Page 4 of The Stalker

Their city probably wasn’t actually a city: one red light, an intersection bisected by train tracks, and flanked on both sides by locally-owned businesses. A tattoo parlor, a tavern, several clothes boutiques. A vape shop, a bait shop, and an authentic butcher shop. A Mexican restaurant with a patio strung with lights where they had fajitas and Coronas every Friday. Anna liked to thumb through old vinyls in the secondhand store, and shop for antiques in the close-walled, pleasant-smelling shop next door to it.

Their attic overlooked a sleepy neighborhood full of single-story cottages that had once been built to house the mill workers – a mill long-since shut down. Lawns were weedy and cars were junky, and it was perfect.

When they first moved in, they earned some curious looks – well, Fulk did. Anna was sweet, and Southern, and adorable, and she fit right in. But Fulk, with his long black hair and his aristocratic features, and his British accent got a bit of curious attention. Eventually, though, the locals had decided he wasn’t all that exciting and they left him alone.

Around the city proper was a ring of chain businesses, fast food places and the Walgreens they’d gone to tonight, where the employees drove in from Carrollton or Douglasville, and didn’t know him. Like that poor cashier who’d thought he was a sex predator trying to abduct a college girl.

The real abduction had been a long time ago. And not entirely true, he didn’t guess.

The truth had been more sinister, actually.

But Anna had never been a victim.

She snuggled up beside him on the sofa and he turned his face to nose into her hair, scent her. She still smelled like sex and pine needles and a thunderstorm.

“Want to take a bath?” he asked. The clawfoot tub was just big enough for the two of them.

“Mm. Yeah. After this episode.” His girl loved herSeinfeldreruns.

Rain fell against the roof and the windowpanes, sealing them in together in their den of antiques and crumbling books and the nail polish bottles lined up in the dormer ledges. It was all so ordinary and human; the only monsters were them, just the way he liked it.

~*~

When they were pink, pruney, and clean, Fulk sat down cross-legged on the floor and Anna perched on the bed behind him, her slim legs bracketing his shoulders. She combed his wet hair, the gentle pull drugging him into a wakeful sort of sleep. She braided it, but not seriously, loose, undoing it as soon as she was finished and starting over.

Relaxed, he breathed deep and easy; slowly, her scent changed. From content and warm to something warmer, spicy. He smiled to himself when Anna brushed his hair back behind her shoulder and leaned forward to press a butterfly kiss against the bite mark she’d left earlier, the brief flash of tenderness a jolt that moved straight down his spine and settled in his hips.

Her lips skimmed inward, to the base of his throat, opened and tasted him there, her tongue wet and hot.

A growl built in his chest, a low, turned-on rumble.

“Fulk,” she whispered, helpless, needy.

He got up on his knees and turned around, stayed within the V of her open legs. She was wearing one of his shirts and nothing else, eyes glowing amber. He pushed the shirt up and buried his face between her thighs.

~*~

“Was it an okay birthday?” she asked, later, when they were stretched out on top of the covers. The thunder had moved on, but the rain lingered, a light patter overhead.

Fulk snuffled into her hair and held her closer, needing the skin-to-skin contact. “It was a wonderful birthday.”

“Not like summer in Paris,” she lamented.

“Better.” He’d never needed Paris, or any of the world’s cities they’d lived in. He only needed her.

She hummed, sleepy and content, and snugged her face into his shoulder; her lashes tickled.

They dozed for a while, sated for now.

And then his phone rang.

“Fuck,” he muttered, burrowing deeper into her hair, resenting the shit out of whoever was calling.

Annabel made a sound of agreement.

The call rang out to voicemail and then was silent. Thankfully.

And then it started ringing again.

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