Ripper (11 page)

He shook his head when I finished my order and had the waitress stop. “Why don’t you bring us a couple of lobsters, too?”

She nodded and walked off.

He stared at me seriously. “What was that about?”

“Dinner. I thought.” Had I burped and not noticed it? That could happen.

“Kelsey, I’ve been friends with your brother for a couple of years. Do you seriously believe I haven’t heard stories of your legendary appetite?”

“I don’t eat that much.” I was going to kick Jamie’s ass the next time I saw him. What did he do? Did he go around advertising that his sister was a complete freak? Did he have a stand-up routine focused on how weird I was?

“Hey,” Gray said softly and this time he let his hand find mine. He covered it with his big one and squeezed a little. I should have pulled away, but I enjoyed his warmth too much. “I wasn’t insulting you. You’re different. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s one of the reasons I’m interested in you.”

“Did you really ask Jamie to set us up?” Not that I was going to go out with him on a date that didn’t involve some form of kidnapping. I was simply curious. In our last year of high school and the first two of college, I tended to date friends of guys who wanted to date Liv. Since then the pickings had been slim.

He smiled and it lit up his face. It took him from brooding to gorgeous with one little tug of his lips. “I’ve been bugging your brother to give me your number for about a year and a half.”

I whistled because that was a long time to wait. “And it never occurred to you to look me up in the phone book? I’m pretty sure if you can turn on the GPS in my phone you can find my number.”

“I respect your brother, Kelsey. He said you weren’t ready so I backed off. You should know, though, that I had planned to require your investigative services in a couple of weeks if I couldn’t get Jamie to come around. I was tired of waiting.”

“What was I going to help you with?”

His smile turned rueful and he looked younger than his thirty years. It softened the hard lines of his face and made my heart melt a little. “I don’t know. I was going to come up with something. I was going to show up on your doorstep sooner or later, Kelsey Atwood.”

He took a drink of his wine and sat back. I tried the ruby-red liquid. I was really more a beer girl, but I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. It tasted rich on my tongue and I vowed to expand my horizons. “Well, now you can really use my services. Tell me about the missing girls.”

And just like that he clammed up.

“Kelsey, it’s an ongoing case,” he tried smoothly. “I’m not at liberty to talk about it.”

I huffed a little and sat back. I wondered briefly if Jamie was forever going to be the only man who believed I could get a damn thing right. I should have taken my chances with the vampire. At least he would have been honest about what he wanted. Sloane tried to tell me he was interested in me, but then didn’t want to talk about my work or his work. We were single people in our late twenties/early thirties. We
were
our work. I took another long drink of the wine and focused on something other than the man across from me.

I needed to find a vampire, possibly one named Alexander. I wondered if I showed up at the club at sundown tomorrow night, if this Vorenus person would be there. He’d seemed willing enough to talk with me. At least he’d seemed flattered by my attention. I wondered if it proved once and for all that I had a death wish that I was a little excited at the thought of meeting a strange vampire.

“I don’t like that look,” Gray said quietly.

I drummed my fingers on the table. “It really doesn’t matter, Sloane. You won’t have to put up with it for long. So, are you going to call Jamie or do you want me to?”

His handsome face was a mask of confusion. “Why would we call Jamie?”

“To come get me. Did you expect me to walk home? You made me leave my car.” I had been willing to come with him because I thought we were going to discuss the case and that photograph of me. I was not willing to buy whatever he was selling without some sort of explanation.

His jaw tensed, forming a stubborn line. “I told you you’re not going home. He knows who you are.”

“Then I’ll stay with Jamie. You can’t expect me to sleep in some fleabag motel until you solve this case. That’s completely unrealistic.” Jamie could protect me when I couldn’t protect myself. I wasn’t planning on mentioning anything at all to Nate. He would have me in a jail cell with a phalanx of armed guards, and then he might sleep well for the first time in over a decade.

He swallowed once and then decided to plow through. “You’re staying with me. My house is secure.”

“Yeah, I bet it is.” Now I knew his game and I wondered briefly if he’d set this whole thing up himself. He must be really hard up if he had to go through all of this just to get laid. He should do what I did. He should prowl a skanky bar, get really plastered, and lower his expectations. It worked every time.

