Insatiable Craving: 2 (Insatiable Nights) (18 page)

“I met Travis my sophomore year. He was the first guy I accepted a date from after my whole shedding of the party girl image. He was nice, or seemed it at the time. We went out three times before I let him kiss me. Another three times before he tried to do anything else.” She swallowed. “I told him I wasn’t that girl anymore—really never had been, and he seemed okay with it. Maybe three weeks passed…and he started trying to get me into bed. When it became clear sex was an expected part of our relationship—and important enough to ignore my request for patience, I ended it. He said some nasty things and we didn’t see each other for almost a year.”

Another break, though this one carrying with it a cloud of foreboding. Razor felt himself tense, partly because he dreaded what came next but mostly because he already knew it.

His wolf, which had been a docile puppy since taking her to bed, had reared its head. He felt it strain through every muscle in his body, a rising tide of anger moving against his chest.

Anyone who hurt Ginny…

Razor clenched his jaw and did his best not to squeeze her too close to him. It was more important that she say the words than he hear them.

“I was a junior,” she continued a moment later, her voice now strained. “It was Homecoming weekend. I went to the game with a girlfriend, who then dragged me to a frat party. Travis was there. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but he seemed…calmer. We chatted but didn’t really say much. He went one way and I went another. About an hour later, he found me again. This time he had a beer. Peace offering.”

Harsh breaths crashed against Razor’s chest. His hold on her tightened, his grip on the wolf beginning to slip. Still, he forced himself to hold his tongue.

“I don’t know when I started to feel a little woozy, but it didn’t take me long to figure out what he’d done. I’m not sure what kind of drug he used, but I knew what was happening the entire time. I think that made it worse, actually. Feeling locked inside your body.” Ginny shifted. “He took me upstairs. Started taking my clothes off…”

Razor bit back a growl, cold rage pumping through his veins. “Ginny.”

“I told him no. I remember that. I begged him a couple times. He told me he’d waited long enough, or something stupid and barbaric.” He felt the flick of her eyelashes as she blinked against his skin. “And I lied earlier. When I said no one had… I think he thought if he went down on me, it’d be less of a rape. He could make me want it.”

His stomach clenched. Her words earlier, her soft admission, had come after a second’s hesitance. He suspected if he hadn’t been so surprised he wouldn’t have noticed it. Razor didn’t know if it was a wolf thing—though he doubted it, as he’d been rather explorative before being infected—but not sampling every inch of a woman seemed a waste of a tongue. Granted, like there were women who avoided putting their mouths south of the border on their lovers, he knew that street had to go both ways. It just struck him as thoroughly unbelievable that any of Ginny’s previous bedmates could have her beside them and not want to taste her.

But discovering the truth was far worse.

“He climbed on me. Pressed his face against my shoulder and—”

Her voice broke, but she didn’t need to say any more. She’d said more than enough.

And that was it. The break in her voice. The surging storm warring within his chest broke loose, hard shards of fury roping his muscles and pressing against his skin until he was certain he would explode. Razor couldn’t contain his roar any longer, nor could he keep still. His bones shifted under his flesh and patches of fur broke across his body.

Oh God, no.

Razor roared again, though this time in terror. He still had so much to tell her, so much she wouldn’t believe but needed to hear anyway. And he definitely didn’t want her to discover his secret—the truth of what he’d told her earlier, when she hadn’t believed him and he hadn’t meant her to—on the cusp of something intense and personal she’d shared with him. Yet he couldn’t leash the wolf.

He couldn’t leash
himself
.

“Run!” he spat, shoving her away.

“Reyvon?”

The use of his given name—bathed in her fear—was all it took. Razor screamed and tore away from the bed. He landed hard on the floor and scampered as far from her as he could, but the hint of her tears tickled his nose and the last hold he had on himself fell away.

“Oh my God,” he heard her whisper.

And then he was gone.

Ginny couldn’t reconcile reality with what she’d just witnessed, because what she’d just witnessed wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t possible that he’d just been in her bed and now was across the room, blinking at her through the eyes of an animal.

It wasn’t possible the man who had held her so tenderly, loved her so well with his body, broken down those final barriers around her heart wasn’t a man at all. Because there were certain things bound to the world of fantasy, and men who turned into wolves were definitely among them.

“Oh shit, oh shit.”

She didn’t remember getting out of bed, but she must have for the next thing she knew she was in the hall. The wolf—Razor—
whatever
didn’t follow her, though that might be because she’d just lost her mind or passed out but she didn’t want to double back just in case her eyes
hadn’t
deceived her. Instead, she went to her utility closet and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans and a green tank top from the dryer.

“There isn’t a wolf in my bedroom.”

A definitively canine whine sounded from behind and dared to her turn around. Ginny froze in place, her heart hammering. When she gathered the courage to brave a glance over her shoulder, Razor—the
wolf—
crowded the doorway.

And then it hit. Everything she’d seen combined with the things she’d been told and the patches of black in her memory. All of it—even the elements she’d managed to forget over the past day and a half came surging to the forefront. Then she needed to get the hell out. Away from him, away from the apartment, away from the illusion she’d crafted around herself.

She needed air.

“Ginny—”

She whirled around. Razor stood where the big dog had been, buck naked, his eyes wide and pleading. “Ginny,” he said again, raising a hand. “Just talk to me.”

She blinked at him dumbly. “Talk?” she repeated. “Talk? I-I don’t. What…
what the fuck was that
?”

“I tried to tell you—”

“No,” she spat. “Don’t give me that shit. You… I… Have I lost my mind?” Her hands were shaking. Hell, all of her was shaking. The ground beneath her feet didn’t seem stable. “You were just… That happened, didn’t it?”

