Meredith shifted uneasily. Of course, she had no future with Silas. He was her partner. She had no business even considering the possibility of a romantic relationship. She shook her head and forced herself to watch the trainwreck below.
Now completely nude aside from stilettos and stockings, Soleil allowed the demon to lead her to the padded bench. He spun her around violently and shoved her between the shoulder blades.
“Yes, Sir,” Soleil said, although Meredith had to read her lips; she couldn’t hear through the thick pane of glass. Soleil’s abdomen slapped the brown leather, her breasts dangling on the opposite side as her feet. Methodically, the demon bound her wrists behind her back with a red silk rope. He tapped the inside of her stilettos. Soleil smiled as she spread her feet, giving the room a clear view of everything between her legs.
The vampires in the room dropped fang. Other guests, young and old, began touching each other, shedding clothes and locking lips.
Meredith touched Silas’s arm. “Silas, what else do you hope to see? This isn’t healthy. We should go.”
Silas didn’t respond. He stared absently through the glass, a look of disgust on his face.
The demon dragged a pointed nail down Soleil’s spine, leaving a red trail behind. When he reached her tailbone, his hand drew back and connected with her backside in a slap that Meredith could hear through the glass. Soleil arched slightly from the pain, tugging against her restraints, but if it was painful, Meredith couldn’t tell from her expression. She was smiling, a sultry, heated grin. Her lips formed the word more.
With a wicked smirk, the demon selected a flogger from the wall to his left. This seemed to excite the crowd. A vampire at the back of the room sat on one of the benches and pulled his middle-aged human escort onto his lap. The human’s lips parted as he entered her and the vampire ran one fang along her throat. He continued to watch the show over the human’s shoulder.
As the demon whipped Soleil, her nipples extended and she arched with pleasure. Until, with his last thrash, he broke her skin. A bead of sunlight dripped from her flesh. The vampires in the room cringed. But the demon rubbed the light away and licked it off his thumb. He tossed the flogger aside.
One of the vampires sank his teeth into his human escort, spraying blood across Soleil’s back. The demon was far from disturbed. He untied the belt of his robe and allowed it to fall open. As he entered Soleil from behind, more red droplets sprayed across his chest. Blood and sex filled the room. Couples joined other couples. Vampires fed on multiple hosts. The entire room became an orgy of pleasure and pain. Only Soleil and the demon remained exclusively with each other, showered in the blood of the surrounding guests.
“Silas, please,” Meredith pleaded. Tears had formed in her eyes, spilling over and tracing a trail down her cheeks. It was all too much. She didn’t want to be here anymore. She shook him by the elbow, hard.
He turned then, blinking his eyes like he’d just woken up. He lifted his hand, touched her face, and stared at the tears on his fingertips like he didn’t know how they got there.
“I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “This is not my thing.” Although she held no judgment against the consenting adults in the room below, there was too much pain here for her tastes. Too many head games.
He nodded, then gestured toward the staircase. The air felt dense as they exited the building, the men in black at the entrance giving them a strange look. Silas tugged at his collar. Meredith took a full, deep breath, the cool night air flowing into her lungs, bolstering her. She wiped the tears from her face.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, Silas tugged her to his side. “I’m sorry,” he said. When she didn’t respond, he hooked a finger under her chin and made her look at him. “Meredith, I’m sorry.” He wiped away her tears with his thumbs.
She nodded. They climbed into the van. For several minutes, they sat beside each other, staring out the windshield without making a sound.
“Hey, you want to get a drink?” Meredith finally asked.
Silas answered immediately. “Yeah. I know a place.”
Chapter 7
“It didn’t seem real at first,” Silas said. He sipped his vodka and tonic within the confines of a booth in the bar area at Valentine’s. “I’m not a prude, Meredith, but I’ve never seen anything like that. You hear about things, you know, doing the work we do. You interview people. You know it happens. But there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.”
“I know what you mean. I thought I could handle it… until…”
Silas waited.
