Chapter One Hunt #2
“You don’t have an accent,” she said, eyeing him dubiously.
“I haven’t lived there in a long, long time,” Stray admitted, and it was his turn to look at his glass and be miserable.
“You know... There are a bunch of people in this town who lived in Ireland or Scotland. Or England. I just had all-new cabinets hung in my house, and the handyman was from Newcastle, I think it was. He didn’t talk much at all.”
“Well, it’s common, not universal,” he muttered. Well, he could try again. “The night is young, Cara Cat. What would you like to do?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want to sit in this hole-in-the-wall roadhouse and eat burgers while Bruce-the-Oaf makes passes at women way out of his league, or do you want to do something else?”
“Well... Really, I... I’d like to go for a walk around town, but Pine Ridge always does trick-or-treating earlier in the day. There’s the Night Market, but I think on Halloween night, town is pretty dead.”
Technically, that makes two of us, Stray thought, but he just nodded. “And you don’t want to walk around an empty town with a strange man on Halloween night?”
Cara ate one of the stale pretzels from the little basket on the table. “It sounds like a dumb way to die,” she said with a bitter little laugh.
Ooh. That was like whiskey sours. Bitter and burning, and his nostrils flared at the scent of her sarcasm and wit, of the tastes they conjured up.
He wanted more. More of every flavor of her—except the sad ones. “What if you and I walked around the town tomorrow? In the bright, sunny November daylight?”
Cara’s eyes lit up in surprise. “Like... holding hands, wearing sweaters, drinking pumpkin spice lattes?”
“I don’t own a sweater,” he had to admit.
“That’s okay. You can borrow one from me.”
“I don’t think we’re the same size.” He looked her up and down, breathing in deeply when her happiness and surprise grew and mingled and swept him under like a warm wave at the seaside.
Cara giggled. “Oh, believe me, I have a collection. I’m thirty-six, like I said. I have too many exes to count at this point.
“None of them had the... Stamina?” he dropped the word like it was going to unlock something between her legs, eyes smoky and silver as he gazed at her.
“I would use the term staying power, but no. Stamina wasn’t much of a thing, either.” She blushed.
“Hm.” He could fix that. Maybe as soon as tomorrow.
“I like this side of town. I like the campus on the weekends. It’s empty. I’m a non-traditional student, so I’m here three days a week, after work. I’m studying accounting.”
He was clad in warmth and brown, and she wore plaid.
He had some pointless spiced coffee in his hand, but he had Cara on his arm.
Every sip of the stupid liquid he had to drink as part of the charade got sweeter the more Cara talked about returning to Pine Ridge after her divorce five years ago, and about her job as an insurance adjuster, and how she was finally going back to school to get a better career.
“You’re a fighter.” He liked that. He remembered once, a long time ago, he’d been a fighter, too. Back when things hadn’t only been about survival, and there had been people to fight for.
Cara made him remember so much—and so much was painful.
That’s why incubi like to forget, he realized.
Then Cara laughed when two squirrels ran across their path, doing some furry rodent parkour across the campus benches and rubbish bins, and her happiness flooded his mouth to the point that he had to drink the pumpkin spice coffee to disguise his drooling.
“You make me glad to remember things. About my youth. About the woman my mother was. She was a fighter, too,” he said, and the hurt and the happy made the empty, broken soul inside of him start to fill.
“Oh. She’s gone?”
“She is.”
“Would you like to tell me about her?”
“I... I would, actually. She was a grand lady—and she had beautiful blue-green eyes, the second most beautiful pair I’ve ever seen.”
Cara blushed again and leaned against his arm. “What was her name?”
“Helen. Helen Joan.”
“Pretty name.”
“She’d have liked you, Cara.”
“You’re laying it on thick, Strathvyn.” Cara used his real name, like he was human, like he belonged. Not a stray, roaming, lost, homeless, nameless.
“I might as well go after what I want,” he realized aloud. “I’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”
Cara was quiet for a second. “No one thinks a scattered, divorced woman in her mid-thirties, with grays that won’t stay covered and eye bags that foundation doesn’t touch, is a prize.
Definitely not an ‘everything.’ Especially not if she’s still chasing a career and a degree—and she can’t have kids. Might as well tell you that.”
“I can’t, either,” he said, smiling. “But people adopt. People have ways. I wasn’t looking for a family when I came to town.
I just wanted dinner and to stop by and see an old friend.
