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As I quietly stalk after the shadow, I roll my shoulders, relishing the weight of my gun tucked into my shoulder holster. I won’t draw it, not yet. This little slip of darkness may not be a threat, but my curiosity is piqued regardless.
Just as the figure finishes its way out the alleyway and into the light of a nearby streetlamp, I realize why.
A slight body, smaller than I’d realized, becomes illuminated, the soft lines of a feminine figure becoming clear as day. I stop short with surprise, my shoes crunching over the pavement, remaining hidden in the darkness of the alley. At the noise, the figure whips around to face me.
“Who’s there?” calls a sweet voice. Something deep and primal stirs in the back of my mind.
A woman?
I stay back, letting the night keep me hidden from her sight. She steps toward me, her shoulders raised.
And then the hood hiding her face in shadow falls back. Ethereal white, blonde hair shines as light hits the bun she’s pulled it into. Her youthful face is framed by wisps of it that have fallen free, her soft lips pressed into a line as she peers into the alley. Most arresting of all is how dark her eyes are against her pale skin. I’m just far enough away and the lighting’s too poor to be able to tell what color they really are, but the desire to know is more potent than I could have ever anticipated.
A dove. A little bird. A delicate creature I’ve never seen before. She’s stock still, like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Need begins to bubble in my veins as I watch her eyes dart around, looking for what made the noise behind her.
Does she know there’s a monster lurking in the shadows? Stalking her?
“H-hello?” she calls out again.
My body tenses as she bites her plush bottom lip in uncertainty.
It’s clear that this slip of a woman is no threat. She looks too sweet and otherworldly to be involved with the likes of me or my organization. Still … what is a girl like her doing in my territory? Why don’t I recognize her?
“Is anyone there?” the girl asks, before slipping a hand into her pocket and drawing a little pocketknife. She unfolds the blade and brandishes it as she squares her shoulders. The gun tucked against my side suddenly seems overkill. “I have a knife. I won’t hesitate to use it!”
Her form needs work, but seeing her so boldly—if not unknowingly—challenge me makes my body flush hot with desire. It shouldn’t be such a turn on for a woman to pull a knife on me like this, and yet here we are. I could disarm her in an instant, and it’s tempting, but I don’t want her to know what’s waiting for her in the darkness.
She’s like prey—it’d be a shame to scare her off.
When she receives no reply, she sighs softly and pulls the hood of her jacket back over her head. I watch as she pockets her knife and resumes her quick pace, darting down the street and keeping to the shadows, stopping only to look both ways before hurrying across the street.
Now that I know what she was hiding from view, I should just let her disappear into the night. I should go home like I’d planned and wait for news about the interrogations.
I should let her go.
And yet, that predatory instinct, the one that drove me to pursue her in the first place, drives me to keep following her.
So I do.
Like before, I keep to the shadows, relying heavily on the skills I honed over the years I’d served as the violent hand of my grandfather. It’s second nature to me, as is giving chase. Nothing beats the sight of her glancing over her shoulder, brow furrowed as she looks to see if she’s being followed.
The thrill of the hunt is almost as arousing as she is.
I want her—that’s the only thing clear to me about why I’m doing this. I’m powerless to fight the urge, not that I’d even try to. Wanting her is as natural as following her is. I’m a moth to her flame.
Who knew I’d find such a thing in this city? It’s nice to know that there are things here that can still surprise me, keep me entranced by their very presence. She’s like a rose creeping up from a crack in the gritty concrete—out of place but special, even more beautiful because of the unlikely location.
And she is a rose in every sense of the word.
Suddenly, the girl steps into the light shining from inside a convenience store. She pulls open the door and slips inside.
There’s a bus stop nearby, marked by a sign that says the route is serviced for another hour, so I make the decision to stop hiding. It’s easy to make myself look like anyone else by standing at the stop and checking my phone, even though the reality is that I’m watching the interior of the convenience store closely.
My rose talks to the cashier and he nods and hands her a piece of paper and a pen. She nods back at him before she ducks her head to look at the piece of paper. I can’t help noticing how wary she seems, those wide dark eyes glancing around as though she’s being hunted.
While that’s true because that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing, it feels deeper than that. It feels like she’s been running from something for much longer than just the past several minutes.
After reading and writing on the slip of paper, she hands it back to the cashier and heads further back into the store and disappears, probably into the bathroom. I wait until she’s out of sight before ducking into the store myself. The cashier glances at me with a bored look, as if he can’t be bothered to care who just walked into his store.