“Until I thought about what it must be doing to you. It’s obvious you cared for her. If I’d seen someone I loved, even in the past tense, doing something like that, it would be like enduring open-heart surgery without anesthesia.”
He snorted. “Maybe. But not for the reasons you might think.” He finished his drink and motioned to the bartender for another. “You want another wine?”
“No, I’m okay.”
He held up one finger. “I thought about stopping it.”
“They would have killed you. The place was full of vampires and demons. If you survived, it would have been a bloodbath.”
“Part of me wanted to believe she’d been drugged. Part of me felt responsible for defending her.”
Meredith swallowed hard and whispered, “She looked like an eager participant to me.”
“Yeah. I eventually came to that conclusion too.” Silas scrubbed his face with his hand, a shiver running through him. “Laina says I clean the pepper out of the salt shaker.”
“What does that mean?”
“Long story.”
“So I take it, it wasn’t like that with her before?” Meredith’s eyebrow quirked.
“Hmm? No. Not with me. I’m a simple guy. I like to keep things simple. Too many people and devices just complicate everything. Why do people need that stuff? Keep it simple, that’s what I always say.” The tip of his nose had started to tingle, and he had a distinct impression that he was oversharing. Fuck. He was drunk. “Sorry. I mean no offense if you’re into that sorta thing. Whatever floats your boat.” He gave a deep chuckle.
She laughed. Goddess she had a cool laugh. It made you want to laugh along with her. “Uh, no. Not my cup of tea. When it comes to sex, I’m more about what’s happening up here.” She pointed at her head.
“Your mouth?” Silas whispered. He was drunk. Definitely drunk.
“No, my brain.” There was that laugh again. “How many of those have you had?”
“I just think it shouldn’t be that complicated, you know?”
“You’re a werewolf. You’re a creature of habit, of instinct. You want a permanent bond to raise young. It’s in your nature. What we saw tonight was not it.”
He nodded, pointing his pinky finger at her as he gripped his now empty glass. “You get me.”
The bartender plunked another drink down on the table and took his empty. “Danke schoen.” Silas raised the glass in thanks to the bartender and took another sip, knowing damn well he should quit for the night.
Meredith took a microscopic sip of her wine. “When I was dating Dave, I thought he was the one. I pictured us living in the suburbs with our 2.5 kids. Turns out he pictured it too, but not with me. He married the girl he cheated on me with. They’re expecting their first young in October. So, as bad as today was, at least you know she wanted something different. It wasn’t that she rejected you like Dave rejected me. She rejected the future you wanted with her.”
“Is that better or worse?”
She shrugged. “Now that I think about it, I’m not sure. Sorry.”
A shadow passed over their table. Logan. “Hey, buddy? What’s going on? Dustin tells me you’ve been drinking the well dry.”
“He’s had a rough night,” Meredith said. “I’m Meredith, Silas’s new partner.” She shook Logan’s hand.
“Shee’sssss not my partner,” Silas said. Okay, now he could hear it. He was defini
tely inebriated.
“Nice to meet you,” Logan said, ignoring Silas’s protest. “Are you okay getting home on your own?” he asked Meredith, “because I’m going to take this guy’s keys and set him up in my office for a long nap.”
“Gotta get home and feed Maggie,” Silas blurted. He was suddenly very tired.
Meredith’s lips twitched like she was suppressing a good laugh. “Actually, we came here together,” she said to Logan. “I’ll drop him off at home. I’m good to drive.” She pointed at the single glass of wine she’d been nursing the entire night. It was still half full.
“Good enough for me.” Logan grinned like he found the entire situation amusing. He reached for Silas’s keys and handed them to Meredith.
Silas grabbed his best friend’s wrist. “I’ve decided to take you up on your offer. You were right about that situation we discussed.”
“Okay,” Logan said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”
Silas squeezed. “The Soleil situation. She’s been playing me. Playing me like a harp the entire time.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Logan took him by the shoulders and shook gently. “I’ll help you. We will figure this out. But right now, I need you to go with Meredith. You need to lie down.”
