Page 36 of Creatures Like Us

“Ha! You wish,” he scoffs.

“You’re the one who kissed me.”

He glances sideways. “Just a temporary lapse in judgment. I’m?…?not really thinking straight right now.”

“Me neither.”

That earns me a questioning look. “You aren’t? I thought you knew what you were doing. I thought you knew how wrong this is.”

“Yeah, but?…?It confuses me. You. Us.”

Asher sighs. “Me too.”

I don’t like to be confused. It would be far less complicated to be alone in my misery. If you’re alone and have nothing to treasure, no one you care for, then there’s nothing to lose. Now I feel like I havetoo muchto lose. Asher, my life?…?My life, which a week ago, I didn’t even want.

If Asher leaves, he’ll set me back to nothing. I won’t have him, and I won’t have anything else either?…?I can’t live like that, I can’t, I?…

“I’m going hunting,” I say abruptly and rise from the bed.

“Hunting?” Asher mutters, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “Fine.”

It’s too soon to check on my traps, but I have to get away from him—away from this tension between us, this back-and-forth. I can’t stand it. He’s playing tricks on me, I can tell that much. Making me let down my guard, making me feel too comfortable around him, until he can finally exact his revenge and escape me.

The realization makes my stomach lurch. Asher doesn’t like me. Not really.

He can’t.

No one likes me.

I just likehim, and I try to read into things where the words are misspelled and the meaning distorted, if ever there was any meaning there to begin with.

I take a deep breath. All will be fine. I will go into the forest. Everything always makes more sense in the forest.

In the forest, there are no humans who think I’m strange and scary. In the forest, I can finally relax and figure out what ishappening. Right now, it’s all a jumbled mess in my mind. I need to become one with the forest and the animals, where there are no human troubles, and no golden-haired angel will stroke my arm and tell me not to hide my face.

Chapter 11

Asher

Strangethingshavestartedto happen when Noah leaves me alone. On one hand, I’m relieved to be rid of his overbearing presence and emotionless stares. On the other hand, my situation is such that I have nothing else to occupy my mind but him. Well, it’s either him or drugs, and drugs hurt to think about when I can’t have them, so the choice is pretty easy.

The problem is my thoughts have taken a turn. For the worse, I don’t know, but it’s certainly unnerving.

Instead of hating him and wanting to escape him, I now stare at my hands, trying not to think about how much I want them on his skin. Or in his hair. Anywhere he’d let me touch him. Visions plague my mind—visions of making him pant and squirm with my hands on his throat and my lips on his?…

I groan, turning to my side. What the fuck is wrong with me? It’s wrong to think those things, and it’s weird too.He’sweird,which I of course already knew. He’s the weirdest person I’ve ever met, and it’s a cruel twist of fate that I ended up in his basement.

I have nothing to do here, and I can’t help that my body reacts in accordance with my thoughts—heating up and hardening in places and ways I’ve almost forgotten. Down in the deepest dredges of my withdrawal, I didn’t think about sex at all, but after yesterday, and after this morning, it’s constantly on my mind.

Not even sex, just?…?touching. It’s so interesting, so?…?thrilling?…?to see Noah’s reaction to being touched in ways he’s never been.Empoweringis what it is, to make him shiver at the mere brush of my fingertips.

My captor, my kidnapper, reduced to a shuddering mess under my touch, and him touching me in toe-curling ways, in shivering ways. When he brushed his knuckles down the line of my throat, I realized I was getting hard again, and that fact startled me more than the touch itself.

Noah being a guy when I always thought I liked girls is jarring enough, but along with the impact of what he’s done to me, it scares me. I’m scared of my own desire and doubly scared of how little I care.

The thing is, I just want to feelgoodfor once, after so many days of feeling like shit. If I can do that by exploring this fucked-up thing between me and Noah, with no drugs involved, would that be so bad?

I don’t know. As I told him this morning, I’m not really thinking straight right now.