InsatiableNeed

Insatiable Need

Rosalie Stanton

Ever since Raegan Pritchett
discovered Private Investigator Zeth McDowell’s habit of occasionally going a
little furry, she’s been vocal in her fervent dislike of both him and all
werewolves. But that doesn’t stop her from shuffling into his office every time
she needs a source for her stories.

Raegan has had a vendetta against
weres ever since her college best friend was found in several pieces at the hand
of her werewolf boyfriend. However, when a psychic claims a local priest plans
to summon a dangerous demon—a demon that will strip the town’s inhibitions and
have citizens surrendering to their innermost forbidden fantasies—Raegan has
nowhere to turn but Zeth McDowell, the annoyingly sexy private investigator she
loves to hate. Neither Raegan nor Zeth know how to stop a demon, but they still
aim to try.

Until the demon’s spell is
triggered—and Zeth and Raegan discover
their
innermost fantasies involve
each other.

Insatiable Need

Rosalie Stanton

Chapter One

There were many things Zeth McDowell admired about the
delectable Raegan Pritchett. How her eyes darkened when she was pissed, how her
frown tightened on the tail of a remark she didn’t like, and the way she held
herself when she was on the cusp of her least favorite activity—asking for a
favor.

Consequentially, this was exactly how Zeth preferred Raegan.
She couldn’t afford to be quite so lippy if she wanted him to scratch her back.
Not that Zeth minded her lippy, but there was little he enjoyed more than
provoking her when he knew she couldn’t take the bait.

And after last week’s assurance that she would sooner become
Donald Trump’s sex slave than set eyes on him or any of his kind again, Zeth
was determined to enjoy her groveling.

“So that’s it?”

Raegan blinked dumbly. “Yeah. And it’s happening tonight.”

“You’ve left something out.”

“What?”

“How it’s in any way my problem.” Zeth flashed a grin, slid
his hands behind his head and kicked his feet up on his desk.

Her face tightened in such a way he knew she was
contemplating the virtues of twenty-five to life. Raegan was one of those women
whose short fuse he enjoyed flicking with an open flame. Watching her teeter
between collected and furious was the cheapest entertainment around.

The fact she was the loveliest creature he’d ever had the
privilege of meeting was merely a happy coincidence.

Zeth was accustomed to fielding calls from reporters. Some
wolves chose pack life while others lived in seclusion. Zeth had gone a
different route altogether. Immersing himself in the midst of the human world
wasn’t something his mother had encouraged—as it typically came with the
warning of torches and pitchforks—but he found people fascinating, not to
mention an easy target off which to score a quick buck. Through the courtesy of
a small business loan and a few start-up clients, Zeth had built a steady
reputation for himself as a respectable private investigator, with special
emphasis in the paranormal.

And since a good chunk of humans spent their lives hunting
down things that went bump in the night, business was good. So good he had his
very own liaison to one of the country’s most lucrative tabloids,
All The
Above,
in the form of their local chapter’s best writer. Raegan Pritchett.

Raegan Pritchett, who hated her job almost as much as she
hated him.

Whenever a story broke about a possible UFO sighting, a
rumor of a malicious haunting, or a string of deaths all related to neck wounds
and blood loss, every crack news agency in the area code made use of his phone
line. There weren’t many paranormal investigators who likewise entertained a
reputation of being trustworthy, and in small-to-largish towns like Highfield,
Missouri—where churches thrived on every street corner and the devil made
weekly house calls to anyone not in attendance—reputation was everything.

Then again, it wasn’t as though his competitors in the field
had anything to offer. A few fancy gadgets like the boys on that
Ghost
Hunters
show liked to play with, a bunch of high-tech mumbo jumbo and words
that meant little to nothing. Oh sure, on occasion, the pea-brains would
stumble across something legitimate, but it was almost always by stroke of luck
rather than anywhere their so-called science had led them.

Zeth could tell the phonies from the Real McCoy any day of
the week. Being born a lycan had its advantages. All he had to do was stick his
nose in the air and follow the trail.

