Page 5 of Hunt Me

I love those animals and have no issue being compared to one, even if it was supposed to be an insult.

I flop backward in bed and close my eyes, touching my cheek gingerly. The way he touched me, soft, reverent.

I let out a shaky breath. I’m spiraling. All of this obsession is just from the trauma of earlier, from the stress I went through with my stalker.

The fact that I have a stalkeragain.

But now I have a protector.

And I have a starting point. At least I know he exists and it wasn’t all a figment of my imagination.

I zoom out and look at the cat café in the background. Maybe the workers inside saw someone walking by the store with a coffin, and they can help guide me in the right direction. I mean, a dude walking around with something like that on his shoulder has to draw attention.

Someone has to know something, right?

Yes, this is where I’ll start.

2

DENVER

I should not be here.This is a bad idea. This is, frankly, one of the worst ideas I’ve ever had. And that includes letting Rene talk me into a drag cruise two years ago full of hearing people.

In the Bahamas.

InJuly.

We ended up sweating our balls off, unable to communicate with most of the people on the ship—including the staff—and missed the warning when all the passengers were told over the intercom that we were sailing into the edge of a hurricane. The way that ship bobbed and rolled unexpectedly? I felt like I was literally going to die.

But I can’t blame Rene for my bad choices today, considering he has no idea I’m sitting in front of the cat café. It’s the last place I have evidence of my…well, for lack of a better word, hero.

Though I hate how that sounds in my head. My savior? No, that’s not any better. Let me try, “the terrifyingly hot man who wiped blood off my face and had me tenting my cashmere joggers.”

Ugh, I’m no good at this, even if all those descriptions are true. He saved me, he got blood on my face after knocking mystalker out, and I have never had a harder dick in my life than when his tender fingers wiped away the spatter.

But all of that sounds ridiculous. In fact, being here is ridiculous. I have no business trying to hunt him down, so why am I here?

Maybe I can tell myself it’s because I’ve heard good things about this café. From what Rome told me, they’re Deaf-friendly, and the café does rescues instead of buying from breeders, which I love. Their place isn’t full of those adorable chibi-faced kittens everyone loves.

They’re a no-kill shelter that takes in the ugly ones. The outcasts. The straggly street cats that would probably die without help. So these guys can’t be all bad, right? Even if they beat dangerous strangers half to death in dark alleys?

Also, they have coffee, and considering I didn’t sleep for shit last night—obsessing over my scar-faced man—I’m in desperate need of caffeine.

At the very least, it’s reason enough for me to get out of my car and make my way to the entrance of the store, though my stomach is twisting around itself the closer I get. God, what do I even say to him if I see him again?

Hi? Thanks for the rescue? Any tips on how to get blood out of fabric?

Or maybe,Hello, I keep thinking about you, and would you like to drop to your knees and suck my dick?

Does a guy like that even get on his knees for a guy like me?

God, I need sleep.

Pulling the door open, I step inside and take a deep breath of the coffee-scented air. I’m not wearing my CIs today because my sleep-deprivation headache was overwhelming, but there’s a slight vibration under my feet, which tells me music is playing.

At the front desk, there’s a broad-shouldered guy standing there who, if I squint, looks a bit like the stranger who savedme. He’s definitely older though. He has a few crow’s feet by the sides of his eyes and just a sprinkling of gray at his temples. He also looks far more tired than my stranger did.

Maybe because my stranger sleeps in a coffin. Maybe I should invest in one. The vampires could be onto something.