Page 166 of Sorrow & Strangers

“Is that truly what you want?” he asks.

He grabs one of my wrists with his free hand and lifts it above my head, taking care to keep my eyes covered. When I reach up to fight against his hold, he snags that hand too and pins them against the tree.

I moan as his body presses against mine, the sharp bark of the tree digging painfully into the back of my hands. He rubs his stiff cock against my stomach, and another moan escapes me, the vision he inserted into my head playing over and over.

Gods.

I push against him, trying to get him off me, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch.

“What’s the matter, little fae? The desire becoming too unbearable?” His warmth disappears, and he pulls his hand from my eyes. His avatar is now firmly back in place, but he continues to hold me by the wrists. He cups my jaw, trailing his thumb along my bottom lip again. “I know if I slid my hand down to cup that trembling pussy, you’d beg for me to make you come.” He smirks. “Too bad.”

He vanishes, his avatar shattering.

Max rolls off me, panting, and we both stare up at the ceiling as we come down from our releases. It’s been days since I last had any sort of release. Days since I allowed the stranger as close as he was when he pinned me to the tree. In truth, the stranger’s mood has been sour, and it hasn’t been difficult to keep him at bay. When Max texted me, I couldn’t resist the offer of meaningless sex.

“Fuck . . .” Max groans.

I climb off the mattress and pull on his shirt with the sleeves cut off before walking into his bathroom, grabbing some things from my bag on my way. I place the soap and towel in the bathroom before cleaning up. The room is still depressing, but at least I’m able to disinfect my hands before I leave it. When I wander back through to the main room, Max is sitting up, his back against the wall. He’s pulled on his shorts, turned on the television, and is flipping through the channels.

“Pizza?” I ask, grabbing my purse and walking over to him. It’s easy with Max to just fuck and then casually hang out and eat dinner. It’s easy to see him as a friend who occasionally gives me an orgasm.

“Fuck yeah.”

I drop down beside him on the mattress as I order the pizza, and then I start to scroll through socials. EverydayEmrys has been much quieter since its secret owner left Avalon, but occasional notable sightings are still reported.

A loud scream from the television makes me look up to see a woman being chased through a wooded area by a large, bearlike creature. It catches her without much effort and tears into her. The gore doesn’t turn my stomach as much as it would have before last year, but it’s still not what I’d choose to watch. I turn back to my phone and continue doomscrolling.

“What are you doing?”

I shrug without looking up. “Just scrolling.”

Max browses over my shoulder, but then someone knocks at the door, and I get up to grab the pizza. The student who delivers it looks at me nervously. I think his name is Kenny. He’s another of the shifter kids. I smile at him as I close the door.

“Pizza’s here. Oh, and I got you some other things,” I say, padding back to Max.

“Garlic knots? I know you probably can’t get them at home because of Alice,” Max asks, sitting up more. I hand him the pizza box and pull a small succulent from my bag before settling back onto the mattress. I offer it to him proudly, but Max blinks at it, still holding the pizza box. “A . . . garlic plant?”

I sigh in exasperation. “It’s a succulent.”

“What do I do with it?” Max says with a frown.

I roll my eyes. “Water it and shit? I don’t know.”

“And then what do I do with it?”

“Look at it?”

Max’s frown deepens.

“I also got you a hand towel and some soap because you’re not an animal.” I stand up and put the succulent on his coffee table, and while it’s no miracle worker, it does brighten the place a little.

“You bought stuff for my apartment?” Max asks as I sit down on the mattress again and open the pizza box.

I pick up a slice and take a bite. “I wouldn’t call soap, a hand towel, and a succulent stuff,” I say.

“But I would call it very . . . weird,” Max says. He hasn’t even looked at the pizza, and normally it would be half gone by now. The male can eat.

I lift my eyebrows and finish chewing the mouthful of pizza before answering. “Well, the succulent was half-off, and it’s cute. Plus, you need something alive in this apartment, other than yourself. How else will you know it’s habitable?”