“You know, you’re quite the mystery woman, Avery Nesbitt,” he finally said, his voice a soft, velvety purr, his breath warm and damp as it stirred the hair at her temple.
“Not really,” she countered shallowly, a little breathlessly. “With me, what you see is what you get.”
And, oh, dammit, she wished she hadn’t said that. If her brain was her fiercest weapon, she might as well concede defeat right now.
His smile told her he was thinking pretty much the same thing. “Maybe,” he said. “But I didn’t see you before last night. Even though I’ve been watching you for a while now.”
Okay, that really creeped her out. Avery knew about stalkers, of course. But she’d never considered the possibility that she’d be the target of one. How could she be? She never left home. It had been weeks, months even, since she’d left the building, and her destination had been only four blocks away, to Skittles’s veterinarian. They’d been gone less than an hour. And Avery hadn’t noticed anyone noticing her. Of course, she’d consumed a half-dozen shots of Johnnie Walker before heading out, so she was lucky to have even found the vet’s office, not to mention her way home. But Avery could tell when she was being watched. If this guy had been stalking her, she would have known.
“How could you be watching me when I never go anywhere?” she asked. Maybe if she got him talking, kept him talking, she could figure some way out of this.
Instead of answering her question, he posed one of his own. “And why is that? That you never go anywhere?”
She wasn’t about to tell him it was because she was afraid to leave her home. Show no fear, she commanded herself. Do not let him know your weaknesses. “I don’t have any reason to go anywhere,” she said. “I work at home and I work long hours. This is an especially busy time for me, and anything I need, I can have delivered. So I do.”
“What about socializing?” he asked.
And she hated to think why. Because if he was thinking she might want to socialize with him, he had another think coming. And then he had a poke in the eye coming. And then a knee to the groin.
“I don’t socialize much,” she said.
“Peaches, you don’t socialize at all,” he rejoined. “Unless you count all that bouncing around the Internet you do as socializing. And trust me, there are better ways to socialize than that.”
She told herself he couldn’t be stalking her on the Net. Not just because she’d done nothing to attract a stalker, but because she had security measures in place on every system she owned that made it impossible for anyone to do that. He was bluffing. Or something. She just wished she knew what the hell was going on.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“What? You don’t remember me?” he said. “From the Eastern Star Earth-Friendly Market? After all those steamy looks you threw my way?”
She squeezed her eyes shut tight at the reminder. Oh, God, how could she have ogled him the way she had? Naturally a psycho like him would misinterpret her simple appreciation of his physique as a blatant invitation to come back later and enjoy a slice of what she was clearly desperate to give him. It was almost funny. She’d been cloistered away from the world for a decade—first through mandatory incarceration, then through voluntary seclusion—having scarcely spoken a word to a member of the opposite sex. Now she was about to be violated in the most heinous way, thanks to some chance encounter with a delivery boy.
“I thought you’d be glad to see me again,” he murmured. “I thought maybe you’d enjoy…” he grinned lasciviously “…socializing with a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood man for a change, instead of a cold, impersonal piece of machinery. And now you’re saying you don’t even know me? Avery, honey, you’re breaking my heart.”
“And you’re breaking my spine,” she muttered, ignoring the first part of his remark. “Please. I can’t breathe,” she added.
Something in her voice must have convinced him of her discomfort—though why a man like him would care about her comfort, she couldn’t begin to imagine—because although he didn’t remove himself from atop her, he shifted his big body to the side some, alleviating the pressure of his weight a bit. In doing so, though, he wedged her body between his and the back of the sofa more firmly, keeping one of his legs draped over hers and one of his hands planted firmly on her hip, so that she was even more effectively pinned than before. Still, at least she could breathe now.
“What do you want?” she asked again.
He hesitated a moment, then told her, “I want to keep you from making a terrible mistake.”
Avery narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”
“That virus on your laptop,” he said.
Her stomach pitched. “What virus?”
“The one you’re building,” he said. “The one I saw when I was here before. It could send you right back to the slammer, Peaches. Not to mention it’s powerful enough to take out half the galaxy.”
Avery didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more terrified. Maybe he wasn’t here to physically assault her. But how did he know about her time in prison? And how did he know what she’d been doing on her laptop unless he had some familiarity with computer viruses himself? And if he had that much familiarity with computer viruses, why was he working as a delivery guy for the Eastern Star Market?
Unless, gee, maybe he wasn’t a delivery guy for the Eastern Star Earth-friendly Market at all. And if that was the case, then who the hell was he? Could his ID have actually been legit? Before Avery had a chance to ask him anything more, he began to speak again, saying things that made her even more confused.
“And that bastard, Andrew Paddington?” he added, sending more fire spilling through her belly. “He’s not worth it, Avery. Trust me. That guy is a class-A prick who preys on people like you. Don’t get involved in his schemes. Because you’ll end up right back in the Rupert Halloran Women’s Correctional Facility. And next time not only will you do the full time, you’ll earn yourself a bonus stay. And Lana and Petrovsky and Mouse and all those other friends you had inside? They’re not there anymore. You’ll have to start from square one again, building your posse. And with your lack of people skills, Peaches, I don’t think you want to have to do that.”
With every new word he spoke Avery felt her panic rise, and it was through no small effort that she managed to tamp it back down again. The last thing she needed right now was to have a panic attack. God, she hadn’t had one for months—not since that last time she took Skittles to the vet. She’d begun to think maybe she was coming out of all that. Even in this situation tonight, where panic would have been a perfectly logical and understandable response, she’d managed to hang on and not succumb to an attack. And she wouldn’t succumb now, she told herself. She wouldn’t. She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, holding it until the fear began to ease.
But how did he know all that stuff about her? she wondered as she opened her eyes again…and immediately began to drown in the frozen green depths of his eyes. Certainly the news of her arrest and conviction was a matter of public record. Hell, it’d been a media circus at the time. But that had been ten years ago. Few people talked about any of that anymore. Fewer still remembered her name. Virtually none of them knew how her life had been in prison or even to which facility she’d been sent. Certainly none knew the names of her closest friends inside, as this man did. And how did he know about Andrew? She’d told no one about him. She’d had no one to tell about him.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
He smiled that sinister smile of his. “Well, now, Peaches, if you’d looked at my ID, you