Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
My hand moved again. I couldn’t stop it. The rough drag of fabric against the length of me was its own kind of torture. I pressed harder, grinding my palm against the ridge of my cock through my pants, and the sound that escaped me this time was closer to a curse than a groan.
It was the knowledge that she was doing this for me, for the watcher she couldn’t find in the darkness but knew was there—that knowledge was what unraveled me.
Serafina was teasing me. Playing with me.
And I was allowing her, standing in the darkness like some pathetic voyeur while my wife—the woman who had tried to kill me—put on a dirty show.
This time, the anger that surged through me was welcomed. Familiar. It burned away the desire licking against my flesh, replacing it with something colder, more manageable.
I dropped my hand from my cock and straightened against the tree, forcing my breathing to slow. Inhale. Exhale.
My heart steadied, and I breathed in, more composed now.
Two can play this game, wife.
One of us would break.
And it wouldn’t be me.
Her hand paused against her skin, right between the juncture of her thighs. Serafina didn’t delve deeper, her touch lingering just… there.
She looked out the window one more time.
Our eyes met across the distance—or they would have, if she could have seen me.
She couldn’t. I knew she couldn’t. I was invisible. I was nothing but a shadow that she had chosen to perform for.
She lingered at the window for another moment, her fingers dancing along the inside of her thigh. Then, with a final glance toward the darkness where I stood hidden, she turned and walked away from the window, disappearing from view.
Just like that. One fluid movement, and she was walking out of the frame, leaving the window empty, holding nothing but the ghost of her shape and the memory of her skin.
I remained motionless, my body still aching with unfulfilled desire, my mind racing with questions I couldn’t possibly answer.
She had left everything to my imagination.
Unfortunately… not just mine.
I turned my head to the left, where I knew he was standing.
My wife’s stalker.
He hadn’t seen me yet. I was sure of it.
He stood thirty feet to my left, tucked into the recessed doorway of a shuttered laundromat, his attention fixed on the window I had been watching, the same one that had held my wife’s naked body minutes ago.
My blood boiled. The thought of him seeing what was meant for my eyes only infuriated me. But he wouldn’t survive the night long enough for it to matter.
I could think of it as his final feast… a last pitiful taste of pleasure before I delivered the final blow of death he deserved.
I took him in, my eyes tracing the length of his solid, tall body. His posture was wrong for a civilian. Too still, too balanced, his weight distributed evenly between both feet in the way of a man who expected to move quickly and swiftly.
His outfit was dark, every piece black and functional. Nothing that would draw attention.
He was taller than I’d initially assessed. Broad shoulders and long powerful legs. His face was angled away from me, but I could see the line of his jaw, the way he held his chin slightly elevated—arrogant and composed. Too confident.
He stepped out of the doorway and began walking.
He moved unhurriedly, cutting across the parking lot toward the narrow gap between the hotel and the adjacent parking structure, an alleyway that ran the length of the building before emptying onto the opposite side street.
I pushed off from the tree and followed.
The passageway opened before us, narrow and filthy. Dumpsters lined the left wall, their lids rusted and askew.
The man walked into the alley without hesitation, and I let him get twenty paces ahead before I closed the distance.
He turned at the sound of my footsteps. He wasn’t startled, but his tensed muscles told me he was alert. His body pivoted with the fluidity of someone who had been trained to respond to threats from behind, and I saw his hand move toward his waistband before he caught himself and let it drop.
My lips twitched with a begrudged smile. He was smart, I’d give him that.
He’d assessed the distance between us and decided he couldn’t reach whatever he was carrying before I closed it.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The question hung in the air between us, simple and direct. I didn’t raise my voice; I didn’t need to. The dark alley amplified every sound—the drip of water from a leaking pipe, the scuttle of something small moving through the garbage, and the measured cadence of my own breathing.
The man looked at me, reading me in the same familiar way I had done to him. Whatever he found didn’t frighten him. The corner of his mouth curled into a lazy smile.