InsistentHunger (16 page)

“Let’s get us home,” Paige said. She knew a couple of
things. If Brady went wandering off on his own, he was definitely going to eat
Hunter, and when push came to shove, Brady was on her side.

He looked at her for a long time before he nodded. “Okay,
then. Let’s get us home.” He slipped an arm around her waist and urged her
toward the dull orange glow in the distance. Hopefully they would get to her
car before the fire did, but the way her night was going, Paige wasn’t going to
bet on it.

Chapter Eleven

Paige shifted in her sleep and a hand landed on her hip,
kneading the muscle for a second before the owner moaned and fell silent again.
Keeping her eyes closed, Paige sent up a prayer that she was imagining things.

Sometimes she liked to wake up before the alarm and indulge
in a little fantasy. She’d slip her hand between her legs and work her clit
until she was wet and then she’d let her imagination run wild. However, the
form behind her was too solid for fantasy. Not unless she’d managed to slide
over into full delusional psychosis overnight. That was possible.

Paige opened an eye and Brady’s shirt was in a heap on her
floor, the bloodstain from where her bullet had creased the top of his shoulder
carefully placed on top so it wouldn’t get on her carpet. They were going to
have to get him some new clothes or he was going to be running around naked
pretty soon.

Paige could feel the blush start. She’d let Brady drive her
home and carefully undress her. She hadn’t protested once when he’d slowly
climbed in bed with her, his hopeful expression focused on her face as he
waited for her to kick him out. She never did. It might have been shock. Maybe
she’d just hit the utter limit of weirdness and fear for one week and her brain
shut down. Either way, she’d definitely had a little moment of weakness last
night.

Okay, so she had a right to be a little freaked out with the
near-death experience, but that didn’t mean she needed to fold up like some
fucking orchid and let the big, strong man take care of her. She hated women
like that.

“Brady, time to get up,” she said as she pulled the covers
back and grabbed her robe off the floor. “Brady,” she said again. It was dark,
and the clock said it was just a bit after four-fifteen, but she wasn’t going
to go back to sleep with Brady on the bed.

Groaning, Brady rolled over and threw the blanket off. His
shoulder had a new scar—a straight line across the top of the arm in the same
place where a doll would have a seam. Last night she’d shot him. She’d shot
him, and this morning, the wound was a simple scar. When she reached out to run
her fingertips over the raised ridge, his eyes came lazily open.

“Morning.” He groaned. “I think. God, Paige, the sun isn’t
even up.”

“We should get up.” Paige swallowed, struggling to push back
a rising awareness that she was in bed with a near naked Brady. Hell, he might
even be naked. She could feel her body warm at the idea.

“Paige?”

She forced her feet out of bed and sat on the edge of the
bed with her back to Brady. “When we’re researching, we might want to look for
demons that affect sexual desire.”

“We…what?” Brady sounded confused. Either he didn’t know he
affected her or he had more acting skills than Paige ever gave him credit for.

With closed eyes, Paige fought her body’s growing need for
touch. The first time they’d ended up having sex, she’d thought she was just
having a bad day. Now though…she was definitely channeling something hot and
lusty. “I think you’re creating a little cloud of lust, Brady. In fact, I’m
going to go take a very cold shower, so please think about something other than
sex.”

“I wasn’t thinking about sex,” he defended himself.

“Then go eat a chicken or something.” Darting out of the
room, Paige turned on the bathroom light and turned on the shower. Without
waiting for it to warm up, she stepped under the spray and cried out as the
cold shocked her body back into submission.

Shivering, she grabbed the wash cloth and soap and started
washing as fast as she could. Washing her hair was the worst with the cold
water cascading over her head. Even after she turned the shower off, the cold
water dripped from her shoulder-length hair and her whole body was one ice
cube. One very sexually uninterested ice cube.

She scrubbed her hair dry, not even caring about tangles,
and then wrapped herself in her robe. She slowly opened the bathroom door and
found the master bedroom empty. With a sigh of relief, she darted back toward
the bed and sat cross-legged before pulling all the covers up over her lap.
Brady was probably out eating a chicken, but as long as he cleaned up his own
feathers, she was totally okay with that. She wasn’t as okay with having her
sexuality hijacked.

