Lights out

She was looking straight ahead when I pulled the door open, so her eyes landed on my chest. I held myself perfectly still as they widened a little and slowly climbed up, glancing over the breadth of my shoulders, lingering on my jaw, before finally rising to meet mine. Her pupils dilated the barest fraction, and a hint of color stole into her cheeks.

Was Aly turned on right now? Did she find me attractive?

I felt both elated and slightly betrayed. Well, this was a weird feeling. I was jealous of myself. Why? It wasn’t like the masked version of me had any claim on her. She was a red-blooded woman with eyes in her head. She was allowed to be attracted to whomever she wanted. I should look at this as a good thing. When she eventually figured out who I was, it would be a bonus if she had the hots for me.

I smiled, reveling in the flush darkening her face. Oh, yeah, she was attracted to me.

“Aly, right?” I asked, extending my right hand toward her, which just so happened to be my injured one. I needed to work my way off her suspect list, and this was a great way to start.

She dropped her gaze to it and frowned, noting the gloves. “Yeah, thanks again for helping me.”

Her eyes narrowed as she slipped her hand into mine, and I braced myself before we shook. If I knew anything about her, and I knew a lot thanks to how much I’d watched her, she was about to take the bait.

Right on cue, her fingers tightened around mine on the first pump upward, and by the time we came back down again, she was squeezing me much harder than necessary.

My hand burned like a sonofabitch, pain racing up my arm. A whimper built in the back of my throat, but there was no way I was letting it out because she would either realize she’d hurt me or recognize the pitiful sound from earlier.

I gri

Her eyes flashed wide with the realization that if I wasn’t her masked stalker, she was choking off the blood flow of an i

I raised a brow, waiting for her to finish the sentence.

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Was Aly flustered? Oh, this was too good. My dark, devious heart sang at the sight of her searching for a way to excuse her behavior. I was going to torment the fuck out of this woman, and it was going to be so much fun.

“Just…sorry,” she finished lamely, looking away.

I briefly took pity on her and stepped aside, holding the door wide. “Come on in.”

“Thank you,” she said, skirting past me.

“Sorry if it’s chilly. The heat kicked off a while ago and won’t come back on. I called the building’s super, and he said he’s on it.”

Her gaze dropped to my gloves. “Oh, so that’s why you’re wearing those.”

“Yup. If you get cold, we have more pairs lying around.”

She smiled, still looking embarrassed about her imitation of a boa constrictor. “I’ll let you know. Thanks.”

I closed the door behind her and strode toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”

“Sure,” she said.

“Just half-and-half, right?”

She was quiet, likely wondering how I knew how she took her caffeinated beverage of choice. From watching her, duh, but I’d known it for even longer, and that little nugget of truth would probably throw her off just as much.

I turned and gri

For the first time in a long time, I was grateful for my looks because the girl of my dreams seemed rattled by them, caught off guard because she hadn’t gotten a good look at me the first time we met and didn’t know what to do about the fact that Tyler’s roommate looked like he could get cast in the next Superman movie.

“I remember how you liked it from when you stayed over,” I said, adding a wink to see if I could get her to blush again.

Sure enough, the pink fading from her cheeks came rushing back. “How I liked it?” she asked, having picked up on the i

“Yeah, your coffee,” I said, tone i

She sucked in a deep breath and turned away. “Yup!” she squeaked. “Half-and-half is fine, thank you. I’ll just go over here and sit down.”

Her ex-hookup’s roommate was flirting with her, and she did not know what to do about it. Inside, I was cackling. Maybe I could keep her so off balance that she forgot why she was here.

But I should have known better than that.

By the time the coffee finished brewing and I ambled over to her carrying our cups, she’d gotten control of herself, back to the no-nonsense, competent woman I watched almost every night. It must have only been her surprise that threw her off at first.

“Thank you again,” she said as I passed her coffee to her. “I know this is a strange request, asking you to hunt someone down for me, and I appreciate your help. Are you sure I can’t pay you?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “The challenge of it will be payment enough.”

