Insatiable Craving: 2 (Insatiable Nights) (15 page)

This was a hole with which he was very familiar, and thanks to his friends, he knew the way out. The only humane thing to do was hop back in and help her find the path.

Razor caressed her hair and let her cling to him as long as she needed. For her, for this, he would wait forever.

They might be strangers, but right then he knew her as well as he’d known anyone.

And he wouldn’t leave her to do this alone.

Ginny wasn’t sure how it happened, but she at once felt both intense peace and profound embarrassment. Her eyes were raw from crying, and a pleasant sort of exhaustion—completely unlike the sexual coma into which she had been coaxed the day before—had taken hold of her tired muscles. It had been a long while since she allowed herself to truly experience hurt, and though she felt better than she had in ages, the toll it had taken on her physically might take a few days to recover from.

As it was, any self-consciousness she might have thought she’d suffer around Razor simply failed to manifest—at least not in obvious ways, which in some form made her feel even more self-conscious. He’d held her as she cried until her body had no more sobs to sacrifice, until every ounce of fight had drained away, until the intense anger she’d felt was a thing of the past. How he’d known what she’d need was beyond her, but for as long as she’d spent fighting herself and attempting to dodge the ghosts from her past, the reprieve had given her more than she could have asked for.

And she hadn’t chased him away. How crazy was that? A girl to whom he owed nothing had fallen apart—after shouting herself blue in the face as to the many ways there was nothing wrong or worth discussing—and instead of taking the first available exit ramp he’d stayed until the storm calmed. Until she felt the pressure in her chest break, scatter and disappear. Even now, Razor had busied himself in the kitchen, using her meager cabinet supplies to throw together a meal that smelled surprisingly good.

“How do you like your steak?” he called.

Ginny frowned and peered curiously in the direction of the kitchen. “I had steak?”

Razor’s head appeared in the space between her cabinets and the kitchen counter the next second. “I had Aria run it by.”

“When?”

“When you were in the shower.” He paused. “I’m not going to the club tonight.”

Ginny’s heart skipped a beat. “No?”

“I’d like to stay with you again, if that’s all right.”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Now her heart was hammering again and wetness pooled between her legs. “I don’t want you to go.”

He offered a faint smile. “So it wasn’t too presumptuous of me to ask her to bring over an extra change of clothes?”

“No. I’m glad.”

And she was. That was the crazy thing—even crazier than her suddenly never-satiated sex drive or the drastic emotional turns she’d taken. From waking up that morning to her freak-out to calming and letting Razor take the lead for a few hours, she’d found some semblance of peace. Dodging ghosts had never been her intention, but she’d realized in the shower that by avoiding the things she’d avoided, by keeping her head down and her routine firmly set and her life so neatly compact, she’d allowed her fear of the past to determine her future.

The first few nights she’d varied from her normal route home and ventured into Electric Panther had also been accompanied by brutally harsh panic attacks. The first time she set eyes on Razor, her feminine reaction had been impossible to ignore, but she’d also entertained a rush of guilt strong enough to bottle and sell at temple. The notion she could want someone so badly from just looking at them with what had happened to her…she thought there was something wrong with her, something broken. How could she desire a stranger when someone who had known her—someone she thought she’d known in turn—had been able to…

For a while she’d hated herself, but hating herself didn’t quell her hunger for Razor. And now, sitting in her apartment with the very subject of her desires cooking her dinner, she felt awash in a new wave of understanding.

Ginny had stopped living. She’d existed, yes, but she hadn’t lived. In that way, for as long as she’d allowed it, Travis had won.

“Ginny?”

She blinked and snapped out of her thoughts. Razor was standing in front of her. “Sorry, what?”

He smiled. “You never answered me.”

“On what?”

“How do you like your steak?”

“Oh.” She blushed. “Um, medium please. Pink in the middle.”

He nodded. “You’ll have to show me just how pink. I like mine bloody, so I tend to undercook them.”

Ginny laughed. “Bloody. ’Cause of the werewolf thing, right?”

Razor hesitated a beat—almost a beat too long—before the smile returned. “That’s right,” he said, turning back to the kitchen. “The werewolf thing.”

While she laughed again, something in his tone had unnerved her. He sounded almost disappointed, though she hadn’t the faintest idea about what. Maybe he was one of those guys who followed stories like the sort her father published. It wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker. Ginny knew many avid readers of
All The Above
.
For a local publication, it generated quite a cult following. And due to a couple of its contributors, some of the stories seemed less out-there than others.

Still, it seemed best not to dwell on something said in the heat of the moment. Razor had made it clear he considered no tactic too extreme to reach her. He’d also made it clear he didn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.

She didn’t want him to. While her heart thundered and her head pounded, while some deeper part of her seemed on edge, the rest of her felt remarkably at peace. This was new and exciting, and she needed to experience it. She needed to try.

“Okay,” Razor called. “You want to look at this?”

Ginny licked her lips, rose from the sofa and made her way to the kitchen. An array of pleasant smells assaulted her nose. Razor stood over the stove, a steak knife in hand. He had cut a sizable line down the meat, exposing a delicious combination of pink and brown middle.

She grinned. “Looks awesome.”

“Let’s hope we can say the same for the taste.”

“Can I help with anything?”

Razor looked up and met her eyes, a slow, promising smile spreading across his lips. The same sort of smile that made her knees rattle and had her pussy slick with anticipation. For someone who had once looked so dangerous he was proving to be one of the warmest, kindest people she knew. She was beginning to think he hid behind his bad boy persona—the dark eyes, shaggy hair and long scar—for the same reasons she had tried shoving him out the door.

