Chapter 10 THEO
THEO
“Um, I’ll see you later?” Alex says, smiling up at me hopefully. She seems as excited as I am by that prospect, and I grin.
“Looking forward to it,” I say, forcing myself to turn away and walk out the door, nodding at Catherine briefly, ignoring her raised eyebrows.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket, slip in my headphones, and log into the camera software.
As well as the rootkit on her work computer, I placed a few cameras in her office while she was on lunch.
One shows the reception area, another is tucked in the corner bookshelf behind her desk, and another shows the kitchen area.
I’m absolutely going to save the video of her pulling up a blank email and typing a string of words to look busy while sneaking looks at me. I watched her do it while I was sitting there, and it was hard not to laugh.
She’s so fucking cute.
I watch her brief conversation with Catherine, which is slightly concerning. Catherine knows who I am and knows why I was in prison, but she didn’t say anything about it to Alex. I know Alex knows my name now, but I’ll do what I can to ensure her computer crashes if she searches for me.
I’m sure she’ll understand why I was in prison when I tell her.
“I’m not really dating right now, anyway,” Alex says to Catherine, sounding dejected. I smile and slip my phone into my back pocket as I approach my house.
That’ll change soon enough.
***
I drop the paperwork from Catherine at home and grab a backpack, shoving in a few more cameras and a swimsuit before I head to the rec center.
I sign up for a day pass and take the facilities tour, surreptitiously checking all the rooms for any surveillance system, grateful that there’s none.
The group fitness classes are held in a room off the main hall, and I head back to the room after the tour.
The next class isn’t for another hour, and the rec center is relatively empty anyway, so I can quickly place a camera without being seen.
I swim a few laps to kill time and make it look like I came to use the rec center, and then I leave and drive over to Alex’s place.
She’s not off work for a few more hours, so I have time.
I need to charge the cameras, but mostly I want to be close to her, to smell her perfume lingering on her clothes and her pillow, to lay in her small bed and look at the art on her walls, to flip through the books she’s reading and see if she’s underlined anything else.
I turn on her TV and scroll through her recently watched movies and shows, smiling.
Alex is such a romantic. She’s a big Nora Ephron fan and seems to like romantic comedies in general, as well as dating shows.
This is precisely the kind of thing I need to know about her.
I want to pursue her in a way that feels good to her and makes her feel adored and desired, and my next move is so simple now.
I’ll start running into her more, not so much that she’s suspicious but enough that I’m on her mind.
I don’t need more help from Catherine right now, so I’ll start running into her at the coffee shop, or join trivia, or take one of her exercise classes.
However I do it, I’ll become a fixture in her life and take every opportunity to make her feel wanted.
I’ll ask her out as soon as possible, I’ll let her get to know me better, let her see for herself how great we are together, and then she’ll feel our connection for herself.
I think I’m the only one who can feel it right now. I felt fire race through me the second our fingers touched, but she didn’t seem to register it.
I need to be okay with the fact that pursuing her like this might take a while. I can be patient, even if I hate it, but I don’t think this will take that long.
Based on how seeing her today went, I’m positive I could have just asked her out right then. I would have, but she pretended like she forgot my name, and I’m not going to reinforce bullshit games like that.
She’s so adorably awful at flirting that I’m surprised she even tried to pull that move, but she made up for it by obviously being interested in me.
My showing open interest in her seems to make her shy and a little uncomfortable, and while I don’t understand how someone that gorgeous isn’t used to that kind of attention, I like how easily flustered she is by it.
She blushes so much when she’s flustered, like when I caught the way she was staring at my mouth.
I check the time on my phone and sink back into her small couch, leisurely masturbating to the thought of bending her across her desk and making her scream my name.
***
I go home and make dinner before changing into black clothes and driving to her coworker Bailey’s house, parking down the block in a poorly lit spot.
I watch in my mirror as Bailey and her tall, thin husband drive off before I pull my hood over my face and walk towards their house, finding an inconspicuous place in the bushes along the side of the house to watch through the window at how Alex interacts with their son, Miles.
