Mariel and Oz Bonus Scene!

This bonus scene was sent to newsletter subscribers as an exclusive. It’s set after the events of A WITCH’S GUIDE TO FAKE DATING A DEMON and is an expansion on an awkward conversation Oz and Mariel had about a niche fan fiction trope the first time they made love. (Knowing about A/B/O will be helpful for both Oz and paranormal romance readers, since a few upcoming releases will be exploring this.) CONTENT WARNING: This conversation revolves around unusual erotica, contains swearing, and is NSFW.

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Mariel was reclining in bed, aimlessly scrolling on her phone, when her inbox pinged with a notification. Themotherofalldemons, one of her favorite and weirdest fan fic authors, had just posted a new one-shot on the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own. Mariel yelped with excitement as she clicked the link.

Oz looked over from his side of the bed, where he was reading a horticulture textbook (over the past weeks he’d been learning everything he could about plants so he could help in the greenhouse). “What are you so excited about?” he asked in his rumbly, accented voice.

“A new fic,” Mariel said, waving the phone gleefully. “It’s called ‘The House of Plantageknot.’”

Oz’s brow furrowed. “Do they mean ‘Plantagenet’?”

“No, it’s a pun on the word ‘knot,’” Mariel explained. “It’s a War of the Roses A/B/O fic.” A niche genre she never would have expected to get into, but that was how fan fiction worked. You started out scrolling through G-rated, fluffy fix-it fics about your favorite sci-fi franchise and somehow ended up reading War of the Roses tentacle knotting fics through your fingers, horrified and amazed in equal amounts.

Oz’s brow remained furrowed. “Ay bee… what?”

Oh, dear. Oz was familiar with fan fiction thanks to Mariel’s reading habits, but his knowledge was rudimentary and the Omegaverse was… not. Mariel started sweating, wondering why she’d blurted that out so casually. “Um. A/B/O is a subgenre. With, uh, knots. You know. Sexual… knots.”

Oz stared at her for a long moment. Then he shook his head and sat up, putting the textbook aside. He ran a hand through his black hair, ruffling it over his horns. “Mariel, I can keep up with most things you say, but this one…” Then his golden eyes widened with what looked like alarm. “Wait, is this what you were talking about the night we first made love? The… inflating penis thing?”

Mariel winced. She babbled when she was nervous. Well, she babbled when she wasn’t nervous, too, but the first time she’d had sex with Oz had been a monumental and nerve-wracking occasion. Having never slept with a demon before, she hadn’t known if there would be any important anatomical differences. So yes, she may have blurted out, “You don’t knot, do you?” at a pivotal moment, then delivered a brief and garbled explanation of the fan fiction trope that had horrified Oz. They’d quickly moved on, no important anatomical differences had manifested, and she’d thought the misstep forgotten.

Oz didn’t forget things, though. He was meticulous and orderly, with a tremendous attention to detail when it came to Mariel. All of which made him an incredible partner, but it also meant that “knotting” had apparently been filed permanently in his brain, whether under the K’s for ‘Knotting,’ the M’s for ‘Mariel,’ or the W’s for ‘What the Fuck.’

Well, there came a time in every person’s life when they had to learn why chronically-online people used the knotted rope emoji. Mariel set her phone aside and sat up, ready to do her duty. The sheet pooled at her waist, and Oz’s gaze trailed lasciviously down her torso as if she was wearing nothing at all, rather than an oversized band T-shirt.

Mariel’s cheeks grew warm. Maybe she should strip the shirt off, give him something to really look at.

Focus, she told herself. Oz had asked a question, and he deserved a thorough answer. “I apologize in advance for what you’re about to learn,” she said.

Oz’s eyes snapped up from where they’d been lingering on her breasts. “Well, that’s ominous.”

Mariel took a deep breath, then launched into it. “A/B/O stands for Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics. It’s a fantasy trope based on wolves, but applied to people.” Or in the case of themotherofalldemons’ work, Yorkist squids, but Mariel decided that might best be left for a future lesson. “Basically, society is made up of three types of people. The normal ones like you and me would be called Betas.”

“Mariel,” he said, cocking a dark brow, “I’m not sure you’re normal.”

Mariel laughed and threw a pillow at Oz. “Like you can talk, Mister Demon Warlock With A Soul.”

