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ADRIEL
She’s in the bath I made her, rose petals and some jasmine thrown in the water. I picked all that up last week, just in case there was a reason for her to use it.
And here she is, in my home, naked in my bathroom. And all I want is to be with her.
But I’m not. I’m here, looking through the surveillance cams, rewinding all the ones around the vicinity of my home. Someone in a dark hoodie left that note. Average height. Average build. Literally nothing to fucking go on! I slam a fist on the top of my desk and grind my molars until my jaw aches.
How the hell did he find me? How long has he been watching me? Watchingher?
Fuck! He could take her at any moment. How the hell do I keep her safe?
I press another key on the laptop and watch the video over and over until I memorize his movements. Everything he does.
He didn’t come with a car. I tracked him for miles until I lost him. Smart not to have used one. Makes it harder to locate him. If I wasn’t enraged, I’d be impressed.
The rushing of water from the bathroom informs me Kayla’s done. She’s going to ask me questions, and I’ll need to keep avoiding them. Because I can’t tell her. She’ll get scared. And I don’t want her to be. I want her to feel safe, especially knowing I’m always watching.
Reaching inside a drawer on my desk, I retrieve a small square box. I intended to give her this sometime in the future. As a token of…I don’t fucking know. But I had it made for her, and I need her to have it.
Quickly, I turn off all the computer screens and lock the door with a key. Wouldn’t want her wandering in here, seeing the videos I have of her. She doesn’t need to know I planted cameras in her trees, her home. That I’m always watching. Night and day. I know everything she does. Every moan she makes. When I’m not watching her sleep, sitting in her room, her quiet breaths lulling me into a calming state, I watch her from my phone.
Heading up a flight of stairs, I meet her in the den as soon as shecomes out of the bathroom. My shirt is draping her body, the hem flirting with her upper thighs. Smiling softly, she holds a hairbrush in her hand, and I have the urge to run it through her hair, to have her in my lap as I brush it.
“Feel better?” I ask, grinning behind my mask too. She does that to me.
But that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? She weakens me. Makes me careless. It’s the reason he found me. Foundher.
“I do. Are you done with the bodies?”
“Not yet. Come sit with me.” Lowering onto the sofa, I pat the space beside me, leaving the box behind my back.
She stares curiously, but doesn’t hesitate, coming to settle so close her knee touches mine. And I feel it: this current of immense power she wields through me. Like she holds the weight of my world in the palm of her hand and there’s nothing I can do to change it.
“Turn around.” I take the brush from her hand just as she pivots, giving me her back.
Dropping my face to the crook of her neck, I can smell the scent of jasmine on her skin. She awakens me just from being this close. She makes me want things that I can’t even put into words. Makes me feel things I can never feel with another. With her, I want to discover parts of myself I never realized existed. Is that even possible?
Gently I brush her hair, taking my time, savoring her long, shallow breaths as though she’s savoring this moment too.
I want to take care of her, in all ways. I just don’t know how to do it.
She reaches behind her, a hair tie in her grasp.
“Can you braid it?” Her voice is a soft cadence, stilling my heart until it beats to a song only she awakens.
“I don’t know how,” I whisper.
“I can teach you.”
“Okay.” I nod, the back of my hand brushing down her cheek from behind, causing the hairs on her arms to stand at attention.
To know I did that is a gift.
I know she feels this too. This unexplainable connection. This palpable magnetism between us.
She takes me through how to properly braid, laughing as I get it wrong the first few times.
“It’s perfect,” she breathes, running her fingertips over her hair, now settled over her shoulder.
