Chapter 19
VICTOR
I’m in my bedroom, frowning at one of the screens in front of me, when Ransom comes back from dropping the girl off at her place. He taps on the doorframe and sticks his head into the room.
“How’s the search going?” he asks. “Any luck?”
“I’m working on it,” I reply, not looking away from my screen. “I’ll let you know.”
“We sure are lucky we’ve got a nerd on our side,” he jokes, fondness in his tone.
I roll my eyes, feeling a smile tugging at my lips. I’ve never been too fazed by Ransom’s teasing. That’s just how he shows affection.
“Anyway, keep us posted,” he says.
“I will. I always do.”
With that, Ransom shuffles off, and I go back to scrubbing through security footage to try to track down the unknown man who was following Willow.
I work backward from the bus stop, trying to figure out where he came from before she saw him hiding in the shadows. If I can get a good enough image of his face, I can do a facial recognition search and figure out who the fuck he is.
Most likely, it has nothing to do with Nikolai, and he’s just some run-of-the-mill pervert who wanted to take advantage of a woman who was alone at night.
But we can’t take the chance. And either way, we have to know who he is.
It’s soothing work, combing through footage, looking at anyone who matches Willow’s—admittedly vague—description of the guy who chased her down the street.
There’s a flow to it, a procedure that I follow, and it’s easy to sink into that, letting one thing lead to another in the logical way that they should.
Once I manage to get a clear shot of the man’s face, I run the image through some programs I set up to scan databases for hits that might be a match.
My fingers move across the keys with a speed born from muscle memory, but for some reason, I can’t clear my head as completely as I usually do when I work.
I can’t seem to get Willow out of my mind.
It makes sense, since I’m doing this because of her, but I’m not thinking about her being followed.
I’m thinking about her in our home. Standing in the shadows of the hallway, watching Malice as he fucked that woman in the living room.
I’m thinking about the heat I could feel coming off her small, delicate body, and the way I could see her pulse point flickering with every beat of her heart.
It makes my cock harden in my pants just picturing it.
I’ve never slept with a woman before. Never wanted to.
I can deal with my body’s needs just fine on my own.
There’s something simple and uncomplicated about jerking off, following the motions and doing the things I know for sure work for me.
I can make myself orgasm easily enough, and there’s nothing random or illogical about my process.
I’ve never desired a woman before. Never craved one. Malice brings random women home often, and Ransom always has ladies staring at him with lustful expressions on their faces. But I’ve been content to stick to my routines, never feeling like I’m missing out on anything.
Until now.
Willow makes me want something that no one else ever has before.
Giving in to a sudden urge, I switch away from the images of the possible stalker on my main screen, cutting over to the camera feed from Willow’s apartment.
There’s a burning need under my skin to see her, and I let that impulse take over for a moment, flipping through the different feeds until I find her.
It’s dark in her apartment, and she’s in bed, asleep. I toggle the right camera to zoom in on her face, taking in the way her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks, the way her lips are slightly parted.
She looks soft and comfortable, her sleep unbothered by nightmares or unsettling dreams, despite the night she had.
I click to zoom in even more, but I’m already at the limits of the camera. Frustration rises inside me, because it’s not enough. I can see her just fine, but it’s not close enough. It’s not real enough.
I want to be there in person, to see her face and smell her light, floral scent. I want to hear the little sighs she makes as she breathes. All those little things that the camera can’t pick up.
For a moment, I sit still, my hands clenched into fists, trying to ride it out. But the compulsion has a hold of me, and now that I’ve fixated on wanting to see her, I can’t get it out of my head.
The camera in the living room needs to be adjusted, I think. Or I need to add another one.
When Willow started to pack up her apartment into boxes, I didn’t notice them at first because of the angle of the camera I placed in the living room. If I had seen them, maybe we would’ve realized earlier that there was something wrong, some upheaval in Willow’s life.
It’s a flimsy excuse, but it satisfies the logical part of my brain.
