The Voyeur Next Door (20 page)

“No,” I said evenly. “You’re not going.”

“What the fuck!” Tammy raged, leaping to her feet. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“Language!” I snapped back. “And I’m on the side of your safety. I don’t care how long you’ve supposedly known these guys, you’re not going out to the middle of nowhere with them.”

“That’s bullshit!” Cheeks flushed, eyes shining, Tammy glared at everyone in the room once before storming to the door. “I hate all of you!”

No one spoke as we listened to the thundering of Tammy’s boots on the stairs. Then the deafening bang of her door slamming shut.

“Thank you, Gabriel,” Mom said softly, slumping wearily into her chair. “It doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I am always the bad guy.”

Jonas rose out of his seat and went over to her. Only to stand behind her and settle his hands on her shoulders.

“It will get better,” he assured her. “We just need to show a united front.”

I wanted to ask where his united front was before I arrived, but I decided not to. Mom had enough on her plate.

“I’m sorry you were brought into this,” Mom said to me. “But I’m glad you’re here.” She shoved out of her chair. “Supper will be ready in a moment.”

Ali

It surprised me when I finished Tamara’s costume in a single night. It wasn’t anything elaborate or Hollywood worthy, but I liked it, and from the pictures I texted Tamara, she liked it, too, so I supposed that made it perfect.

It was a design I’d found on
Pinterest
. I’d gone to the dance store and bought a tutu, white and very lacy and a white bodysuit with thin straps. Then I sewed the two together, added a yard of white fabric to the back of the tutu with buttons to double as her non-swan costume and added glittery feathers to the tutu and the bodysuit. Then, because it was Tamara, I died the hems of the tutu black. For someone who didn’t sew, I thought it looked pretty good. It gave me hope that if I ever needed a fall back career, I could always become a costume designer for children’s plays, or Halloween.

I took it in to work with me the next day, hoping to give it to Gabriel, or Earl to give to Tamara. Instead, I walked into the shop and found the entire place in disarray.

The stairs leading up to my office were gone, literally blown out of the wall. Hell, even the wall was gone. There was a giant hole overlooking a landing where my desk and cabinets used to be. Six men were moving back and forth, heaving cinderblocks and planks of wood and creating a pile along the side. There were no cars on the hoists, no other crew members. Just Gabriel, standing a few feet away, arms folded, watching the scene with narrowed eyes.

I went to him. “What’s going on?”

He glanced down at me in surprise, like he hadn’t been expecting anyone. “What are you doing here?”

It was my turn to squint at him. “I work here … right?”

“I tried to call you.”

I stiffened. “Am I fired? Because you didn’t have to blow up the office to make your point.”

“I’m getting ramps installed,” he said. “And no, you’re not fired.”

“Ramps? Oh!”
Earl
, I realized. “That’s nice of you.”

He peered at me. “Do you know you have no paperwork with us?”

I blinked. “Really?”

He nodded. “I was going to call you last night to let you know not to come in, but there is no record of you.”

I grimaced sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

Reaching into his back pocket, he withdrew his phone. “Give me your number for now and I’ll call to let you know when the construction is finished.”

I gave it to him and watched as he programmed it into his device and stow it away once more.

“Here.” I held out the bag with Tamara’s costume. “Can you give this to Tamara? I finished it last night. Tell her to call me if something doesn’t fit right.”

He took it and our fingers grazed in passing. An electric current of livewires zapped up my arm and I hurriedly snatched my hand back. But my skin continued to tingle as it always seemed to do when Gabriel touched me.

“Thanks,” he murmured, setting the bag down at his feet, completely unperturbed by the spark.

He dug into his other back pocket and emerged with his wallet. He pulled out two crisp bills from inside and held them out to me.

I stared. “What?”

“For whatever you spent on the costume,” he said, shaking the two hundred dollar bills at me. “And your time.”

I took a cautious step back. “I didn’t using gold thread.” I chuckled. “Really. That’s too much. I can’t even remember what I spent, so…”

He eyed me. “Take it.”

“Uh, no.”

I started to walk away. I got two steps when his hand closed around my wrist and I was drawn back to him. Closer, if possible. My heart jumped even as curiosity had my head tilting back.

“Take it,” he repeated in a tone that left no room for noncompliance.

The money was stuffed into the hand he held and my fingers were curled around it. His grip remained firmly clasped around my wrist, forcing me to stay and breathe him in while falling into his eyes. I could feel the familiar ripple of longing and arousal hissing through me and I tried to pull away. Thankfully, one of the crew members took that moment to call Gabriel over, giving me the perfect exit strategy to make my big escape.

At six thirty, I made my bed up with new sheets, took a shower and pulled on my robe. I set my prehistoric laptop up on a bed tray at the foot of my bed and plugged it in. Then, I checked the webcam. While I wasn’t certain Q still wanted to video chat, I figured I would be prepared.

At six fifty-five, I sat and stared at my terrace doors.

At seven, I reached for the phone and dialed. I waited the habitual five rings.

“Hello.”

I wet my lips. “Hi, how did things go last night?”

He sighed heavily.
“Fine. It really wasn’t anything overly serious. Just teenagers being overdramatic.”

I chuckled. “I’m glad everything turned out okay.”

“Me too. Do you have your computer?”

I glanced at the tray and machine mere inches from my feet.

“Yes.”

“Turn it on, but keep me on the phone. The speakers on mine are shit.”

It was on, but I scooted closer and folded my legs under me. I moved the mouse and the screensaver faded to my desktop.

