Page 5

Avery

By cinematic standards, Avery’s first eight months spent being a werecreature have been pretty goddamn boring. Not fun, not enjoyable, but they included surprisingly few life-or-death encounters, none of which involved any form of silver weaponry.

Sure, leaving Indiana on such short notice sucked, but it was either that or be mauled by a fully-loaded pack of much older, more experienced werecreatures. So what if they’d sworn to protect and accept him after one of their own made a little oops and infected him during a time when she emphatically should not have been getting close with a human? That contract was overwritten the night of Avery’s first full moon.

The horror of that shift, bloody and broken and feral, is the last thing he wants to think about right now. Especially since he hasn’t had sex since the Friends With Benefits hook-up that brought him here.

Sascha might be a shifter—and easily stalked on social media, thanks to using his real name on his PROWLR bio—but he’s also the single nicest person Avery’s met since getting runout of the only home he’s ever known. So many things can change with one mistake made in a moment of passion, and fucking a shifter is no exception to that rule, but…God. It’s been too fucking long since anyone has been willing to touch him. The loneliness got so bad his choices were either download that stupid app or give in, give up, and go die alone in a storm ditch.

Avery wasn’t quite ready to meet his end face down in shallow water next to an impassively croaking bullfrog, so he got drunk enough to fill out the PROWLR bio without crying, and now he’s here.

Bewildered, he stares at Sascha’s outstretched arms. While lurking Sascha’s public posts, he discovered that, like himself, Sascha is an alpha. By then it was—by his standards of decency—too late to cancel. Avery can faintly smell Sascha’s alpha magic on him but doesn’t think Sascha has caught on to the inverse yet. Which is good because alphas outside of family hierarchies get along almost as poorly as shifters and werecreatures in general.

Cougars might not be big compared to Avery’s ursine form, but defending himself would require having control over his shift… which he does not.

Is one hug worth being torn apart by another alpha?

Avery can’t answer his own question, so instead he steps forward into Sascha’s open arms, heaving a sigh of bone-deep relief when Sascha cocoons him in a firm embrace. His eyes flutter closed, impossible to keep open as his body hungrily absorbs Sascha’s warmth.

“Feel better?” Sascha asks, a smile in his voice.

Avery grunts and squeezes his arms around Sascha’s back. Yes, this hug is worth it. He could die now and be content. An awkward amount of time passes, during which death starts to sound like a mercy, but even though Avery’s embarrassment is mounting, he can’t make himself let go. It’s as if he has a bone-dry intimacy well that is doing its best to siphon enoughexcess to comfort him when he returns to his scratchy bunk at the work farm.

Eventually, Sascha laughs, briefly drawing his arms so tight Avery can’t breathe in, which is more okay than he’d expect. “We could move to the bed?” he suggests.

Though he doesn’t want to be let go, Avery relaxes his hold but leaves his forehead pressed against Sascha’s chest. He keeps his eyes closed, murmuring, “Whatever works.”As long as the touching doesn’t stop.

Rather than release him entirely, Sascha winds behind Avery, then nudges the bridge of his nose against the back of Avery’s head. Before his parents kicked him out of his condo, Avery had fed a local stray cat. While tragically unfamiliar with his own instincts, Avery is well versed in recognizing feline behavior. The gentle, guiding affection from a man he’s known less than ten minutes—not to mention one who has been taught since birth to hate the creature Avery has become—almost drives him to tears.

Swallowing the emotions, Avery distracts himself by toeing out of his shoes, then crawls onto the bed. He has to fight the urge to look back at Sascha for approval, because he’s a fucking adult and doesn’t need to be told twice to get on a bed.

Once Avery is settled, the mattress dips as Sascha climbs on after him. He flops onto his back, then spends several seconds writhing to get comfortable, during which Avery wishes the bed wasn’t so damnuncomfortable, because this could take all night. All Avery wants to do is pillow into Sascha’s chest, already addicted to the man’s warmth and the strength of his embrace. Sascha is very classically attractive—tall, blond, with a toned chest underneath that navy blue Henley—but sex is the furthest thing from Avery’s mind right now.

Not that he isn’t down if Sascha initiates something,which, judging by that box of condoms, is more than likely. Avery just wants to be held a bit longer first.

Settled, Sascha carefully weaves his fingers into Avery’s long bangs, selecting one dark curlicue to tug gently. Avery can’t breathe, and it gets worse when Sascha asks, “This okay?” His smile is soft and fond, like he’s known Avery for years rather than a paltry handful of minutes.

Before the werevirus, Avery was a confident lover. The one to coax nervous partners into action, though his method relied on whispering filthy things against their skin rather than hugs and gentle smiles. He preferred casual arrangements. Nurturing intimacy and deep connections took work he wasn’t willing to put in just to get off.

Eight months of touch-starvation later, Avery regrets leaving all those people in the lurch, because he needs that intimacy more than oxygen right now.

“Breathe,” Sascha says, nudging his knuckle against Avery’s hung-open jaw.

Avery sucks in a gasp, then snaps his jaw shut, feeling the pink flush of embarrassment crawling down his ears. “Sorry.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who over-apologizes,” Sascha muses before shaking his head. “Forget I said that. C’mere.” He gives the collar of Avery’s baggy t-shirt a little tug—an unnecessary one, as Avery would have followed even if he said, ‘climb on my dick, fucker.’

Avery pours himself onto Sascha’s chest with a graceless plop. He stretches his tense limbs, only relaxing when he’s splayed every inch of his sub-average height over the length of Sascha’s body. His chest is firm, not broad but just wide enough for Avery to sprawl without any part of him slumping onto the cheap mattress. He wraps his arms around Sascha’s neck, forgetting the risk of approaching an alpha’s throat, and buries his face in the crook of his neck. Only then does his breathing even out, aided further when Sascha humsand wraps one arm around the small of Avery’s back, leaving his right hand to play amongst his curls.

“So, how long has it been, then?” Sascha’s question enters Avery’s ears and nests between them, a pattern of sounds with no discernible meaning. He doesn’t answer, even when Sascha’s chest twitches in laughter beneath him. “Okay. I’ll leave you alone.”

In response, Avery can only grunt. It’s early summer, but despite the muggy air that perpetually chokes his bunk at the work farm, he hasn’t been able to shake off the chill he picked up wintering homeless downstate. This is the closest he’s felt to normal since that fateful fuck last October.

Avery’s eyes drift closed, eyelashes brushing Sascha’s skin. He blinks a few times to savor the sensation before the heaviness pulls them down with finality, leaving him in soul-soothing darkness.

When Avery blinks again, there’s a palm resting skin-to-skin between his shoulder blades, and dim morning light is slipping from the corners of the wall-spanning curtain. He gasps, tensing, then gasps again when the body he’s sprawled over moans and squirms beneath him.

Oh, fuck. Sascha.