“I have a room for you.” Gray frowned my way. “I’m not going to jump you the minute I get you home. If it would make you feel better, you can ask your mother to join us, or your friend Olivia.”

Both of whom would be shoving me into the Ranger’s arms as fast as they could. No, thank you. “I’m not staying with you. You can’t force me to. If you insist, then I’ll take the motel.”

“Why?” He was looking down at his hands. They were big hands. His voice was grave and when his eyes finally found mine, I saw a wealth of pain in his deep blue eyes. It made me stop my sarcastic inner commentary. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Kelsey. I would try hard to never change around you. I have excellent control over my form. You wouldn’t have to see that…side of me.”

Now I was confused. “I didn’t think you would hurt me physically, Sloane.”

“My name is Gray,” he insisted.

“What do you change into, Gray? Why would you be afraid of hurting me?” I was really interested and on more than a personal level. I have excellent instincts and, while I knew that Gray wasn’t entirely human, I couldn’t tell what he was. It bugged me.

Gray’s eyes went stubborn as though he knew he’d made the wrong move and wasn’t sure how to take it back. “I thought Jamie told you and that was why you didn’t want to be alone with me.”

I gazed deeply into his eyes. He wasn’t a vampire, obviously, but he also wasn’t a werewolf or shifter. He didn’t have the right energy. I couldn’t put my finger on it. If he was a witch then he wouldn’t have talked about changing. Hags could change, but they were exclusively female. Fae creatures didn’t shift form, either. They used magic to affect glamours, but they didn’t change their essential forms. I could only think of one other species with the power to change forms and the very real potential to hurt someone they liked. The room turned cold around me as I realized the truth.

“Please tell me you’re only half demon.”

He seemed to retreat, everything about him becoming smaller somehow. His shoulders hunched, his head drooping a bit and his eyes slid away from mine. “My father was a demon. My mother was an ambitious human. I’m a halfling. I seem to be more human than demon, though. I have the physical strength of a demon and I can change my form, but I don’t want to kill everyone I see or cause chaos for no reason. No one ever believes me on that so don’t even try to pretend. I know the spiel. A demon’s a demon. We’re evil.”

A full demon was. I agreed with him whole-heartedly on that count, but I had grown up in the supernatural world. My mother had talked to me about a halfling friend of my grandfather’s all the time. They’d worked for the Council together on several jobs. He’d had a wife and kids and he’d always been a loyal friend. The way my mother told it, halflings came in two kinds—the kind that took after the demon part and the kind that stayed true to their human souls. Though she’d said even that kind could be assholes, too. Assholiness, according to my mother, was not limited to demon DNA.

Sloane pushed his chair back. “I’ll call your brother. He’ll watch out for you. As long as you stay away from this particular case, I think this perp will leave you alone. He seems to want to keep this between me and him. Don’t worry about the check. I’ll get it. I’ll catch this guy, Kelsey. I promise you that.”

He turned to go and the easiest thing in the world would have been to let him. Let him think I didn’t want to have anything to do with a half-demon and I wouldn’t have to ache at the thought of his pain. I didn’t like caring about someone I’d just met. I didn’t like…anything I felt when I thought about Grayson Sloane.

“Why me?” I couldn’t let him walk out like that. “Why this sudden pursuit of me?”

He turned back around and I could see he really didn’t want to walk out either. “It wasn’t sudden. At least, it wasn’t for me. I’ve wanted you since I went to your mom’s for dinner with Jamie and I saw a picture of you and I knew I’d finally found you.”

“Found me?”

He laughed a little and weariness overcame his handsome face. I had the most insane urge to force him to sit down, to massage the back of his neck and kiss his forehead until his troubles went away. “I was never going to tell you this. I was going to pretend we just met through Jamie. Well, it doesn’t matter. My father…one of his powers is prophecy. He can see certain futures and determine outcomes and often change it. I don’t do any of that, but every now and then I get a flash of the future. It’s a little movie in my head. I’ll touch something or I’ll walk into someplace and it triggers the power in me.”

