4. Mag citrate and conditioner

FOUR

On the pretense that I need to grab my wallet from the back, I take a quick detour to Frank's office.

The old man is overweight and pushing sixty. He had a colonoscopy my first week on the job, and though I learned just how much I'd rather drive home to shit than use the employee bathroom after that, I've been in here enough times to remember seeing the barely-drank bottle of liquid magnesium citrate he never had the chance to finish during his prep.

I snatch it, then head to the employee fridge. Brendon's iced tea jug takes up most of the space. Quickly unscrewing the cap to the jug first, the magnesium citrate next, I dump the entire contents of the bottle into it before tossing the empty into the recycle bin.

That done, I grab two bucks from my back pocket, then head back out to the vending machine.

Brendon is making a big to-do of doing the diagnostics for Simone's car. I feel a sense of twisted righteousness at what I just did as I search for Simone.

She's studiously ignoring Brendon.

Good.

Striding over to the vending machine, I feed the first dollar into it.

With Simone sitting on the edge of one of our plastic chairs, watching the crooked television in the reception area, she can't see what I'm doing. I quickly jab the ginger ale button?—

"Crap."

Brendon pokes his head out of the Mazda. "Something wrong, Jakey?"

"Vending machine spit this out instead of my Coke."

"Ah. That's shit luck."

I shrug. "It's fine. I got another buck. I'll try again. But you've got your iced tea…" I pause as though something just came to me. Crossing the garage, heading over to the reception area, I don't stop until I'm standing about three-feet away from Simone.

Unlike Brendon, I'm not trying to spook her. I clear my throat, waiting for her to notice me.

When she does, I suck in a tiny breath, waiting to see if she'll recognize me. Either from all the times I got close to her in Springfield, or just from how long I spend outside in the cul de sac, giving her the chance to watch me, get used to me, before I slip into the shadows, watching her.

Damn it. Not a spark of recognition as she glances up at me questioningly.

That's fine. It's all going according to plan. She doesn't know me now—but she will.

I give her a grin. "Hey. Thirsty? I got a ginger ale I'm not gonna drink."

Her beautiful brown eyes light up. "Um. Yeah. I mean, if you're sure?—"

I hold it out to Simone. "Take it. On the house."

See, Bren? I can hand out freebies, too. And, sure, I'm doing all of this according to my plan that will eventually end with Simone in my bed, but it won't be a one-time thing. Let Bren get his casual sex somewhere else.

This one belongs to me.

Her nails are a pretty pink color almost the exact shade as her car. She takes the can from me, popping the tap carefully so that she doesn't snap a fingernail. It fizzes and pops, and she smiles as she takes a small sip.

My cock twitches, aching to think about what it'll be like to have those lips wrapped around me.

A hint of my lust for her must slip into my pleasant expression because the heights of her cheeks turn pink.

Fuck. Why don't I just come in my pants while I'm at it?

"Thanks," she says, never once dipping her gaze from mine. "It's my favorite."

Oh, Simone…

I know that, too.

I endup finishing the trans job on my own.

Probably for the best. A transmission swap isn't all that difficult, but it takes a steady hand, an eye for detail, and a mechanic who knows what the fuck he's doing.

Brendon's a pretty decent mechanic when he's not thinking with his dick. He doesn't keep Simone waiting too long—I only get to watch her out of the corner of my eyes for about forty minutes before he announces he's done—though I'm pretty fucking glad I doctored his drink when he suggests the two of them meeting up for dinner or drink after the garage closes up.

He can try. Considering he spent nearly the rest of our shift in the bathroom, I'm thinking that's not gonna happen.

Every time he curses under his breath, then bolts for the back, I have to swallow my grin. Finally, when he starts walking funny on his way back, I can't keep from commenting.

"What's up with you? You okay?"

"Dunno. I've been shitting my brains out since lunch. I had tuna. You think it was bad?"

Maybe. Or maybe he's been guzzling his iced tea all afternoon, getting more and more laxative with every sip.

"Could be."

