Page 6 of My Masked Stalker
As if waking from a trance, Emily drops her hand and takes a hurried step back. Then two. Then disappears out of line of sight. But she leaves the curtains open.
∞∞∞
I glance at my phone,monitoring Emily’s location. She’s at her friend, Barbara’s, drinking and gossiping. It's been weeks since I first made myself known, and she still hasn’t told her so-called best friend about me. Any sane woman would. File a report. Change her locks.
But not my Emily.
She keeps me to herself.
She’s intrigued. Tempted. Maybe scared—but not enough to run. That tells me all I need to know.
After all, I haven’t hurt her—I kept her from getting hurt by the scum she’d been dating. And I’ll keep protecting her, even from herself. That’s why I’m nearby, making sure she doesn’t walk home alone.
“Are you going to keep staring at that phone?” Damien rumbles, his voice carrying easily over the din of the bar.
My eyes flick up to the blond EMT’s. He patched me and Ethan up more times than I can count back in the sandbox. Andthough he’s not part of our merc work, there’s no hiding shit from him. He’s seen too much of me to ever pretend otherwise.
“Just making sure I don’t miss her leaving,” I mutter before taking a swig of my Guinness. The burn in my chest isn’t from the alcohol.
“There’s something I don’t get,” Ethan cuts in, voice dry as dust as he shreds the label from his craft beer. He’s got that smirk that makes me want to put a bullet between his eyes just for fun. “Two things, actually. One: how a man can be pussy whipped without even having the pussy. And two: how the great Killian Cross has gone a whole month without claiming that pussy.”
Ignoring him, I take another look at the glowing dot on my screen. Emily. Always Emily. I wonder if she’s thinking about me after I showed myself to her the other night—stepping into the moonlight on the rooftop. I gave her a few days to come to terms with the truth: her nightmare is real. A masked assassin stalks her every step. Watches her every breath.
Claims her without her even realizing it.
Mine.
“You’ve got it bad, brother,” Damien says, steady as ever.
My grip tightens on my bottle. He’s not wrong. But I’d burn this whole place to the ground before admitting it out loud.
Ethan doesn’t let it go. “Honestly, I’m starting to think you’re losing your edge. A few years ago, you’d have had her bent over the kitchen counter by day two.”
I growl loud enough to have their eyes widen in alarm. “Careful how you talk about her. She’s different.”
Damien snorts into his beer. “Different, my ass. You’re just obsessed.”
Ethan recovers from my outburst, his lips stretched into a shit-eating grin. “Obsessed? He’s practically writing her nameover and over again into that creepy little notebook he thinks I don’t know about. Emily. Emily, Emily, Emily.”
I give him a freezing glare, leaning back in the booth. “Say her name again, and I’ll feed you the notebook page by page.”
Ethan blinks his eyes innocently, as if I don’t know his hands are just as bloody as mine. “Why don’t you… I don’t know, ask her out like a normal human? Give her a chance to say yes or no.”
I wave away the waitress who’s checking in on us a bit too frequently. When I reply, my voice is deadpan. “I’m not normal. And she’s not walking away.”
Damien’s shaking his head. “Christ, you sound like every stalker warning poster I’ve ever seen.”
I grin around my Guinness. “And yet here we are, alive because I know what I’m fucking doing.”
Ethan leans back, a lazy grin cutting across his face. “Relax, Romeo. Nobody’s calling the cops on you. Yet. But seriously—if you’re this far gone, what’s stopping you from just taking what you want?”
I tilt my head, studying him, letting the silence stretch just long enough that Damien mutters a low curse under his breath.
“Because she deserves to know she’s mine before I touch her,” I say finally. “And when I do—she won’t want to leave.”
Damien levels me with that medic stare—the one that used to pin me down when I was half-dead and refusing morphine. “Just make sure you’re not the one she needs saving from.”
The words land heavier than I think he means them to. My jaw ticks, but I don’t rise to the bait. I know the line I walk better than anyone else at this table.