“Ooookay.” Silas allowed Meredith to help him from the booth, losing the murmured conversation between her and Logan. She was a beautiful woman, Meredith. Her hard-ass attitude made her seem uptight, but now, as she buckled his seatbelt around him, he realized how soft her hair looked, how the square jaw and athletic build gave her a strong but feminine mystique. She wasn’t a girly-girl. No makeup. No jewelry. A practical dresser, for sure. But there was something about her. She was funny and smart. Smart-mouthed. He loved her mouth.
“You gonna make it?” she asked, finally succeeding in clicking the seatbelt at his hip. “You look a little—”
He leaned over and spewed out the open door. In his defense, he tried his best to miss her shoes.
Chapter 8
Elven brain torture. The slicing pain that ran from Silas’s right eye through the back of his head must have had a supernatural cause because the pain was sheer torment. His mouth tasted like he’d eaten his own dirty socks, and his stomach… he didn’t want to think about his stomach.
He raised his hand to rub his aching temple and blinked his eyes. He was in bed, in his bedroom. A warm body shifted next to him. He looked over to find Maggie curled into his side.
“Hey, girl.” He scratched her behind the ears. The canine licked his hand and nuzzled his palm. He noticed she was lying directly on the sheets. That was odd. The comforter was pulled back as if someone had gotten out on the opposite side of the bed. Silas frowned. What had happened last night?
He glanced down at himself, lifted the covers. Naked. Naked as the day he was born. He closed his eyes. He remembered Meredith buckling him into the seat of the unmarked. He’d thrown up. What happened after he threw up? Nothing. He couldn’t remember a thing.
What time was it? He turned his head to check his alarm clock, only to have a glass of water and two pills block his view. Painkillers. He sat up the rest of the way, shoveled the pills into his mouth, and swallowed them with the entire glass of water. It was a nice thing to do, leaving him the pills.
Meredith had driven him home. Had she undressed him? Why? He climbed out of bed and headed for his dresser. His gaze caught on the chair in the corner of his room. Folded neatly on the seat were Meredith’s slacks and royal blue blouse, topped off with her gun like the cherry on the she-got-naked ice cream Sunday.
“Fuck me,” he whispered. Meredith had spent the night!
He glanced down at his dick, but little Silas wasn’t talking. His eyes darted between the bed and her clothes, his fingers digging into his hair. Why couldn’t he remember?
Wild squawking outside his bedroom window made him spread the blinds with his fingers. A red fox jogged through his large backyard, sending a flock of birds into a tizzy. The fox seemed less than interested in their flight. It moved toward the house, transforming as it neared, one moment animal, the next human. Meredith. Her long red hair gathered in waves around her shoulders, over pert breasts, a long waist, well-muscled legs. Meredith was solid muscle, almost like there was something more than flesh under her skin. Bricks maybe. Concrete. Yet she was ultimately feminine with curves that would inspire him to paint if he was the artistic type. Goddess she was beautiful. He couldn’t have had sex with her last night. He would’ve remembered that body. Holy hell he would have remembered.
As she neared the house, Silas frantically opened his drawers and threw on a CCPD T-shirt and a pair of black sweats. What was that smell? He breathed into his hand. Fuck! He sprinted to the bathroom to freshen up. He was still brushing his teeth when he heard her enter through the back door.
“Hey, Maggie girl,” she whispered. There was a thud as the dog leapt down from the bed, then danced across the wood floor. “That’s a good girl. Where’s Silas?”
The brush of cloth on skin was followed by the clink and rattle of her gun holster. She was dressing. He finished brushing his teeth but waited until the movement quieted before coming out of the bathroom.
“How are you feeling this morning, slugger?” she asked him, grinning like the cat who ate the canary. She was fully dressed, scratching Maggie behind the ears.
Silas sniffed, picking up the scent of the outdoors on Meredith’s skin. “Like the south end of a north-facing pig.”