"Fuck. My ass is burning. I can't wait to get home and take a nice cold shower."

I fake a look of concern. "Home? But I thought you had a hot date tonight."

He thought so, too. Even though Simone gave him a non-committal answer, saying something about having to go shopping still, I know Brendon. If he got the hots for her, he'd be like flies on shit. He won't leave her alone.

Not unless I make him—and a nice round of explosive diarrhea should do the trick.

"Yeah. She was pretty hot. Nice tits. I told her that one of her hoses was looking questionable as a way to get her to come back sooner. Maybe I'll give her a shot next time."

Reminder, Jake: grab some more liquid mag citrate, just in case.

But because I've assured myself that Brendon won't be bothering Simone tonight, I feel magnanimous enough to let him head out early. I close up the garage myself at six, stop for dinner, then head home.

Simone's driveway is empty.

I don't even bother getting out of my car before I'm checking my phone, pulling up the app for the tracker I have on hers.

Even after two and a half months in this town, I'm not all that familiar with every part of it. I don't know at first glance where her car's parked, but once I zoom in, I see that she's at a local shopping mall.

A quick look-up reveals that their hours are ten to nine. It's only seven now. If Simone's gone shopping, looking for some retail therapy, she won't leave that mall until it closes.

I'm not worried that Brendon somehow got her to agree to go out with him. Even if he took her number off her paperwork, I put enough of Frank's magnesium citrate in Brendon's jug of iced tea to keep him confined to his house.

But Simone's? It's empty right now.

I smile. Not for long.

It shouldn't bethis easy to break into her house.

When I live with Simone, I'll make sure to put up the best security system money can buy to keep my wife safe. Since doing that now would only make it more difficult for me to visit her while she's sleeping, or immerse myself in her space while she's out of it, I rely on my cameras to make sure no one else is slipping inside other than me.

I pull on my black mask as a precaution. My routine checks of her house tells me that her house didn't come with a doorbell camera. She never installed one herself, either, though she might have if her bastard of her husband kept coming around. I'm glad she didn't because then I would've had to find a way around it instead of just changing from my coveralls to black jeans and a matching shirt, grabbing my mask and yanking it on right before I let myself in through the back.

Our cul de sac is surrounded by a thick wooded area. It's shaped like a ‘U', with my house and Simone's on opposite sides, and the woods bracketed the entire neighborhood. Moving soundlessly through the woods, following the same path I have for months now, I can go from my place to hers and never get caught.

I have this animalistic need to mark my territory, even if she has no idea that I'm here. Leaving her flowers is one way to do that, but since she acts as though they miraculously appeared with no ulterior motive, it doesn't satisfy my urge to catch her attention.

Writing her a note, signing it with an anonymous nickname… that helped. Even if she doesn't know who Jake is, I want her to obsess over the Watcher—and she does. I've lost track of how many times she's pulled out the note I sent with Burke's ring, running her fingers over the print, murmuring something to herself.

Of course, her face would change, and the murmur would turn into a louder mutter as she snaps something at a man only she can see. Will Burke is haunting my sweet vixen, and if she's anything like me, it's the lack of closure that's fucking with her.

She knows he's dead. I made it as obvious as I could without writing her another note that says: Yup, I did it. In time, I'll confess to her. I'll tell her fucking everything, the good and the bad, just so she knows as much about me as I do her.

I won't be satisfied until she's as devoted to me, and when I know I have her love and affection and every goddamn emotions I can steal from her, I'll explain to her how I killed Burke, and just why he had to die.

And that's if she doesn't already suspect the truth…

Tonight, there's no sign of the ghost of Will Burke. It's quiet in here, the only sound coming from the wall clock in her kitchen. It's shaped like a lemon, a bit of whimsy in the otherwise empty space. There's a cheap table she picked up online, the wall clock, and a set of matching dishcloths, and that's about it.

I like the clock. The towels, too. They suggest to me that Simone plans on making this her home. Of maybe sticking around her a while.

The rest of her house is decorated the same way. A few stock pieces of furniture that would've been here when she rented the place with a handful of ornaments, pictures, and decorations that show off her personality.

