Hunting Harbor (Stalkers in the Woods #2)

1. Prologue

Prologue

Kairo

The morning sun hits her just right, making her look like a fucking angel. Harbor sits alone at a corner table in the shitty cafe, so absorbed in her writing she has no idea I watch from the shadows. I sit in my truck with a surveillance file on my lap, flipping through page after page of proof that she's mine. Through the window, I track every movement, my breath catching when she pauses to tuck her hair behind her ear or stare into space with her head slightly cocked. She taps her pen against her chin, her brow furrowed as she thinks, a smudge of ink across her cheek. Her soft, serene beauty makes my pulse race, makes my chest ache. She doesn't know it yet, but I've already chosen her. I've already claimed her.

Noah says it’s just a joke, a relationship that I couldn’t possibly hold down. Not like him and Cassidy do, but he’s wrong. I have particular tastes in women, but those were playthings. Toys . Women I’d use to pass the time while I waited. And it’s her. He’s still hung up on the fact that the last girlfriend I had was a cheating whore and got ran through by the football team. Some of those guys still can’t play with the injuries I laid on them. I think one of them had to get his finger amputated.

It doesn’t matter though. She was a university fuck. Something fun and pretty to pass the time while I studied. In fact, she’d been the one to open the door to my demons, to start me down the path that led me to Harbor. I should thank her for allowing me to tie her up and have my way with her. It gave me the chance to release some energy while I kept my truths bottled up until the right one crossed my path.

I’ve been waiting for someone like Harbor for a long time. Someone introspective, someone beautiful and smart. That was always the issue in university. The women may graduate, some with honors, but they were all so fucking dull. I can’t do dull anymore. I need someone who will allow me to be who I truly am and blossom.

And she is the one to do that. The truth is written all over her, even if she can’t see it herself.

Her lips move silently, mouthing words that only I can understand. My fingertips run over the edges of her file, grazing the pages like I would her skin. Her name is scrawled across the front in bold letters. Her image is stamped into my brain like an old photograph, curling at the edges with obsession.

A man enters the café and glances in her direction, but her eyes stay locked on the page. A single-minded creature. Driven. A perfect fit for me. My fingers bite into my palms as I watch him, watching her. His beady little eyes linger too long on her and I have half the mind to go inside and slit his throat. I don’t like when other men look at her. If I let them stare, they’ll try to touch. If they touch, they’ll break her. Then I’ll have to break them.

I’ve watched her like this for weeks, always from a distance. I am the shadow she senses at the corner of her eye. I know the light in her apartment windows and how long it takes for her to answer the door. I know she sleeps with her mouth open, and her hand tucked under her cheek. She sleeps with no underwear on, just an oversized t-shirt. Hers. I checked. I know she hasn’t been writing like this, not with the desperation she’s shown in the last few days.

This frantic scribbling is new.

Maybe she senses me.

She stretches her arms, twists her back, runs her fingers through her hair. Her eyes sweep over the café, and my muscles tense as they pass the window where I’m parked. My fingers close around the file. I’ve never been a patient man, taking what I want and discarding them when I’m bored, but her… she deserves the patience of a man starved. The anticipation leaves me breathless. Hungry.

Some, like Noah, would chalk this up to another warm pussy to fuck, but it’s not like that. A man has needs and I took where I wanted and destroyed whoever had anything to say about it. A few angry boyfriends might be living at the bottom of the ocean, but it’s not my fault they couldn’t keep their girls satiated.

Then, by some fate of chance, the universe plops this beautiful little creature in my lap and everything changed. I became a reformed man. One with a single-minded focus to learn, to study, to obsess over the one woman who caught my attention longer than a few days. Harbor.

Even her name is perfect. So perfect, in fact, I haven’t fucked anyone else in months. She is everything.

I remember the way she cried last week when she opened the envelope with her name on it. How she sat for ten minutes, hands trembling, eyes wet. I stayed outside until the lights went out. I’ve kept myself on a short leash, reeled in, wound tight.

