I sheepishly made my way toward the door. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you know when I have the results,” she said, waving me away.
I left the lab feeling oddly deflated and more than a little guilty. Yes, I wanted the results, but I didn’t like that I was taking time from Vern. I knew how sacred breaks were when you were overworked, and the forensic lab was as short-staffed as the nurses.
My phone pinged in my pocket as I made my way back downstairs. I knew without looking that it would be Josh, and I was hesitant to check the text in public in case he’d said something especially incendiary. The man had a way of needling me that led to expletives spewing from my mouth, and I didn’t want to offend anyone who might overhear me.
I whipped my phone out of my pocket the second I stepped inside the breakroom. Yup. It was Josh.
On a scale of 1-10, how mad are you about the tracker? he asked. One being you need a day or two to cool off, and ten being we need to start drafting a joint custody agreement for Fred.
And just like that, I was grinning. I had no idea how he kept doing this to me: pissing me off one second and making me want to burst out laughing the next. I’d never met anyone quite like him, and his personality was addicting because of it. It didn’t take much imagination to picture life with him, going home after a horrible shift and having him find some way to turn my tears into laughter.
I’m at a 3, I wrote back. As in, I think I need a few days to regroup and form my next plan of attack.
Lie. What I really needed was time to talk myself out of the feelings I was starting to develop for this man. A kinky hookup? Fine. That was allowed. We all had one-night stands with strangers. But to want more from the man who had a) broken into my house, b) broken into my car, and c) was actively stalking me had to be the height of stupidity.
Only I didn’t feel like an idiot. I felt…right. He’d had countless opportunities to harm me, and he hadn’t. All he’d done so far was make my life better. Food, shoveling, rides home when I was too tired to drive, security updates, the best orgasm of my life. Sure, he drove me up a wall half the time and couldn’t cook for shit – the bacon was still raw in the middle, and I stopped eating the eggs after picking the third piece of shell out of my mouth – but no man was perfect.
I feared that I was getting too attached too quickly. It had only been a few days since he’d broken in the first time, but I’d spent almost every free moment since either obsessing over him or in his presence. If my disappointment at getting home yesterday and not finding him there was anything to go by, this man had the potential to hurt my feelings. I blamed all the time I’d spent obsessing over his videos. It made it feel like he’d been a part of my life for much longer than he actually had, like we’d been in a strange, one-sided sexual relationship since before Halloween.
Now I understood the female leads from all the sports romances I’d read. No wonder they were saying “I love you” by the halfway mark – their feelings for their famous counterparts had started months, sometimes years before they had their meet-cutes.
I snorted, remembering my own not-so-meet-cute, unable to keep from imagining someone years from now asking how Josh and I met. Somehow, I didn’t think “He broke into my car at three o’clock in the morning and waited there for me with a gun and a knife” would be the answer they anticipated, even if I added the part about the seat heater and the snacks.
My phone pinged, and I looked down to see another text.
I’m sorry if I went too far, he said. Both with the “LOL” and earlier.
Great. Now he was worried he’d crossed a line and either offended me or pushed me into doing something sexually that I hadn’t been ready for. This was what I got for being evasive.
I took a deep breath and started typing, pulling on my metaphorical big girl panties. You don’t have to apologize, and you didn’t go too far. I’m just trying to protect myself.
I would never hurt you, Aly, he wrote back.
I sighed. Why did he have to be so sweet? My stupid, fragile, love-starved heart wasn’t great at self-preservation to begin with, and this man was shredding what few defenses I’d erected around it.
Maybe not intentionally, I said. But I’ve been watching you a lot longer than you’ve been watching me, and I’m worried – Fuck. How did I say this without giving too much away? – that this is only kink fulfillment to you.
It’s not, he said. Watch my video later. Take some time if you need it. But Aly?
Yeah?
I’m only willing to allow you a few days. After that, I’m coming for you, baby, whether you’re ready or not. And until then, I’ll be watching.
Well, that wasn’t ominous or anything. And definitely not the hottest thing I’d ever read in my life. My panties were soaked not because of how achingly turned on I was but because I’d developed sudden-onset incontinence, and that was the story I was sticking to.
Not knowing how to respond to Josh’s sendoff, I set my phone in my locker and backed away like I’d just stowed a bomb in there. Of course, that’s when Tanya walked in.
“You doing okay, Aly?” She stood halfway inside, arm outstretched as she held the door open, glancing warily between me and my locker. “You didn’t leave Indian food in there again, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “And that was one time!”
She stepped inside, letting the door close behind her. “Yeah, but that one time was enough to clear the whole floor. Four days, Aly. Four days of rotting curry in the middle of summer, the week the A/C was acting up. We sent Seth in here dressed in full PPE to dispose of it.” She shuddered. “He still has nightmares.”
I shook my head at her, oddly grateful for the familiar ribbing and the distraction it provided. “I’ll pay for his next therapy session.”
She strode toward the coffee maker. “Our therapy is free.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll buy him some wine,” I said, joining her.
Technically, our shift didn’t start for another half an hour, but Tanya and I always came in early to get the lay of the land. We chatted for a few minutes, catching up on life – mostly hers, as she actually had one with a husband and kids – before heading to the nurses’ station to get the gossip from the day and learn which patients we’d be inheriting.
Josh’s parting words kept repeating themselves in the back of my mind, and it wasn’t until someone poked me in the ribs and asked if I was listening that I realized I’d been zoning out. Yup, I had it bad. Hopefully, I’d figure out some way to guard my heart in the next few days.
Several hours later, my hope went up in flames as I watched his latest video. It was darker than his others, not just in lighting but tone, with lyricless, haunting music playing in the background. He was shirtless in it, and the video opened with him grabbing the phone like he’d just wrapped his hand around someone’s throat – my throat – before a pan transition revealed him rising over the screen, one hand braced somewhere overhead, his dark jeans unbuttoned as he reached into them like he was getting ready to pull out his dick – and fuck it straight into my tits again. The camera panned once more, showing him lying on his side, one hand propping his head up, the other disappearing off-screen, forearm flexing deliciously as he pumped his arm like he was fucking that vibrator into me again.