Razor stepped forward and she recovered the space in the opposite direction as quickly as possible. “I was born into a family of hunters,” he said. “I don’t know how it is for people who aren’t told from the cradle that the boogeyman is a real thing, but I was.”

“The boogeyman. What?” Ginny blinked and shook her head, defying him to make sense. “Please start talking sane, I don’t think I can handle—”

“We hunted werewolves, my family did. And then one night I got bitten by one.”

“You have to know how that sounds.”

Razor gestured to the doorway behind him and took another step forward. “You just saw me, Ginny. What do you think
that
was?”

“A stroke?”

“I told you earlier—”

“And you really thought I believed that?”

He frowned. “Well, no, but—”

“Then why the hell would you just… Why would you turn in front of me?”

Even though they were separated by several feet of carpet, even though Razor’s body was mostly cast in the hallway’s shadow, she didn’t miss how fiercely he tensed. How every line in his body went rigid, his hands forming fists and a hard breath stealing through his lips. A low growl touched the air, enough to spark the shimmer of fear she’d felt earlier but not enough to sustain it. For whatever reason, her fear had begun receding, even when it had no earthly reason to.

A man had turned into a fucking wolf in her room, practically in her bed, and somehow that wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened all week.

“Why?” Razor repeated slowly, moving a pace forward. It might have been a trick of the light—or lack thereof—but she could have sworn tufts of fur resurfaced, blanketing his skin. He entered a darker patch of shadow before she could know for certain. “You told me what happened to you—”

“Because I trusted you, dummy!”

“And I fucking love you, so hearing—”

Ginny’s heart dropped and her ears started buzzing. “Wait… You… What?”

“I said I love you.”

She blinked at him stupidly. That didn’t make sense. In fact, of everything that had happened in recent memory, that made the least amount of sense. “You… Razor, you barely know me. You can’t love—”

“I never claimed otherwise.”

“Then you can’t love me! That’s ridiculous.”

He gestured emphatically but still didn’t leave the shadows. “Any more ridiculous than me turning into a fucking wolf in your room?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because…because…” There just was no good argument for that. “Shut up, that’s why!”

Razor fell silent a moment. Then he snickered.

Ginny shifted her weight from one foot to the other, feeling wholly ridiculous and a little pissed off because of it. Her heart crashed against her chest, her eyes were welling with tears for the umpteenth time tonight, her skin hummed and her ears wouldn’t stop ringing. And Razor had just announced he loved her.

There was no chance her life would ever be normal.

“I didn’t want love,” she said softly. “And… It’s… Razor, you don’t—”

He held up a hand. “Please don’t say I don’t know you again.”

“It’s true.”

“Bullshit. You’re an open book to me.” He stepped forward, inching toward the light. “Look, I didn’t know I was going to say that until I…said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Love doesn’t work like that.”

He snorted. “Says who? There are no rules for this thing, and I wouldn’t give a shit if there were.”Another step. Then another. His chest was exposed now, the fur she’d thought she’d seen gone, if it had been there at all. “My world isn’t like your world. I trust my instincts. Aside from Aria, they’re all I have. If there’s anything she’s pounded into my skull since she took me in, it’s to follow what’s in here.” He placed a hand over his heart. “That’s you, sunshine.”

Ginny shook her head, tears beginning the now familiar trek down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything.” Razor’s face was visible now—the face she’d come to cherish. His eyes warm and compassionate and so full of honest hope she thought she might suffocate. Even the scar that marred his features, the smooth line he’d claimed earlier was a parting gift from a psychotic ex, made him seem overtly beautiful. Vulnerable. The man had turned into a fucking wolf and she wanted to…

“You love me?”

She hadn’t meant to speak the words—they manifested of their own accord. Her voice sounded small and pathetic to her, but if the warmth that flooded his eyes was any judge, he didn’t share her assessment.

“I do,” Razor agreed softly. “God help me.”

“And…you’re a werewolf.”

He nodded again. “I am.”

“And that’s…real. That’s really a thing. You’re a werewolf.”

He smiled. “No cure, I’m afraid. Believe me, I looked.”

“What else is real? Zombies, vampires, Scientology?”

Razor laughed this time. “Never met a zombie,” he said, “but I know a few vamps.”

Ginny’s eyes bugged. She hadn’t expected that. “Oh.”

“And don’t get me started on Scientology.” Another step forward. They were only inches apart. “And I wolfed out because…I knew what happened, Ginny. Maybe not the whole story, but I’m a smart guy. I pieced it together. But knowing it and
knowing
it are two different things.”

She swallowed and inched closer to him almost unwittingly, but her body refused to obey her mind. She wanted him—wanted the comfort of his arms even if the rest of her couldn’t catch up with what she’d learned. Fighting him or their pull wouldn’t make a difference. In the end, the trust she’d felt earlier, the connection, the kinship, remained just as strong. That had to mean something. “They sound the same,” she said. “Knowing and
knowing
.”

Razor nodded and pressed on another step. She could feel his breath on her lips, feel the heat rising from his body, feel his cock, hard and ready, straining toward her sex. At once nothing mattered anymore. She just wanted him. Wolf or not, crazy or not, she wanted him. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“One is said with more pizzazz,” he practically whispered.

Ginny released a trembling breath, her gaze abandoning his just long enough to study his lips. “You lost control…because of me.”

“Yes.”

“Because I… Because you know.”

“Yes.”

“Say it again.”

“I couldn’t take the thought of someone doing that to you—of me not being able to stop it from happening. As long as you’re mine, anyone who touches you, hurts you…fuck,
looks
at you funny is a dead man walking.”