safety after the well-being of the Vampyres, Owen for being chosen as his successor, Serena for valuing her freedom more than my company. I may never have been anyone’s main preoccupation, but I know better than to spend my time on this Earth simply begrudging.

But when I’m with Lowe I feel different, because he is different. He never treats me like I’m the runner-up, even though I know I am. I could see myself becoming jealous, envious. Greedy for what he cannot give. It could quickly become unbearable, the pain of being just an afterthought to him. Not to mention that if—when, dammit, when—I find Serena, I’m going to have to make some important choices.

“Misery,” he says, patient. Always patient, but also urgent. I realize that he’s offering me his hand. It’s outstretched, waiting for me, and . . . This cannot possibly end well. And yet, I think Lowe might be right. The two of us, we’re well past avoiding what’s between us.

I smile. His warmth is tinged with intense melancholia. This won’t end well, but so few things do. Why deny ourselves?

“Yeah?” I take his hand, registering his mild surprise when my fingers slide past his knuckles, then close around his wrist. I hold his palm in both of mine, upturn it. The meat of it is fun to trace, full of calluses, scars littering the rough skin.

A large, capable, fearless hand.

I bring it to my lips. Kiss it lightly. Scrape it gently with my teeth, which has his eyes fluttering closed. He mumbles a few hushed words, but I cannot make them out.

“If I really do this,” I say against his flesh, “I should avoid your neck.”

“Why?”

“It might leave a trace. People would notice.”

His eyes shoot open. “You think I’d mind?”

“I don’t know,” I lie. I doubt Lowe cares about what others think of him.

“You can do what you want with me,” he says, and it feels like he means more than just his blood.

My fangs graze his wrist. I’m teasing myself as much as him. “Are you sure?” I hover, afraid that it won’t be as good as the first time. Maybe I embellished it in my head, and he’ll taste like every bag I’ve ever had—satisfactory, unremarkable.

“Please,” he says, soft, hungry, and I sink my teeth into his vein. The wait for his blood to hit my tongue lasts long enough for thousands of civilizations to collapse. Then his flavor floods my mouth, and I forget about everything that is not us.

My body blooms with new life.

“Fuck,” he slurs. I take more with a strong pull, cradling his arm to myself, and he presses me against the fridge. His teeth come to my neck and bite, hard enough to leave a mark. He seems to have descended into a trancelike state, to be moved by instinct. “Sorry,” he gasps, and then resumes sucking on my neck, licking my pulse. Marking me. “Of all the good things.” He grasps my hips as I roll them into his. “Of all the good things I’ve felt in my fucking life, you are the best.”

I take one last gulp and seal the wound with my tongue. His eyes are stark, wide. A wolf’s eyes. They stare at my fangs like he’s desperate to have them in his body once again. “Am I?”

He nods. “I’m going to—” He kisses me, eager, immediately deep, tasting the rich flavor of his blood on my tongue. “Can I . . .” He picks me up and carries me upstairs. I bury my face into his neck, and every time I nibble at his glands, his arms tense with pleasure.

Lowe’s room is dark, but light filters from the hallway. He deposits me in the middle of the unmade bed, pulling back instantly to take off his shirt. I sit up and look around, processing that this is really happening.

“I didn’t change them for the longest time,” Lowe says.

I admire his beautiful form, the corded strength of his body. I could bite him anywhere and would find nourishment. Sip from his round biceps, the V on his stomach, the hill of his lats.

“What?” I’m losing track. Skipping words. “Didn’t change what?”

“The sheets.”

“Why?”

“They smelled like you.”

“When— Oh.” My break-in. “Sorry.”

“The scent was so sweet. I got myself off to the filthiest fantasies, Misery.” He gently flips me around, belly against the mattress. My leggings are pulled down to my thighs, my shirt in the opposite direction. “And then the smell faded.” He climbs over me, on each side of my legs. His hands close on the round globes of my ass, half stroking, half gripping. Through the rough cloth of his jeans, his erection drags against my thighs. When I twist my head back, he’s tracing the shallow dimples in my lower back with a pleased expression. “Not the fantasies, though.” He descends over me, his heat an iron blanket. “I can’t be anything but what I am about this,” he whispers against the arch of my ear. There’s a hint of apology there.

“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.

“It’s different.”

“Why? Because I’m a Vampyre?” I look down at the way I’m clutching the hem of my oversize shirt like it’s a life raft. What we need here is some humor. To defuse. “I swear I don’t have teeth down there.”

He doesn’t smile. “You are not the problem.”

“Ah.” I wait for him to continue. He doesn’t. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

I glance at his groin. He pulled his underwear back up. It’s tented, and the room is dark, and my view is not exhaustive by any means, but he looks normal. Good. Big, sure. But normal.

I remember what he told me about Switzerland. The way different species lived together. He said he didn’t hang out much with Vampyres, but . . . “Have you ever . . . with a Human?”

He nods.

“And you hurt them.”

“No.”

“Then—”

“It will be different.”

We’re discussing sex, right? Penetrative intercourse? This insurmountable obstacle he’s talking about must be located somewhere between his and my hardware. Except that he seems structurally standard. “I grew up with a Human. My reproductive organs don’t significantly differ from Humans who are assigned female at birth.”

“It’s not because you’re a Vampyre, Misery.” He swallows. “It’s because you’re you. Because of what that does to me.”

“I don’t understa—” He interrupts me with a kiss, bruising in a delicious, unhinged way. He cups my face, teeth pulling at my lower lip, and I lose track of our conversation.