In her upstairs bathroom, she has a frosted shower curtain, a pink toilet cover, matching pink rug, and a pair of towels that are, you guess it, pink. It has a hint of sweetness lingering in the small room. Her body wash, or maybe the perfume she splashes on before she leaves the house. I'm not sure yet, and like I do when I have time, I pick up random bottles I find scattered about, opening the lids and breathing in deep.

I haven't gotten close enough to Simone to learn her true scent, the smell that is inherently Simone. I've caught whiffs of it, and it makes me rock fucking hard each time, but it's some kind of combination of all of these products that creates it.

There's so many. I've watched her through the camera I taped to the bottom of her mirror; the size of a Scrabble tile, I painted it white so it blends in with the wall behind it. I've lost hours of my life to studying her morning and evening routines, cataloging that in my file of everything Simone.

I recognize the bottles, though I need to do more research to learn what each of them do. If they help make my Simone's skin that dewy, her eyes beautifully bright, and her lips fuckably soft, I'll throw money at the companies so that she'll never run out if it makes her happy even if I know fuck-all about any of them.

But there's one thing I'm pretty sure everyone uses when they take a shower, and after I put her bottles back where I found them, I tug the shower curtain back and grab her conditioner.

The first time I did this, I used her shampoo because I'm a guy and I wash my hair with shampoo. I thought about it after I slipped out of her house. She has long, beautiful hair. I might not use conditioner, but Simone probably does. The way my camera is angled, I can see the bathroom but not inside of the shower itself. It's a tub/shower combo, and the edge of it is in the picture, but with the curtain drawn, it's useless.

So I waited until I could go back and check. Of course she has conditioner. And that means she rinses out the shampoo, replacing it with conditioner.

Oh, no, no, no. I want the last thing that touched her hair to have me in it. I don't care that she probably rinses that out, too. They make leave-ins, don't they? That's a thing. If not, that's fine. The conditioner works.

And that's why I've grabbed the conditioner every time I've come back in here.

I'm quick. Not because I'm worried that Simone will return home and find me in here, but because I've been hard on and off since she walked into the garage earlier today. With Brendon stinking up the toilet, I couldn't rub one out real quick at work, so I suffered with a hard-on while I finished up the car I was working on.

I finally went down, but that fucker came back to life the second I walked into Simone's house. I'm so desperate for her, there's already a little pre-come beading at the tip of my poor cock when I yank down my jeans, releasing my cock from my boxers.

Closing my eyes, I imagine those pretty pink fingernails scraping the veins of my cock before her soft palm wraps around me. My hands are callused as fuck, covered in grim until I can go home and scrub them off like I do nightly, but in my fantasy, it's Simone who starts stroking me off.

I grit my teeth, bracing my boots against the tile of her bathroom floor. The friction is painful, which is only right. I don't deserve pleasure until I can convince Simone to be mine, and the way I'm rubbing my cock raw right now is all the motivation I need to work toward my ultimate prize.

The one.

The memory of her smile flashing before my mind's eye has my sac tightening. I squeeze, tugging now, panting her name softly—Simone, Simone, fuck me, Simone—as I start to come.

I'm ready. I opened the conditioner bottle before I started, and as soon as I start coming, I grab it, angling to catch as much of my come as I can. Considering how many times I've jerked off into Simone's hair care products, determined to have my sweet vixen walk around with a little bit of me on her, you'd think I'd be better at this.

You'd be wrong.

I spill fucking everywhere. My hand, the sides of the plastic bottle, her rug… I'm not mad, though. Just another way to make my territory, and I use my finger to scoop up what I can before dabbing it inside the conditioner bottle.

Only when I'm satisfied that I got as much as I could in there do I re-cap it, then give the conditioner a good shake. I tuck my cock back into my boxers, pull my jeans back on, then use the tip of my boot to rub in the jizz I couldn't gather up.

There. Simone might not know who I am just yet, but at least I marked her the only way I can.

For now.