“As much as I wish I were in your apartment, spending my night in your bed with my face between those creamy legs, I’ve been right here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, my brows furrowed as I start to feel myself beginning to spiral. “It’s just this whole stalker thing. I could have sworn it was you. Something he said just reminded me of something you said at High Voltage Ink and I just . . . I guess I hoped it was you so I could quit freaking out about it.”

  “Shit, Mace. He’s been there again?” he says, stepping into me and pulling me into the safety of his warm arms. “You did all of this for him?”

  I nod against his chest before remembering his fresh ink and tilting my head again, not wanting to hurt him. “Yeah, I’m sorry,” I say. “I know considering everything that’s going on between us, that probably isn’t the easiest thing to hear, but he left this lingerie set out for me with a blindfold, and I didn’t want to risk him showing up in my apartment to find I hadn’t obeyed his instructions. I know that’s a bullshit, lame excuse, but until I know just how dangerous this guy is, I don’t want to do anything to set him off.”

  “I get it, babe. I fucking hate it, but I understand why you did it,” he says, his hand rubbing soothing circles on my back. “But I’m not going to lie, I’m jealous as fuck.”

  I laugh and can’t resist burying my face into his chest, his ink be damned. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into the darkened hallway. “You know I wish it were only you.”

  “You know what?” he says, a teasing tone in his voice that has me pulling back and lifting my gaze to him. “If you want to make it up to me, you could always keep this little number for me.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “This dude has got excellent taste.”

  “That he does,” Alex agrees, his cock stiffening against my waist as his fingers brush over my skin. “Though, I can’t lie. I’m curious to know exactly what he did to you.”

  My tongue rolls over my deep-red lips. “Instead of telling you,” I whisper, my fingers dragging down his body and clutching onto the waistband of his basketball shorts. “Why don’t I just show you?”

  His gaze darkens, and not a second later, his lips are crushing down on mine as he drags me into his apartment, kicking the door closed behind us.

  34

  KYAH

  My gaze lingers on the subtle bruises that are just starting to appear on my hips after my insane night with my stalker, and I really don’t know how to feel about it. Am I wrong for absolutely loving it? Yeah, he kinda terrifies me, but the sexual thrill I get with him is wildly addictive, and I hate how much I crave it. But what I hate more is how it gives me conflicting thoughts about being with Alex.

  I want to keep him safe, but at the same time, I want to spend every last moment with him. There’s no denying it any longer; I’ve fallen madly in love with the cocky bastard next door, and I know we haven’t been seeing each other long enough to really know that, but I feel it. This one is different.

  His smile, the way he smells, the way he can so effortlessly throw me up against a wall and tell me exactly what he wants to do with me, but also knowing exactly when I need him to shelve the dominant bullshit and be the man who holds me when my world is falling apart.

  He’s slipped right into my life, and now, I can’t imagine having to go a single day without seeing him. He’s everything, and for the first time, I’m starting to plan for the future, want things I’ve never wanted before, but if this were to fail, if he doesn’t feel the same way . . . shit. I’ll be devastated. Though, I suppose that’s not exactly at the top of my list of priorities right now. You know, considering I’m dealing with a stalker who may or may not be a murderous psychopath.

  Fucking hell. How did I get myself into this mess?

  I have so many questions for my stalker. Why me? How did he even find me? How long has this been going on? It’s insane. Every time he sneaks through my window, I’m left with even more questions. But mostly, what I really need to know is what he plans on doing with me. Is he just screwing around, enjoying the thrill of welcoming himself into my apartment and loving how I like to play along, or is this leading up to something? Am I in more danger than I could ever know?

  Crap. My hands start to shake.

  I’m in big trouble here. I’m going to end up on the news.

  A heavy pounding sounds at my door, and my back stiffens. It’s almost nine on a Sunday night. Who the hell would be trying to break down my door? You know, apart from Alex, but he doesn’t usually use a knock that could wake the dead.

  Fixing my shirt back into place to cover the bruises, I make my way out into the living room, the heavy pounding booming through my small apartment, and while I would usually call out, telling the person that I was coming, I also don’t feel as though I should be alerting someone to the fact I’m here. What if this is a break-in? Just like what happened at High Voltage Ink the night Crew died.

  Creeping toward the door, I peer through the small peephole and let out a heavy breath as I find two of Viper’s men, Spider and Fuse. Both of them have been my clients, though I haven’t worked on Fuse in a while because, apart from his dick, I don’t think he has even an inch of available skin left on his body.

  “Open the door, Kyah,” Spider grumbles, not the type to be kept waiting. “I know you’re in there.”

  Shit.

  Before he gets the chance to kick the door down, I twist the locks and release the deadbolt before finally reaching for the handle. I open the door, and before I can even ask what they want, they push past me, striding into my apartment as though they have every right to be here.

  Fuse kicks the door closed behind me as Spider glances over my cameras. “Ummm . . . someone wanna tell me why the hell you’re here?”

  Spider reluctantly looks back toward me and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve been looking into what you said, about having a stalker—”

  “Really?” I say, cutting him off as my back stiffens, wondering if this is when I finally start to get some answers.

