Page 14 of Killer Attraction

I still hadn’t brought up and asked him what he did for a living. Mostly because I didn’t want to talk about how he went after killers. Not that he’d ever be able to catch me.

But it made me wonder if he was suspicious of me at all. He was damn good at his job, so I assumed he must have caught at least a red flag or two. But he never mentioned anything. It almost made me even more uncomfortable than if he’d confronted me. I knew the longer this went on, the riskier it was.

I’d never let him go, though.

I let out a sigh as I snuck through a few backyards to get to the car I had stashed a block in the opposite direction of where I’d come from when I’d followed Clint back to his house.

Part of me knew it would be easier if I killed Aiden, but I had already established that I couldn’t do it. He was the only one who had ever escaped through my fingertips.

Not that he went very far, as I still had him in my grasp. Just in a different way than I intended.

It was why I found myself sliding into my car and following the man who dared to put his hands on what was mine.

CHAPTER NINE

AIDEN

Life was going good. Almost too good. The last month had been a whirlwind with Nate since we had started dating. We didn’t get to see each other as often as I would have liked, but that was as much my fault as his. When we did get together, we tried to make an effort to actually leave my house. Sometimes, we were successful, but more often than not, we barely left the bedroom and had food delivered.

Not that I was going to complain.

Well, I had some complaints about not getting to see my boyfriend as much as I would like, but we talked every day—a lot. Sometimes, I wondered how he got any work done. Then again, I also wondered how I got any work done.

I definitely had Victoria to thank for a lot of that.

She was also who I had to thank for helping me plan our anniversary dinner.

“What are you so worried about?” Victoria’s voice asked from the phone speaker on the other side of my bedroom.

As I perused the dress shirts in my closet, I thought about how to answer her question. She was one of my best friends and if there was anyone I could talk to about Nate, it was Victoria. Yet I hesitated.

“Sometimes, I wonder if he’s too perfect,” I admitted. “I wait for the other shoe to drop and the universe to laugh and tell me that, of course, I can’t be that happy.”

“Too perfect?” she scoffed. “Do you think you might be looking for problems so that you can push him away before he can do it?”

The barb stung, but it wasn’t unwarranted. I’d done that to plenty of guys in the past. But they’d all given me a reason to think they weren’t invested or were about to bail.

Nate hadn’t done anything to give me any reason to think he wanted to leave me. Just the opposite. He wasn’t always the most in touch with his emotions, but he didn’t hold back on what he was thinking—and he thought about me a lot.

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem real. And I don’t mean in the sense that it’s really happening to me.” I paused, trying to figure out how to say what I was feeling, to figure out if I even wanted to put those thoughts into words. “Nate is, well, he’s intense in everything he does. But sometimes, I feel like I’m getting a glimpse behind it all, and it seems…forced. Flat.”

If I ever stopped and was honest with myself about Nate, I would have been able to admit the man was throwing out red flags like penalty markers at a football game. Starting with how he’d choked me. It didn’t matter that I had ended up finding it hot and came harder than I ever had before.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something seemed off about Nate. There were some suspicions, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready to let them become fully formed thoughts, let alone voice them to someone else.

“You’re right,” I said with a sigh, wanting to wrap up the call. “I’m probably just looking for problems when they’re aren't any.” I blew out a breath and turned back to my clothes dilemma. I had ten minutes to pick out my clothes, get dressed, and get my ass out the door.

No pressure.

“Wow, are you actually admitting I’m right? Hold on, let me note the date and time.” She cackled on the other end of the phone, and with my clothes in hand, I strode across the room and hung up on her.

Served her right.

* * *

Half an hour later, I was sitting across the table from Nate with a smile on my face as he thanked me for being so thoughtful.

“It’s not a problem. I wanted to do something nice for you. We’re always holed up in my house, and this is special. So I wanted to do something special.”

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