8. Always

EIGHT

My brave girl doesn't scream. As though she can already sense that she's safe with me, she only gulps, then turns away from the shower spray so that she's facing me.

She gasps when she sees the mask. Almost as on their own, she starts to reach up for the hem of the balaclava.

That's a hard no from me. The mask covers my entire head and throat, with only a hole cut out for my eyes. Secretly, I want her to look into mine and know—just know—that she's staring up at Jake McIntyre, but there's no recognition in her sad brown eyes. Jut surprise and, unless I'm fucking willing into existence, excitement.

She reached for me. It's only fair I get to do the same.

My fingers land lightly on the sides of her neck. She jolts, but before she can do anything else, I grate out, "If you try to peel off my mask, I'll go."

Simone gulps. I trail my fingers down the column of her throat, too late to catch her sudden fear.

Maybe it's better this way. She should be afraid of what a faceless, nameless man can do to her when she's vulnerable. If I wasn't the one who saw her silhouette on the window shade, who else might have taken advantage of my sweet vixen?

I love her, but she doesn't love me yet. She doesn't know me. That'll change in time, when the Watcher becomes Jake—or Jake is revealed to be the Watcher—but, for now, her fear will make her easy to control.

So will her lust.

She's the one who teased me. Who invited me in with nothing more than a glance out of her window, and a sight meant only for the twisted man watching her.

"Is that all it takes?" she whispers. "I take off your mask and you'll leave?"

"Yes."

I mean it, too. I want nothing more than to pleasure this woman, even if the extent of it is sharing a shower with her, but if she crosses this one boundary with me, I'll go back to watching her, waiting for her to fall for Jake instead.

Over the years, I've learned patience. I've learned to work for what I want. Simone being drawn to the Watcher is something that I hadn't anticipated and, fuck yeah, I'll take any chance to get closer to her… but Simone and me… we're endgame, no matter what.

I wait to see what she'll do. When her gaze drops from mine, eyes finding the erection my naked body can't hide, she takes a small step away from, backing up.

She still doesn't scream, though. I'm ready to bend her over and fuck her in this shower, she knows it, and she doesn't scream.

Simone swallows again. "You… you're naked."

I reach out my hand again, ghosting the back of my fingers against her pebbled nipple. I'm not touch her, not quite, though the heat from my hand mingling with the heat from the shower spray has her arching her back enough that she brushes against me.

Beneath my mask, I grin. "So are you." She touched me first. Way I see it, that's just more permission… Turning my hand, cupping her tit, I give it a gentle squeeze. "Just like you were in the window."

"You saw that?"

"You meant for me to."

Simone doesn't say anything to that. She just bites down on her bottom lip as her eyes lock on my cock again.

She doesn't even seem to realize that I'm still holding her boob in my hand. Entranced instead by the sight of my hard-on, she can't seem to rip her gaze away from it.

Yes. This is exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping for from my Simone. No fear. No trepidation. Just pure animalistic want.

I'm coiled up with it. One touch. It took that one touch for me to know that the long nights, the move out of Springfield, the blood on my hands… it was all worth it for this single moment in time with Simone.

But, fuck it, I am greedy. I need more. I want more.

And, more than anything, I need her to want it, too.

Releasing her tit, I trail my hand up her jaw before cupping that next. As much as I want her to get used to my cock since it'll be the only one she'll ever have again for the rest of her life, I use a little pressure to tilt her head back so that she's looking at me.

"I won't hurt you," I promise in that deep voice. "Before anything else, I need you to know that, Simone."

I won't scare her away if I can help it. She won't be another Casey. I learned from the mistakes I made with Heather, too. I killed the biggest threat to her before he could take Simone with him.

I won't be responsible for the death of another blonde with sad brown eyes. Not this time. Not this one. She's mine, and there isn't anything I won't do to get Simone to agree.

"How can I?"

"You can't," I tell her honestly. "You'll have to trust me."