  His gaze sharpens, clearly not appreciating being cut off. He holds my stare, a clear warning in his eyes to keep my mouth shut until I’ve been invited to talk. I swallow hard. I’ve only met Spider a handful of times, and he was pleasant enough, but since Viper’s death, he’s been promoted to Vice President of the Grim Reapers, and I assume a position like that doesn’t come without hardships.

  “You said your security system we installed was fucked,” he continues, and not wanting to open my mouth out of turn, I simply nod. “But that doesn’t make sense. You have one of the best systems money can buy. Viper made sure of it. He wanted his old lady safe.”

  “I wasn’t his old lady,” I supply before immediately cursing myself out. How stupid can I be?

  Spider just glares at me again. “In his eyes, you were, so as far as the rest of us are concerned, you’re part of our family, and we protect our own,” he states. “But I’ve been looking into it. At the clubhouse the other night you mentioned someone’s been coming into your apartment, but the cameras and the alarm aren’t picking it up.”

  “That’s right,” I say with a nod.

  “Something’s not adding up,” he says, opening the security app on his phone and bringing up the feed from my apartment.

  “Wait,” I say, my eyes widening in horror. “How many of you have access to the security feed? I thought only the security company, and me and Viper did.”

  “We all do, baby,” Fuse admits.

  My jaw drops, shock pounding through my veins. “So, when I . . .”

  Fuse grins. “Mmm-hmm,” he says, his gaze lazily trailing up and down my body as though he knows exactly what’s hidden beneath these clothes. “Thanks for the show.”

  “Fuck,” I say, my cheeks flushing with embarrassment, realizing I’ve been making porn films in the privacy of my own home and distributing them to the whole fucking club. “You guys need to leave.”

  “You want us to reboot your cameras, or what?” Spider grunts, clearly growing irritated with me.

  “Why would you need to reboot them? What’s wrong with them?”

  “What’s wrong with them is that we don’t currently have control of the system,” Spider says. “Whoever the fuck has been hacking into it has overridden control of the system and has been setting a loop each night.”

  “Setting a loop?” I ask. “What the hell does that mean? I’m not sure I’m following.”

  Spider presses his lips into a hard line before letting out a heavy sigh and striding toward me. He’s probably mentally reminding himself that I’m only twenty-three, and when it comes to shit like dealing with stalkers and security cameras, I don’t know shit.

  “Here, look,” Spider says, holding up his phone so I can see. The feed from last night appears, and I see myself in my bedroom, hovering by my window in the outfit my stalker left for me. He points down at the time stamp. “Take note of the time,” he says before fast-forwarding through the video. I watch as the clock quickly climbs, and just when my stalker should have been climbing through my window, the clock jumps back an hour, and instead of me pulling the blindfold over my face and preparing for him to walk in, the feed simply shows me peering out the window.

  “What the fuck?” I ask, grabbing hold of Spider’s phone and bringing it closer to my face to better see the little numbers in the corner of the screen. I fast forward, watching the clock start to climb again only to jump back again until an hour later when I’m seen racing out of my apartment in a sheer panic. “This isn’t right. He was in my apartment during this time. He left that outfit for me to wear and then fucked me. How can none of that show up?”

  “A loop,” Spider says, his brow arching just enough for me to realize that I probably shouldn’t have given quite so many details. “He makes a copy of the footage before he comes in and replaces the real footage with that.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he agrees. “But once we reboot the system. In theory, we should be able to gain control and override his access. He shouldn’t be able to get in.”

  “Get into the security feed, or get into my apartment?” I question. “Because something tells me that disabling his access to my feed is only going to piss him off, and I can’t have him escalating things more than he already has.”

  “You really think this asshole killed Viper?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I mean, I really have no proof,” I tell him. “It’s just a gut feeling. He was in my apartment that night. What if Viper saw him coming or going and crossed the street to check it out? It’s just . . . it’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Unless there was some other kind of club business going down that night and I’m completely overshooting here.”

  Spider shakes his head. “Nope. No club business that would be going down in the alley beside your building.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Spider drags his hand over his face, his lips pressed into a hard line. “Look, we’ll reboot your system and give you control, but I think until this shit is sorted out, we’ll keep someone stationed outside the building,” he says. “That’s what Viper would have wanted.”

  I give him a small smile, never so grateful in my life, but let’s be honest, the club has been on protection detail for weeks and hasn’t once been able to catch this guy sneaking in and out. “Thanks, I really appreciate it,” I tell them.

  Both Spider and Fuse nod before getting on with it, and I make myself comfortable as they find the control box for the cameras hidden within my linen cupboard and start messing around with it. Then once they’re done with that, they go about the apartment checking over all the cameras and making sure they’re all working as they should be. Spider disappears into the bathroom, and I think nothing of it until he comes out with a grim expression, his jaw firmly clenched with a bunch of wires dangling from his fingers.

  He doesn’t say anything about it, and judging by the dark look in his eyes, questions aren’t welcome. “Alright, that should be it,” Fuse tells me. “Do you need another rundown of how to access everything?”

  “Nah, I should be good,” I say with a small smile. “Thank you.”