The room seemed quiet and I was aware that we were alone. It was intimate and not at all scary. “Where did you see me?”

“I spent the night in a hotel in Dallas.” His voice was rich and I got the feeling he enjoyed the story he told. He might be thinking twice about telling it, but it was close to his heart. “I’m from Houston originally, but the job I was interviewing for was here in Dallas. My family had money and I inherited it when I was sixteen, so I kind of waste it as much as I can. I took the bridal suite because it was the only suite left. I always spring for the best. It’s a game in a way. Let’s see how much of my mother’s money I can waste. Anyway, I interviewed and it went great. I spent some time in the bar, but something compelled me to go back to my room alone. The minute I laid down on the bed, I saw you.”

“What was I doing?”

He smiled and it was sweet and carnal. “Me, honey. You were doing me. It was our wedding night and I was so happy. I remember feeling happier and more…complete than I’ve ever felt my whole life. I was with my wife. She was beautiful and difficult and mine. I thought about how hard you were on the outside and what a stunningly giving woman you were on the inside. I saw your entire fucked up, gorgeous soul, and it melded with mine. I tried that whole weekend to see it again, but it was gone after that first night. I didn’t see you again until two years later when I walked into your mother’s house. I told myself I had to wait until the time was right. I told myself not to fuck this up. Of course, I still managed it.”

I felt my whole face go red with emotion and I tried hard to force the tears that threatened back, but he said it with such great longing that I couldn’t argue with him. He believed in this and that made me want to believe, too. Who didn’t want to believe there was one person out there who could complete them? Who didn’t feel lonely enough to want that?

He stood there and looked down at me with such deep desire. It went past anything sexual and I wished I could have seen what he saw that day. His eyes were filled with regret. “Look, I know I screwed everything up so I can be honest with you. I love you. I know that sounds ridiculous and it’s too soon to say anything like that, but you’re the other half of me. You always have been. You always will be. If you need anything, I’ll get it for you. All you have to do is call me.”

He stared at me for another second. In that weird time, I felt like I saw myself through his eyes and it was a revelation. I was fucked up and yet I was still beautiful to him. For one stupid moment, I felt radiant and I couldn’t let it go. I jumped out of my chair and my hand was on his arm. He turned and the minute he saw my face I was in his arms. They caged me and I felt safe and small and feminine in a way I hadn’t up to that point.

I lifted my face and he kissed me.

It was gentle at first, a meshing of lips as he lowered his mouth almost reverently to mine. He had to bend over to press our lips together. The moment our mouths met, something seemed to open up inside me. He gently ate at my lips, his tongue barely a whisper, but I felt it there almost begging entry, and I softened against him. I’d had sex before. My experience wasn’t vast. It wasn’t nonexistent either. My sexual history up to Grayson Sloane consisted of seeking a way out. I indulged in sex for the same reason I drank that last tequila shot I didn’t need. I wanted to get out of myself for a while and not think about anything.

Gray’s kiss didn’t simply take me away. It was so much more than a meeting of lips that led to something else. I was more myself than I had ever been in my life. I didn’t want to be anywhere but right where I was—in his arms.

I let my hands trail up his body, feeling the strength of him. He was all muscle, from his lean waist to a chest that felt like a well-made statue against my hands. Pressing my body against his, I sighed and opened my mouth. His hands tangled in my hair and I had no idea how much time passed as his tongue danced with mine. When he groaned, I felt it deep in my own body, and everything that was female inside me answered him. He pulled me close, his hands dangerously near my ass, and I felt how much I affected him. His erection rocked firmly against me, not trying to hide what he wanted. His cock was hard against my stomach and I went up on my toes, trying to get it where it belonged. It belonged at the center of me. He belonged inside me.

The door to the private room opened and I was pulled roughly from my little slice of nirvana as the waitstaff entered carrying trays of food. Gray let me go, his hands shaking as he steadied me against his chest. He laughed, a nervous sound, and I couldn’t help but lean against him and laugh, too. The waitstaff was professional and pretended like they hadn’t interrupted a serious make-out session. I felt like I was sixteen and my mom had caught me with my boyfriend. It was silly and innocent and I felt younger than I had in years.