InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “I feel it too,” he confessed.

  Paige laughed. “No way could you feel it this strongly. If you did, you’d be jumping every woman you met, and a disturbing number would probably let you.” Brady had been a flirt even before the demon. He might have described himself as a clumsy flirt, but Paige figured most of the women in the station would disagree. Now Paige figured he could charm his way into any woman’s bed, including hers.

  With a shake of his head, Brady stepped forward, pinning Paige in the corner. Immediately, she could feel her body start to get hot. “I only feel it with you, Paige.” He stared into her eyes and Paige’s self-control struggled to keep her from saying screw it and jumping Brady’s bones.

  “And exactly how many women have you tested this with?” Paige asked with a laugh.

  “When I was going to your father’s farm, I stopped and talked to women. I would ask for directions or tell them their dress was pretty.”

  Paige frowned, not liking the idea that Brady had risked someone recognizing him. True, he did look different now. His eyes were a different color and he had a sharpness to him that didn’t come through in any picture of the human Brady, but it had still been a stupid risk.

  “I never wanted them like I want you,” Brady finished.

  Paige closed her eyes, her lust surging forward. “Two bad guys upstairs, nine outside. Focus on the scene, Brady,” she said. She included herself in that order.

  “The scene. Right.” Brady cleared his throat and Paige opened her eyes and risked looking at him. He has his back to her and he was moving back into the main hall. He headed for the staircase leading upstairs and Paige pulled her weapon and followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “That was anticlimactic,” Paige said.

  “If you want, I can bring in a new demon and let you kill him,” Brady offered.

  “Smart-ass.” Paige looked out at the late afternoon sun as it sank lower. Both demons Brady had killed left pretty messy bodies behind. They lay in a rotted-out bedroom with broken necks. If Captain Foley got called out to this place, Paige had no idea what he would think.

  The one body looked and smelled like it was a few weeks old. The other looked like a victim from a few years ago. Paige had taken one look and abandoned ship, heading for a far bedroom. “So, what’s the next step?” She watched as the low-level vamps stood in the shadows of the trees, their wandering steps turned back by direct sunlight.

  “I don’t want to make a run for it at night. So, wait for morning?” Brady said in a voice that sounded like he was guessing.

  “Would they bother you?” Paige watched a zombie-like vamp pull leaves off a branch, one at a time.

  “Probably not,” Brady admitted. So it was her fault they were stuck here for the night. Her imagination came up with all sorts of suggestions for how they could spend the time, and for a second, she considered giving in to that urge. Brady was definitely standing too close. Paige inched away from him. “There could be more vampires coming to the house. There were more than two smart ones when I attacked the house.”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I couldn’t find my idiot partner. I thought he was in trouble.”

  “I was.” Brady gave her a smile, but he carefully kept his hands to himself.

  “You said that this only affected you with me,” Paige blurted out before she could chicken out. She’d face a dozen vamps before having a meaningful relationship conversation, but she couldn’t stop thinking about this. “Why?”

  Brady took a breath and backed off another step. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s just true. When I talk to other women, I could feel something.” He frowned. “I could feel this little itch that made me wonder about sleeping with them.”

  Holding up a hand, Paige stopped him. “I really don’t need details. Voyeurism is not my kink.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It was a small itch, easily ignored. Even when one woman put a hand on my arm, I could ignore the feeling. I can’t do that with you.”

  “Touch me, you mean?”

  Brady moved closer and reached out to capture Paige’s hand before she could retreat. “Touch you without wanting more. I can control myself, but I want more. There’s a hunger that threatens to break out of my control and I have to hold on so tight.” For a second, Paige stood holding his hand, desire rippling through her. Then she pulled her hand away and backed out of reach.

  “You may have control, but mine is fraying,” she warned. Brady gave her a huge smile. “Don’t look so smug.”

  He made a show out of controlling his smile. “I’ll try to not look so happy about being liked,” he said. “But don’t worry about any demons that show up. I’ll take care of them.”

  “Unless they’re as strong as bitch woman.”

  Brady shook his head. “They won’t be.”

  Paige waited for some sort of explanation, but none came. “How exactly do you know that?” she finally asked.

  For a second, Brady frowned as if trying to figure something out. “Smell,” he finally said. “Her smell is the only strong one. The others were careful to stay out of her way, to not leave their scent around.”

  The more Brady talked, the less he sounded like a demon. If anything, he sounded like an animal, not that she planned to share that particular insight. “So, the others are just backup crew?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Four or five, maybe six, with two being dead.” He gave a head jerk toward the bedroom with the bodies. Paige definitely preferred television where vampires vanished into dust. If she were a fan of those shows, she’d feel cheated by reality where demons left stinky bodies behind and just generally failed to live up to the sparkly hype.

  She and Brady had less than a day to get out of the house before the smell drove them out—or until it drove her out. She didn’t know what Brady thought about the stench. “It’s hard to tell how many demons came though because the human servant left his scent around.” Brady frowned as he talked about the guard he’d killed.

  Paige understood.