Yet for all the stuffed shirts that came through his door,
Raegan was definitely his favorite. Her surprising, understated beauty had yet
to faze him. The strawberry undertones in her chin-length blonde hair seemed to
burn bright whenever she flushed, or when her brown eyes gained some fire
behind them. She was short, curvy where he liked his women curvy and slender
where he liked his women slender. But her best asset, hands down, was her
mouth. Those lips that could form the world’s most kissable pout one second,
then be moving at inhuman speeds to illustrate each of the twenty-seven ways he
was her least favorite individual. She swore like a sailor and she didn’t
apologize for it, and the more she fought, the more hungrily he anticipated his
conquest.

But Raegan Pritchett would have nothing to do with him. Not
since she discovered what he was. Not since the night when he’d lost control of
his inner animal and wolfed out in her living room. Since then, she’d made it
clear she hated the air he breathed, which made his victory all the sweeter
when she shuffled into his office.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“You heard me. You want help. Fine. You first gotta convince
me how your little problem is
my
little problem.”

“Your problem?” Raegan scrunched her face in disgust. “Were
you paying attention or do you just delight in having me repeat myself?”

“Is there only one answer to that question?”

“Zeth—”

“What did you expect?” he retorted, kicking his legs off his
desk and straightening his spine. “You come in here with some demon nonsense—”

“It’s not nonsense!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

“Convincing as that argument was in the second grade, I’m
gonna need a bit more than that.”

Raegan stared at him for a long moment, then broke away with
a sigh. “Look,” she said slowly. “Higgins says this is a story.”

“Of course he does. Higgins has had it in for Father O’Brian
ever since he kicked him outta Mass.”

Raegan’s nostrils flared. “That was a major undercover job.”

“Yeah. Can’t imagine why the good father wouldn’t want a
sleazy tabloid reporter sniffing around his communion wafers, can you?”

“Are you this much a pain in the ass to everyone or am I
just special?”

“I’m hurt you’d even have to ask. Of course you’re special.”

The way she glowered at him led Zeth to believe she didn’t
take it as the compliment he intended. And though yanking her around was one of
his favorite pastimes, he could concede when the conversation went from
innocent teasing to snappy insults. “How long you been doing this, Raegan?”

“Being annoyed by you? More hours than they can pay me for.”

“Working for that smut rag.”

“
All The Above
is not a smut rag!”

Now she was just arguing to argue. Zeth knew damn well
Raegan hated her profession, almost as much as she pretended to hate him. “Come
on, now,” he said. “You’re a smarter girl than this.”

“Flattery on the heels of a putdown. No wonder you have such
a fantastic reputation.” Raegan crossed her arms and huffed. “Look, I’ve cut
you more than your fair share of slack. I’ve tolerated each and every one of
your sleazy come-ons—”

“Like hell.”

“Tolerated as in I haven’t yet attempted to break that
honker you call a nose.”

Zeth frowned and thumbed said honker. “That was just mean.”

“And I haven’t shared your secret identity with any of the
thirteen poachers who stalk out your kind, despite being sorely tempted.”

That threat had grown stale, but Raegan had just enough
contempt for his kind to make good on it if he ever
really
pissed her
off. The way she’d found out still smarted. Zeth had lost control on his wolf
during a very inopportune moment—like a damn pup who’d just learned how to
transform without someone holding his paw. He couldn’t even blame the fuckup on
the full moon. Not really. He didn’t know
what
had gone wrong. Zeth
typically liked to keep things quiet. He didn’t need the publicity, the hate
mail, or the phone calls from his mother.

Granted, the incident hadn’t been all bad. He guessed. From
that particular lesson he’d gleaned that Raegan had already been inducted into
the world of the paranorm, which had admittedly helped him cut out the
bullshit. It
didn’t
help, however, that her one and only experience with
creatures of the night occurred when she was in college, and involved losing
her best friend to the angry claws of a werewolf.

It wasn’t that Zeth lacked sympathy. He was acquainted with
the wolf responsible—had been elected along with several of his brothers to
locate and put down the asshole in the literal sense, failure as that
expedition had been. Yet for whatever reason, Raegan had a hard time
understanding the wolven world differed little from the human world. His kind had
their fair share of scam artists, thieves, murderers, rapists, pornographers,
corporate embezzlers and politicians; they also had ordinary Joe Schmoes doing
their damndest to make an honest day’s living.

Things had definitely improved since the night Raegan
discovered his true heritage. At least she’d gotten over attacking him with
that silver letter opener.

“All right.” Zeth released a long, tired sigh. “Once more.
From the top.”