“You’re going to smell like this,” he murmurs against my lips. “It’s happened already, and you weren’t even in the fucking room.” It? “And I’m not going to be able to stop myself from wanting to finish.”

“That’s fine.” I laugh. My forehead settles against his. “I want you to finish, I—”

“Misery, we are different species.”

I close my fingers around his wrists. “You said you’d . . . You said we would. In Emery’s office.” I’m blushing, embarrassed to admit that I’ve been thinking about those words for days.

“I said I could fuck you.” His throat works. “Not that I would.”

I lower my eyes. “Were you ever planning to tell me? That we couldn’t have sex?”

“Misery.” His eyes capture mine, and I suspect he can see everything. The very inside of me. “It’s sex, what we’ve done. What we’re going to do. It’s all sex. And it’s all going to feel really good.”

I believe him, I really do. And yet: “Are you sure? That you and I can’t . . . ?”

“I can show you. Would you like me to?”

I nod. He kisses me again, tenderly, clearly trying to take things slowly. I’m the one to wriggle away to take off my shirt.

“Have you done any of this before?” he asks against the crook of my neck, and I shake my head. He’d never judge me for it, but I want to explain. “It felt weird. Doing this with a Human when I was already lying to them about everything.” And Vampyres were never an option. I was always alone, at the border between those two worlds. The fact that I feel more at home than ever before with a Were, with someone whose proximity I should have never been in . . . There’s something wrong about it. Or painfully right.

“Feed more,” he orders, pushing me down on the bed. We end up on our sides, facing each other. Not a position I’d associate with wild and uninhibited sexual activities.

“If I feed, we can’t—”

With a hand on the back of my head, he guides my face into his neck. “We can.” He kicks his jeans away, and it’s just his skin, hot against mine, the rough hairs on his arms and legs subtly foreign. I slip my shin between his knees and let my hand roam, curious, eager to explore. He is gloriously different, and while I’m not one to admire beauty, I cannot stop thinking that I like him: the way he looks, the way he feels, the way he likes me. The slight tremble in his fingers as they settle on my waist, the muscles of his body tightening with patient anticipation.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs into my temple. “I thought so since they gave me that first picture of you. You came walking down the aisle, and I was afraid to look. I hadn’t even smelled you yet, and I already couldn’t stop myself from staring.”

A stray notion crosses my mind, sweet and terrifying and utterly unlike me: I wish I was your mate. I know better than to say it. I know better than to think it. Instead I feel his large hand close around my nape. “I really want you to feed, Misery.”

Sinking my teeth into him is becoming second nature, his flavor lovely and familiar. I don’t let myself wonder how I’ll go back to chilly bags. I just take deep, blissful gulps, and when I hear his drawn out, vibrating moan, when his hand drags my wrist to his cock and closes my fingers around it, I’m happy and pliant and eager to please.

He is hard, but also soft, and doesn’t want much. He guides my hand up and down once, once more, and beyond that, he has no instructions for me. My touch appears to be enough, just like the rest of me.

“I’m going to come really fast,” he puffs out.

I let go of his vein with a wet pop. “You don’t have to.”

He laughs, rocking into my fist. “Not much of a choice.” He tightens my grip, giving himself the pressure he’s craving. “And then I’ll show you what you do to me.”

Whatever he needs, I want the same. One of his thighs wedges between mine, and I rub myself against it, vaguely embarrassed at the lewd, rhythmic sounds the contact makes, at the mess I’m making on him. But it feels good, too good to stop and good enough to forget, and then even better when his hand kneads my breasts, moves to the small of my back to cant my hips, positioning me so that yes—there, “There.” I hum the word into his neck, around mouthfuls of blood. I’m shameless and dizzy and briefly happy, grinding and searching for pleasure like it’s something he has in store for me—not if, just when. I take one last drag, and swallow, and then ask, “Is this good?”

Lowe’s eyes stare unseeing into mine, and the fact that he seems too awestruck to be able to speak, the choppy, uncoordinated way he tries to nod his pleasure, that’s what pushes me over.

I let out a low, resonant whimper, and my orgasm spreads like a wave of heat. My breaths shorten, my vision narrows, and then I’m shuddering all over Lowe’s thigh, rolling against him like a wild creature. I forget about what I was doing for him, the rhythm I was keeping, the twisty, lingering touch he enjoys. But even then, just seeing and hearing my pleasure seems to do it for him.

His arms tighten around me. His cock becomes harder. His mouth against mine chants a string of obscene, pleading things about how much he wanted this, how beautiful I am, how he’ll always think of me when he does this from now on, till the day he dies. His semen is hot on my fingers, on my belly. The sounds in his throat belong to something that lives in the underbrush of the forest, someone lost to rational thought.

It’s beautiful, I think. Not just the pleasure, but sharing it with someone else, someone I care about and maybe love a little bit, as much as I’m able.

And then the things he’s saying change. Unlike my orgasm, which bloomed and exploded and ebbed, his lasts. Crests. And Lowe shivers and pants and groans through it before he asks me, “You want to know?”

I nod, still out of breath. His hand comes down to guide mine lower on his cock, until we reach the base.

“Shit.”

His cheeks are flushed, head tilted back. I don’t immediately understand, not until his soft skin changes. Something inflates under my palm. Lowe’s hand closes around mine, pressing it there, circling the swelling protuberance like all he wants is for it to be enclosed, held within something. It grows larger, and Lowe’s stifled groans grow louder, and—

“Misery.”

He’s saying my name like a prayer. Like I’m the one thing standing between him and heaven on Earth. And that’s when I understand what he meant.

Sexually, he and I might not be fully compatible.