unrelenting bastard, and she'd get tired of him and his abuse and take herself away for good. Forever.
He wanted that.
"Troy." Putting her weight into it, she pulled on his arm again. "Let's get you back to your den of Zen. You'll feel better there."
"Den of Zen?"
"Sure, I expected more of a stinky, sticky bachelor pad, but now that I know you're a yoga-practicing vegetarian - "
"Vegetarian!" Shit, the syllables only made his head pound more. "I don't know who told you that but it isn't - "
"It is too true, and if you don't get your stubborn butt out of that chair, I'm going to announce to everyone in the bar that your famous Macho Marine chili recipe is vegetarian too."
He groaned. "You'll ruin my rep." This was blackmail.
"And laugh uproariously while I do it."
Desiree considerately turned off her car stereo as she drove him home. Nothing could turn off his alarm, however, at the reckless way she drove. Gritting his teeth, he braced his arm on the dash as she whipped into each turn. The first time it was a left one, and she pulled directly in front of an oncoming vehicle, sending his heart to somewhere near his nasal passages. When she almost overshot a stop sign and had to stand on the brakes, he lost his cool.
"Slow the hell down!" he shouted, the words pounding like another hammer in his skull. "You're going to kill yourself like this. Or someone's going to do it for you in an act of road rage."
"What do you care? Then I'd be out of your hair for good."
It was such a childish response that he wanted to strangle her. "In case you haven't noticed, Dez, I'm in the car at the moment too."
"Always looking out for number one."
Flippant brat. How she goaded him beyond belief. "Believe me, Desiree. A beautiful woman doesn't make a beautiful corpse. Severed arms and legs are pretty ugly no matter how fucking sexy they were when they were part of a package."
"Hey." She pulled into his driveway and turned to him with a bright smile. "So you think I'm fucking sexy?"
He wouldn't give her the satisfaction. Instead he opened the car door. "Thanks for the lift."
She was out faster than he was. "I promised Tanner I'd get you all tucked in and make sure you took your medication too."
Oh, crap. When he felt better he was going to take his little brother to the mat for this one. "He explained the lycanthropy, did he?"
"Yeah, Wolf Man, he did. And he told me sometimes you try to sweat it out through the full moon rather than taking your prescription like a good little puppy."
"It makes me woozy." Now he sounded like a child.
"That's while I'll be here to catch you."
"My folks..." He gestured to the house next door.
"Are at their desert place, Tanner said."
His head was hurting too bad to come up with another argument. She didn't rub it in, though, and he was grateful for her silence as they entered his house. He went immediately to the kitchen and located his bottle of pills, then shook out a couple.
Dez was ready with a glass of water, and he took it with a grunt of thanks. Then he set it on the counter. "I'm going to take a shower now and go to bed. You can assure Tanner you've done your duty."
He turned toward the hallway. "Show yourself out, all right?"
Lukewarm water sluiced away some of the tension. The medication was starting to do its thing too. As usual, it seemed to work on him from the outside in - fuzzing the edges of his brain first, then moving toward the middle.
He was working on a full fuzz when he walked out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, naked.
Desiree was sitting in the easy chair beside the bed. Her shoes were off and she had her bare feet stretched out in front of her. The headaches played havoc with his vision, but thanks to the pills, it cleared even as his thought processes got muddy. So what he thought he was seeing came to him in sharp detail.
Dez's bare toes dabbled in the pool of light from the bedside lamp. Each nail was painted a pale green, like a spring field, and tiny, multicolored flowers were scattered across them too. On each big toe was a perfect butterfly, the tips of their antennae glittering like jewels.
He knew it was a hallucination, of course. Not just because