Page 210 of Sorrow & Strangers

“What?” I ask, pulling back, feeling like I’ve been doused in freezing cold water.

“This is ours,” he says, kissing me again.

I lose myself in the kiss for a moment before his words register, and I pull back again. “Stranger.”

“Yes?” he says, tightening his hands on my hips.

“I’m not there.”

“There?” he asks, and I brush his hands off me, moving out from between him and the gazebo wall. “This can’t come as a surprise to you,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. I glance at him, and he licks his fingers again. “I am not asking for a commitment, per se. But this is for us.” There is a predatory wildness in his eyes, a dangerous possessiveness.

“What are you talking about?”

“Kissing.”

I blink. “Speak plainly.”

He straightens and closes the distance, cornering me once again. “I am the only person you kiss. From this day to our last,” he says with a growl.

“I told you I am not ready for commitments.”

He smiles wolfishly. “You are for this one. Or you wouldn’t have kissed me.”

I feel like I’ve been hustled in some way, and anger is edging out the bliss of my release.

He braces one hand against the wall above my head. “You wouldn’t have offered to breach this boundary tonight if you weren’t ready for the consequences because you know exactly the type of male I am.”

I push him back and slide out of the gap I created and try to storm away, but he grabs my wrist and yanks me back against him. Plunging his fingers into my hair, he fists it tightly, holding me where he wants me. “Don’t you dare pretend this isn’t something you want.”

“I am not committing to you. In any way,” I hiss.

He moves his hand from my hip and grips my chin. “Then why kiss me? Why do anything with me this weekend? Why give me a taste and then act like it’s nothing?”

“You . . .” Fuck. “You were right. This was a mistake. A huge one.”

He scans my eyes, and then he releases me. “Do you care for me?” he asks, and there’s that vulnerability again.

“Stranger . . .” I say, looking away, my need to not hurt him tamping down the anger a little.

“Do you?”

Does he deserve the truth after that shit he just pulled? No. Do I want to give it to him? No, and yet . . .

“Yes,” I say, but it’s barely a whisper.

“This was never something to . . . pass the time for me,” he says, and I watch in horror as he reapplies his glamour. Even his lips change, and seeing him retreat has pain radiating through my chest. “I was willing not to do anything this weekend. To put it all aside so I could just be in your presence.”

I frown, looking at him as if he wasn’t the one who just begged me to let him make me come. “So it was all me?”

“I am helpless against you. I will take any fucking scrap you give me,” he snarls. “Even a look in my direction without that flicker of hatred.”

I shake my head, pain deafening me, but I am not sure if it is his or mine. “How could you . . . ?” I look away. “Forget it.”

This time, when I leave, he doesn’t stop me.

Chapter Eighty-Eight

The Stranger