He grinned and raised his hand. When he snapped his fingers, sparks of blue lightning danced across them–a party trick he’d gotten better at over the past few months of learning to harness his new magic. “Fair point.”

It was extremely hard to concentrate when he did anything with his fingers, but Mariel did her best. “Alphas and Omegas are counterparts that usually come together in lifelong mated pairs,” she said. “The Alphas are dominant, provider types and the Omegas are submissive, caretaker types.” There were a lot of ways to subvert the genre and reverse or play with those tropes, but this was A/B/O 101, not a grad-level course.

Oz frowned. “And you think I’d be a Beta?”

Oh, the male ego. “Wait for it,” she said, raising a finger. Because yes, Oz was her big, overprotective provider boyfriend who cleaned her house and gave her orgasms and would happily punch anyone who harmed her, but there was more to the Omegaverse than that. “So, sex and reproduction are really important to Alphas and Omegas.” Was this sounding appropriately informative and educational? Mariel was nearly squirming with embarrassment. “The Omegas go into heat periodically, which involves a lot of writhing around and making nests of blankets so they can have a multi-day sex marathon.”

Oz blinked. “This doesn’t sound bad so far.” He planted a hand on her thigh and leaned in. “We could have a multi-day sex marathon, you know.”

Mariel laughed breathily. “Do you want to know the rest or not?”

He squeezed her thigh, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Go on.”

Here was where things really started going off the rails. “So the Alphas go into rut,” she continued. “They get all aggressive and feral and want to fuck the Omega in heat. There’s a lot of growling and biting and sniffing glands-”

Oz flinched. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘sniffing glands’?”

“And because the reproductive imperative is kind of a whole thing, the Alpha has something called a knot.” She finished the rest in a rush, cheeks flaming. “Basically, when the Alpha orgasms the base of his dick inflates so he’s stuck inside the Omega for a while so the, uh, seed has the best chance of taking hold.”

There was a long silence. Oz’s face was blank. Was he processing? Disassociating? Questioning his life choices leading to this moment?”

Mariel twisted her fingers in the sheets. “There’s also a lot of fluid,” she blurted. “Way, way too much fluid. Like, I’d read a fic about the struggle to invent super absorbent heat mops or the perils of running a demihuman laundromat.”

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe she should text the suggestion to Themmie.

“So, uh, yeah,” Mariel said when Oz still didn’t speak. “That’s A/B/O. Ta da!” She accompanied the words with jazz hands. Hecate, this was embarrassing.

Oz’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, and he blinked like he was coming out of a trance. “Oh,” he finally said. “And you… like this?”

Mariel’s entire face was on fire at this point. She’d never had to justify her erotic reading tastes before. “I mean, I don’t not like it. It’s very, ah, primal.”

Oz cocked his head and looked at her assessingly. She could practically see the gears in his head turning as he figured out what to do with this information. “So you like that the sex is frequent and a bit animalistic,” he said slowly.

Mariel tugged at the collar of her shirt. “And there’s the whole fated mate thing. Like… they’re absolutely devoted to each other.”

“Hmm.” He tapped his fingers on the blanket, eyes dropping to her breasts again. “Animalistic and devoted I can do. So long as the inflating dick part is optional?”

She bit her lip and smiled at him. All things considered, this explanation hadn’t gone as terribly as she’d thought. “Yes, that part is optional.”

Rather than running screaming, Oz instead looked like her oversharing had sparked a curious sort of interest. His gaze ran over her, and his tongue dabbed the corner of his lips. Mariel’s pulse accelerated. She unthreaded her legs from the sheets, planted her feet, and spread her thighs so he could see where her T-shirt brushed the hem of her underwear.

Oz shifted to his knees. He licked his lips and reached for her, then paused. “And the gland sniffing?” he pressed, golden eyes flicking back up to hers.

“Gland sniffing is also optional,” she said, fighting a laugh.

“Good.” He settled his hands on her waist, leaned in, and dragged his tongue up her throat. “Then let me prove my devotion to you, velina.” He punctuated the lick with a small bite, and Mariel gasped. “Let’s see how primal we can get.”

Moments later, the phone was knocked off the bed, any fan fiction long forgotten.