Page 2 of Bad Blood Bear

Lissa shook her head, panicked. “We’re not together,” she said. Go away, go away, go away. Pretend this never happened.

The waitress cut her eyes from Lissa to the man. “Tank?” she said. “She with you?”

He shook his head mutely, still looking stunned.

The waitress pursed her lips. “Oookay,” she said. She gestured to Lissa. “Come this way.” She handed the man one of the menus and said, “You can have the corner table if you want. I’ll be right over.”

“Thanks,” the man rumbled, and headed off to his table, throwing Lissa one last perplexed glance.

Lissa followed the waitress to a booth and slid onto the vinyl seat. She was starting to feel nauseated again, but she wasn’t sure whether it was from the hunger, or what the demon made her do. It had sure as hell never made her grab a strange man in a public place before, and attack him with her lips. Heat shot through her.

Chill out, she told herself. That’s not the worst thing you’ve done. Maybe just the most humiliating.

She needed food. Cooked meat wasn’t what the demon wanted, but it was the only thing that quieted the cravings. If she didn’t feed it, God only knew what it would make her do next.

She looked at the menu. A small burger was just within her budget, if she didn’t get any extras and didn’t leave a tip.

The waitress stopped back after a minute and set down a glass of water with a straw. “I know it’s not my business, hon, but is everything okay with you and Tank?”

Tank. What kind of a name was that?

She glanced over at the big man, who was gazing at her, a tiny frown between his eyes. Just forget about me, she thought. Leave me alone.

“Everything’s fine,” she said.

The waitress shrugged. “If you say so. You ready to order?”

Lissa opened her mouth to ask for the small burger, and then the scent of cooking meat wafted over her again. Blood. Meat. Kill. Devour.

The demon took over her mouth, and she said through the red haze, “Two double burgers. No, three. Rare. Bloody.”

The waitress said, “Fries okay with that? Want a Co-cola, or sweet tea?”

“I don’t fucking care,” she ground out. “Just bring me the burgers.” The demon was screaming inside her, and she had to wrap her hands around her waist and bite her lip until the blood came, just so she wouldn’t run over to the kitchen and start stuffing burgers into her mouth. Or steaks. She could smell steaks, and she wanted them. Want, want, want.

An eternity went by. Then finally there was meat and warm bloody juice running down her throat, and everything was red and hazy and she wanted more and more and more until it was all gone, all gone except the hunger that never quite left her.

Lissa sat back, staring at her plate. She didn’t remember getting her food. She’d sat down at the table and looked at the menu, and then—nothing.

Now her plate held nothing but a wreck of fries and shredded buns, with some lettuce and tomato scattered through it. Her hands were greasy and bloody, as if she’d stuffed her naked burger into her mouth with both hands like a crazy person. There was still juice running down her chin.

Lissa tried surreptitiously to clean herself up, pulling napkin after napkin from the metal dispenser on the table. The pro wrestler wannabe—Tank—was staring at her again, that little frown still between his eyebrows.

Go back to your lunch, dude. Nothin’ to see here.

As if he could hear her, he returned to his own burger, but he still looked concerned.

That’s all she needed—a concerned citizen.

One that she’d—shit, she’d bitten him. How would she ever explain that?

She could deal with guys on the make. In her years on the street, before she’d joined the People of Ursus, she’d developed a well-honed sense about which guys were your normal everyday creeps and which were run-away-quick bad news. And which were safe to hook up with, the ones who would make an okay boyfriend, protecting her until they got a better offer or got too deep into drugs or major crime.

Then it was time to move on.

But this guy was not one she’d ever consider hooking up with. She could tell from his soft eyes that he was too nice—the kind of nice that let people get close and then got stomped on. The kind of nice that wanted to fix everything about you, because they thought if they smothered you with kindness you’d shape up and become a good girl. Someone who wanted babies and minivans and white picket fences and wore a bra every day.

Someone without the kind of baggage people like her carried around. Good luck with that.