  Killing in the line of duty could rip a person up emotionally. She feared having to kill more than any other part of her job. “You did what you had to with the guard. Don’t beat yourself up about it, because I would’ve shot the man if I’d had my weapon. He was a clear threat and you had to take action to defend yourself, your partner and your position. So don’t feel guilty.”

  Given her own questionable mental health, Paige recognized the irony of her trying to provide emotional support, but Brady couldn’t drop in on a psychologist talk about his feelings.

  “I don’t feel bad,” Brady quickly answered. “I just feel bad that I don’t feel bad because I feel like I should feel bad. And honestly, I can’t.” Brady’s voice trailed off and Paige looked at him for a long time. He gave a little shrug in response.

  “You need therapy,” Paige said.

  “Yeah, probably. It’s been a hard week.” He shrugged again. “So, do you want to watch north and east? I’ll take south and west.” That would leave him checking the windows with the two dead bodies. As the training officer, Paige should take the tougher jobs, but this time, she was breaking the rules. Actually, breaking rules was starting to be a habit with her.

  “Deal. You don’t trust the vamp guard dogs to make a ruckus if something is coming?” Paige didn’t really trust the outside vamps, but Brady seemed to have more and more inside information on demons.

  “Not a chance,” Brady said with a snort. “They aren’t exactly bright.”

  “To say the least. They make me want to find them a nice quiet deserted island where they can play with the pretty seashells.” Paige flashed on the image of a vampire herder trying to get them into the cargo bay of a ship. It wouldn’t be a job she wanted.

  “Until some boat lands and they eat the crew,” Brady said with a little more pragmatism than she expected. After all, they were related to Brady…sort of. Anyway, she’d ex
pected him to stick up for the guys. “Don’t forget they’re dangerous. They can kill with a touch,” Brady warned her as he looked out the shaded window.

  “Unlike you,” Paige guessed. She looked at Brady and waited for some sort of confirmation.

  He took a step backward and tilted his head to the side for a moment before answering. “No, I can’t.” So he was remembering more. Either that or bitch lady had told him about life as a demon and Paige assumed Brady had the brains to take anything she’d said with a grain of salt. “I have to kill or,” he hand-waved, “you know.”

  “Sex,” Paige said. She was about twenty years too old to get embarrassed about it.

  “Sex,” Brady said firmly. “Fine, I need the energy of sex or I need to kill. I’m trying to be polite here and not offend you.”

  “By saying sex? Considering that we’ve now had it twice, I think you can say it.” Paige knew human nature well enough to know that Brady probably said far less polite words when he hung out with the guys watching football. “I’m not some shy virgin.”

  Brady made a face. “No, but this is usually about the time in the relationship when I go offending the girl and end up getting slapped and dropped.”

  “Offending?” Paige decided to ignore the “girl” comment. She could only break one bad habit at a time.

  Brady crossed his arms. “Yes, offending. I get accused of being insensitive or something and I never do understand why I get dumped. So I’m trying to not offend you.”

  Paige stared at Brady and she was pretty sure her mouth was hanging open. “I never knew you were an idiot,” she finally said. Brady glared at her. “Seriously! This is me. Do you really think you’re going to offend me by saying ‘sex’?”

  A flicker of doubt crossed Brady’s face. “No, but then I never see it coming before some girl blows up at me.”

  “Trust me, if I’m offended, I’ll say so,” Paige promised. “We had sex. We had great sex. I’m actually feeling a little cheated because twenty years of what I thought was good sex turned out to be mediocre sex, and if you don’t get that stupid grin off your face, you’re never getting it again,” Paige threatened when Brady got another of those delighted grins on his face, like he’d never been told he was good in bed before. “If you want to call yourself a demon, you need to work on the evil part.”

  “I’ll get right on that,” Brady said, barely hiding his grin.

  “I can’t believe you even thought that.” Paige gave a snort of disgust. “I mean, really, am I some sixteen-year-old girl to blush at the word sex?”

  “Give me a break,” Brady said, raising his hands. “I know what Brady knew.” A pregnant pause followed and Paige gave him a sharp look.

  When he didn’t elaborate, she flat out asked, “So, are you remembering more?”

  His gaze fell to the floor. “Bits from the world before I came here,” he admitted. “The brain got a little scrambled there for a while. However, the demon knows nothing about how to avoid insulting women and Brady only knew slightly more than that. Which means I’m still adding up to a whole lot of not much.”

  Picking the cleanest bit of floor she could find, Paige sat down and crossed her legs. “What memories are leaking through from the other world?”

  That shocked Brady enough that his face lost all expression. Whatever he remembered, he hadn’t expected her to ask about it, which was pretty stupid. It was the most reasonable question for someone to ask. Hey, I just came to this dimension from another world. Really, what was it like? Yep, the question was perfectly reasonable, assuming that you believed the person did actually come from another world. After a minute, Brady’s eyes seemed to lose focus.

  “It was different,” he said, his voice clipped.

