Lights out

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The MacDonald triad was an outdated but sometimes eerily accurate prediction of violent tendencies in a person.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 gri

I’d let Aly get a few punches in, make her feel like she had a chance before pi

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.

Not only had Aly not done any of those things, but she hadn’t even told me to stop spying on her.

I palmed my erection through my shorts. She was into it. She might still be trying to convince herself she wasn’t or shouldn’t be, but she was. I just knew it. Somehow, I’d find a way to get her to accept it about herself.

She leaned in again and sent me a wink through the camera that had me gripping the base of my dick so hard it almost hurt. “See you soon,” she threatened before lifting the tape.

Sooner than you think, baby, I thought as the screen went dark. Last night, I’d formulated another plan for breaking into her house, but now I had a better idea, where she’d have just as much control as I would.

I slid my hand beneath my waistband and idly stroked my dick, tipping back in my chair. Aly might have temporarily blocked me from looking at her, but I still had a window open that mirrored her computer screen. Her next Google search was for how to turn off her camera entirely. I followed along as she went through the steps, letting out an exhale when she was finished. She’d killed the video feed but hadn’t disabled the microphone. I heard rustling through it, wondering what she was doing before the quiet sound of a phone ringing hit my ears.

Who was she calling?

An all too familiar voice picked up. “Aly?”

I yanked my hand away from my dick. She’d called Tyler? What the fuck?

And why did I suddenly want to drive to his office and punch him in the face?

Get ahold of yourself, I thought. He’s your best friend.

“Tyler, hi,” Aly said. “Sorry for calling you out of nowhere. I’m not about to beg you to reconsider breaking things off or anything, but I have sort of a weird favor, and if this is crossing a line, feel free to tell me to fuck off.”

“Okaaay?” Tyler said. I recognized that tone of voice. He didn’t believe her. He totally thought she was about to proposition him.

Aly took a deep breath. “I feel like I remember you saying your roommate was good with computers?”

Oh.

Fuck.

No.

She wasn’t about to…

She couldn’t really be…

Tyler blew out a laugh, sounding relieved. “He is. Why?”

“Could he find someone for me? Online? I have a bit of a situation here.”

Fuck!

I was a danger, after all. To Tyler. Because I was going to kill him for telling her that much about me.

The humor was gone from my roommate’s voice when he responded. “What kind of situation? Are you okay?”

“Uh…” Aly said, and I wished I could see her face. “I think so? Actually, I’d know for sure if your roommate could find this person.”

I jerked to my feet and threaded my hands behind my head. This was bad. This was sooo bad.

“Aly. Seriously,” Tyler said. “If someone threatened you or something, you should go to the cops, not my roommate.”

“I haven’t been threatened.” A long pause. “I don’t think.”

Goddamnit. If I knew Tyler, he was about to offer to handle things himself.

Right on cue, he said, “Just tell me what you need, and Josh and I will take care of it. Between the two of us, we’ll make whoever it is regret being born.”

“I can handle this,” Aly said, a hint of a

There went my dick, tenting up my shorts again the second she said my name.

“Save your money,” Tyler said. “I’m sure he’ll do it for free.”

I nearly flipped my fucking desk. Great. There was no getting out of helping Aly now. At least not without seeming like a monumental asshole and making Tyler question why I’d turn her down. It would look suspicious as fuck if I said no.

Aly let out a sigh. “Thank you. Just let me know a good time to come over.”

Come over? Come over here?

I whipped my head to the left, toward the distinctive couch along the far wall that I heavily featured in my videos, then to my bed and the stupid fucking custom headboard I just had to commission because I couldn’t go to Ikea like everyone else on the goddamn planet. No, I had to be special. Unique.

Aly was smart. She’d probably worked out that I lived nearby. The second she stepped inside my room, I’d be fucked.