Something had happened to him as well. Perhaps not on par with what occurred with Travis, but something. Maybe a deranged ex-girlfriend really had given him his beauty mark.

“No,” he said at last, “let me worry with this.”

What could a girl say to that? “Okay.”

He nodded, then leaned in to brush a soft kiss across her lips. The touch was brief but it sent the right signals to all the right places. Too much time had passed since he’d last been inside her, and though there was definitely something to be said for a slow seduction, the longer the day went on the more tempted she was to grab him by the wrist and drag him to the bedroom.

Ginny bit her lower lip and forced her feet back to the living room. While she suspected Razor planned to take her to bed before the night was over, she figured it was best not to push the subject. If it happened, it happened, and there was no reason to act as though there wasn’t time.

Strange how much a person’s world could change in a day—hell, in a few hours. The apartment looked different, almost homier. She felt warm and close to something she might be so bold as to identify as happy.

It was a heady sensation. She just hoped she didn’t get drunk on it.

Razor finished up in the kitchen a few minutes later, then joined her with two steaming plates in hand.

“That smells heavenly,” she said.

“I can only claim the steak,” he replied, placing her meal on the coffee table before her, along with a knife and a fork from a silverware set Aria must have brought over as well, as they looked far too nice to belong in her kitchen. “Everything else came from a bag.”

The everything else consisted of a vegetable arrangement and a piece of garlic toast. Ginny grinned. “Frozen veggies?”

He shrugged. “I figured I could fool you if I stuck to the one thing I know how to make. I’m actually a shit cook.”

“So far you’ve done more in my kitchen in a day than I have since I moved in.” She waved a hand. “For me it’s usually frozen dinners or whatever I bring home from Trixie’s.”

Razor sank into the oversized chair across from the sofa. “Trixie’s? That the diner off I-44?”

“That’s the one. Where I work.” She frowned and cut into her steak. “Or worked.”

“You don’t work there?”

“I got fired. Yesterday, actually.” Ginny took a bite, which was delicious—annoyingly delicious, actually, as the man should have the decency to have at least one fault—and flashed him an approving smile. “This is really good.”

“You were fired?”

“That’s why I went to Electric Panther. Well, part of it. I don’t remember how I got home or anything, but I slept in and missed my shift by several hours. That tends to piss off the boss.”

“So they fired you.”

“Frank Palmer is an ass.”

Razor’s brows perked. “Your boss.”

“Yes. Well, former.” Ginny polished off another bite of steak, then sampled the vegetables. They weren’t bad, but she could tell they were store-bought. Unlike the meat, which tasted fresh out of the oven at any five-star restaurant. “He’s my former boss now.”

“Why didn’t you mention this yesterday?”

“I was a little preoccupied with getting my brains screwed out.” The words came out a bit harsher than she intended, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like her to forget or dismiss something as monumental as getting her ass canned. Ginny had some cash stored away for a rainy day—maybe enough to float her rent and keep food on her table for a month, maybe two if she really tightened her belt—but this wasn’t the best time to lose her job. Not that there was an ideal time to lose her job, but if ever there was a bad one this would be it.

And she’d managed to forget all of that for a little while. She’d released her resentment, even her concern over what had really happened the night Aria approached her. Those things that shouldn’t
not
bother her had been shoved to the back of her head, and even now she didn’t care to ruminate.

Her job had been a part of her shield for such a long time. Perhaps the reason she didn’t care was because, at least for the moment, she felt she didn’t need the shield.

Still, money was an essential. She needed to start shopping around for a new job soon.

“I can get you a job,” Razor said, “at the club.”

Ginny blinked and snapped back to herself. “What?”

“If you need a job—”

“No, I heard you. I mean
what
? I don’t get it.”

He looked at her a moment, then frowned. “Now I’m confused.”

“I mean, you’re going to be the guy who… What, takes care of me?” She winced. “Wow, that sounded really lame.”

Razor raised a hand. “I’m just offering to get you a job. Not…wherever it was you were—”

“Sorry,” Ginny said, then stuffed another forkful of steak into her mouth. “It’s a defense mechanism.”

“What is?”

“I take care of myself. I’m not used to other people offering, or caring, or wanting to get involved.” She shifted awkwardly in her seat and looked away. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so overly dramatic.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s okay.”

“You’ve been so nice—”

“I have ulterior motives.” Razor grinned. “We still haven’t made it to a bed yet.”

Her cheeks warmed. “No,” she agreed. “We haven’t.”

“But I meant what I said earlier. I like you. I like you a whole fucking lot.”

“I don’t get why.”

“Because I see so much of me in you it kinda freaks me out.”

Ginny’s breath caught in her throat and she found the will to meet his intense gaze. If she spent every minute of every day of the rest of her life with him, she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the way he looked at her. How much he seemed to see, or how much he wanted to see.

It felt like much more time had passed since his lips first touched hers than one measly day.

“What?” she asked softly, placing her plate on the coffee table. “What do you see in me?”

“You’re beautiful, for one thing.”

She snorted. “Wow, you are a cocky son of a bitch.”

“That didn’t come out the way it was supposed to.”

Ginny bristled and looked away. “Doesn’t matter. It’s still a line if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who doesn’t know how pretty they are.”

“No,” she replied, shivering. She’d accused Aria of the same thing not too long ago. “But you can’t tell me you see yourself in me and have that thing you see be something superficial.”