“I… I see best in the dark. Dusk has this way of revealing monsters, and I like to study them.”
“Am I the monster in this scenario?”
“No.” My fingers shook as I slipped them beneath the hem of my sleeve, dancing across my skin for the rough wounds it concealed. Once I’d found them, I sunk my nails into patchy skin, scratching lightly. “No way. You’re a criminal but… you’re not a bad guy.”
“Is there a difference? A monster who kills monsters is still a fucking monster.”
“Kill the right monster, and you’re a fucking hero.”
“I’m nobody’s hero.”
You’re mine.
Eyes sealed shut, I focused on the familiar bite of pain that bloomed across my forearms. Dots of blood painted the tips of my fingers, and I tried to focus on how warm it felt rather than on the violent way my brain was knocking at the edges of my skull.
The truth was on the tip of my tongue now, tapping at the seam of my lips and begging to be set free.
I was… unsure.
All my research told me stalking was bad… even in the virtual sense. I didn’t want to scare Daddy away before he was even my Daddy but I wasn’t sure how to lie to him either.
“Silas?”
“You’re my favorite.” I said, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut. “I know a lot of stuff about Mr. Thomas and his men but only because it’s my job. I… I know more about you because you’re my favorite.”
There.
Not a lie…
Not the truth…
“I like to… watch you pretend. I like watching you lie to people. I like the way you convince people you’re one person when you’re actually the complete opposite. I like… uhm.” I cleared my throat. “I like watching you smile at the men you’re going to kill.”
Silence followed my confession, and it was so stifling and unnerving, I wanted to crawl back under my desk.
I’d said too much.
“You, sweetheart, are something else.”
My skin lit up when he touched me, first my shoulder and then slowly his fingers crawled up my neck. He wrapped them carefully around my nape, his thumb throbbing against my pulse point.
He squeezed.
“I…” My eyes opened. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You intrigue me.”
“I do?”
“How is it possible that one can be so shy yet so goddamn confident? Look at you, sweetheart, all curled up like a fucking kitten, big ass brown eyes and tiny little hands. Ben told me you hack the FBI for fun yet this conversation is making you sweat.”
“Computers are different. My last face-to-face conversation was over a week ago. I rarely leave my apartment and my only friends are artificial intelligence systems. Computers are the only thing I know how to talk about.”
My lack of human interaction didn’t seem like an enormous deal, but it was the one barrier I hadn’t overcome, and it was the one reason I hadn’t claimed Elijah the moment I saw him.
For months, I’d been researching—reading articles, watching videos. I had notepads of things I’d wanted to say, words I thought I should speak and questions I thought I was supposed to ask.
Problem was, it all felt wrong.