“Sorry about that.”

Jumping, she twisted around to glare at Brady, who stood in
the doorway. “Jesus! Don’t startle me like that. I thought you were going to
eat a chicken.”

“I did. They aren’t very big.”

Paige closed her eyes and tried to come up with another
excuse to keep him away. Luckily, he was sticking to the doorway.

“Are you sure?” he asked. His hands fluttered at his sides
until he finally crossed his arms.

“About what?” Hopefully playing stupid would just let them
both avoid a very awkward conversation.

“Are you sure that it’s the demon making you feel lust? Are
you sure it couldn’t be that you just like me?” He looked up from the carpet,
studying Paige’s face.

Paige opened her mouth, but before she could give a quick
retort, she saw the raw pain in Brady’s eyes. He was standing there prepared to
be hurt, and maybe it was self-preservation or maybe it was just that Paige had
her heart torn out once or twice. Either way, she couldn’t bring herself to
reject him outright. “Brady, I always did like you,” she admitted. “I didn’t
want to because you were a trainee, but when you flirted with every woman in
the station, I couldn’t help but think you were charming.”

Brady rolled his eyes. “Silver, I’m a lot of things, but I
am not good at flirting. I suck at it. Women laugh more often than they swoon.”

Paige smiled as she remembered Brady in the middle of the
station trying to hit on Cindy from records. He’d started off so well, and then
Cindy had mentioned having a boyfriend. Brady had turned brilliant red and
verbally bumbled through the conversation and had managed to look so adorably
incompetent that Paige was pretty sure that Cindy at least considered going on
a date with Brady just to save him from his own embarrassment. Paige hadn’t
been immune to Brady’s unique charm.

“Yeah, you were kind of unpolished,” she said fondly.

“That’s the nice way to put it. The guys in the locker room
had a few other descriptions. I’m just lucky I’m cute because otherwise, I
never would have dated.”

Paige snorted. “And you’re clueless.”

“Well, thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“Brady, women dated you because you were unpolished and
adorably uncomfortable. No woman wants to think she’s dating some horn dog. You
put yourself on the line and risked some serious humiliation to ask a woman
out. And anyone as uncoordinated as you in the flirting department didn’t have
a long string of conquered women in his past. You don’t, do you?” Paige asked.

“Do you want my resume?” Brady uncrossed his arms only to
promptly cross them again as he gave her an unamused look.

“No,” she said quickly. She really didn’t want to think
about Brady’s sexual conquests, especially since the need for condoms had sort
of slipped into the background the second Brady touched her. Either he had
lusty powers or she’d lost her good judgment along the way. Maybe both. “But
the fact is that women are drawn to that honesty, including me. If the guys
gave you shit, it was because they could see the women falling for you. Most of
the women were either eyeing you or wanting to mother you. You just had that
edge of bumbling cute on top of all the absolutely adorable.”

Brady was blushing now.

Shifting around on the bed, Paige struggled to say the next
bit. She might not want to rip Brady’s heart out, but he had to know how he
affected her. “But I could control myself. I never sat in the middle of the
station and wondered if I could keep my hands off you for one more minute.
Hell, I would have resigned as your training officer if it had ever gotten that
bad. But now…” A heavy silence fell on the room.

“The demon makes you want to lose control?” Brady guessed.
He sounded thoughtful rather than insulted, so maybe she had softened the blow.

Paige turned to look at the computer. The CPU was blinking,
so they’d forgotten to shut down last night and it was only in sleep mode. “So
we need to look for a demon that inspires those sorts of feelings.”

“Succubus.”

“What?”

Brady frowned. “Or incubus. I could never keep track of
which was male and which was female.”

“Would you like to make a little more sense, Brady?”

He stepped into the room, but before Paige could start to
panic, he backpedaled and stood in the doorway again, his face confused. Paige
had no idea what that had been about, but as long as he kept his distance, she
was happy. Clearing his throat, he asked her, “You really aren’t into horror
books, are you?”

“No, I’m really not,” Paige admitted. Everything she knew
about vampires came off the television and she was starting to think the
writers were all stupid.

