Page 33 of My Masked Stalker
“You wanna change clothes?” Killian asks me quietly, and I flush anyway. It’s more than obvious his friends knew about the costume as long as I did, and them seeing me in it now, the day after, feels oddly intimate. So, I eagerly nod and slip off the barstool, ready to invade his drawers in search of a hoodie and sweatpants I’m going to have to roll up ten times. He really needs to bring me my clothes if he wants me to stay here.
19
KILLIAN
The second Emily disappears down the hall to change, I finally let out the growl I’ve been holding in.
“You couldn’t keep your mouths shut for one goddamn day?” I snap, slamming my fist on the counter hard enough to rattle the coffee mugs Damien set down.
Ethan grins around a strawberry he stole off the bowl on the counter. “Relax, Marine. You’re acting like we told her about the time you got drunk in Kabul and?—”
“Finish that sentence,” I warn, leveling my Ka-Bar on the table between us, “and you’ll be eating through a straw for the next six months.”
Damien exhales like a tired father with unruly kids, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You two never change. Jesus. Grow up.”
I glare at him too, because he’s not off the hook. “Don’t think I didn’t see your face when you saw her. Like I dragged a kitten into a pit of wolves. She’s tougher than she looks.”
Damien just looks back at me, calm as the goddamn desert. “She’s soft. That’s why you’re losing your mind.”
I grunt, sinking into my chair. He’s not wrong, and I hate that he’s not wrong.
Ethan chews loudly, eyes glinting with mischief. “She’s cute. Sweet. Probably way too good for you.”
I give him an incinerating glare, but he barrels on.
“I’m just saying, it’s funny watching you play house. You, the guy who once spent two weeks in a hole with a rifle, now eating breakfast with a kindergarten teacher.”
“Difference is,” I mutter darkly, “breakfast with her is worth more than every contract I’ve ever taken.”
That makes them both go quiet for a second. Damien studies me, his spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth, then finally shrugs. “At least you’re honest about it.”
Suddenly, the silence in the kitchen becomes oppressive. Then I hear the soft shuffle of bare feet. Emily steps back into the room, swimming in one of my hoodies, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, the hem brushing her thighs, a pair of my boxers barely peeking over. My dick stirs like it’s on a hair trigger, and I have to grit my teeth to stay focused.
“None of your sweatpants stayed on,” she says shyly when she notices me staring at her bare legs.
Ethan whistles low. “Cute.”
My knife is in my hand before I realize it. “Say it again.”
He grins wider. “Relax, Cross. I meant it in the most platonic way possible. She’s not my type.”
“Good,” I growl, shoving the blade back into its sheath. “She’s mine.”
Emily rolls her eyes, padding over to sit next to me. “Are you always like this?”
Damien answers for me. “Yes.”
I shoot him a glare, but Emily’s laughing, and it softens the edge of my temper. For a few minutes, we eat in relative peace. Ethan cracks jokes, Damien offers dry commentary, Emily listens and snorts into her coffee mug, and for the first time in years, my place doesn’t feel like a bunker. It feels like… home.
But in the back of my head, I know peace doesn’t last. Not with Black Ash in play.
∞∞∞
After the menleave and Emily forces me through an episode of Love Island—apparently a cross between a guilty pleasure and watching a train wreck—she convinces me to bring her some clean underwear and lounge clothes. I don’t know why, because the only thing I want now is to keep her naked for two weeks straight. But she promised to be waiting for me in the bath when I came back, so we can end the day like we did last night, and off I went, led by my dick—something that seems to happen often with my Little Red.
The key to her new door is in the mailbox, like she arranged with the landlord, and I enter without any problems. The place smells faintly of her—vanilla lotion and that sweet strawberry shampoo I bury my face in every chance I get—but it’s layered now with something else. Something wrong. The faint metallic tang of broken locks and strangers rifling through her life.
I glare around, as if the intruders are still there to be on the receiving end of it, then sweep the apartment like I’m clearing a room overseas, every muscle tight, every corner suspect. Empty. But that doesn’t ease the knot in my chest. I hate that someone—other than me, of course—violated the sanctity of her home.
