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  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.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  She huffed and tucked a lock of her chin-length blonde hair behind her ear. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have a funny way of asking for favors?”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re an annoying ass?”

  “Every day of my life. It’s one of my better qualities.” He grinned. “But about this thing… How does it work if people keep their wits about themselves? Say you got this retail assistant who wouldn’t ordinarily steal from the cash register. When they start pocketing Benjamins, if their minds are still there, if they know they’re not acting according to their own moral code and can’t stop, how does the guilt play in?”

  “Harriet told me it didn’t work like that.” Raegan crossed her arms. “I’m not really sure how it’s supposed to work, but it’s like…when Jezebel shows up, the people she influences take whatever course of action they have fantasized about but never acted upon. And it only counts for those things that are in proximity. If that cashier in your example were anywhere else, his actions would reflect his surroundings. Something the
y’ve contemplated doing but not really. Fantasized about doing but wouldn’t really. It’s like any given scenario, you take the person’s sense of right and wrong away and suddenly their bodies are doing it, and their mind remains their own. People can convince themselves of anything, so if they find themselves doing something, rather than think ‘oh, witchcraft!’, they will reason it’s a choice they made. Because they have thought about it.”

  Zeth fell silent, his inner skeptic starting to lose its voice. It wasn’t as though Father O’Brien was a standup member of society. Hell, most everyone regarded him as a pariah, save the couple dozen sheep who flocked to his Sunday sermons. In shithole towns like Highfield, Missouri, though, everyone played at an angle…and as long as Zeth could remember, O’Brien had been the stuff of smalltime folklore, a local legend in his own right. He’d become the face of the boogie man for the neighborhood children and the favorite scapegoat for whatever happened to go wrong. Granted, the good preacher didn’t do himself any favors. His long face was perpetually set in a scowl, his blue eyes always slanted, and the nostrils on his narrow nose flared whenever he was particularly displeased. He dressed modestly and parted his thinning silver hair the same way every day, which made him impossible to miss.

  O’Brien was best known for preaching hellfire and damnation, driving away parishioners he felt were unclean in God’s book, and his overall lack of public tact. Just recently, in fact, an opinion piece had appeared in the local paper regarding O’Brien’s Monday ritual, which was roughly composed of targeting unwed mothers at the mall or grocery stores and explaining in explicit, gruesome detail what the devil did to those who committed sexual sins. Penance came with joining him for Mass so he could pray away the demons afflicting the souls of the damned.

  That tactic hadn’t worked. Neither had his much-publicized family values campaign, though that wasn’t much of a surprise seeing as his family values came out of the eighteenth century. If O’Brien wanted to scare the devil out of citizens of Highfield, it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that he would first have to invite the devil in and make people believe they were just as rotten as he’d always said they were.