Next-Door Obsession

1. Victor Porter

ONE

VICTOR PORTER

My eyes skimmed over the mess on top of my desk, and I sighed.

Old coffee mugs.

Empty energy drink cans.

The mess was nothing new.

When I started working on a project, I tended to lose myself in it, unable to focus on anything that wasn’t work.

My mom, well, my foster mom, who adopted me, used to say I was a bit of a compulsive workaholic.

My dad used to tell me I needed to get that kinda shit in check because one day, a woman would come into my life who would need attention from me, and I’d be in a bad way if I lost her because I was too busy staring at a screen.

I’d thought he was crazy.

I could still remember the way I would roll my eyes at him.

Scoff at the idea and tell him no woman could ever get me to put my work down.

I loved what I did. From the moment I was allowed to use a computer in elementary school, tech intrigued me.

Like your typical kid, I’d wanted to go into formatting to create shit like video games.

But as I grew older and honed on my skills, it turned out I was so much better than I could have ever imagined.

Hacking and finding information came second nature to me. I loved a challenge, and it became an addiction I couldn’t shake.

Now, I knew better. Because of her.

I regretted not being able to pick up the phone and call my dad and mom to tell them I’d found the one.

They might not have given life to me, they might not have had the same blood running through their veins as mine, but in the short amount of time they’d been in my life, they’d given me a place to belong.

They’d been my parents, my family, in every sense of the word.

And thanks to them, I also had four seriously stubborn pain-in-the-ass brothers.

The four of them alone could have kept me in business with the shit they needed from me.

I shook my head, and when the soft ding of a notification rang in my noise-cancelling headphones, I immediately closed my work down and opened up the window that had multiple screens open.

Live feeds of my sultry little neighbor came to life.

Lucy.

Breathing became just a little easier as I reached for the mouse, glancing at the second screen on the right-hand side of the screen in the middle. I waited for the chat box to open and waited.

Patience had never been my thing, but Lucy had changed all that. She’d changed a lot.

Two months ago, after a long, tedious job, I’d been online, looking for something to jerk off to. I know just how pathetic it sounds, but I had never been the kind of guy who was okay with one-night stands. Some of my brothers were. Hell, Trager lived off them.

But then again, the fucker was charming as hell.

I, on the other hand, was not.

I might have only been thirty-five, but I felt old as hell.

I wasn’t charming. I hardly smiled, according to my brothers and best friend.

I didn’t go out unless I had to, usually at the insistence of my brothers.

I had no idea how I’d come across the cam girl site, but I had.

And when I’d scrolled around, just about to close the window to head to my usual porn site, I’d seen her.

Ray of Sunshine. Her cam girl tagline still made me smile every time I looked at it. How couldn’t I when that’s exactly what she was?

My personal ray of sunshine in my dark, boring world. She’d lit it up and flooded my black soul with technicolor that could have rivaled any Lisa Frank painting. Hitting Subscribe had been the easiest yet most dangerous thing I’d ever done to date.

I was fucked after that. My life quickly spun out of control.

The tight control I had on my work life slipped through my fingers, and I found myself unable to help myself. My obsession started off easily. After one-on-ones and watching her lives, I searched for her online trying to find every little morsel I could.

Her social media accounts had been easy enough. I went through every picture, every story, savoring each detail I found like a man on death row devouring his last meal.

Then, because I couldn’t help myself, and with the skills I had at my literal fingertips, I dug deeper.

Dove into finding her real name. Where she lived.

Who she hung out with. All while I became her number one fan.

A fan who took up as much of her one-on-one time on the site as possible.

Sending her obscene amounts of money, tipping her more than anyone, just to be the one she thought of. To be the one she wanted to see.

That’s how I ended up moving two buildings away.

When I found out my girl not only lived in the same city as me but only a block away, I’d felt like destiny was laughing at me. Having an angel so damn near yet so far. I’d sat on it for an entire day before I cheated and hacked my way into getting the apartment next door to hers.