Decision made, I get up from the desk and go to my closet, grabbing a small bag of tools.
Then I pad downstairs to the garage and slide into my car, pulling out and navigating the streets with quick efficiency until I reach Willow’s apartment.
I haven’t been here since I installed the cameras that first night—not in person, anyway—but the routine is the same as it was then. Her lock clicks open under my tools, and the familiar sound soothes something in my brain.
I creep into her apartment, closing the door behind me, and scan the living room, searching for the perfect place to put another camera.
I finally settle on hiding one near the corner by the TV, which will give me a more complete view of the room.
With my task complete, I could leave… but instead, I follow the path I know by heart to her room.
She’s sleeping deeply, the bedroom quiet except for the soft sighs of her exhales. Clearly, she’s gotten hot in her long-sleeved shirt and pants because she’s kicked the covers off of her in her sleep. Her shirt is riding up, showing off a stretch of her skin.
I take in the sight of that stretch with an odd sort of hunger, devouring it with my eyes. She’s pale and pretty, and there’s a little freckle right where her waistband meets her stomach.
On one side, there’s a stretch of scar tissue, and I lean in closer to get a better look at the marks.
They’re deep and old, healed already, but the kind of scars that will never go away.
I study them for a bit, trying to create some sense of order out of them.
Trying to find a pattern in them that will explain their origin or why they’re there.
But there’s nothing.
No matter how many times I run my eyes over the marks, they stay the same. Purely chaotic. Just like this girl.
So why do I like them?
Why do I like her?
Chaos sets my teeth on edge. It makes me feel like there’s a swarm of angry wasps rattling around in my head. Usually, the only thing for that kind of feeling is to start counting or to find some routine that takes my mind off whatever kicked my world off its axis.
But right now, I just want more of that chaos, and it’s an odd feeling.
I jerk my eyes away from her body and step away from her bed altogether, looking around the room.
It’s a cluttered mess, with clothes on the floor and a bag overflowing with textbooks slung across a chair. I make a low noise of distaste at the mess, stepping over a pile as I examine her books.
She’s diligent with school, always there unless something else is going on in her life that makes her have to miss it. The clothes on the floor are all like the ones she wears to bed. Long sleeves and long pants or skirts. Meant to cover things up, probably.
I pick up a notebook and flip through it, noting her neat handwriting for her notes.
I scan the pages a bit, but it’s all stuff from her classes.
A few dates are written in the margins, and some of them are crossed out, but when I track down those dates, they’re just about projects or assignments for classes.
I tuck the notebook back into her bag where it belongs, ignoring the itch under my skin that makes me want to clean and organize her entire bedroom. She’d notice that when she wakes up and realize I’d been here.
Finally, I cross her room to the small, beat up dresser that’s pressed against one wall. It seems to barely hold all of her things, which is probably why she has clothes on the floor. It’s old and scuffed, and it looks like something that someone set on the curb to be taken out with the trash.
Honestly, that’s probably where she got it, considering her financial situation before we stepped in.
Of course, there’s no order here either. Her clothes are folded chaotically or not at all. If there’s a system, it’s impossible to find, and it makes more sense that there just isn’t one.
I close a drawer full of shirts and some pants and quietly tug open another one, finding it full of her underwear.
My head tells me to shut the drawer, turn away from the dresser, and get out of here.
But my hands itch to touch, to take, and after waging an internal battle with myself, I finally give in to that urge.
I rifle through her panties until I find a pair that’s dark purple, with a small bit of lace around the waist band.
They aren’t sexy like some of the panties Malice’s conquests have left around the warehouse, but I can picture her in them.
My fingers curl around the fabric, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m stuffing them into my pocket.
In my pants, my cock is fully hard again, just from being around this girl. Just from touching her things. Irritation curls inside me, and I huff a silent breath.
Usually, I can control my reactions to things. It’s rare for me to be affected by something in a way I can’t deal with.