One
DOMINIC
The door swings shut behind me with a sound that’s too soft for what’s about to happen.
My hand closes around the mask. It weighs nothing and everything.
I don’t look at the shelves as I move through the space. I’ve been here enough times that I've memorized the layout by now.
She comes at ten forty-five on the dot, as if she’s calibrated her entire week around this one ritual, just like I have.
I’ve watched her from the moment she pushes through the door until the moment she leaves—always with a stack of books tucked under her arm.
She doesn’t know I’m always here, watching her smile in person. Fuck… that smile. Those lips. Is it any wonder I worship the ground she walks on? I think the fuck not.
It doesn’t take me long to find the aisle I know she’ll hit first. It’s the one hidden in the corner like dark romance with covers featuring men with their shirts half-open and their hands around women’s throats is anything but fucking amazing. I, for one, love this era.
Thanks to Nicki’s recommendations, I’ve studied these books. The ones where the heroes are villains and the women love them for it.
Since that’s what my baby wants, it’s exactly what she gets.
Once I’m in position, I put the mask on.
I always feel different when I’m wearing it.
Even my breathing changes, echoing back against the inside of the plastic, warmer, closer.
The mask smells like me. Like my skin and my sweat and the particular scent of intention that has been building since the first Saturday I saw her and thought: Mine!
I cross my arms over my chest. The tattoos shift with the movement: dragons coiling, mermaids diving, tribal patterns tribaling. My heart is beating at exactly the rate I want it to beat. Steady. Patient. The kind of calm that lives on the other side of certainty.
Soon.