Rhys continues with his questions. “Do you hang underwear up to dry on the balcony? Have small personal items been disappearing from your handbag? Do you undress in front of open windows?”
I pick up my stalker’s letters and shuffle them into a neat pile. “No, and of course I don’t. Do you think I’m an exhibitionist?”
“I know it sounds like I’m accusing you of something, but I’m just trying to get a complete picture of the situation so I can help you.”
His cold blue eyes are a shade friendlier. He’s back to being Rhys, the boy I went to school with, not the icy and suspicious Detective Thorn.
“Thank you. I’m trying to cooperate. I’m so grateful that you’re here.”
He gives me a small smile. “You are cooperating. Let me see those notes again.”
He holds out his hand for them, and I’m struck again by just how big they are as I pass them over. Large palms and thick, muscular wrists. Mitchell has small hands and soft skin. I imagine what it would feel like to have Rhys’ hands on my body.
I look away quickly, wondering where that strange thought came from.
Rhys gets up and paces as he reads. “That’s strange.”
I go over to him and read the note he’s looking at upside down. My stalker is wondering how many inches I can take of his cock and telling me how he loves a shaved pussy.
“It’s oddly specific, the way he talks about you. Almost as if…”
He glances up, and our eyes lock.
I’m suddenly very aware of his broad chest rising and falling as he breathes. An electric jolt shudders my body into even keener awareness of him. My gaze lands on his hands and I imagine them squeezing me. Smacking me. Seeking all the sensitive spots.
“More?” he murmurs, and his deep voice is like black velvet sliding between my legs.
I’m not sure what he means. Maybe he wants to know if I want more of whatever he’s doing to me. Rhys isn’t handsome. He’s not even pleasant looking. Craggy and sullen is the best way to describe him, with unnerving blue eyes. I’m sure any suspect he gets into the interrogation room feels the full force of them. Right now, they’re directed at me and I fall right into them.
Rhys frowns, puzzled. Then the corner of his mouth tilts up and he brandishes the stack of notes. “Are there any more of these?”
I stare stupidly at the notes and then back at him. “Oh—no, there’s not.”
“What did you think I meant?” he asks, the smile still on his lips.
“Nothing. Never mind.” The stress, loneliness and fear of the past few weeks is making me melt over the first man who takes my fears seriously. God, I’m pathetic.
Rhys turns his attention back to the notes, frowns again, and then looks around the room. He goes over to a lamp by the sofa and peers into it. Then he reaches down into the lampshade and fiddles around for a moment.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he growls. Rhys comes back and shows me something sitting in the middle of his palm. A small, black, electronic looking thing with wires sticking out of it.
“What’s that?”
“A bug. Your stalker’s been listening to your conversations. And if he’s been listening, he’s probably been watching you, too.”
Chapter Four
Rhys
I scour every inch of the living room and Alaina’s bedroom. This piece of goddamn shit has put more surveillance into Alaina’s apartment than a Russian hotel room.
Ten minutes later, I come back to Alaina, showing her what I’ve found, and Alaina bursts into tears. She’s sobbing like her heart is broken, and I feel my heartstrings being tugged.
No. Yanked. Just like they always did when she cried.
I draw her to me. Her arms slip around my waist and she buries her tearstained face against my chest, her shoulders shaking. I’m nine years old again and holding little Alaina, sopping wet in her bathing suit, in my arms as she bawls her heart out.
The summer she was four, Alaina nearly drowned in a wading pool in her front yard. That memory still makes me break out in a cold sweat. I pulled her limp body out and thumped on her back to make her spit the water up. I didn’t know what I was doing or if she was already dead; my instincts just took over. Those were the longest, most terrifying minutes of my life. She coughed all the water up and sobbed against me, her mom out god knows where and her dad in prison or maybe high in the back yard. They never even noticed that their little girl nearly fucking died. An hour later Alaina’s mom stormed down the street to my house and cussed me out for putting my foot through the wading pool and breaking it.
Slowly, I draw my hand down her hair, over her back to her waist, marveling at her silky hair running through my fingers. She’s curvy now. She feels even lovelier as she clings to me.
Get out that fat dildo and think about me pounding you hard.
This sicko has seen her do that. He’s watched her. The image explodes in my mind, Alaina naked on her back with her knees spread wide while she hammers a dildo into her gleaming pussy.
I take a rough breath and hold her tighter. I never let myself lust too hard after Alaina when we were in school. I had already resigned myself to waiting until she was eighteen and I was happy to wait. More than happy. I knew I was going to be a cop and I would do things right. Then that shithead Mitchell Caine came along and stole her away from me. Even now I can’t tell her how I
