Insatiable Craving: 2 (Insatiable Nights) (3 page)

“Leave Draken out of this!”

He resisted the urge to cluck his tongue at her. How Aria could be so irritated at her pet one second yet so defensive the next was beyond him. In the end, ignoring her and proceeding with his point seemed the best option. “And then you hexed the poor thing?”

“I needed to get you on board.”

“On board?”

Aria nodded. “With the whole dating thing.”

“You’ve been trying to get me on board for years now. What on earth made you think this would work?”

“I thought maybe seeing the girl you’d be getting on board with.” She gestured to the sleeping brunette again. “Look, I know this is difficult for you. The last time you let your guard down…”

Razor clenched his jaw and looked away.

Aria swallowed. “Something bad happened.”

He huffed and shook his head. Something bad. Nice, sterile way to describe a young girl being ripped into several pieces. To remember the crimson stains along the wall, the stench of blood clogging his lungs. A cool shiver crept up Razor’s spine.

Thinking about that night had never come easy, and he supposed that was a good thing. The instant he stopped flinching when he considered her screams, when he stopped recoiling at the thought of his blood-smeared hands, when he could brush off what had occurred without entertaining a parade of nightmares was the day he lost his grip on humanity. Full throttle, no-holds-barred monstrosity. The sort of thing he’d feared since the moment he first lost control of the beast. The moment he first
wolfed out
.

Razor shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. Aria and her coven had kept him grounded in the years since Natalie Meyers’ death. Since the moment his former love had aimed a pistol at his head, told him she knew what he was and how killing him wasn’t personal—just business.

Poachers
would
call it business—this he knew from personal experience.

But it wasn’t business. He knew that now. The word they were looking for was
murder
.

And he’d gotten a glimpse of murder—up close and personal.

If it weren’t for Aria’s kindness and the support of her coven, Razor would be one dead pup right now. Most everyone got a second chance after they fucked up, but he didn’t think he was lucky enough for a third or fourth.

Since walking away from the bloodbath of a dorm room, Razor’s ambitions had been zeroed in on ensuring nothing remotely related to death ever occurred at his paws again. A part of that meant keeping people at a nice long distance.

Aria didn’t seem to understand why she was the exception that proved the rule. While the coven as a whole had taken him in, Aria was the one who had championed him from the beginning. He hadn’t known why until last month, when she revealed she had once been engaged to his cousin Marcus, who had been raised almost as a brother.

Razor had fallen out with Marcus shortly after becoming infected with the lycan virus. In fact, not many of his family remained on his calling list. Coming from a line of hunters hadn’t made his biological shift easy to accept, especially for a group of people who had previously enjoyed a good night’s sleep believing that what they did was just, as wolves weren’t human.

Marcus, fortunately, didn’t share their line of thought. Once he discovered his cousin’s fate, he’d hooked him up with Aria and her coven, all of whom had taken him under their wing, doctored him up with protection and shielding spells, and kept him safe until his family ceased hunting for him.

Aria had become one of his best friends, even with her territorial god in tow.

But the difference between Aria and everyone else was he knew her. He knew what to expect when she showed up blitzed on his doorstep, when she called him swearing like a sailor, and when she looked at him with that mischievous glint in her eyes.

She was his kid sister in everything but blood. He didn’t need bedmates to keep him warm.

He didn’t need to be
set up
.

“Get her out of here,” Razor said, pointing at the brunette. “And don’t pull this shit again.”

Aria’s eyes had softened into that pitying look he abhorred. “This is no way to live, Raz,” she said. “You need companionship.”

“I have you.”

“But you won’t have me forever. I’m not gonna babysit your furry ass the rest of my life.”

“Then I’ll deal.”

She huffed and looked away, every line in her face fixed with staunch disapproval. “This was part of the deal,” she said. “We start easing back into the world and you start cooperating. What happened won’t be changed no matter how many songs you write or how many girls you don’t—”

“Get her out of here before she wakes up, Aria. I’m not talking about this anymore.”

And before she could get in another word, he turned on his heel and stalked out the door. She yelled something after him but he ignored it. He didn’t need this shit. Not now. Not ever.

His life was predetermined. Set. He’d grown accustomed to the idea of being alone. It was what he deserved after the crime he’d committed.

After the life he’d taken.

Ginny awoke with a throbbing head, a dry mouth and a general sensation of having been flattened by a Mack truck. She sighed and rolled over, stretching across the confines of her familiar queen-size bed. Her mind, ever her enemy, struggled to piece together events from the night before.

Of course the memory of the blonde girl couldn’t stay away for long. After a few seconds everything filtered back in Technicolor. Going to Electric Panther, seeing Razor on stage and then being accosted by the self-proclaimed club owner who insisted the enigmatic lead singer had kept his eye on her.

And then…nothing. Nothing after that.

What the ever-loving fuck?

Ginny bolted upright and took an immediate, harsh look at her surroundings. It
was
her room. Her queen-size bed. The quilt her nana had knitted for her lay draped across the corner rocking chair like it always did. Her television. Her nightstand. Her Mickey Mouse clock. Everything looked exactly as it should, which for whatever reason scared the living piss out of her.

She had
no memory
of returning home last night. None. Zilch. Nada.

Okay, panicking.

Her feet hit the ground and took her on a whirlwind tour of her modest apartment. Just as in the bedroom, nothing seemed out of place. Her purse was on the kitchen counter, her cell phone charging on the coffee table—heck, even her jacket was strewn across the back of the couch as always. Nothing to suggest she hadn’t come in here of her own volition.