Simone lets out a sound that's half laugh, half sob. "Trust the intruder who broke into my house? Into my shower?"

"You could've locked the back door."

I wait for her to tell me it was a mistake. An accident. That she never would've left it open for me on purpose?—

She gives her head a royal shake, her water-damp hair falling down her back as she lifts her chin a little higher. "Would that have kept you out?"

Not even a little, and my silence answers the question for her.

We're mere inches away. The shower is cramped, but I've been inching my way closer to her the entire time we've been talking. Her breasts are heaving, my own chest is doing something similar, and the only thing coming between us right now is the water falling from her shower head.

She doesn't seem to notice that, either. And then, to my shock, she plants her hands on my chest.

I groan, and she narrows her gaze.

"Who are you?" Simone demands.

"Don't you know?"

"I want to hear you say it."

Good girl. Smart. She knows exactly who I am—who she invited into her home—but she wants to make sure that her masked man is exactly who she was expecting.

"I'm the Watcher."

"What do you watch?"

It's not a ‘what', and we both know that. Still, she asked me a question, and I'll answer it if I can. "You."

Her lips part. Since I have to struggle to keep from dropping my head and covering her mouth with mine—or guiding her to her knees before feeding my cock between those gorgeous lips—I bark at her, "Turn around."

"What—"

"I mean it, Simone. Turn around." Then, gentling my tone even though I still try to disguise it, I add, "I won't hurt you. I promise. I just want to take care of you."

"How?" she whispers softly even as she does what I told her and turns to face the shower spray again.

In so many ways. She'll learn that, too, but for now I reach for the shampoo bottle.

After I put the shampoo in her air, scrubbing her scalp, lathering up all of her pretty blonde hair, I massage it in. She was tense at first, probably because she can feel my cock prodding her in the lower back as I focused on tending to her hair, but once she realized that I wasn't going to grab my cock and shove it into her without an express signal that she would welcome me doing that, she relaxes infinitesimally.

I help Simone rinse out the shampoo, then trade it for the conditioner.

I just wanted to pamper her. To pleasure her in a way she deserved. I'm so glad her back is to me and that my mask is covering most of my face because I'd probably scare the crap out of her with my possessive expression as I firmly rub the conditioner into her hair.

She has no idea I've marked it—that I've marked her—but it does something to me to apply it to her myself.

I could've stopped there. I don't want to push her too far, not so soon, but there are limits to even my self-control.

Tugging

"Are you leaving? I didn't peek. I swear I didn't."

She wants me to stay. I can hardly fucking believe it, but Simone doesn't want me to go… which is good, because I'm not going anywhere.

"Just grabbing a washcloth, my sweet vixen. That's all."

She keeps them on a stand over her toilet. I grab one, then duck back into the shower just in time for her to ask, "What is that you keep calling me? Sweet vixen… isn't that an oxymoron."

Maybe. I don't know. It's just the way I've thought of Simone ever since I saw her with those tear-filled eyes outside of the Springfield convenience store. "It's my petname for you."

"Like you're the Watcher."

"If that's how you want to think of it. But you can call me anything you want, baby, as long as it's yours."

Shit. She stiffens up again even as the last of the conditioner streams out of her hair.

Finally, in a voice so quiet I can hardly hear it over the shower, she whispers, "But why? That's what I want to know. Why? Why me?"

Doesn't she know? I thought it was obvious, and maybe it was… to me. Not to Simone.

I grab her body wash from the shelf in her shower. As I open it up, plopping a large drop of the pink gel onto the washcloth, I tell her honestly, "Because I love you."

"Love me? You don't even know me."

That's what you think, baby.

It might be fucking devious to distract her with my words the same time as I start running the washcloth over her skin, touching every part of her I can reach under the guise of scrubbing her clean with the body wash, but I don't care. She let me wash her hair. She can let me wash her, too.

And all it will cost me is a little of the information I've learned about her these last few months.

