The Unlikeable Demon Hunter: Crave

Chapter 1-2

Her PSA over, she reeled off her phone number.

The second I had it, I dropped my phone in my clutch and snapped the clasp shut. “Excellent. I’ll call you. As for you, Naomi, I’m going back to my boyfriend and forget you exist.”

Naomi actually snorted. “Who’d you steal this one from?”

I gave her an icy smile. “Keep running on that hamster wheel. Maybe if you go fast enough and achieve enough, no one will realize you have absolutely no personality. Just an addict, held together by insecurity and rage, desperate for a rush to make you feel alive.”

Christina gasped.

Aw, s**t. My eyes darted away from both their faces, my fingers fiddling with the diamante clasp. This was what happened when I let things fester. Spewage and emotional c*****e.

“f**k you. You have no idea how hard I work.” Naomi’s voice trembled.

Calvin Harris’ “This Is What You Came For” came on and I flinched at the memory that came with it. Christina, myself, and a few others had gone back to the apartment she shared with Naomi near campus to chill. That song had pulsed on low through the speakers and the air was fogged with the sweet smell of pot.

It was the time of night when people got cozy and shared past experiences. I’d been telling them about my Lincoln Center debut back in high school. The whole room had been silent except for me and that song, and yeah, the shine of admiration in their eyes had eased the constant sting of hurt a bit. Tap had been such a sad topic for me during that period, and it had been nice that night to remember the highs and not just the lows.

Naomi had burst in, eyes bright, loudly retelling some craaaazy adventure she’d just had. Like, the last one had been insane, but this one? She’d nudged me to the side so she could sit next to Christina, except there wasn’t enough room on the couch so she ended up half-squashing me instead. She’d sucked all the air out of the room, totally disrupting our mellow vibe and killing my tale. I’d never understood why everyone not only indulged her spotlight-hogging, but was so charmed by it.

Keeping my mouth shut since speaking out against her was pointless, I’d reached for the joint in the ashtray and lit it.

Naomi had waited for me to inhale. “Geez, Little Miss Gimme. Never enough with you.” This from the woman who had literally just interrupted herself mid-story about BASE jumping. Flinging herself off buildings, slacklining it across canyons, yes, it was cool, but she was such a hypocrite accusing me of being extreme.

Her crew called themselves the Full Tilt g**g for f**k’s sake. Half the stunts they pulled were done illegally, so her moral high ground was built on quicksand.

Christina had shot me a sympathetic smile but the others had snickered unkindly. Not ten minutes ago they’d thought I was the coolest person alive, and here Naomi had totally turned them against me. Naomi had smirked, taking her friend’s arm and monopolizing her in conversation, my existence forgotten.

The same way she now clutched Christina’s arm, not so much possessively as in defeat.

My gut twisted. I’d fired off a lot of smart remarks in the past, but my comment to Naomi now had been a b***h too far. I didn’t want to deliberately hurt others anymore. I was doing good in the world.

I wanted to be good in the world.

“Naomi, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bringing up the past. But you do deserve a night off,” I said. “The earth will continue to spin. The lawyers work you to the bone and in return you get no interesting tasks, no praise, and no life. Besides, you’re ridiculously smart. I’m sure you can knock out the items on your minion list in record time. Do this stuff, don’t do it, but enjoy yourself tonight. Normal is important.”

Naomi snatched the vial away from Christina, rolling her eyes. “I don’t need you to tell me how to have fun. I trademarked that shit.”

So much for my genuine, heartfelt attempt at being friendly, Bellatrix.

Christina squealed and clapped her hands while Naomi licked up the crystals. In her excitement, she failed to notice that when Naomi tossed the vial out, there was still some left at the bottom.

A cautious good time on the menu, then. Whatever worked for her. As for me, I waved bye to Christina, catching the door and shouldering past a group of chattering women spilling in.

Rohan waited for me at the end of the short hallway leading to the restrooms. His lopsided grin soothed my fraying edges.

“Hel-lo,” Christina said, having followed me. “I could ride that boy into next week.”

“Words spoken by many a woman with working eyeballs,” I said. “Yup, he’s all the catnip. But he’s also more than just a hot body.”

Christina gave me a searching glance. “You know this how?”

“That’s my boyfriend.”

Naomi’s mouth fell open as she stared at Rohan. “No way. He’s dating you?”

To be fair, his moss green shirt emphasized his broad shoulders and leanly muscled, V-bod. It was like his East Indian/Jewish genes had convened a summit at his conception to negotiate for maximum incredible. He was magnificent, but for me? His humor at 2AM blending me smoothies that he named after our demon kills–the Tezcatlipoca Mocha Blast was my fave–the effort he’d made getting to know Ari and Leo, and the steadfast belief in his convictions even as he helped me dig deeper into the Brotherhood, were even more attractive. I respected the hell out of him.

“Way, baby.” I said. “We don’t match, but we go.”

Rohan crooked a finger at me and all three of us sighed.

“I underestimated you,” Naomi said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “In more ways than one.” I hugged Christina goodbye with mutual promises to see each other soon and headed for my guy.

Rohan slung an arm around me, glanced back at the women, then kissed the side of my head. “You okay?”