When I’d mentioned my move to my brothers, they’d looked at me like I had grown an extra head. But I didn’t try to bullshit any kind of explanations. There was nothing I could say or reason for moving a block away into a shittier building compared to where I’d been.

Not without confessing the truth. So, I hadn’t even tried.

Thankfully, they hadn’t pressed too much, and my brothers had my back when they’d helped me move. They didn’t know just how urgent the move had been. How badly I needed to be closer to her.

Physically, it was like I couldn’t keep myself from finding ways to walk by her building, staring up at the window that looked into her place and dream about sneaking in.

Seeing my baby girl asleep on the couch and lifting her up and taking her to bed. Tucking her in. Kissing her softly, touching her with a gentle caress until she woke up and…

No. The fantasy had been too real, too crystal clear in my head, so to stop myself from breaking and entering, I moved in next door. Afterall, it had been a necessity to my fucking sanity—or the small amount of it I still clutched to with a white-knuckled grip.

Destiny had a funny sense of humor when it came to my life.

To Lucy.

Turned out our worlds, our lives, were a whole lot smaller than I could have ever imagined.

We both liked most of the same places around town.

It felt like serendipity was laughing at us as I noticed what her schedule was compared to mine.

Lucy would be leaving as I was showing up to places around town we liked to visit, or vice versa.

The coffee shop.

The diner.

The bookstore.

Grocery store.

Even my brother’s fucking gym was a place she headed to on a regular basis.

Changing my schedule hadn’t been easy, but I’d done it.

If I could manage it, I’d make sure to go out at the same time, which three out of four times, I did.

Not that she ever noticed me. I made sure of that, too.

I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t just approached her from the very beginning.

Hadn’t I told my brother Lucas to say hi to the stripper he’d fallen in love with at the Velvet Leopard, the club my other brother Jonas owned?

But I guess you never really followed your own advice.

Lucy Rae had changed my life completely, and she was clueless to her effect on me.

Hell, I hadn’t even said two words to her.

Sure, I’d smiled at her when I’d seen her in the hall of our apartment.

A tight nod when we were out and about and I saw the hint of recognition in her eyes.

A small wave as we found ourselves at the mailboxes downstairs at the same time.

But that was it.

Not one damn word had been spoken between us.

Not vocally at least.

No. We’d shared full conversations. Easy ones.

Deep, soul-searing ones. Filthy ones that tapped into her innermost desires, proving time and time again that she was mine when we were both into the same things sexually.

But that all happened online while I paid for her time on her site with her staring right into the camera at me and me typing every word out for her.

She’d never seen me.

Not that she knew who I was.

I was convinced she would freak out to learn I was living right next door to her, our bedrooms sharing a thin wall through which I heard almost everything. If the wall wasn’t thin enough, then the multiple cameras with audio let me know what was going on.

I settled into my leather chair and watched the screen. She was in her office.

Lucy was in one of her workout outfits today.

She’d hit the gym while I had been stuck having to wrap up a project.

And damn, my girl looked good. But then again, she could be in a black trash bag, and she’d look phenomenal.

My already hard cock thickened behind my jeans, and I had to lift my hips and readjust myself before getting settled back into my chair.

My hands ached to take my cock out, to get ready for what would inevitably happen no matter how much self-restraint I thought I had, but I was a man thriving on punishment, it seemed.

Drawing out what I knew would eventually happen only kicked up the need inside my veins.

She chugged on the massive black stainless-steel cup she carried everywhere.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off her throat. Zooming in closer to get a better look, I let my mind wonder what she would do if I kissed the side of her neck.

If I licked the saltiness of her sweat off her skin before breathing her in.

Would her eyes light up with my hand wrapped around that delicate neck of hers?

Would she shudder with a full-body tremble?

Her thick, long strawberry-blonde hair hung almost to the side, wet with sweat at the hairline.

She stretched, and even then, the long black T-shirt with Ghostface printed on the front didn’t lift enough to give me a sliver of skin.

She’d paired it with a bright pink pair of flared yoga pants that looked like they’d been painted on her curvy frame, highlighting the thickness of her thighs.

Something that irked and soothed me at the same time.