This is not the day she gets another envelope. This is the day I break the surface.

She returns to her notebook, pen moving with that same desperate rhythm. She is small and alone, swaddled in her oversized cardigan like it’ll protect her from me. She will be perfect at Pine Ridge. Kept away from the world like the little recluse she is.

The movement of her pen slows, then stops. She drops it onto the table and presses her fingertips to her forehead, wincing. Her eyes flutter shut, then open again. A woman possessed. Inspired. My doing, I’m sure.

She doesn’t write for anyone but herself, not unless she’s paid. I’ve seen the overdue notices, the drafts with angry red notes from her editor, saying this wasn’t the genre she said she wrote. The darkness in her new work is too brutal, too raw. Something has changed, something I did. Her struggle, her desperation, her fear. It has finally cracked open the brittle shell that blocked her words.

She needs me.

She rubs her temples, delicate circles. Takes a sip of her tea, forgotten and cold. Breathes in. Breathes out. Let’s her hands drop to the table and smiles softly. Her eyes lose focus, looking past the cafe walls and into her fantasy. If I wanted to, I could drop the leash now, lure her out, take her to the cabin, let her run, give her ten, fifteen minutes. Then I’d hunt her, chase her, track her down.

But I wait for her to pick up the pen.

She watches the world unfold in front of her. Imagines every heartbeat, every footstep, every exhale. Sees herself as the prey. My eyes close as I remember the lines from her latest work.

He chases me through the woods… this man in a mask. His footsteps are heavy as he closes in around me. I should be afraid, I should scream and fight, I should claw at his exposed skin until it’s raw and bleeding… but I don’t… my legs burn as I run and finally, finally, I give up.

My breath quickens with hers.

I’ve waited too long.

She is mine, and she doesn’t even know it.

Not yet.

She is as still and as perfect as a photograph. As soon as I step from the truck, the invisible thread between us pulls taut. She doesn't see me. Walking inside, the bell dings but she doesn’t even look up. I order my coffee and sit at a table in the corner. I am the shadow that flickers at the edges, the whisper beneath her thoughts. The seconds stretch thin, delicate and trembling. My heart thuds against my ribs. She's mine.

She sighs, a dreamy look in her eyes as her pen moves again with mechanical rhythm. Her eyes follow the strokes like she’s tracing someone else’s path through the woods. A thoughtless little rabbit.

I’ve run the calculations. A chance meeting where I open the door to her new life. Despite what she thinks about herself, about love, she has no idea the monster she’s unleashed with her words. I am the equation that balances her.

Her cardigan falls open, the neckline of her blouse pulled askew. She twists a finger through a loose strand of hair.

My muscles coil, and I hold them tense until it almost hurts. I want to taste her. To bury myself in her and make her mine in every sense of the word. To tattoo myself on her skin and force her to accept that her world will center around me.

The light shifts. She pauses, looks at the notebook, taps the pen against the table. Her gaze floats across the café and toward my table, but never quite reaches it as she giggles, a blush spreading across her skin as she furiously writes something down.

I breathe.

Watch.

Wait.

It is almost enough to know she can feel me, to see the tremor in her fingers as they return to the page.

No longer interested in my coffee, I walk to the garbage and toss it, heading back to my truck.

I know how long it takes for her to fold under pressure, how quickly her inspiration turns into doubt, turns into panic. She can’t wait as long as I can, and I can’t wait much longer.

The second envelope will be too much, too fast, but that’s the point. In this letter, I will spill my desire for her, I will tell her exactly what I’m going to do to her. She will think, like she did the first time, that I’m just a fan.

But I’m so much more.

I’m her muse, the one awakening desire across her flesh like my fingertips will soon.

So soon.

I reach across the file and start the engine. The vibrations make the pages hum. My muscles tighten, but it feels good.

She doesn’t know it yet.

The second envelope.

She’ll be mine.