InsatiableNeed (9 page)

Then she lay under him, her breasts pressed to his chest.
Zeth covered every inch of her flesh with his lips and tongue. And in all her
life, she’d never felt more loved than she did in that moment. More complete.
She’d never belonged before. Never belonged. Not until now.

“Zeth,” she whispered, teasing his ear with her teeth.
“You…”

“Shhh…” He licked at the pulse point on her throat then
gently ran his incisors over her skin. Raegan hadn’t even noticed his fangs
emerge—or maybe she had but hadn’t noticed. “I want you to remember this,” he
murmured, hissing when her muscles clenched and squeezed his cock. “I want you
to remember right now. When this is over, I want you to remember everything.
How good I make you feel.”

Understatement of the year. “Can’t forget,” she said,
hugging him close to her. “Never.”

“Promise me.”

Hadn’t she told him that this wouldn’t be over? Had she? The
past few hours were such a blur. She’d had so many conversations with him—both
in her head and aloud—but she felt sure she’d made that point clear. He’d done
things to her mind and body that she’d only read about. And if he thought that
he could walk away once the guise of a spell no longer protected them, he had
another think coming.

Zeth split her in two. Every drive into her pussy, every
stroke of his mouth against her skin, every gentle caress of his surprisingly
loving hands. She felt divided and burning. He set her on fire and eased her
with his cold body, and she shuddered with ecstasy.

“Tell me again,” Raegan gasped as her orgasm washed over
her. “Tell me.”

He didn’t even hesitate. “I love you,” he whispered,
trembling hard as he came. “I love you, Raegan. I love you so much.”

Now. Now she should tell him he wasn’t alone. That the night
had changed her too. She needed him to know.

“Zeth,” she gasped as he collapsed against her, panting
harshly. “Zeth, I—”

Words lingered on the tip of her tongue, held back by fear
and encouraged by something she didn’t realize she had. She wanted to tell him
what he’d done to her, what he’d given her. She wanted to tell him everything
he deserved to hear, for things had changed since they entered this room, and
they could never change back.

Only the burn sizzling her skin began to fade. The need, the
drive, the sense of absolute isolation—of timelessness—fell to the quiet. Her
gut knotted and a gasp seized her chest. Just as quickly as it had started, the
world around them fell silent.

Raegan didn’t know how she knew the spell had ended in that
moment. Ostensibly, there was no difference. She didn’t burn any less for him,
her body didn’t suddenly unwind and demand his eviction. If anything, her
muscles tightened around him, desperate to hold on.

She didn’t feel any different—didn’t feel any more or less
in control of herself. Nothing triggered except a keen awareness that the power
of choice and decision had been restored. And just as quickly, the realities
she’d decided to check at the door began pounding against her temples,
demanding reentry. Things she’d fought to remember, the things that made up her
armor, began patching together again.

A cold rush of panic flushed her burning body. Raegan knew
Zeth sensed it, as well. Their eyes remained locked, their bodies rocking, and
even as they approached orgasm in each other’s arms, no further words breached
the silence.

The world belonged to them again.

For the first time in hours, she didn’t know what to say.
She hated it. She hated the drop in her stomach, the sink in her heart, the
steady sense of awareness creeping through her veins and seizing her better
senses.

The spell had ended, and Zeth loved her.

She knew nothing anymore.

Chapter Nine

She couldn’t find her shoe.

“I think you threw it somewhere over here,” Raegan said, not
meeting Zeth’s imploring gaze, waving at a pile of what she assumed were dirty
clothes. “I… It’s all kind of blurry, you know?”

Damn shoe. She’d found her pants, which were torn on one
side, her panties, or what was left of them, and her blouse had been balled in
a wad beside her bra, both of which were completely useless. She’d have to wrap
the torn fabric around herself and hope no one saw her between the hobble to
her car and the walk of shame to her apartment door.

Though in truth, she didn’t need her shoe. She was stalling,
trying to take Zeth’s temperature regarding…well, anything. His feelings. His
mood. Whatever happened to be going through his head, she wanted to know. But
Zeth apparently didn’t feel like sharing. She couldn’t blame him, but likewise
couldn’t help herself from babbling. Needing to hear his voice, his thoughts. Needing
to hear
anything.

“I mean, we weren’t ourselves,” she prattled on, plucking up
random pieces of clothing and tossing them every which direction. “The
spell…we, ahh… That really wasn’t what I expected. It was…umm… I guess. It
kinda…”

Sucks.

No words. She had no words for the look on Zeth’s face when
she felt brave enough to glance in his direction, remained stoic. He wouldn’t
speak, and she couldn’t blame him. Not when she chickened out in a big old way.
For a few hours, a few blissful hours, she’d forgotten everything about being
who she was.

Zeth loves you.

The knowledge made her blood rush, but not nearly as much as
the knowledge that she had been so close to saying the words back. To
admitting… What? If she loved a werewolf, the same sort of creature that had
butchered her best friend, what did that say about her? What did it say for her
if she could just
forget
everything she’d been through?