It was my turn to get flustered as I stared into her wide brown eyes. Up close, there were lighter hints of amber and topaz hiding amongst the deeper tones. Her eyebrows were thick, a shade or two darker than her hair, arching in the middle like one of the beauties out of a Renaissance painting.

Whatever you do, do not look at her mouth, I told myself.

I used the excuse of sipping my coffee to tear my gaze away before I gave in to that temptation. Looking at Aly’s mouth was dangerous because it would remind me of what that mouth had so recently done to me, and my dick was already hard enough as it was.

I set my coffee on a coaster and opened my laptop. The screen came to life, displaying the emblem of the company I worked for. I’d scrubbed this machine down earlier, removing any trace of Aly from it just in case I had to get up and pee, and she got curious and started clicking around.

“Why do you need to find this person?” I asked. “Tyler was kind of vague.”

“That’s my fault. I didn’t want to go into details with him,” she said.

I glanced over to see her watching my screen intently. I waited a beat, but she didn’t elaborate. Really, Aly? You won’t even tell the guy helping you find what you’re after? Fine. If she refused to be upfront about it, I’d have to wheedle it out of her some other way.

“Okay then,” I said. “Do you at least have a starting point? A name or an address?”

She took a deep breath and pulled out her phone. “Please don’t judge me for what I am about to show you.”

I watched her unlock the screen, noting her passcode – because of course I did – and waited as she pulled up her social media app, found my profile, and then showed it to me.

I looked from it to her and back again. “You want me to find this guy for you?”

She nodded.

“You’re not some rabid fangirl trying to find out where he lives, right? Because stalking is a crime, Aly.” My tone was dead-ass serious, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep the rabid glee from my expression.

Her cheeks heated again, but it looked like it was from temper instead of lust. “I know it’s a crime. It’s someone else who has the boundary issues,” she muttered.

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh.

“Oh?” I said.

“It’s a long and insane-sounding story, and I don’t want to get into it with a near-stranger.”

Ouch.

She lifted her gaze to mine and had the good ma

“None taken,” I told her. “I’m just a little worried this ends with me getting charged as an unwitting accomplice in someone’s murder.”

She snorted. “It’s my murder you should be more concerned about.”

Was she serious? She still thought I might hurt her? Fuck, I hadn’t done enough to reassure her after all. Maybe I needed to change tonight’s plan around and give her the power again. She seemed to like having it last night.

“Are you joking?” I asked because that’s what a non-involved, concerned person would do. “You think this guy is going to kill you?”

She blew out a breath. “No. I mean, I hope not.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Fuck, I’m making this sound so much worse than it is.” She lifted back up and looked at me imploringly, and I decided I would give her anything she asked for at that moment. My help. My undying loyalty. The password to my investment account and all the money inside it.

“If I thought I was truly in danger, I would have gone to the cops,” she said. “This guy has just been messing with me a little, in a mostly harmless way, and I’d like to get back at him.”

I continued to play the role of a concerned bystander. “I don’t know. This seems like something the authorities should handle.”

She shook her head. “No. I want to do this my way. Will you help me or not?” She placed her hand over mine, my right one, I noted, and squeezed again. “I totally understand if you’re too freaked out, though.”

Ow, ow, ow.

I kept my face stoic as I answered her. “I’ll help. But please go to the police if things escalate or you feel unsafe.”

She gri

She seemed almost disappointed that I didn’t flinch as I nodded and turned back to my laptop. Did she want it to be me?

Did she think I’d make it so easy for her?

I made a show of pulling up my social media profile on a browser and locked it to the left side of my screen. Next, I opened a coding program, locked it to the right, copied and pasted my user name into a line of code, and hit enter. Numbers and letters started flying over the right side of the screen while the program got to work.

It looked impressive as hell, like something out of a spy movie, but in reality, it did fuck-all. I wasn’t really going to sit there and track myself down, nor had I replaced my fall guy with someone closer. If Aly was serious about looking for payback, that might mean breaking into someone’s house, and I would never send her to a stranger's address if that were the case.

I’d have to find some way to run down the clock, tell her that her hacker was very good – I mean, he was, not to blow my skirt up or anything – and he’d done too much work covering his tracks for me to find him without risking getting caught and hacked myself.