  “Tell me one thing, Brady. One thing.” Paige leaned forward, her elbows propped on her knees as she studied him. Sometimes his body spoke another language—it moved in ways that humans didn’t. Right now, she recognized every gesture. He scratched his neck and his eyes trailed off to the side. His head was ducked down and his shoulders hunched. Whatever he remembered, it didn’t give him happy-happy, joy-joy kind of feelings. Then again, if he’d liked his home, he wouldn’t have left.

  “It was crowded,” Brady said softly. His hands slid down to his arms and clenched them tightly. “Not bodies pressed together, nothing as firm as a body, but still…” His tongue came out and moistened his lips and he shifted his feet. “Everything was too bright and too crowded, but some…some beings…they sang of a place with darkness and quiet. Even though we pressed so tightly together that it felt as though I could be pressed into nothing, I wanted to get closer to one of the…” He seemed to choke on a word.

  “Storytellers?” Paige filled in gently when Brady’s discomfort only seemed to grow.

  He gave her a smile, but it didn’t erase the sadness from his eyes. “The storytellers,” he agreed. “They told about this world. They never said it would be so confusing.”

  Paige considered that for a second. “That’s why you came. You’d heard stories.”

  He nodded.

  “What was your name?”

  He blinked fast and his fingers pressed deep into his arms. “I didn’t… I existed. I was like some and unlike most others, but I wasn’t me. I didn’t have a sense of being someone specific…” Brady’s voice trailed off as he ran out of words.

  “Until you became Brady,” Paige guessed.

  That got another nod.

  “And you recognize the others from your time in that other place?” She wasn’t as sure about that conclusion as the others, but Brady nodded.

  “It’s different. They’re different, but I think I knew beings like them.” Brady moved back to the window.

  Darkness had fallen and a tapestry of stars hung on the other side of the dirty glass. “Those kind, they wander as far from others as they can. Sometimes they’re food. Usually, they’re just there…like…” Brady struggled again and Paige pushed herself to her feet and moved to him. She rested a hand against his shoulder, prepared for a completely inappropriate wave of lust. It never came. Instead she moved until she could rest against Brady’s back, resting against his strength.

  “They’re like cobwebs. You try to move through them, to find some place that isn’t crowded, that isn’t flooded with light and life, and they cling to you as you move through them, pulling bits of you off as they flow through you, their cobweb thoughts hungry for stories. But they aren’t the only ones there. They’re just the most common. When I tried to spread my wings they would pull at me, ripping at something that… it isn’t quite skin but it was still part of me.” Brady stopped as a shiver went through his body.

  “It doesn’t matter. You aren’t there,” Paige promised.

  “Not now,” Brady said softly. “She was afraid of going back. Why would she fight me? Why would she even risk bringing a rival into her house if she was afraid of going back?” Brady might be watching the zombie-vamps in the yard, but he was talking about the bitch.

  “Power,” Paige said softly. “If you learn about the world through people, then demons or vampires or alien spirits possessing the dead or whatever the hell else freaky thing you want to call yourself, you’re going to inherit human flaws. She wanted power, Brady. I mean, she had power over the vamps outside, but having power over those things—”

  “Not all that impressive or powerful,” Brady finished for her. “They’re everywhere, filling any spot not claimed by a stronger force. They’re the kind of demon that will happily sit in the same six square feet of ground forever and be…content. I don’t think they can do happy.” Brady sighed. “At least they can’t be miserable.”

  “But you can be.” Paige rested her cheek against Brady’s back and ran her hand up and down. She wasn’t one for comforting, but then most of the guys she’d dated who wanted comforting hadn’t suffered more than a wrecked car or lost job.

  Maybe she was jaded and a decade of therapy hadn’t been enough, but she�
�d never actually felt pity for those schmucks. But Brady had lost his world—or escaped it—and now he had to figure out a way to exist in a new one, and worse, his only lifeline was the memory of the man whose place he’d taken. Paige’s issues had to bow in defeat to Brady’s. His issues were the sort to rise up out of the ocean and eat Tokyo.

  “I can be,” Brady agreed. “Which is why I don’t want to piss you off. You make me happy and I like making you happy.” Brady continued to look out the window and Paige continued to rest against his back, grateful for a chance to not look him in the eye during this conversation. She wasn’t sure she could look a man in the eye while getting this mushy.

  “I like you too, Brady. You aren’t going to piss me off, so stop assuming you will. Hell, you keep trying to convince me you’re evil, and if that didn’t drive me away, using the word sex won’t either.” She watched one of the vamps rock back and forth in time with the tire swing that lazily swayed in the breeze. “So, you definitely aren’t one of them,” she prompted him.

  “God no,” Brady quickly agreed with a little huff of laughter. That sounded more like the Brady she knew. “I was…” His body twitched under her. “I was like her,” he said slowly. “She’d been here longer and had better control, but we were the same.”

  “Incubus?” Paige guessed, although unless the bitch had hidden a very small penis under her dress, she’d actually be a succubus.

  Brady shook his head. “I don’t know. The words, the way things change when we’re all in human bodies—I don’t know these things.” He took a deep breath and something shifted. Paige stepped back and immediately, Brady turned to look at her.

  “I should go check the other directions, make sure we aren’t about to get a nasty surprise.”