Chapter 5
Irelynn
The scent of winter and flame, of spiced berries and sin accosts me the moment I enter my apartment. Which is ridiculous!
It”s my apartment.
I know the mystery wolfman hasn”t been here.
I know it.
I know it deep in my bones. It would be ludicrous to assume otherwise. And, still, the scent of him is so strong, I can taste it on my tongue. Just like I tasted it that night at the roulette table. I’d truly felt as though I were playing for my life.
I”ve been in the presence of many predators in my time. But I”ve never felt quite so off-kilter, so hunted, as I felt when he looked at me with those shockingly intense eyes.
I”ve always thought blue eyes were beautiful. But his—they”re the kind of blue I”ll never forget. Deep, and yet light in the center. Almost like shards of ice, shooting outwards from the despairing pit of an ebony pupil.
They deepen in color, darkening to a deep-sea blue that is fringed by a blue so dark, it almost looks black. They”re exquisite, and haunting, and entirely captivating.
Maybe that”s why I keep catching his scent. He affected me so deeply, so much more profoundly than somebody I shared at roulette table with, should.
The last time I thought of him should have been when I bid him goodnight.
But I”ve thought of him every day, multiple times a day.
And, shamefully, even sometimes in the middle of the night.
He creeps into my dreams, and I prefer not to dream at all.
Dreaming leads to disappointment, I should know.
Every day when I wake and I don”t see him, I feel disappointed. The crushing weight of it is like a blow to my chest that knocks the air from my lungs.
I don”t know why I”m waiting for him to appear in my life. Again, it”s ludicrous.
I don”t know what”s wrong with me.
Like now, for instance. I know for a fact, that aside from Lucy, no man has been in my apartment.
And yet, I smell him. That nameless, wolfman. I smell him as though he”s here, standing beside me, close enough to taste.
What is wrong with me?
I”m losing my mind.
It”s official.
I”m not sleeping. Not since I started feeling as though I”m being watched, stalked. I’m entertaining dark, shameful fantasies, I have no business entertaining. And yet…
I imagine that he’s there, in my window, watching me. Wanting me.
It’s silly and, quite frankly, impossible. I’m on the fourth floor. No one is peeping in my window.
Still, in my fantasies, in the dark depravity of them, he hungers for me.
I’m not sleeping. When I do sleep, I wake in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, my breaths quick—certain I can feel him. A dangerous presence that lingers in the shadows, untouchable by the light that reaches from my lone window.
The certainty that he’s there when I wake in the night—the fantasy that he hungers for me—a man capable of breaking me, shattering me to pieces—it’s crushingly unrealistic.
Even more bizarre, this depraved obsession I have with the wolfman didn’t begin over the weekend, when he was freshest in my mind. No, it began when I returned home from work Monday night, when my memory first concocted his scent in my space.
It’s becoming more and more outrageous as the days pass.
I keep circling back to that fantasy. That dangerous, ludicrous, ridiculous fantasy that a man as magnetic as him could be obsessing over me enough to stalk me.
Jeez, it”s not like I want a stalker. As fast as I’m driving toward complete insanity, I know in my heart of hearts that it’s wrong to entertain the dark thoughts I’ve been entertaining.
Maybe I’m sick. Maybe I’ve checked out one too many dark romance books from the library. Because I’ve concocted a dark tale of forbidden curiosity starring the man who gazed at me like a wolf would a rabbit.
And I had fled the man as though he were the big bad wolf in a fairy tale. Only, not a Disney fairy-tale. More like a Grimm Brother’s fairy tale. Where the princess is shredded by the wolf rather than, you know, taken and mated by him.
You know, the one that drips viciousness and lacks a happy ending.
Yeah, if there’s a fairy-tale for me—it’d be one out of that gorgeous, yet freaky leather-bound book of horrors.
I make a mental note to check out something with a happy pink cover the next time I visit the library. Something with bubbly blue font. Something stamped with happy red hearts.
Clearly, I have an overactive imagination. Mafia romances—addictive as they are—are doing nothing for my sanity.
Like, honestly—the mafia? If it does exist, it’s nothing like these authors romanticize it to be in their books. But there is something seductive about a dark man, incapable of love, falling in love with a woman he’d burn the world for.
My addiction, like all addictions, is not healthy.
I glare at the book on my nightstand from where I stand in the kitchen, still smelling winter and flame, spiced berries and sin. Him.
Yep, I’m returning the book unread.
This obsession isn’t healthy. I don’t even know his name, and he hadn’t asked for mine.
If I could just figure out what it is about him that I’m obsessing over, I could dissect it and reject it. Like a logical, healthy-minded woman would do.
Because, I mean, it”s not as though I”m the kind of woman a man such as him, so obviously powerful, dripping wealth, and exuding danger, would glance at twice. He wouldn”t. It”s just not in the cards for me, catching the eye of a man like him.
I’m plain Jane, simple, and pitifully poor. I have nothing in this whole world, but for Lucy. I didn’t even graduate high school. If I hadn’t lied on my resume, I wouldn’t have the job I have now. And, honestly, because of my lie; I have no doubt that my time at Low and Bard Construction is borrowed.
Leaning into the counter, I fold my arms over my chest and do my very best to figure out why I’ve turned suddenly insane over a man I’m confident I’ll never see again. I picture him there at that table, sitting too close to me, and feel the familiar spike of fear in the deep of my belly. His arresting blue eyes had tracked my every movement like I was the prey he intended to devour—and I had been afraid.
I’d fled him.
In fact, it took everything I had in me to save face and walk away from him when I’d wanted to run.
None of this makes sense.
Why am I smelling him in my home? Why is he invading my dreams in the dark of the night?
WHY?
Lucy demands my attention with a long, determined meow. Doing my best to banish the man from my mind, I bend to give my boy some attention. Lifting him into my arms, his body rumbles with a sweet purr—but I’m frozen.
Lucy—my cat—smells like the wolfman.
Burrowing my nose into my cat, I inhale the scent stronger than it’s ever been.
As I pull back in horror, I know I’ve lost every shred of sanity I’ve ever possessed.
Hot tears sting the back of my eyes. My hands shake as I place Lucy on the floor. My breaths come in hard. My teeth chatter.
I”m really losing it. I need help. Professional help.
Or maybe I should just ride out the fantasy.
I should just climb between my sheets, rest my head on my pillow, and play out the dark and twisted fantasy I have of being mauled by the wolfman.
Maybe then I”ll stop smelling him whenever I’m alone.
Maybe I”ll stop waking, certain that he”s close in the night.
Maybe I’ll stop drowning in blue every time I close my eyes.