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1.
Tamsin
There’s a mist in the air tonight, a light rain cascading down from the sky and it shimmers in the light of the lampposts. Its cold out, the pedestrians keep their heads down and jog unless they’re of the lucky few who remembered to bring umbrellas.
I pass cozy jazz playing coffee shops, gaze with longing at the bridal boutique with magnificent dresses that I will never afford to buy. Not that I ever will marry either. At the age of twenty, I have never in my life been even remotely excited by a man. My friends tell me I need to snare one of the doctors at the hospital but the relationship I have with them is strictly professional. I work as a nurse, graduated from college recently and got a job soon after.
I’m on my way to the hospital now and I’m working the graveyard shift, my shoulders and knees aching from all the hustle. I’ve been working night for several weeks now and my colleagues were right when they warned me it was hellish. At least the weekend is coming soon, something to look forward to and maybe I’ll drive out of town and visit my family.
This town is new to me, bigger and darker than the one I grew up in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful in its own way but the shadows here seem more consuming somehow, hungrier...Shivering, I pull my thin jacket tighter around me and rub rain out of my eyelashes. I’m about to cross the street, about to turn when something or someone walks past me.
As he does my breath constricts in my throat and I pant, catching a hint of expensive minty cologne. He doesn’t notice, walking ahead with powerful strides and I’m not surprised he didn’t see me. He doesn’t to pay attention to anyone because people including me seem so small next to him. The man must be close to seven feet tall and his shoulders are the width of three normal sized men. His black, leather coat flares in the wind behind him, the color a stark contrast to the silver blond braid hanging down his back.
The man moves like he’s on a mission, almost floating ahead. His legs are so tall that it looks like he’s running while the rest of us are walking. He seems to be scenting for something, until I realize that he’s not scenting...he’s tracking.
Who is he tracking? This man and his behavior awakens my curiosity and I bite my lip. I need to cross the street and hurry to the hospital but I can’t seem to drag my attention away from the man. I feel something when I look at him, the muscles in my lower belly constrict and my heart is taking quick, short jabs at my chest. I’ve never experienced anything like it, not when any of the doctors tried to flirt with me or when men would buy me and my friends drinks at the bar.
This man whose name I don’t even know is making me feel like a woman for the first time in my life and my cheeks heat. Putting my hands into my pockets, I agonize. Forget about him, just go to the hospital. Inwardly I nod, but then my eyes go to the man again and something about him seems to say...
Follow.
Yes, sir.
Gulping, I begin walking behind him and people stay out of his way. Some of them jerk, others turn pale. I haven’t even seen his face but he must be terrifying. This is exactly why I shouldn’t be stalking him and I chew on my lower lip. I don’t even know what the meaning of this is. If he discovers that I’m following him, he might get pissed and I feel a flutter of anxiety.
He looks like a man who has a ton of enemies, I shouldn’t do anything that could piss him off. His hands are gigantic, big enough to crush a skull and I shudder again, then turn hot when I wonder what it would feel like to have hands like his stroke me, caress every inch of me. What would it feel like to bring out another side in a man like that?
My friends talk about those things all the time, how they made their boyfriends obsessed with them simply by smiling and showing cleavage but this man isn’t anything like any of their boyfriends. This man is a menace, someone who terrorizes the streets. He must be difficult to control, difficult to turn into a law abiding citizen. As a nurse, I should be appalled but the appeal of him is mind-altering. I’ve never seen anything like him, never felt anything like him.
When he stops, I gasp and his face turns slightly to the side and I catch a hint of his profile. It’s strong and manly, making my fingers curl and my body feels like it’s swelling, a rose catching much needed rays of sunlight. The man isn’t sunlight though, he’s not even the moon. He’s a starless sky. He’s black, he’s leather and...death.
More importantly, why did he stop?
He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t face me and I catch a slight shrugging in his shoulders before he keeps on walking. I relax in relief. It would have been so embarrassing if he had turned around and caught me staring at him. I’m following him like a black cat follows her master and usually I never do these things. I’m proper, super conscientious, started school earlier than most kids and never partied like an animal or dropped my undies for a bad boy. The man shouldn’t have this much of an effect on me but he does. Maybe all that testosterone he’s emitting is toying with my hormones.
And if he can do all that at a distance then what will he be able to do up close? Make me his lovesick slave? Inwardly I jerk myself. Why am I already fantasizing about the man wanting me? A girl like me is his opposite and he’d probably eat me alive the second he’d lay eyes on me. There’s still time to turn around and walk away, but my body has a hard time tearing itself away from the man and I feel like a crazy person. Is this what happens to young women when they come across men this powerful? Does it awaken some kind of deep need to be protected, to be soaked and drenched in his masculinity until it’s dripping down my thighs...
Flushing at the thought, I put a hand on my heart to control my breathing. This is so out of my character it’s unbelievable and I’m so happy he can’t know what I’m thinking. When he turns, I widen my eyes in surprise because it looks like he’s going to pay the barber a visit. But he walks out of the barber just as quickly as he walked in and he’s carrying a white, lengthy package in his hands.
Worry takes root in my gut before I brush it off. It’s just a package. Maybe it’s filled with hair wax or hair spray? I let out a burst of nervous, silent laughter and the man treks into an alley. That I don’t like. Girls don’t like alleys and I stare at the steam coming out of a manhole. I throw a look over my shoulder.
What are you doing, Tamsin? Stop following the stranger!
But I don’t like the idea of the man in that alley on his own. My concern is bizarre. He can take care of himself obviously. I’m the last person he needs. And yet I feel a deep urge to make sure he’s okay and I blame the nurse in me. I’m just going to take a quick peek and I walk into the alley. It’s not a dead-end but continues to the left. Stopping, I hide behind the brick wall and there he is. He’s leaning against the wall, his head tilted backward and his hands are clasped in front of him. His energy is even more potent without the disturbance from traffic and pedestrians.
I can see his face now and it’s an achingly beautiful face. A fallen angel. High cheekbones, straight nose and the sort of developed jaw that means he’s frequently clenching his teeth. His skin is pale, his eyes lowered but I can still catch the color. Steel, pure steel and suddenly the bra I’m wearing seems too tight and chafing. Suddenly there’s a need to take my clothes off and strip for him, walk up to him while he’s standing there among darkness and smoke and let him kiss my lips, yank me to his chest and...
My body tenses when another man transforms at the end of the alley and suddenly I don’t just like this anymore. Suddenly I’m scared. The other man has a mustache and cargo pants and my stranger straightens when he sees him. The fallen angel towers over the other one and he’s so majestic that my chest aches from looking at him.
Please don’t get hurt. I don’t know him but I already don’t want anything bad to happen to him.
The two men assess each other before the package is exchanged. I feel a dip in my stomach when the other man opens it up. It’s not hair wax or hair spray. It’s a dagger, coated in blood and I feel sick when I realize what it is. The dagger must be a murder weapon, the man I followed, the fallen angel is tampering with evidence and I take a deep breath, almost staggering against the wall.
I need to leave before this situation gets out of hand. I’m way in over my head but I freeze when the man with the mustache smiles evilly before snatching a gun from the back of his pocket, pointing at his opponent’s forehead.
Something hot and protective bursts in me and I panic, terrified for the man’s life. I run out with my arms in front of me, shouting,
“Please! Don’t.”
