He’d made me stand up straighter, instantly aware of the fact that I was wearing his roommate’s t-shirt, and he’d probably heard me fucking Tyler just a few hours earlier because we hadn’t been as quiet as we should have after splitting a bottle of wine over dinner.
None of that mattered because I didn’t need Josh for his looks; I needed him for his brain. Would paying him be enough incentive to get him to help? And how much would I have to tell him about what I needed? Could I simply ask him to find someone for me without going into too much detail?
I needed Google to answer all these questions.
My fingers strayed toward my phone, but I hesitated, not trusting myself not to pull up my DMs again and obsess over the video the Faceless Man had sent me. Instead, I set my coffee down and went in search of my laptop.
Chapter 6Josh
Aly was Googling what information a hacker needed to find someone for her.
This could be a problem.
I watched her through her laptop camera as she read the article, her dark eyes filled with focus, a small divot appearing between her brows as she started to frown. Her hair was in a messy bun, she had no makeup on, and her clothes were rumpled like she’d just rolled out of bed. Something inside me softened at the sight. I’d been so fixated on playing out a fantasy with her that I hadn’t stopped to consider what reality might look like.
I closed my eyes and pictured myself sitting across from her at the dining table, watching her sip coffee as she woke up, her hair wild and lips bruised from what I’d done to them the night before. I nearly groaned at the thought. It’d been so long since I’d shared a bed with someone for more than just a quick hookup. When was the last time I’d woken to a woman splayed across my chest as she slept, using me for body heat? The fact that I couldn’t remember probably wasn’t a good thing.
Tyler regularly called me a recluse, but up until now, I hadn’t given it a second thought. So what if I was one? My aversion to leaving the apartment building was warranted, considering my past and the fallout of being recognized. But picturing myself inside a simple slice-of-life scene with Aly had me questioning my choices. How much was I missing out on by locking myself away from the rest of the world? Was it still necessary to guard myself from people and vice versa? I was twenty-six years old, and so far, I’d gone all this time without hurting anyone.
Did that mean I might never hurt someone?
Dad had committed his first assault as a young teen. The podcasts that examined his case loved talking about how an early childhood filled with abuse and a couple of head wounds had started him down his dark path. He’d passed the pain on to me before Mom managed to get us away from him for good, but at least I’d been lucky enough to escape suffering a traumatic brain injury.
The MacDonald triad was an outdated but sometimes eerily accurate prediction of violent tendencies in a person. The first point of the triangle was fire-starting. Burning shit down had never appealed to me. The second was bed-wetting. I’d had an iron bladder even from an early age, and I’d never pissed the sheets. The third was the one I’d always worried about because I’d never wanted to test myself – animal cruelty – but since I hadn’t hurt Fred the other night or was even tempted to, I was starting to feel more confident than I had in a long time that I wasn’t going to snap one day and turn into my father.
Bro, you are literally stalking Aly right now, I reminded myself.
Yeah, there was that. Okay, so I might not be a danger to the public, but I had some traits most people – my therapist included, if I ever confessed what I was doing to her – would call problematic. At least I wasn’t watching Aly because I wanted to chain her up in my hypothetical basement or anything. I just needed to figure out whether or not she was into what I’d done, and then I’d stop.
I rolled my eyes. Unfortunately, I was too self-aware to believe my own bullshit.
I wasn’t going to fucking stop.
Aly sat forward in her seat and started typing.
Can someone watch me through my laptop camera?
Uh-oh.
Her eyes flashed wide as she read the results, then jerked to the top of the screen, looking straight at me.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I said, wishing she could hear me so I could watch the blood drain from her face in fear.
Yup. Definitely problematic. I’d circle back around to analyze that later.
“Shit,” Aly bit out, pushing away from the table.
She turned and strode out of view, and I watched her ass the entire time. The things I wanted to do to that ass. I’d always thought of myself as a tit man, but Aly was proving me wrong.
I heard her rustling around somewhere nearby before she marched back into the feed carrying duct tape and scissors. She was about to cover the camera.
Fuck.
Disappointment and frustration sank straight into my gut, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling my phone out and typing a one-word message to her.
Don’t.
Her phone pinged onscreen, and she paused in the middle of tearing off a piece of tape to look at it. Fear flashed across her face – sweet, delicious fear – before being quickly replaced by anger.
“Listen, motherfucker,” she said, setting her phone down and planting her hands on the table as she leaned in close. God, she was beautiful when she was mad, her dark eyes almost black as she narrowed them at me. “I am going to find you, and then we’ll see how much you like it when you come home to discover someone waiting for you in the dark.”
A thrill shot through me, zooming straight to my dick. Apparently, I’d like that a lot. I might not even try to block whatever two-bit hacker she might end up hiring if it meant the result was her waiting for me with a gun or a knife. I’d be her willing victim. Or maybe I’d test her to see how far she’d go.
I didn’t have a death wish. It’s not like I wanted her to shoot me or anything, but I was curious about how much darkness hid beneath her beautiful façade. If she wanted to rough me up a little, I might just let her.
Actually, no. Scratch that. Instead, I’d rather put up a good defense, push Aly to her limit, and see how much she’d learned in her self-defense classes. She looked like a woman who didn’t pull her punches, and with all the muscle on her frame and how well she must know her body after all her workouts, she could probably do some real damage, even to someone like me who outweighed her by at least seventy pounds.
I grinned. Unfortunately for Aly, I’d been studying various martial arts since I was eleven. Mom enrolled both herself and me in our first class after we’d left my dad, wanting us to be able to defend ourselves if he ever tried to hurt us again. Even now, I practiced once a week with Tyler, who’d taken them with me starting in high school.
I’d let Aly get a few punches in, make her feel like she had a chance before pinning her to the ground and finding some way to convince her she’d rather fuck than fight.
I sat back and watched her while she tore a piece of duct tape free. I didn’t miss the way her mind had gone straight to revenge. She could have threatened to report me, ordered me not to break in again, or told me she was calling the cops. But she didn’t do any of those things. Did that mean some part of her enjoyed this as much as I did? After all, a “normal” person would go to the police. They’d let the professionals try to find me instead of searching for me themselves.