“After the night we spent together?” Meredith winked. “You were an animal. It was like an entire circus going on in here. I’ve never had anyone like you my entire life. You’ve ruined me for all other men.”
He stopped breathing, his jaw going slack. After a moment of staring dumbly in her direction, Silas muttered, “Uh…”
She snorted, then burst into full-out laughter. “Relax. I brought you home and put you to bed. Then I spent the night in the woods in my fox form. I needed to burn off a little energy after what we saw last night.”
He let out a relieved breath. “Thank the goddess.”
Her face twisted. Fuck, he’d offended her.
“Not that it wouldn’t have been great. I mean, I’m sure sleeping with you would be a really fun time.” Her face continued to fall. “Not fun like carnival fun, like sexy fun. You are obviously a fun, sexy woman who is probably very good in bed. It wouldn’t be a total disaster to sleep with you.” He held up a hand. “Although it would be because we work together, but not because of you or your body or anything like that. Not that I’d ever have sex with you sober. I mean, anyone would want to have sex with you. Just not me. Given the circumstances of us working together.”
He stopped talking.
“Okay then. No sex. Got it.” She nodded her head slowly. “Sooo, I’ll bring the van back on my way in, and I’ll see you at the station. Oh and you spewed all over your clothes last night. You probably want to throw those in the wash before they get up and run away to avoid their own smell.”
She slung her purse over her shoulder. Silas followed her into the hall where she headed for the door, Maggie trailing behind her. Abruptly, she paused at the entrance to the kitchen and scooped a cup of kibble into Maggie’s bowl, rubbing the dog’s brown head. “There you go, princess.”
Then she fished out her keys before opening the front door.
“Hey, thanks for driving me home,” Silas said.
“You’re welcome.” She flashed him a wry grin. “Oh, and don’t worry, I didn’t see anything. Except for your genitals.”
The door closed behind her.
Chapter 9
Mickey Mouse stared up at Silas from the bottom of his favorite cereal bowl. Technically, it was a small mixing bowl. The thing held half a box of Cocoa Krispies, which was necessary when you had a werewolf’s metabolism. It was empty now aside from a smear of milk residue. He had no memory of eating the cereal. His mind was too busy replaying Meredith’s naked body striding toward his h
ouse on an endless loop.
“I am royally fucked,” he said to Maggie. She panted up at him and wagged her tail.
It wasn’t only that Meredith was beautiful. She was also smart, funny, brave as fuck, and compassionate. She was possibly the perfect woman. And he had made her watch his ex-girlfriend fuck a demon and then thrown up on himself. And to top it all off, he’d told her he never wanted to have sex with her.
He leaned back in his kitchen chair and stared at the ceiling. He should call in sick today. He’d never taken a mental health day before. Maybe it was time.
The piercing ringtone of his phone made him grab his throbbing head. Jason. He tapped the screen. “Are you back in town, bro?”
“Back and already at the hospital with Laina. You better get down here. Grateful is preparing to wake her up.”
Meredith filled her For Fox Sake coffee mug with the tepid bean water the humans drank at the station. Damn. When was Silas getting in? After the night they’d had, he seriously needed to rectify the caffeine situation.
“Yo, Meredith,” the captain called from his office. “Can you come in here for a minute?”
“What’s up?” She joined him, closing the door behind her for privacy.
He handed her a folder. “I need you to check out a potential shifter disturbance at the city zoo. Seems an extra bear has appeared in the exhibit and the zookeepers are flipping out. Go make sure the guy finds his way home and tell him to get his jollies with his own kind.”
“Sure. Uh, should I take Silas with me?”
“Didn’t he tell you? He called in.”
She frowned. “Sick?”
“No. Something with his sister. The family is meeting at the hospital today.” The captain’s face contorted with sympathy. “Between you and me, I think they’re preparing themselves for the worst.”
“I’ve gotta go,” she said. She waved the folder. “I’ll take care of this.”
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