7
" I like you,” his friend said, and it sounded like an admission. It had to be an admission, following what Josh had said about liking men, even as Josh insisted, “I really like you, Ray.”
Even as Ray arched into the soft, feathery kisses Josh was planting down his throat, he realised he wanted to know more. But the words wouldn’t come. He let his eyes flutter closed to focus on the sensation of Josh’s mouth and Josh’s hand sliding up his naked thigh, pulling his shorts down. Whatever else Josh felt or didn’t feel, this was true, he thought. His hands and his mouth and the way he was already hardening again against Ray’s side. He hadn’t asked about himself in particular, himself… before. He didn’t know how.
He knew he was wanted, but he didn’t know how to ask if he was loved. "
― N.J. Lysk , Alpha for the Pack (The Stars of the Pack, #2)
10
" I love you,” I said, and if people say it gets easier the more you say, they’re bullshitting you. It’s the opposite, it gets harder. Because every time you say, you’ve loved them for a longer time, they’ve become more integral to who you are. At some point, “I love you” also means “I need you” and there is nothing more terrifying than admitting that to another person who can walk out any time they like. But I owed it to him, not the love, that he’d earned himself. No, I owed him the truth and the trust because he’d offered them to me. You can love someone on your own, even if they can’t feel the same for you, but truth needs to be heard, and trust needs to be returned. "
― N.J. Lysk , The Parenting Habits of Werewolves (Werewolves of Windermere, #3)
14
" The moment it was over I knew I shouldn’t have done it. It was fucked up on so many levels that it didn’t even feel right to hold Dan close to me in what had been our bed less than a month earlier. Dan loved me, I knew he did. It wasn’t fair of me to lead him on, even if I had broken up with him just before fucking him. But it wasn’t just that, the rest of it wasn’t right either. The knowledge of what I no longer was in my family’s view but forever, for whoever looked upon me, marked on my body, a lack so fundamental and obvious that some would refuse to call me a man. And what would happen to me because of that, the way my body was even in that moment changing to accommodate someone else’s desires, the way I was becoming what Brennan had decided I needed to be. For the first time, it wasn’t a mere omission but an outright lie. To be in that bed next to Dan was taking up the space that belonged to someone else, someone we had both loved and who was now gone. That life was over, done. "
― N.J. Lysk , The Mating Habits of Werewolves (Werewolves of Windermere #1)
20
" I like you,” his friend said, and it sounded like an admission. It had to be an admission, following what Josh had said about liking men, even as Josh insisted, “I really like you, Ray.”
Even as Ray arched into the soft, feathery kisses Josh was planting down his throat, he realised he wanted to know more. But the words wouldn’t come. He let his eyes flutter closed to focus on the sensation of Josh’s mouth and Josh’s hand sliding up his naked thigh, pulling his shorts down. Whatever else Josh felt or didn’t feel, this was true, he thought. His hands and his mouth and the way he was already hardening again against Ray’s side. He hadn’t asked about himself in particular, himself… before. He didn’t know how.
He knew he was wanted, but he didn’t know how to ask if he was loved.
He didn’t know how to ask if it was him or the omega wolf. But that wasn’t the real problem; he could have accepted either answer—painful as it might have been. It was something else that scared him: that maybe Josh couldn’t tell the difference. And that… that Ray couldn’t bear. "
― N.J. Lysk , Alpha for the Pack (The Stars of the Pack, #2)