I leaned into his steady comfort. “Perfect.”

The opening notes of George Michael’s “Freedom” kicked in and he tugged me onto the dance floor, squirming past the other dancers into the center. He caught me around the waist, singing into my ear about roads to Heaven and Hell as we grooved to the music, all rolling hips and sinuous arms.

I was lightness and air, anchored to this mortal plane by the rasp in Rohan’s voice and the gentle bite of his fingers through the thin fabric of my tank top. I caressed his cheek and he nuzzled into my hand. “Did you get yourself happy, Snowflake?” I asked, referring to the lyrics.

“I did. I am.” Still, when he sang along about freedom, the insistence in his voice was more than emotive karaoke.

“Is that what it felt like to leave the band? Like you got your freedom?”

He pulled me to him, making me ride his hard thigh in the dirtiest of dancing. Cuntessa de Spluge was in Heaven. “I thought all heavy conversations were banned tonight,” he said.

“Yes. Heavy conversations pertaining to current Brotherhood-witch s**t are banned during date night,” I confirmed, my hips in a slow, syncopated slide with his.

“But prying into my past?”

“A total go.” My breath quickened, a spark low in my gut bursting into flame.

“Nice try. Pool?” he asked as the song ended, taking away my happy motion ride.

“You callous bastard.”

He leaned in, his lips brushing my ears. “I want you desperate for me.”

“Your arrogance isn’t doing it for me.”

“Yeah, it is.” He waggled his eyebrows at me in exaggerated fashion.

I shot him the finger and sashayed off the dance floor.

We passed Naomi, currently the filling in a boy sandwich. She’d shed her jacket, leaving her in a lacy camisole. Good time evidently unlocked. Christina smiled at her from outside the plastered-together bodies, but her expression was a bit strained. I didn’t blame her. Naomi had gone from “no” to “wheeee!” in record time and she’d been known to ditch Christina when there were more interesting–or dangerous–things around to play with.

I raced off ahead to snag a pool table, practically flinging myself bodily over it until Rohan caught up. I handed him a pool cue. “Answer my prying now. Was it a relief ditching Fugue State Five? You ever wish you had that back or some new version of it?”

Are you going to run away soon?

His expression turned distant. “Sometimes… It felt like I was living with a noose around my neck. Writing music, even performing again, it wouldn’t be like that. I wouldn’t be like that.”

“What changed?”

He pulled some balls out of the corner pocket, rolling them over the green felt for me to rack up. “Time. Heals all wounds, right?”

Rohan had always had a dark side, which had gotten worse with the twin fallouts of fame and the demon murder of his cousin Asha. His personal demons had been front and center pretty recently on our mission in Prague and only intensified on his gig in Pakistan, so I doubted he was suddenly a paragon of mental wellbeing, but I nodded.

He bopped the tip of my nose. “Don’t worry, Sparky. I’m not going back down any dark roads.”

I wasn’t convinced of that either. Not given the single-minded focus Rohan had shown in unraveling the mystery of what certain Brotherhood members were up to these past few weeks. But that was part of tonight’s ban on serious Rasha topics, so I pushed those thoughts away.

Maybe I was overthinking things. Besides, I needed my full concentration to kick his a*s. Rohan was exceedingly competitive.

The hour grew later, the music faster, the crowd drunker. Despite being jostled yet again by a stray elbow, I sank three balls in rapid succession. I chalked my pool cue, eyeing the eight-ball. “Need a safe word, baby? Because when I sink this and obliterate you for a second game, it might be more pain than you can handle.”

Rohan slid his palm in a teasing glide along my belly. “Try me.”

“My favorite dare.” I positioned my stick slightly off-center, and with a satisfying c***k, sank the eight-ball. I handed Rohan my pool cue. “Does it chafe? Be honest.”

He snapped both our sticks back into the mounted wall rack. “It’s a little raw, not gonna lie.”

“Good. I want you to feel it in the morning. Remember who owns you.” I smacked his a*s, laughing at the mock-scandalized expression on Rohan’s face.

He caught my wrist, tugging me up against him and nipping my earlobe. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to minister to me and take away the sting like a good girlfriend?” His voice ran over me like rivulets of honey.

I mentally stomped on the memory of his ex, Lily, adjusting his scarf and quietly caring for him in a dozen small ways when we’d all been in Prague.

Without having to be asked.

In the Grease lens on the world, which was really the only useful metric, Lily was Sandy and I was Rizzo. Rohan claimed to want Rizzo, so he should have known that the idea of me on some Sandy scale of good was laughable. I gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes. “Got something in mind, O wounded man child?”

“Since you asked.” He motioned for me to fan him.

“Yeah, right.”

“So hot,” he whined, taking my hands and moving them ineffectually up and down. It was so humid in the club, my skin was sticky where he held my wrist. “I know these are the wilds of Canada, but don’t you people know about A/C?”

Laughing, I blew air on him. “Poor pampered L.A. baby.”

Motioning for him to follow, I unclasped the chain blocking access to a small stairway and led him up. At the top was a small balcony overlooking the back half of the dance floor and one of the bars. The door behind it had been jacked open to the summer night. A siren cut through the alley below, its flashing lights bouncing off the building walls.