Page 55 of Bad Demon

“But, Relic—”

“Best you find a new garage as well.”

Her face crumpled, and she ran from the bar.

Relic shook his head, looking pissed off and kind of bewildered.

I sat there, fighting the feelings swirling inside me, feelings I should not be having. I was irrationally angry, and my skin was hot and tight.

What the hell was wrong with me? Relic was an extremely handsome male—I got that—but I wasn’t interested in him, right? I was just confused because of the whole owning-his-soul thing, because he made me feel safe, and I was mixing that all up in my head with something else, something that wasn’t real. And, okay, waking up, draped all over him, wasn’t helping; it was creating this illusion of closeness that didn’t exist. I’d never had any kind of closeness with someone—ever—so I didn’t know what to do with it. I was confused. I was just really fucking confused.

Hunger gripped my stomach tighter, and heat hit my face. I quickly slid off my seat.

“Where are you going?” he asked, eyeing me in a way that I didn’t like, as if he could see deep inside me.

“Bathroom.” Then, I took off before he could round the bar and insist he come with me.

I rushed down the short hall and into the restroom, and as soon as the door shut behind me, silence engulfed the small space like a heavy blanket. I locked myself in a stall and tried to calm my racing heart. The hunger wouldn’t subside though. In fact, the silence was making it worse.

I finished up and washed my hands. Then, through the stillness, a heartbeat—no, two—reached out to me, pounding through my skull. I shook my head, trying to get it to stop.

Why was this happening to me now?

Drawn to those throbbing pulses, I walked back out to the hall and froze when a moan somehow reached me over the loud music and voices out in the bar, as if my senses had zeroed in on the owners of those heartbeats. Instead of going back to the bar, like I should, I followed the sounds of pleasure farther down the hall.

A door was ajar, and I looked through the inch-wide gap. An office. A female was sitting on the desk. She was bare from the waist down, and I recognized the auburn hair of the male crouched in front of her. The hound I’d first met when we got here—Fender. His large hands were gripping her hips, his face buried between her legs. His growls of enjoyment and her cries of pleasure started a deep throb inside me.

I felt out of control, dirty, afraid, and so incredibly turned on that I had to squeeze my thighs together. Fender snarled, and the female fell back, arching against the desk, trembling uncontrollably. The oxygen punched from my lungs when a vision of Relic and me doing what they were doing filled my head. I swallowed thickly.

No.

Nausea tried to creep in, but the hunger inside me shoved it back.

I spun away, rushing back to the bar. The thud of heartbeats, of blood pumping through veins, bombarded me. My gaze darted around the room. I felt cornered, terrified of the deep hunger inside me, gnawing in my gut and throbbing between my thighs.

I didn’t know myself at that moment. I didn’t know my own mind or my body.

Gasping in a breath, I looked over at the bar and locked eyes with Relic. He was already rounding it, heading for me. My hands came up all on their own, warding him off. I was afraid of what I’d do or say, of my own thoughts and feelings.

One of the wolves howled suddenly, and then someone was tossed across the bar. With a snarl, they jumped up and ran back. The thud of bodies colliding and fists hitting flesh came next, and the room broke out into chaos. The scent of blood saturated the room, and my mind spun, my fangs tingling. Terror washed through me as my hunger deepened, yawning wider. I felt my eyes change, and I tried to change them back, but I couldn’t stop it.

“Fern,” a rough voice barked.

I looked up, and Relic was staring down at me. He saw my eyes and cursed. He snatched me off my feet when another body went flying across the room and all but tossed me over his shoulder. The hounds were wading in, breaking things up, but Relic strode through the crowd, knocking people out of his way like bowling pins as he went, heading for the exit.

Clamping my eyes closed to hide them, I waited until I felt the cool night air hit my face before I dared open them again. Relic kept walking until we hit the parking lot, but he didn’t walk into the clubhouse. He carried me around the side of the garage, where it was dark and quiet. Then, finally, he eased me down his front, putting me back on my feet.

My back was to the wall, and he was crowding me, not touching me, not anymore, but he was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, making my already-hot flesh burn.

“What are you doing?”

“You were scared, Tinker Bell. Thought you might need some fresh air.”

And he knew I hated being below ground, so he’d brought me here.

“Thank you.”

“It’s my job, remember?” he said low—so low that goose bumps rose all over me.

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