Raegan leaned over the desk, bracing her palms on the edge.
“Father O’Brien.”

“You think he is going to summon the demon Jezebel.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“As in…
Jezebel.
Biblical Jezebel.”

“That’s the one.”

Zeth tilted his head and considered her. It wasn’t the most
outrageous assertion he’d ever heard by any stretch of the imagination, but
people typically didn’t come to him for help with Hell Demons. That didn’t mean
he was unlearned in the area. No, in this field, one had to be prepared for
anything, especially those claims that erred on the side of truthful rather
than paranoid or, his personal favorite, plain ole batshit insane. Zeth had
just enough research under his belt to know what Jezebel was capable of, though
rumors of her involvement in certain events were typically only spread by
people who didn’t really understand demonology.

From what Zeth had read, the demon’s power seemed to stem
from interpretation of the woman herself. The mythical Jezebel had been a false
prophet, later dubbed by scholars as a controlling harlot. Her demon
counterpart, by all accounts, played on her victims’ sense of control—stripping
it, rearranging it, or influencing it in one way or another.

Jezebel seemed a strange decision for O’Brien, but Zeth was
willing to hear Raegan out.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So Jezebel’s summoned. You have any
crackpot theories to explain O’Brien’s motive?”

“His campaign for traditional family values is in the
shitter.”

“I fail to see how that is my problem.”

If looks could skin, Raegan would have herself a new
wolf-fur coat right about now. “Do the words ‘mass chaos’ mean anything to
you?”

“A kickin’ good time?”

She gritted her teeth. “Come to a werewolf for help and
they’ll just hump your leg. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Zeth’s eyebrows perked. “Fun as that sounds, you have yet to
make a convincing case. If the crazy man succeeds, why the hell do I care?
Furthermore, why the hell do
you
care? It’s not like this shithole town
couldn’t use a little spice in their nightlife. Whatever doesn’t kill ‘em—”

“This could!”

“How? Come on, now. You’ve given me the problem and you’re
telling me the answer. All you forgot to do is show your work.”

Judging by the look on Raegan’s face, she was mentally
knitting herself a pair of wolf-fur mittens to go with her coat. “Jezebel
comes, and people lose control of their bodies, but not their minds. And then
ethics are holding a fire-sale, ’cause whatever it is you’ve always wanted to
do but not done because of a moral code becomes reality. And I’m not talking
about small things like running an asshole off the road because he cut you off.
I’m talking men who have lusted after their neighbor’s wife suddenly become
rapists. Women who have briefly wondered what their lives would be like sans
kids go all Andrea Yates. They’re slaves to whatever fleeting moment of mental
insanity they’ve entertained, and they’re aware of it, and themselves, the
whole time. They just can’t stop. This has happened before, according to my
source.”

“Your source?”

Raegan stared at him for a long, quiet moment, then looked
down, heaving a heady sigh. “Your ex-girlfriend, Harriet Pollack.”

Zeth nodded slowly. While there were many so-called
psychics, most turned out to be in the same vein as the famed Ms. Cleo. Harriet
Pollack, however, was a genuine Seer. She was also a former lover. Emphasis on
former.
It was hard being with someone who could plan their rebuttal to a conversation
days in advance. Through her gift, she was able to see exactly where their
relationship was going, where it would splinter, and to whom he was destined to
be mated.

Zeth hadn’t given the latter much consideration until
recently. Wolves mated for life, and he had no interest in being tied down.
Harriet’s predictions notwithstanding, he’d decided to stray from anything that
didn’t have the word
fling
written all over it.

For whatever reason, his convictions had recently started to
wane.

“Well,” Raegan continued. “Harriet has had a vision.”

“Harriet’s
always
having visions.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Kinda goes with the territory.”

“So what was this vision?”

Raegan groaned. “Have you been listening at all? Just what I
told you, you doof. O’Brien, Jezebel, the full shebang. And I have to stop it.”

Zeth stared at her a long moment, then sighed and pinched
the bridge of his nose. “All right, from the beginning,” he said slowly.
“Father O’Brien summons the demon Jezebel. The rest of us get our hands dirty
doing things we don’t wanna—”

“All while our mental faculties remain intact,” Raegan
confirmed with a nod. “That part is important. If people see themselves doing
things they wouldn’t ordinarily do, while maintaining their presence of mind
and conscience, it makes it more
them
.”