A. Arthur - Hunger for You

“I’m not the bad guy here,” he whispered, looking down at me. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

I nodded and then swallowed, searching for my words—even if they were only primal ones—because standing here mute wasn’t my best look. I believed what he’d said. I don’t know why, but I did. I just didn’t know how to react to them.

“I’m okay, Hanna,” I lied, but used the opportunity to push Caleb off of me and turned to hurriedly unlock my car door. “I’ll be right behind you,” I told her.

“Good, because I’d hate to have such a good customer arrested for harassment!” Hanna yelled. “But I will so don’t you forget it, buddy!”

Caleb had backed away from the car by the time I pulled the door open and slipped inside. I refused to look out the window to see what he was doing now, just put the key in the ignition and prayed it would actually start this time. It did, after some spit and sputtering action that was beyond embarrassing. On my nod, Hanna pulled her car up slowly and I moved my vehicle out of the parking spot. We both left the parking lot without looking back. Or, okay, maybe Hanna didn’t look back, but I did.

Caleb was still standing there, his hands in his pockets once more, his intense gaze still on me and my car, even though I was coming up on the intersection almost half a block away. Of course it was dark and I couldn’t really tell that he was looking at me, but I knew it, I could feel it almost as if his presence was right in the passenger seat beside me. It was an eerie feeling, an unfamiliar one, a warm and slightly satisfying one that I considered myself all kinds of a romantic fool for entertaining. But as I turned the corner, officially ending the visual contact between us, I smiled. Just a small one but one that warmed me all over as I imagined Caleb’s intense gaze, his warm body, and those intriguing eyes. In one of my romance novels he would be a hero, the brooding, sulking, dark hero that scared the heroine at first then kissed her until she melted.

Or he was the serial killer that stalked the spineless heroine who was naïve enough to fall for his brooding good looks. A nervous chuckle erupted in my chest and I shook my head, continuing my drive home while politely informing my inner romantic that Caleb and his creepy threats were not a good thing. Definitely not a good thing at all.

If he touched her again I was not only going to break his arm, I was going to break both arms, then his legs, then I was just going to kill the SOB. That’s how I was feeling the moment I turned into the bar parking lot, three nights later. I’d purposely stayed away because her words, “he’s my boyfriend and you’re not” still rang in my ears. Even though that probably wasn’t an exact quote, it had the same punch-in-my-gut result.

She was right, I wasn’t her boyfriend, so I really didn’t have a right to act possessive and protective of her. Hell, I’d only learned her name because her available-anytime-you-want friend—whose name I also now knew was Hanna—had yelled it across the parking lot. So from a factual standpoint, I probably should have minded my own business, but from a Shadow Shifter standpoint, that was impossible.

When that asshole—who had been identified by Zoe as Dex—had grabbed her by the arm she’d been afraid. The tangy, citrus scent of fear had wafted fresh and potent all the way across the bar, dangling in front of me like the red cape in front of a bull. I’d been able to restrain my reaction at that particular moment, but that had only been temporary. I wanted to let her know she was safe and that I would protect her. The realization that she didn’t give a rat’s ass about my shifter instincts, possibly because she thought I was simply another human, was both startling and annoying as hell.

Putting the truck in park and yanking the key out of the ignition, I thought of all the reasons why I shouldn’t be here, why I should have simply gone back to my apartment and continued to stay far away from this bar and this female. I don’t do connections—that was the first reason as clearly stated by the pattern of my life. I had gone from an orphan to the adopted son of Gil and Marta Sanchez, traveling the world with them and their two sons and daughter, to finally wandering around the human world on my own. Alone, which is how I always figured I’d end up.

Second, she was a human and I was a Shadow Shifter. No bigger taboo existed, at least not in the shifter world—the world in which I lived with one foot in and the other out, thanks to my mixed heritage. My mother had been a Shadow Shifter, while my father—the rotten bastard that had abused and raped my mother—had been a human. That should probably have made me hate the entire species but my mother had told me stories of other humans that lived outside of our village in the Gungi rainforest. They had been generous and compassionate to her, helping to clean her up after my father had brutally attacked her, and bringing her back to the Gungi. There had even been an old shaman that had come to our home to warn my mother about returning to the human village in search of my father. Apparently the old man with all his medicinal remedies and spiritual contacts had foreseen my mother’s fate. She hadn’t listened, led by the love for a man who had no use for her, and died for her efforts.

Again, I should hate humans, but I don’t. In fact, the human named Zoe was even more intriguing to me. I couldn’t get her out of my mind, not the soft sway of her hair along her shoulders, or the vibrant color of her eyes, or the soft, yet firm tone of her voice. Each time I closed my eyes I could see her, when I tried to drift off into sleep I imagined her, and when I woke up with a hard-on each morning, I wanted her.

With much futility I slammed my palms against the steering wheel, staring at the front door of the bar. It was closed but the lighted sign in the window right beside it stated the bar was OPEN. In another fifteen minutes that sign would switch to CLOSED and a half hour to forty-five minutes afterward, Zoe would come out. I knew her schedule now, knew the days she worked her seven or eight hours and got off at ten and the days she stayed until close of business. Tonight she was closing so I was waiting. What I was going to say or do when she came out I had no idea.

The screech of tires on asphalt ripped me from my thoughts and I immediately shifted my attention to the front of the parking lot. A black Hummer came into the lot pumping the piercing lyrics of Maroon 5 into the air and at a speed that just about promised a collision with the front wall of the building. Before I could think better of it I was out of my truck, stopping at the bumper as the other truck also came to a halt. The passenger-side front and back doors opened quickly and out jumped two guys. They laughed, the first guy turning to bump his fist against the other guy’s before both of them headed toward the front door. The driver came out last, switching off the ignition but keeping the music playing loudly.

It was Dex, I knew it the moment he came around the front of the vehicle and leaned against it. I stood at the front of my vehicle, not leaning, but staring pointedly at him. When I was out here three nights ago with Zoe there had only been floodlights at the back of the building. Tonight, when I pulled up I noticed that new lights had been added to the front as well. They’d stayed lit for about ten minutes after I’d parked my truck, probably enough time for someone to park their vehicle, get out, and walk into the bar. It was a good safety measure, one that they’d probably needed to have installed a long time ago. I wondered if Zoe had gone into work the day after our encounter and complained that she didn’t feel safe.