God, everything hurt. Promises she’d made him, made herself,
swarmed around her head, teasing her, mocking her, shoving her toward him when
her first instinct screamed to bolt out the door. The heat of the moment
differed entirely from the weight of reality. Everything she’d felt still
seemed real to her, and she feared if she stayed too long she’d wind up leaping
into Zeth’s arms and demanding he take the world away.

But she couldn’t do that. The spell no longer influenced
her. She’d reverted to form, a woman of her own making again, and one that
didn’t get involved with werewolves.

No matter how involved she already was.

“Need my shoe,” she murmured again. And she finally spotted
it, tossed into a far corner. “Oh.”

“You promised,” Zeth said roughly.

Raegan froze, every muscle in her body wrought with tension.
“I…”

“You promised me.”

“I know.” The words left her lips before she could stop
them. And why not? The truth seemed the best bet in these situations.

“You’re running now. Don’t think I don’t see it.” She
glanced up again just as he looked away, rolling his eyes. He hadn’t bothered
putting on more than his jeans, which did little to help her resolve. His
smooth, sculptured chest could tempt a nun. “You’re running scared.”

“Of course I am.”

Zeth’s jaw tightened, and the hurt on his face nearly did
her in. “Raegan…”

“Do you have any idea what happened here?”

“Do
you?
” he fired back. “I was here the entire time.
The entire fucking time. You can’t hide from me.”

“I’m not trying to hide.”

“Bullshit.”

“I just…” Raegan sighed heavily and shook her head, doing
her best to conceal how hard she trembled. “Things change, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” Zeth agreed. “And they don’t change back. Nothing
goes back to being the way it was.”

He looked up then, and Raegan held his gaze as long as she
could before the storm brewing in his eyes became too heavy to bear. She sighed
and turned her attention back to her shoe, hating the conflict wringing her
nerves. Hating the fact that she couldn’t do what she truly wanted. She’d told
him things she couldn’t have meant, not the way he wanted.

She couldn’t be his when she belonged to the world—when he
embodied everything she felt she hated. Zeth had to remain where he always had,
regardless of what had happened between them.

“Zeth…”

“Point of fact, I claimed you.”

They had already covered this. “I know.”

“I fucking claimed you, Raegan. That’s not… You don’t go
back from that. You can’t.” Zeth stopped short, laughed, and ran a hand through
his dark hair. “I thought we already touched on this.”

Raegan shivered, words dancing in her head, all dragging her
back to the moment he’d whispered something that had changed everything. She
could argue until blue in the face, but it wouldn’t matter with Zeth. She knew
him well enough, and he’d told her he loved her. It didn’t seem possible now,
standing a room apart without his hands on her skin or his cock inside her, to
confuse things. She’d wanted it so richly, but now…

Now she’d returned to herself. And Zeth thought he loved
her.

It was the spell. Nothing else.

And that was the kicker. How could Zeth love her? He didn’t
know her, not really. He didn’t know how the fear of never finding Razor kept
her up at night. He didn’t know she often fell asleep crying for thinking of
things she could have done to save Natalie’s life. He didn’t know she rarely
had guests at her apartment, that his invitation was an exception she had since
deemed a mistake, all because of her crippling fear of letting anyone close.
She didn’t ever want to suffer losing someone again. Natalie had been more than
a friend—she’d been her goddamn sister, if only in spirit.

No one was unbreakable, and no one was honest. Razor hadn’t
been what he seemed, and Natalie had gotten herself killed as a result. Zeth
hadn’t broken her yet, and he hadn’t lied to her, but then again, if she didn’t
give him the chance, she didn’t have anything to lose.

Zeth didn’t know her outside the office. How could he love
her and mean it?

How could anyone?

“The claim was a mistake,” Raegan said, wincing at the pain
that stretched across his face. His haunted, too-beautiful face. “Come on,
Zeth. You have to know it.”

His jaw tightened. “Do I?” he spat. “I have to fucking know
it? You’re telling me what I
have—
”

“I’m trying to make this easy.”

“Good job.”

“The claim was… It felt right, yeah. But—”

Zeth’s nostrils flared. “Damn right it did.”

“But that didn’t mean it was. I’m not on the market.”

“By
choice
.”

“By necessity.” She waved an arm. “I don’t know anything
else, Zeth. This is who I am. I get up, I go to work, I type up some bullshit
story, I go home, nuke some Ramen noodles, spend hours on the web looking for a
werewolf who fucked up my life and good, then go to bed. That’s the life I
chose. I don’t know where you fit in that world.”

He took a step forward, and the sudden eagerness on his face
nearly destroyed her. “We’ll find out,” he said. “We’ll find out where I fit. Rae,
what happened with your friend won’t happen with me. I’d cut off my arm before
I hurt you.”

Something in her gut wrenched. “I know.”

“Then you know I’m serious. That wolf, Razor, I can help.
The pack stopped looking for him a long time ago—”

Raegan reeled in shock. Whatever else, she had not expected
him to drop that name
.
Granted, she’d told Zeth in no uncertain terms
what she thought of his kind after he initially wolfed out in her apartment,
and the factors contributing to her opinion, but she’d never mentioned Razor by
name. “What? You know about Razor?”