Perhaps the blonde girl had drugged her. Or something. Or maybe there had been something in the cookie her boss had given her before she left the diner. It had been rather suspicious. Frank Palmer wasn’t her biggest fan. In fact, he threatened her with unemployment every day.

Oh God.
What time was it?

Ginny scrambled to the kitchen and the clock on the microwave told a story that completely trumped whatever had happened the night before. One in the afternoon. She was supposed to be at work at ten.

She was so fired.

“Fucking fuck fuck.” Ginny turned and made a mad dash for her cell phone. Just as she thought—eleven missed calls from Trixie’s. Half a dozen voice mails and three text messages.

WHR R U?

GET UR ASS IN HEAR RITE NOW!

U R FIRED!!!!!!!

Ginny’s pulse spiked to epic proportions. She choked back a sob and did her best to calm the niggling doubt rising in her belly. She couldn’t be fired. She couldn’t. She came in to work every day, often ten minutes early to get a quick and—by the way—
off the clock
start on her duties. She stayed late when she had other plans—or at least pretended she had other plans—had put up with the nicknames, come-ons, ass-grabs and borderline sexual stalking that had occurred each and every day since she put on her Trixie’s apron.

Frank couldn’t fire her. He had to know she wouldn’t go without a fight. Not after everything she’d done to earn her paychecks. Every miserable, nasty, sometimes humiliating…

Why do you want to keep this job, again?

She shook her head and focused. It was the principle of the thing. Also she needed money for rent. And utilities. And clothing. And food. And living in general. And Trixie’s
was, if nothing else, steady money in the bank.

And she wasn’t about to get fired. Not when she had spent years drafting the perfect
I quit
speech.

Ginny’s shaking fingers managed to punch in the right numbers to the restaurant’s main line. She knew Frank would answer—he sat on his ass in the manager’s office where he pretended to do important paper-pushing while barking orders at a staff of line cooks and servers, all of whom entertained idle fantasies of frying His Assholeness on one of his own goddamn burners.

Seriously
,
the annoyingly logical voice that remained perpetually holed up in the back of her mind chirped,
why are you calling to fight for this job?

Her answer hadn’t changed, she just said it over the phone’s ring this time. “Matter of principle.”

On the fourth ring, Frank picked up, breathing heavily into the receiver. “Trixie’s.”

“Frank—”

Apparently the sound of her voice was all the fuel he needed to lose his already-lax grip on control.

“Your ass is fired!” he screamed. “You have any idea what you put us through up here this morning?”

“I overslept.”

“What kinda mamby-pamby excuse is that?”

“This one happens to be the truth. I can be there in thirty minutes, I swear. And I’ll work doubles for the rest of the week. Just give me time to shower and—”

“Do you have hearin’ problems or what? You are
fired
! Finished, finit-o!”

“I have never once missed a day of work!”

“Tell me why I should care. You weren’t here
today
, and that’s what matters.”

Ginny’s grip on the phone tightened to the point she was certain it would shatter in her hand. “You’re a miserable old ass, Frank Palmer.”

“Yeah, well, I still have a job.”

Click.

Trembling, Ginny lowered her hand, every molecule of her body wound tight as a drum. She stood gasping for breath for endless seconds, then finally turned her attention to the phone itself. The screen was blank except for two words spelled across in red text.

Call ended.

Call fucking ended.

This was all that stupid blonde’s fault. She’d done something to her. Slipped her something or…something.

And there was the rub. Ginny should feel mortified, victimized or any number of things alongside just angry. Honestly, she didn’t know what was going on in her head. Nothing made sense—not last night, not waking up and not whatever the hell had just happened. How in the world had she gotten home? Had someone brought her? The blonde? If so, how had they gotten in? Why was everything exactly where it was supposed to be?

Well, except the phone. The phone typically slept on her nightstand, as it had the app that served as her alarm clock. Her apartment’s wiring was faulty though, and the only outlet that worked was the one in the living room.

So she had come in, and instead of taking her phone with her to the bedroom, had hooked it up where she knew she wouldn’t hear it?

No. Someone had helped themselves inside.

What in the world had happened last night?

Ginny squared her shoulders. Freshly fired, she found her schedule had flown wide open. Seemed she owed a certain club a visit.

* * * * *

By the time she arrived at Electric Panther, some of her bravado had faded.

In all honesty, Ginny wasn’t sure what had possessed her. Not last night with snapping at the blonde over something that seemed, in retrospect, rather silly, nor this morning with her freak-out. While yes, she was a little concerned she couldn’t recall the pertinent details of the night before, she felt as close to normal as a girl could get. Her heart rate picked up every time she thought of what could have happened—what
might
have happened—but she remembered the physical side effects all too well to give it too much concern.

Maybe she’d agreed to a date after all her protesting. It wasn’t as though the prospect of being alone with Razor—the drop of yummy goodness—was something she wanted to avoid. No, it was more a mixture of things beyond her control. The thought anyone like him, like the mysterious singer, could want her, stretched the limits of her imagination. What terrified her was the thought of getting close to anyone after what had happened with Travis.

Ginny shook her head and released a trembling breath. Visiting the club during daylight hours made her nocturnal habits seem, if possible, even more sordid. The familiar crowd was nowhere to be seen. Granted, she hadn’t expected the band to still be playing or to navigate through a horde of drunken floozies who didn’t know the meaning of last call, but the building looked different in the harsh light of day. There was no flash, no sense of exclusivity, no cheap, forbidden thrill accompanying the knowledge her choice of how to spend her evenings would be something that confirmed every one of her father’s accusations.