Page 35 of Creatures Like Us

“Smoking? Here, try it.”

I put the cigarette between my lips. As I inhale and the smoke fills my throat, I seize up and break out into a coughing fit.

Asher laughs. He snatches the cigarette from me and takes a final drag before he puts it out. “Was that your first time?”

I nod, eyes tearing up.

“Don’t tell me you never snuck into the woods with stolen cigarettes as a kid.”

“I didn’t.”

“Figures,” Asher says with a smirk. “I even let a guy jack me off in exchange for a cigarette once.”

“So you didn’t want him to jack you off?”

He shrugs. “I was high and dying for a cigarette, but all the stores were closed. I asked a random stranger at a bar for one, and he told me to follow him into the bathroom.”

“And you just?…?let him have his way with you?”

Asher shrugs again. He leans his elbows onto his knees and stares straight ahead. “I guess.”

“But did you enjoy it?”

“I came, so I guess I did. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? So you just loan yourself out to the highest bidder?”

He sends me a glare. “I don’t know. It’s different when I’m high; I don’t care what happens, and if what happens feels good, why should I complain?”

I grimace and look away, shaking my head, but it seems like the wrong reaction.

“What?” Asher snaps. “You can’t tell me you’ve never just gone along with something.”

My frown deepens. I’ll never understand these types of casual sexual encounters and what people get out of them. It doesn’t seem very intimate, that’s for sure, and what point is there to sex besides intimacy?

“I’d let you do it to me, you know,” Asher says.

“What?”

He flashes a charming smile, but it doesn’t seem genuine. “If you let me go.”

“We’ve already been through this,” I mutter. What would I get out of sleeping with Asher over such an agreement? An unwilling partner, and then an absent one. I could trick him, of course?…?Promise to let him go but keep him here afterward?…

No. I can’t do that. Bad thoughts. Bad.

I grit my teeth, looking away from his sly smile. His fingers smell like smoke as he lifts his hand and caresses my cheek.

“Don’t do that,” I say roughly.

“Why? You liked it in the bath.”

“That was different.”

In the bath, we connected. In the bath, we shared a moment I still can’t begin to decipher. This is nothing like that. This is just Asher trying to tempt me into sleeping with him—something he doesn’t evenwant—so he can convince me to let him go. An exchange of favors. It would be wrong. I’d be wrong to do it, and he’d be wrong to go along with it.

“Suit yourself,” Asher mutters.

“You’re talking about it so much, it seems likeyou’rethe one who wants it.”