"I know your favorite drink is ginger ale. You'll only eat pizza with onion on it, but you hate the way the taste lingers, so you'll chew gum." I lean in, my mouth next to her ear as I whisper, "Cinnamon. It has to be cinnamon."

It's more of a hiss than anything. It tickles her skin, making her shiver despite the warmth in the shower.

"You're addicted to only 90s sitcoms because you think life was better back then. But you'd never survive without your Amazon prime, baby, so I don't know who you're fooling. Not me, for sure. Not with the fifteen boxes you get every week. And that's just Amazon. Don't get me started on the other stores you can't get enough of."

Simone shakes her head, though she doesn't move away from me, not even as I drop the hand holding the washcloth under her ass—then drop the washcloth, too. "How did… are you stalking me?"

"You are my life. My obsession. Call it stalking if you want. I like to think of it as watching."

"Watching? I—" Simone stops, suddenly realizing that it's my bare finger that's currently easing through the slick wetness in her pussy. "What are you doing?"

"Getting you clean, baby. We're taking a shower together, and you're impossibly wet. Gotta make sure you're clean all over before we can… dry you off."

She reaches behind me, clutching my arm. "Your finger is about to go inside of me."

She doesn't say ‘no'. She doesn't try to tell me to ‘stop'. In fact, I'm pretty sure she's gone up on the balls of her feet, angling herself perfectly so that I have easier access to fingerfuck her.

I didn't come in the shower, planning on such an intimate touch. But if she's into it… why wouldn't I give my Simone everything she desires?

I trace the circle of her entrance with my pointer finger. "I said all over, didn't I?"

"Watcher…"

It's not my name. It shouldn't fucking pain me that it's not my name, not when I call her ‘my sweet vixen'. But once again I'm jealous of myself, and jealous Jake can be rash, reckless, and impulsive—and he proves that by running his finger up Simone's slit again before taking his hand back.

She gasps as though missing my touch, but before she can back her ass into me, I grab her wrist. One jerk of her hand and I have her palm angled so that I can press my cock against her delicate skin.

"Touch me."

"What? No. I… I can't."

Yes. She can.

"Tell me to go. If you really want to convince me that you haven't been eyeing my cock since I joined you in here, tell me to leave and I'll fucking leave. But if you can't do that, Simone, then touch me."

I'm playing with fire. All it will take is her refusing me and I'll have lost any progress I've made with her.

Well, the Watcher will have…

Is that why I'm pushing her now? Because I'm ready to rip off this damn mask, show Simone my face, and make her understand that she's going to be mine?

It's possible, or I might have just thrown Royce's advice right out the window. I mean, look at me. I haven't even gotten the chance to ask Simone out on a date, but I'm naked, she's naked, and, holy fucking shit, she's touching me.

I don't know who shudders more visibly: me or Simone.

This is exactly what I dreamed of. Her light grip could be a little more possessive, but I can work on that. The fact that she closed her fingers around the base of my cock on her own is good enough for now.

Only one thing would make it better, and as I start to thrust in Simone's hand, spreading my legs, bracing my hand against the slick shower wall so that I don't slip… as I start rocking, fucking her fist, my eyes nearly roll in the back of my fucking head as she moves with me.

I don't expect to last. I was already so close, just with being near her, then when she didn't stop me from touching her all over. Having her hands on me? I hold out as long as I can so that she doesn't think sex with me will be a waste of time, but when I'm seconds away from doing just that, I grip her by the hips, stunning her as I trap her hand and my cock between our bodies.

I grunt out a release, painting the swell of Simone's lower belly with my come without wasting a single drop.

Then, before she can try to back off and rinse it away, I use the heel of my hand to rub it in.

She blinks up at me when I finally step back, giving her a little space. "What the…"

"You're mine, Simone. Just a little reminder. Try to run. Try to hide. I will find you. I'm always watching. And when you're ready to accept that you've always been mine, let me know. Give me a sign, baby. I'll be there."

I'm always there.