I saw Sarah emerge from the hospital doors and I slipped my phone back in my pocket. Weeks of investigating had turned up nothing—well, not exactly nothing, but so little, it might as well have been nothing. I’d checked in with every contact that might have proved useful and done everything I could to flush out the son of a bitch. The only thing I had to go on was a single sighting months ago, suggesting he hadn’t left the area altogether.
That, and the intuitive certainty Cane was coming for Sarah.
I didn’t know when or where, hence why I’d spent the past several weeks in her near-constant company. I’d never spent so much time with one woman in my life. I should’ve been going stir crazy, clawing at the confines of my invisible cage.
But I wasn’t.
It had been nice spending time with Sarah. Sure, I felt like a complete asshole for leading her on like I’d been, but I didn’t have a fucking choice. Better that she be a little hurt by my leaving when the time came than to be dead, wasn’t it?
Still, with how elusive the guy had been, I was beginning to worry I’d be hearing wedding bells long before he surfaced. A shiver ran down my spine and I resisted the urge to shake it off visibly. But damn, wedding bells? Sure, if I had to imagine myself with a woman for the next fifty years, Sarah was probably the only one I could see myself tolerating. But marriage was for a different sort of person. Certainly not for the kind of guy who had no permanent address and no desire for one.
So why the hell was I even thinking about it? Because I was more aware than most that it could sometimes take months, if not longer, to track down a mark—that’s why. Sarah seemed to be taking things day by day with us, but what happened if a month went by…and then two…then six? How long before she wanted to define what was going on between us?
But there was no sense in worrying about it. I’d just have to double my efforts and find the bastard. I was a damn good hunter. Find him, kill him and get the hell out. It was that simple.
And with that resolved in my mind, I grinned as she slowed her steps a few feet from me. She was smiling back, but there was an uneasy look in her eyes, too. She was uncomfortable; on edge. I hadn’t even considered that angle, but what if I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t looking for a happily ever after?
She wasn’t big on relationships. It had surprised me to hear it, but she hadn’t been lying when she’d said her love life had been confined to a string of casual flings. What if she was looking for a way to end this? Wouldn’t that just be great? How to keep a woman from kicking me to the curb wasn’t exactly amid my areas of expertise since I never stuck around long enough to overstay my welcome. What the hell was the woman turning me into?
“Hey, Sarah. I just stopped by to ask a favor of you.”
Maybe we’d just been spending too much time together and she needed some space, so I thought I’d offer to give us a night off—which basically amounted to me staking out her house from a discreet distance while she did…well, whatever she did when she wasn’t banging me. The blood circulating through my veins threatened to drain into my cock at the thought of her pinned beneath me, but I forced the images from my mind. There’d be none of that happening, and it was a good thing, too; I was getting far too used to jumping at the opportunity to fuck the same woman night after night.
“What favor might that be?” she asked, some of the tension leaving her shoulders as she looked past me and around the parking lot. What the hell was going on in that incredible brain of hers?
“Um…” Right…think quick. “I got cajoled into dinner with Hope and John tomorrow night. I was hoping you’d agree to come with me.” While Sarah might have had enough of me, Hope was a different story.
“Yeah, alright. I’d love to see Hope again.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up around eight?”
She nodded, but didn’t turn to leave. We stood there in awkward silence for a moment, and though she still seemed off, I could see the heat flaring in her eyes. While her mind might have been ready to move on, her body certainly wasn’t, and if I lingered there any longer, I’d have been hard-pressed to get her home before I fucked her brains out. A night off—that’s what we both needed.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said quickly and then revved the bike’s engine.
An hour later, I was parked a few doors down from her house in an inconspicuous car she wouldn’t recognize. I’d brought along an enormous thermos of coffee to keep me alert through the night, but I had a feeling that sitting there wondering what the woman was up to would keep me plenty awake—and hard as hell.
But as I watched her move from room to room, I first thought she’d returned to the task of searching the house for clues to her past. It didn’t take long to realize that she wasn’t rummaging through boxes, though: she was doing a sweep of the house, checking for…something. She was also battening down the hatches—windows and doors locked, curtains pulled. She peeked outside often, looking up and down the street and then dropping the curtains back into place. What was she doing?
I watched as she opened the door and took a tentative step outside. She looked up and down the street like she’d done from the window and then scurried back inside. And that’s when it hit me—which it should have long before then. It’s why Sarah had been tense, looking around when she’d come out of work. She was looking for something—or rather, someone.
To my shame, I’d been so caught up in what had been going on between the two of us that I’d attributed her unease to that and hadn’t even recognized what it really was. It was clear, blatant proof I shouldn’t be the one doing this. I was just way too damn close to the situation.
But since there was no other option at the moment, I examined what I knew. Sarah was on edge; not scared, but it was enough. What exactly had happened to make her so anxious? Whatever it was had taken place at some point between the time I’d left her sleeping peacefully that morning and the time I’d seen her in the parking lot after work. So, it was reasonable to assume whatever it was had happened at the hospital.
I considered one possibility after another in a process of elimination. It wasn’t a nasty accident that had dug up memories of her childhood. She would be distraught, not uneasy—I’d seen that one firsthand. It wasn’t a fight with a colleague—she’d be pissed or agitated. She’d want to talk to me about it like she had earlier in the week when she’d had a disagreement with a coworker.
And that left me with two conclusions: first, I knew far too much about the woman, and second, whatever had made her uneasy was tied directly to the reason I was still lingering around.
How I was supposed to find out exactly what had happened though, I didn’t know. If I’d been able to be upfront with her from the start then I could simply confront her about it. But since she had absolutely no idea what I was up to, I was going to have to lead her into revealing the event herself. And since I’d foolishly opted to give the both of us a night off, it would have to wait ‘til tomorrow.
Fortunately, I had plenty of hours to figure out how to do that since I had even more of a reason to keep an alert eye on her house—all night.
By the time morning came, I was bleary eyed and sexually frustrated. Sometime after midnight, my thoughts had turned inside the house, wondering whether Sarah had gone to bed…and if she slipped beneath the covers naked…and if she’d been desperate for physical release and taken matters into her own hands.
Images of Sarah had plagued me for hours: her hands grazing over her own body, cupping her breasts and teasing her nipples; her skilled fingers slipping into her slick pussy, moving slowly at first, fighting the urge to rush headlong to the end, drawing it out until the need to come overwhelmed her resistance. Fuck. If she didn’t get her ass to work soon, my own self-control was going to crumble and she’d end up with more than her morning coffee to get her day started.