Page 102 of Watching Her

“That’s right. My big, bad stalker. You almost remind me of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, except your attire is decidedly too expensive. Don’t try and deny it. I know someone has been in my house.”

Yes, I had, but I had no intention of admitting it.

“Touching my things,” she continued.

Only a few. I’d been respectful.

“Including in my lingerie drawer.”

Her words caused me to stiffen. While there was a chance she was doing nothing more than teasing me, which it seemed by the gleam in her eyes, I wasn’t that much of a creeper. Now I’d need to install another set of eyes inside her home. Perhaps the troll had taken a trip. I’d find out.

And if the asshole had, he would learn what the term suffering meant.

“There’s no need to stalk you any longer, now is there? You’re all mine.” I kissed her lips, my gesture softer than any I’d offered before, backing away and finding it difficult not to look at her, study her, watch her just one more time. The feeling was as strange as anything else I’d felt and a part of me didn’t like it.

Because it felt as if I was losing all sense of control.

My catch word, the one I’d held onto as a child during every lesson forced on me by my brutal father. During every punishment to make me a stronger man. During his angry tirades about how I’d disappointed him over whatever subject of the day.

During all those, including the physical pain he’d inflicted, I’d maintained full control of my emotions, something he’d never managed to take from me.

He’d tried. God knows my father, who also didn’t like to lose, had done everything in his power to witness his firstborn son losing his shit. Crying. Screaming. Begging. Pleading. Promising.

I’d done none of them, not once. Not under the worst of circumstances.

Even when he’d made me kill the first traitor at seventeen, a man I’d known my entire life.

Not even when he’d forced me to… end the life of a dog I’d adored, but who’d made the mistake of peeing on the carpet.

And most definitely not when he’d been the cause of my mother’s murder.

As I walked toward my car, a sickening epiphany hit me hard in the gut. On all three occasions in what little privacy I’d found, I’d cried for hours.

After that, I’d stopped feeling almost anything. Why? Because begging to a God that didn’t exist to change the fact I’d killed a friend had done nothing. In promising to be a good person if only my puppy would live again, I’d fallen ill from staying out in the cold. And when I’d promised to sell my soul to the devil if my mother would walk into my bedroom once again, I’d realized there was no one, including any deity who would help ease the pain.

So I simply stopped feeling anything at all.

Until now.

Penelope lingered in the doorway, her arms crossed and the same sly smile on her face.

The woman was far too astute, which was why I found it fascinating she was enjoying the time spent together.

As soon as I slipped onto the driver’s seat, I contacted Jessica.

“Yes, sir.”

“I need you to have the jet readied.”

“Where are you off to?”

Thomas Atwood, aka HotAlphaMan, lived too close for comfort, only four hours away by car in St. Louis. “St. Louis.”

At least I could check on one of my hotels while I was there.

Not that I needed an excuse.

“Yes, sir. When do you want to leave?”