Page 3

Chapter 3

Benji Morrison

He was here.

He was real. A living, breathing, smiling human being. Elijah wasn’t just some fictional character locked up behind my computer screen. He didn’t live miles and miles away, nor did he appear any different than the man I’d come to know over my time watching his streams.

My mouth went dry. Meeting new clients wasn’t exactly a difficult part of my job, but that changed when I was meeting someone who I already intimately knew. I’d seen Elijah lying back with his legs spread, a hand massaging his full balls as he blew his load all over his sexy chest.

I couldn’t say that about any of my other clients, that was for sure.

“Come,” I managed to say. “Let’s step into my office.”

I turned and tried to compose myself, even though I could feel Eli’s intense stare boring a hole through my back. There’s no way he could possibly know I was a, well, fan of his. I just had to play it cool. I could do that.

“You can take a seat here.” I pulled out the chair in front of my desk. Eli stepped into my office—into my space —and looked around, seemingly admiring it all while I secretly admired him.

I’d been working at Stonewall Investigations for a little over a year now, so I’d had plenty of time to add personal touches: a watercolor sunset painting I had picked up on a trip to Paris, a wooden sculpture of an eagle one of my clients had gifted me. A couple of books were neatly stacked next to my computer. A few nonfiction reads and two thrillers I was working my way through.

“Nice reads,” Eli said as he sat. “I’m actually reading The Missing Roommate , too.”

“How are you liking it?”

“Meh,” he said with a shrug. “I think I already know who killed her.”

“Same.”

Eli grinned. Fuck me, did he have a sexy smile. “Say their names on three. One, two, three: Janice.”

“Emily.”

Eli blinked and laughed. Wow, was that sound beautiful. Almost as nice as the sounds he’d make when he was nearing an orgasm. “Emily? Really?” he asked.

“You don’t think her writing up that fake email to cover for her roommate missing work was suspicious?”

“Oh yeah, that was sus as fuck. But, I don’t know, Janice just seems sketchy. Then again, you’re the detective, so you’re probably right.”

My turn to laugh. “I get some things wrong.”

“Well, I’m almost to the end of the book, so I’m going to find out soon anyway. I won’t spoil it for you, though. Unless I’m right. Then I may shoot you an email.”

You can spoil whatever you want, Eli.

“I’ll make sure I send it to Spam,” I replied with a wink.

He rewarded my sarcasm with another golden laugh.

Fuck. He was making me hard.

I squeezed my legs together under my desk, glad to have some cover. “So, what brings you in today?” I asked, my hands in a loose fist. He leaned back in the chair, taking in a deep breath. A tuft of soft brown hair stuck out from his cap. He wore that same pink hat in some of his streams.

Fuck. Was I being a creeper? This entire situation felt like fate, except fate had nothing to do with Elijah walking in through the Stonewall doors.

Still… fate did have a hand in me finding him. And it wasn’t as if I snuck into his house, broke into his phone, and illegally stole all of his nudes. Eli put himself out there, to be watched by thousands of people online. I doubted that I was the first person to cross him in the real world while knowing what he did in the cyber one.

“Damn, I don’t even know where to start.”

You can start on your knees.

“Wherever feels the most natural,” I answered. My cock throbbed against my thigh. I had to click into work mode, but his pouty pink lips were making that incredibly difficult.

Elijah started by telling me his profession (as if I didn’t already know) and went into the issues he’d been having with a certain anonymous user. The messages from this “Nomad” person were definitely reasons to be concerned. They’d started off innocently enough until they began to sound more desperate, more rage-fueled.

“It gets worse,” Elijah said as he put away his phone. “I haven’t told anyone this. But there was a letter inside my mailbox. It was from Nomad. Handwritten, short, really fucking unsettling.”

I cocked my head. “Did you bring it with you?”

“I only have photos. I’ve also gotten the police involved. They were going to test it for fingerprints, but, I dunno, something about the way the cops were talking to me made me feel like they weren’t going to do much.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll follow up with them and make sure I apply some pressure. I can guarantee you I won’t slack on this.”

“Thank you,” Eli said, genuine gratitude in his voice. He handed me his phone. It had a cracked screen protector, with a soft black leather case, still warm from his hand. The letter he’d been sent looked like it had traveled by pigeon. It was wrinkled and stained with a corner ripped off.

The message was brief, written in a shaky script:

I need you to know how perfect you are. Would you be open to meeting face-to-face? Respond to my DMs. Please.

“When did you get this?”