Zeth stared at her a long moment, then sighed, his shoulders
dropping. “That’s the kind of shit you don’t keep outta the grapevine. I’ve
known about Razor since
you’ve
known about Razor. Rae, I was on the
fucking committee to hunt the bastard down.”

Silence fell between them. She blinked, trying to grasp hold
of the information, process it into something that made sense. What little was
left of her brain sizzled out completely. “Why…why is this the first I’m
hearing about this?”

“I didn’t think it’d matter.”

“You didn’t think that you hunting down my best friend’s
killer would matter to me?”

Zeth threw his hands in the air. “Well, fuck, Raegan, it’s
not like we’ve ever actually talked, is it? You haven’t ever let me in. You
found out what I was and went running scared.”

“Can you blame me?”

“After what you went through? No, of course not. But you
made it perfectly clear talking about your friend and the wolf that killed her
was off limits the next time we talked.” Zeth shrugged. “I don’t wear my
victories on my sleeve. Not where family business is concerned. Of course I was
on Razor’s tail. The Midwest is my territory, and even though I don’t go around
policing the place, I do maintain some authority when it comes to what happens
around here. I try to stay out of our kinds’ politics, but hearing what
happened to Natalie Meyers pissed a
lot
of people off. Not just you.
Rogue wolves don’t have any friends. Not among your kind or mine. We hunt and
kill the way other animals hunt and kill, but we don’t murder. Those who do get
our
justice. Trust me when I say when Razor’s found, he’s gonna wish he
made it easier on himself.”

Raegan stared at him a long moment, her chest heaving. In
all honesty, she’d never given any sort of consideration to Razor’s actions in
terms of how he affected his kind. Now, though, overlooking that much seemed
beyond stupid on her part. She’d known Zeth long enough to understand the
creatures that went bump in the night had some sort of working justice
system…or, at least the wolves did.

“You’re right,” she said slowly. “We didn’t talk.”

“Raegan—”

“We’ve never talked. Not really. I come and say something
bitchy, you counter with something annoying, I ride your ass until I have a
workable story to give to Higgins and then it’s back to normal.” She scrunched
her nose. “How can you love me when that’s all we’ve ever had?”

“Because I do.”

“I don’t believe you.”

His eyes flared yellow and patches of fur erupted along his
chest, arms and torso. “Now?” he rasped. “Now you don’t believe me? You wanted
me to whisper it over and over again not twenty minutes ago, but now that
you’re done using me—”

“Using you?” Raegan’s defenses flared. “When did I ever use
you? This was mutual, remember? This had to be something we both wanted or it
wouldn’t have happened.”

“Which part?” he snarled. “The fucking or the claim? We were
already fucking, Rae. My loving you had nothing to do with that.”

“I don’t—”

“And yeah, you used me. ‘I’m yours, Zeth,’ ‘touch me there,
Zeth,’ ‘tell me you love me, Zeth.’” Long, hard breaths rocked off his chest.
His hands had balled into fists and shook tightly at his side. His jaw was
clamped and his yellow eyes no longer looked human, burning with fire that
would have—should have—terrified her. “You’re running scared. I gave you
something real, the first something real you’ve had since
I don’t know when,
but instead of letting yourself open up, instead of owning yourself…” He
trembled and tore his gaze away. “Goddammit, you’re my mate. You think it
matters if I claimed you in the heat of the moment? You accepted. You said you
were mine. You can’t take that back.”

Raegan inhaled deeply, her mind a confusing rush of want
versus propriety. It would be easy, she supposed, to fall back into his arms—to
pretend the things that frightened her didn’t frighten her, to pretend the bad
she’d seen had been a nightmare all along. To try to forget what happened when
she allowed herself to get attached, to love. Zeth might not be a monster of
Razor’s caliber, but that didn’t prevent other monsters from existing. There
were no guarantees as to what happened tomorrow, and if she lost herself as he
wanted, if she gave herself over to a sea of sensation and allowed her heart to
mend, to love as deeply as she’d once wanted to love, the inevitable day when
it was ripped from her would do more than reshape her world. It would destroy
her.

If she gave herself to Zeth, if she let herself love…

The thought felt too tempting for words, but it similarly
remained too complicated for easy solutions. The place in her heart where love
should live had stood unoccupied and neglected too long, and the thought of
allowing someone into that place terrified her more than she wanted to admit.
To open it to a werewolf would defy everything she’d taught herself to believe.

A shiver of panic seized her spine. Her heart raced and her
throat tightened, tears stinging her eyes. Zeth would only destroy her. She
couldn’t make him happy. Once he really knew what she was like, he’d head for
the proverbial hills.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. She had her shoe
now. She had everything she needed. “I’m so sorry, Zeth… I just can’t.”

The stoic look had returned. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t
do anything.

She half expected him to follow her. When he did not, it was
all she could do to get out of the church before falling apart.

She hated herself almost as much as she feared loving him,
and at the moment, she didn’t know which sensation was worse.