“When I was thirteen, my very Catholic babysitter used to
tell me that if I didn’t stop masturbating in the bathroom that I was going to
get hairy palms and a succubus was going to come and suck my life force.
They’re sexual demons, attracted to lust.”

Paige thought about some babysitter scaring the shit out of
a thirteen-year-old Brady with that story. It made her skin crawl. “Seriously,
that’s creepy. That’s borderline sexually inappropriate creepy.”

Brady shrugged. “Yeah, well my parents are very good
Catholics and masturbation did not exist in their world view. Shit. Can you
imagine their faces if they knew I’d turned out to be a succubus? Well, I guess
I was always a succubus, but can you imagine if they found out I’d taken up
residence in their son’s body?” Brady was clearly amused, something that
disturbed Paige to no end.

Paige pulled the sheet up higher. “You can stop now. I
really can’t handle talking about how you aren’t Brady.”

“A wise woman once told me that ignoring a fact doesn’t
change it.”

“I was talking about your shooting scores,” Paige pointed
out. Brady just looked at her. Last night she’d gone out to see other demons,
to see whether Brady really was one of them. She’d come home with no answers
and several years scared off the end of her life. Brady still looked like Brady
to her. He talked like Brady and got embarrassed like Brady and said stupid
shit like Brady.

Brady’s gaze fell to the floor. “I’ll keep my distance.”

“We need to get you out of this house altogether.”

Brady’s head snapped up and he frowned at her.

Paige felt a flash of guilt as Brady laid his pain and fear
of rejection out in his every expression. He insisted he was a demon, but Paige
was fairly sure that a demon wouldn’t have the expressions Brady did. “Last
night Hunter had a partner. He went running out the door, but here’s the
thing…I don’t know how many partners he might have. I do know, however, that he
suspects I’m not telling the whole truth. He kept suggesting you were in the
house.”

Brady snorted. “He was trying to manipulate you.”

“Trying, hell. He did manipulate me,” Paige pointed out.
“However, he was trying to see how I’d react to the suggestion you were in the
house and my gut says that he suspects I know where you are. That means either
Jim or his partner are going to snoop around the house the second I’m gone.”

Brady’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Good.”

“Not good,” Paige said. Last night she hadn’t commented when
Brady had sicced the eighties vamp on Hunter, but she’d been pretty sure he was
already gone. He didn’t seem like the sort to stick around after the shooting
was over. If Brady killed him in Paige’s house, she was going to have a
guilt-inspired nervous breakdown.

Brady’s face turned mulish. “He almost got you killed.”

“Almost only counts in horseshoes. I’m not dead.”

The noise Brady made left no doubt about his opinion on the
issue.

“And he knows how to kill demons. He knows more about demons
than you do, Brady, and going into battle without information is just plain
stupid. You aren’t stupid, so you aren’t going to go to war with someone
without understanding yourself and your powers. I don’t care if you are some
higher-level demon.”

Brady drew himself up a little straighter. “You think I’m a
higher-level demon?”

“I think if Hunter waved his stupid little balls in front of
your face, you’d eat him.”

“I would.” Brady’s voice was dark and cold and utterly
demonic, but Paige was trying hard to repress that knowledge.

“You need to be somewhere else, somewhere safe and private
where you can get control of your hunger—maybe eat a goose or two or a few
chickens.”

Brady made a squinchy face. “I can’t believe you’re telling
me to eat animals.”

“Hey, I happen to like burgers and ribs and steaks and any
number of animals. I’m not going to question your food, just your table
manners. But until you know you’re strong and you know what Hunter is going to
throw at you, you need to avoid him.”

He tilted his head and studied her for long enough that
Paige started to feel uncomfortable and the heat started to gather in her body.
“I don’t feel strong. If I wait that long, he might die of old age,” Brady
pointed out. “But I can take him if he challenges me.”

“Let him die of old age then. He’s not important,” Paige
suggested. She didn’t want Brady trying to take Hunter and she really didn’t
want Brady getting killed. She wondered if it made her evil that she was more
concerned about the second than the first. Hunter had chosen to fight. Brady
had been shoved into the middle of a war he didn’t understand, so she was
rooting for Brady on this one.