So glad he was out, and you were in.” He leaned over and stole a kiss from her cheek, raspberries and sugar staining his lips even from a single swipe. “Found something much better.”
“Um.” She was flustered, and cute when she was flustered. Innocent again, but still a woman with womanly ways, and he still needed to feed... But she was going to be a banquet worth waiting for.
And that’s why he was doing this, right?
Just to get a proper meal, a meal that would truly fill him and last for months, that would sustain him the way quick sex didn’t?
A thrashing fuck in some back alley was like a single shot of whiskey and a cigarette.
You can’t live on that, but incubi just need to survive, not truly live.
“There’s a hidden gem of a restaurant right across from campus. It’s warm enough that we can get a table on the patio, and it overlooks the river. It’s called the River House, appropriately enough.”
“Are you asking me out to lunch?” Stray enjoyed the thrill of surprise that shot through him. He’d thought he was long past being surprised.
Or happy.
Cara made him feel both, and he made her feel both.
And that was delicious.
“Yeah, I am. If you want?” she asked, the scared little girl hiding behind wise eyes peering out at him.
“I’d love to,” he said, and he was surprised (again) to find that he meant it.
She snuggled up against his chest suddenly, pointing out the building where she had her accounting classes, her hair pressed close to his nose, and the scent of her invading every pore.
He drank his coffee and found it tasted like Cara when she was this close, this happy. Stray drained every drop as he cheered in his head.
His plan, if he could call it that, was working. They had lunch. He suggested dinner. She suggested breakfast the next day at The Pine Loft Coffee Shop.
He kept saying yes, even as the hunger kept growing.
Unlike the last time he’d been in a city, ravaging his way through half-awake, half-willing women, the hunger didn’t hurt, and it didn’t make him reckless with desperation.
It’s like Christmas dinner, he realized, eyes alight as he watched Cara cut into her quiche and smile a secret, guilty smile as she treated herself to something luscious.
There was growing hunger, but it was fueled by anticipation. Not desperation.
He was going soft.
And that was bad.
But when he ate anything near Cara, and her scent was swarming over him, it was hard to remember that anything in the world could ever be wrong, because everything tasted so incredibly right.
“You said you were in town to see an old friend. How long were you staying?” Cara’s voice was suddenly cautious, and the bite of roast beef and gouda on a flaky croissant was suddenly off.
“I can stay as long as I want. My work schedule is flexible.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m... I’m a quality control inspector for breweries and bars in the area. But it’s a job that forces you to be away a lot, out at night.”
“Ah. I bet.”
He put the sandwich down and tried not to gag. The sadness stench emanating from her was thick in his throat, like suddenly walking into a room full of decaying fish.
“I’m thinking of leaving that job. Looking for another,” he choked out, pretending to cough on too big a bite.
The smell began to fade at once. “Really? You are?”
“Unless you fancy going to bars with me every night of the week,” he offered.
Her smile was pure sunlight, and the dark hollows in him couldn’t hide from the light. “Stop,” she said, blushing. “We just met. No guy gives up a job for a girl he met at a bar two days ago.”
“Three. And he might, if it was the right girl.”
“I take night classes three nights a week,” she reminded him.
“You won’t always,” Stray countered, then realized what it meant. He wanted to be with her, even after she had finished her degree. Years later, maybe.
Because Liam warned you that you might find something real to keep you fed—and then how can you walk away from that?
“I like the town. I have a friend here. It’s very healthy here, too.”
He meant the fact that the monsters in Pine Ridge had aligned themselves with love and goodness—and yes, that was boring as heck, but if this place was bad and evil, and monsters were pillaging and attacking, then Cara wouldn’t be safe.
And that made him feel very, very dangerous. “You wouldn’t mind if I lived nearby, would you?” he risked.
Cara’s twinkling eyes put pure delight in his veins. “It’s a free country,” she shrugged, but looked far too pleased when she said it.
“Bruce called. He wants to come over and pick up some things he left at my place.”
“Did he acknowledge what a colossal ass he is?” Stray held up a pumpkin at the Onyx Farm Market. This wasn’t for carving. It was for baking. Cara wanted to learn to bake.
He wanted to watch. And taste. And be in her space, in her home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her scent, and close to her bed.
“Um. No. He just said he left a pair of sneakers and his gym bag there one night.”
He’d no idea why that sent insides roiling.