She’s sweet with him, animated and goofy in a way I didn’t know she could be as they play whatever games he wants. The windowpanes are old and thin, so I can hear them making silly sounds as they play, and I watch the two of them for hours.
At one point, when it’s late and they’re piled on the couch, Alex seems more relaxed than I’ve seen her before. She looks down at Miles with this wistful, content look, and I start to wonder if she wants a family.
I could give her that.
I begrudgingly walk back towards my car a few minutes before Bailey and her husband get home and watch in my mirrors as Alex starts to walk home.
Did they seriously not offer her a ride home? Fuck these people.
I stay in my car for a minute before following her on foot, keeping about two blocks behind her. I don’t want to scare her, but she doesn’t notice me. She doesn’t look around at all, she just walks quickly with her head down and her headphones on.
She’s so fucking vulnerable.
I walk a little faster, trying to make a lot of noise. I’m a block behind her now, and she still hasn’t heard me. Oh my god, I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin.
Why is she putting herself in so much danger?
After about ten minutes of this bullshit, she pulls her phone out, her voice drifting back to me.
“Hey, Bailey. Yeah, no, just walking up to my door now. Yeah, we had a great time! I’d be happy to watch him again. I’ll see you on Monday.”
What the fuck?
I follow her all the way home and she doesn’t notice me once, which is terrifying.
Alex lives alone, seems to have no close friends or family, and is either so naive or stubborn that she’s taking stupid risks with her safety.
Is she entirely ignorant of what could happen to her?
I had an insufferable serial rapist as a cellmate for a few years, and I’m aware of just how much danger Alex is unwittingly putting herself in.
Fuck, I need to make sure she stays safe. I think of one of the unopened packages in the attic, full of microchip GPS trackers, and I knew there was a reason I didn’t return them.
I’ll start tracking her soon, just for her safety.
Once she’s inside her apartment, I turn around and log into her camera feeds as I walk back to my car.
I love having this kind of access to her, but I need to remember that it’s only to help me get to know her better.
I just want to make sure she gets inside safely – I can’t watch her all the time or anything like that.
She lets herself in, takes off her headphones and coat, and drops her bag on one of her breakfast bar stools before heading straight to the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of wine as she starts playing French jazz from her phone, and I feel the frisson of connection again.
How many hundreds of times did Nana play that Django Reinhardt record when I was a kid?
Alex sips her wine and throws some olives, pickles, and crackers on a plate before sitting on her counter. I walk back to my car, watching her eat something that isn’t technically a meal and pour herself another drink. That’s a lot of wine in a short amount of time, but it’s Friday, I guess.
I’m down the street from my car when she gets up and starts pulling her shoes and socks off, and as she heads into her bedroom, I realize she’s about to get undressed.
I run the rest of the way to my car, torn between the overwhelming impulse to watch her and the knowledge that the first time I see her naked should be in person, when I’m the one undressing her.
The cameras are for getting to know her, her tastes, her likes and dislikes, her routines, not this.
I should stop watching.
I sit in my car as she starts to strip, trying to convince myself to close out of the camera feeds, but all thoughts of what I should do evaporate from my head as she pulls her dress off.
Alex wears looser clothes with chic, boxy silhouettes, things that don’t give a real indication of what her body looks like, which is fucking criminal.
She’s got a fit, athletic build, but with a softness to the curves of her body that makes me hard immediately.
I’m aching to get my hands on her. I want to wrap her long, sculpted legs around my hips and dig my fingers into her round ass while I watch her full, perky tits bounce in my face as I fuck her.
My erection is bordering on painful, so I jam the car seat back and undo my jeans quickly, grateful that it’s late and that I’m parked on a dark part of the street.
My fist is so tight around my cock it hurts, but all I can do is work myself furiously to the sight of her walking around her bedroom, slipping off her bralette and taking her hair down.
She slips her thong off and keeps her legs straight as she bends down to pick up her clothes off the floor, and on the tiny, dimly lit phone screen, I can see the shape of her cunt between her legs.