Elijah chewed his bottom lip. It made my blood heat. His lips were plush, sinful, the kind that could make a man snap like a branch in a storm.

Fucking hell. Focus.

“Three nights ago,” he finally said. His voice was a little tight, like he didn’t want to admit how much it bothered him. “I almost threw it out, but something about it… it just felt off, you know? Like this wasn’t just some random person. Like it was personal.”

It was personal. Whoever this Nomad guy was, he wasn’t some casual creeper hiding behind a keyboard. He had access—to Elijah’s real life, his real address. And that meant he wasn’t just some online stalker getting off to fantasies.

He was escalating.

I stared at the photo on Elijah’s screen, fingers twitching.

As polite as the words seemed, this letter basically read: I see you. I know where you live. You’re mine.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my focus back on the case. Not on the way he was licking his lips like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

“You did the right thing keeping this,” I said, handing him back the phone. “The police might not take it seriously, but I do.”

Elijah looked at me, his big blue eyes scanning my face like he was trying to decide whether he trusted me or not.

“Do you think I’m actually in danger?” he asked, his voice quieter now, like he was waiting for me to confirm his worst fear.

I nodded. I wasn’t someone to sugarcoat things. “Yes. I unfortunately do.”

He inhaled sharply, rubbing a hand over his face. “Shit.”

That one word cracked something in my chest. He was scared. And that did things to me. Dark, dangerous things. It made me want to snap my fingers and make this Nomad character appear in my office so that I could slam a fist against their jaw, all before the cops dragged them away to jail. No one deserved to live their life in fear for simply existing. The paranoia that this brought to Eli’s life must have been exhausting.

“What do I do?” Eli asked.

“Well, we’ll start with the basics,” I said, leaning forward. “Security cameras. Alarm systems. Do you have any at your place?”

He shook his head. “I mean, my building has some security cameras, but nothing inside my apartment.”

“Then that’s priority number one. I’ll help you set it up.”

Elijah blinked. “You’d do that?”

I smirked and gave him a casual shrug. “It’s part of the job.”

It definitely wasn’t. I could have easily recommended a service, sent him a list of local security companies, kept my distance. But the idea of someone else being the one to install those cameras, the idea of someone else having access to his space, his bedroom?—

No.

If anyone was going to be watching over him, it was going to be me.

I was already doing it, anyway.

Elijah hesitated for half a second before nodding. “Okay,” he said. “That would actually help a lot. I’m absolute shit at installing or building things.”

He chuckled, and his shoulders dropped slightly, some of the tension easing out of them. The fact that he already felt safer just being in this office, with me—fuck, that did something to me.

Something possessive.

I let the moment linger for a second before leaning back, tilting my head slightly. “Tell me more about Nomad,” I said. “You said the messages started innocent. What changed?”

Elijah shifted in his seat, rubbing his hands together. I wanted to get up, walk behind him, and rub his shoulders. Wanted to tell him to relax, that I’d take it from here. “I guess it was when I stopped responding to his messages,” he admitted. “At first, I tried to be polite, you know? Just a quick ‘thanks for the support’ or whatever. But then the messages started getting… weird.”

“How weird?”

He swallowed. “It started off as little things—him saying he could tell when I wasn’t enjoying myself on stream. That he knew when I was just performing and when I was really into it.”

My hands clenched under the desk.

“That’s already bad,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.

Elijah nodded. “Yeah, but then it got worse. He started talking like we were in a relationship, saying shit like, ‘You don’t have to fake it passion for me’ and ‘I know what you really need.’”

My jaw clenched.

“And then when you ignored him?” I asked, already figuring out the answer.

His gaze dropped. “That’s when the threats started,” Eli said.

My blood went cold.

“I don’t know why I let it go on for so long,” he admitted. “I should have blocked him the second things started getting weird.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing my body to unwind. “It’s not your fault, Elijah.”

He looked up at me, something hesitant in his aquamarine eyes.

“Yeah, but?—”

“No.” My voice was firm, cutting off whatever self-blame he was about to spill. “You didn’t do anything wrong. People like this? They don’t stop because you’re polite, and they don’t stop because you ignore them. They stop when they’re forced to.”

Elijah studied me for a long moment.

Then, slowly, his lips curled into something small, something real.

“Good,” he said, voice softer now. “Because I want him to stop.”

I nodded, my own smile sharp as a blade.

“Then let’s make that happen.”

“Thanks, Detective. ”

There was a tone to the way he said detective that made my toes curl.

Fuck. This job was going to be hard, for a hundred different reasons.