“Ready and that’s okay. I’m not even sure my laptop has speakers.”

I was pretty sure it did, but I didn’t want to waste time trying to figure it out.

He walked me through the steps of opening a browser and putting in a series of letters that were completely random, but when I hit enter, took me to a fairly elegant website. The background was the black leather of a brand new sofa, indented by thick, fat buttons. In the center were two white boxes framed in a thin, burgundy lines. I had been around enough chatrooms in the past to recognize a chat box and group name list. Another box popped onto the screen, demanding my name and email.

“Is it asking for your email?”

“Yes.”

He gave me an email address that consisted of my name in small lettering and a password—
Mine01
. The latter sent butterflies erupting in the pit of my stomach. But I typed it in carefully and hit enter.

The popup vanished and another one materialized in its place, thanking me for signing in and to enjoy myself. I found that highly amusing. The little box on the right where it showed the names of the guests was empty, except for my name, and I wasn’t sure how, because I never typed in a username, but it already had one set up for me with just my name. I figured he must have done it. Out of curiosity, I clicked my name and my profile came up. There was no icon, or barely any information under bio, except for a single word:
Taken.
Was it strange to get so excited about being so openly claimed? Maybe. But it filled me with an overflowing surge of warmth and I loved it.

“I’m here,” I said into the phone, my tone breathless to match the flutter in my chest.

A second later, the group had two names: Aoife and Q. It was irrational how excited I became at his arrival. If I had a tail, it would have been wagging … erratically.

“I see you,” I breathed, anticipation thickening my voice.

“I see you, too.”
There was a pause. I could hear keys being stroked, rapidly, like maybe he was on the computer a lot for a living, which made me wonder what he did. I figured it was one of those things we weren’t going to talk about right away.
“A screen’s going to come up in a moment,”
he told me.
“Make sure your webcam is positioned down far enough so I can only see your shoulders before you accept.”

After propping the phone between my ear and shoulder, I reached for the laptop screen and adjusted it to roughly my chest area. I figured I could fix it better once the video came up. But at least this way, he wouldn’t see my face.

“Ready.”

True to his words, an invitation for live chat popped onto the screen. My fingers shook as I drove the clicker over to the accept button and selected.

Several seconds passed, although probably not as many as I imagined. The screen turned black and flickered with strips of color. Then it cleared and there he was.

My breath caught. My mouth became inexplicably dry and my heart drummed wildly between my ears.

I couldn’t see more than a man sitting on a brown, leather sofa wearing a gray t-shirt and gray sweats. But that body looked exactly as I remembered it from our first encounter. Perhaps more. Up close, his shoulders seemed wider, his chest fuller. The muscles strained against the thin fabric of his top. I reached up to adjust my glasses and stared some more.

“Aoife?”

“Yeah?” Even to my own ears, my voice was no more than a fan-girl sigh.

I heard him chuckle.
“Sit back, baby. I want to see you.”

I hadn’t realized I’d started leaning closer and closer to the screen until he mentioned it.

“Oh!”

Clearing my throat, I leaned back, watching the small box on the bottom left hand corner to make sure I didn’t pull too far back. I stopped and adjusted the screen so it framed everything from my shoulders down to my waist.

Nerves swelled through me. Fear curdled at the back of my throat. My hands twitched with the need to cover more, to pull the blankets up and around me. Every inch of me felt exposed and horribly on display. It was made worse by the fact that I looked enormous in the tiny window. My torso seemed to take up the whole square. God, he was disgusted. He had to be. He wasn’t saying anything.

“Please say something,” I whispered, or maybe it was in my head.

“Christ.”
I didn’t know what that meant. A thousand different endings to that flared through my mind and I began to panic.
“You’re beautiful. Aoife?”

Struggling to regulate my breathing and swallow back the sting of tears, I forced my voice to be even. “Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?”

Had I made a sound? He couldn’t see my face and the badly shot image of my body had barely moved. How could he know anything was wrong?

“Nothing.” I winced at how badly my attempts at sounding upbeat came out fake.

“You’re lying to me.”
There was no mistaking the disapproval and hint of warning in the four little words.

I drew in a breath and willed my body to relax. “I wasn’t sure what you would think.” It wasn’t a lie.

He made a soft hum of contemplation.
“I think you’re overdressed, but otherwise…”

I laughed and loosened a fraction.

“You’re delicious,”
he purred in that deep, rich voice of his.

I felt my cheeks warm. “You can’t even see all of me. I could have a tail.”

His groan lifted his chest and filled my ears in silky shivers that skated down my spine.
“Oh but I have seen all of you, but I’m willing to check again.”

That hadn’t been my intention, but the thought of being asked to lower my panties and lift my robes so he could check soaked the patch of fabric between my legs.

“You’re not saying anything,”
he teased darkly.

I giggled and it was filled with tension and nerves. “I honestly don’t know what to say. I’ve never done this before.”

“Do you want me to check?”
he cajoled.

“Yes.”

His chuckle was low, throaty.
“In a minute.”
He shifted and the camera shuddered slightly before he straightened once more.
“Did you watch today?”

Instinctively, my gaze went to the terrace doors.

“Not yet.”

“Take me with you.”

I turned my head back to the screen. “Really?”

“Yes.”

Abandoning him on the bed, I scurried off and hurried to doors. The small table was weightless when I hefted it out onto the terrace. I positioned it carefully before hurrying back to disconnect the laptop from its cord and haul it outside, careful to keep the camera aimed downward. Once positioned properly, I tucked the phone back to my ear.

“Can you see?”

“Open your robes.”