  They both nod, and as I follow them to my door and hold it open for them, Spider turns back to meet my eye. “Call me if you see or hear anything,” he tells me as something sinister and vile flashes in his dark eyes. “I’d like to have a word with this guy.”

  I don’t respond, but he’s not looking for me to. Instead, he simply walks away, and the two of them disappear down the hall. I let out a shaky breath, my gaze settling on Alex’s door. Usually, when I’m out in the hallway, he’ll hear me and come and hang out, but his door remains closed. He must be out, or maybe he already crashed. He tends to wake early every day and put himself through a grueling workout, and while I could never, I really appreciate that he does because he likes nothing more than putting that impressive strength and fitness to the test every time he touches my body.

  After quickly locking up my apartment, I take myself back to my couch and curl up with my comforter, but curiosity gets the best of me, and I bring up the security feed on my phone. I start searching through all the settings, trying to figure out how the hell this guy could have hacked into the system in the first place, but to be honest, when it comes to shit like coding and hacking, I’m out. That shit flies right over my head.

  As I go through everything, I look back over the old footage and find what appears to be a small hidden folder for old data. My brows furrow as I open it. My gaze sails over the files, and they look just like the rest in the main folder, only there’s something different about these, and as I open one and look at the file details, I realize they’re all deleted files that have been restored when Spider and Fuse rebooted the system.

  My heart starts to race as I look at the footage from last night, and just like the beginning of the footage I watched with Spider, I’m seen standing at my bedroom window, peering out into the street, only this time, I see the moment my back stiffens and I pull the blindfold over my face. As I look over to a different camera view, I watch as the living room window slides open.

  My heart races.

  This is it.

  A man appears in my apartment, and due to the lack of lighting, it’s almost impossible to make out any of his features, but I can see just how tall and broad he is, and my heart stops for just a moment, a wicked thrill pulsing through me. There’s something about a tall, broad man that I like.

  Shit. I shouldn’t be searching for reasons to like this guy more than I already do. I should be repulsed, yet watching the way he silently makes his way through my apartment has my pussy throbbing for more.

  He moves with ease, with a confidence that reminds me of Alex. Alex is confident like that, taking each step with purpose, knowing exactly what he wants. It’s one of the things I love about him.

  My stalker moves into my bedroom, and I watch as he pauses, taking a moment to look me over, and I remember what it felt like in that moment, feeling his appraisal, and now seeing it like this makes it that much better. He moves toward me, and over the next hour, I watch as he makes his demands and how I succumb to his every need.

  I watch as I take his thick cock in my mouth, and I watch as my whole body shudders as I do. He looks like a fucking god as he comes down my throat, but when he pulls me back to my feet and takes my ass, I’ve never been so engrossed in my life.

  Is it odd to be turned on by my own sex tape?

  When he finishes, he turns around, and for a fleeting moment, he lifts his gaze right to the camera, but then he’s gone, disappearing from my room like a ghost in the night. Something pulls at my chest, just like it did when I heard him utter those words ready to play.

  Rewinding back until he glances up into the camera, I pause the footage and take a screenshot. It’s too dark to make out his features, but I wonder if I were to adjust the color settings of the image if I might be able to make out a face.

  Unable to help myself, I open up my image gallery and select the screenshot before hitting the little edit button. I start playing, adjusting the contrast, brightness, and trying to minimize the shadows, and with each new adjustment, the image becomes just a little clearer.

  Adjusting the brightness once again, I finally see him, and my heart tears right down the center. My phone drops into my lap, horror blasting through my chest as I struggle to suck in a deep breath.

  How could he do this? He lied to me.

  I shake my head, not wanting to believe what’s right in front of my face. I asked him point blank, and he said no, but the proof is right here.

  God, he really made a fool out of me. I stare down at the proof in the palm of my hand, the devastatingly beautiful face of the man I’m falling in love with—Alex Fucking Reid.

  35

  REID

  Standing out on the fire escape, I pull the cloned phone out of my pocket and open up the security feed of Kyah’s apartment, only she’s nowhere to be seen. It’s late, creeping close to midnight, and while most nights she’s usually in bed by now, it’s not unusual for her to stay late at work or crash in the living room while binge-watching some ridiculous show.

  But I better check things out, you know, just to be on the safe side.

  I try to hack into the app to create the loop, just as I do every night, only the system blocks me, forcing me out. My brows furrow, and I try a few more times before suspicion begins creeping through my chest. What the fuck is going on?

  My jaw clenches. I don’t like the idea of going in there without covering my bases, not to mention, she’s left the house and forgotten to turn off the lights, meaning despite it being the dead of night, the cameras will be a pain in the ass to avoid.

  But if something has changed, if there’s something wrong, I need to know what the fuck I’m dealing with. Has she worked out that I’ve been fucking with her security system, and that it’s not just a faulty camera? She’s a clever girl, and a part of me has been hoping for this. I like the chase, the thrill of her paranoia. When I can scent a woman’s fear in the air, it turns me on, but it’s different with Kyah. The fear is there, but there’s also something more—a deep, erotic desire to see just how far I can push the limits.