Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,45

to his word, he haunted me.

Loulou didn’t like it, but Priest acted as if she didn’t exist. Where I went, he went, stalking me like it was his profession.

I knew he technically worked at Hephaestus Auto, that his exacting hands made him one of the best mechanics at the shop, but for the last ten days, he was with me nearly every moment save Sunday at First Light Church. We didn’t discuss it, but Priest made sure another brother was available for church duty. I knew there was something there, something sinister in his memory and its connection to religion, but I didn’t press. I wasn’t stupid. He was entertaining the idea of more with me only tenuously and there was no way I’d threaten it by asking invasive questions, by peeling back old scars.

It amused me to see how my university friends and peers responded to the long, red-haired man with tattoos of death motifs stamped all over his freckled flesh. Those who had the balls to look at him for longer than a second were met with those cold, pale eyes, unblinking and untranslatable. He always sat by the door to the classroom, thick thighs spread too wide in the little seat, large hands too big for the little desk attached to the right side of each chair. He whittled when he was bored, and the one professor who made a stink about it was subjected to his scathing glare. I’d had to share the note from the police allowing him in class with me in order to get her to let him stay.

Psychopaths, Professor Wells reminded me quietly after reading the note and handing it back, were chameleons mimicking our own emotions back at us. They understood feeling only in abstract, not in personal identification. Whatever trust I might have placed in this man, she urged me to reconsider.

I smiled at her, patted her hand in thanks, and flipped my curled ponytail over my shoulder as I’d practically skipped back to my seat. It was nice to know my armchair psychologist diagnosis of Priest as a psychopath was confirmed by a professional.

And when the professor looked at Priest?

He used the blade of the small dagger he whittled with to clean under his fingernails then winked––winked––at her.

I couldn’t stop the giggle in my throat, though I did hide it behind my hand.

It was a weird time.

I was scared and uneasy, constantly vigilant about my surroundings, carving out time every day to practice defending myself with Priest. I hadn’t slept in my own home or been surrounded by my things for almost two weeks. Sampson was staying with King and Cressida, and I went by every day to feed Delilah.

But I had Priest.

Finally.

If one can even claim possession of a man like Priest.

At times, he looked at me as if through me, as if I didn’t exist. At first, it hurt me to see that because I could feel the lurch of my heart every time I looked at him. But then I studied closer and noticed he only ignored me when he was focused on a task, when he was assuring we were safe.

That was what made him so savage and brilliant. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of his agenda.

It might not have been an average girl’s dream, but I was freaking thrilled to be the obsession of this particular psychopath.

The other times, in the rare snatches of time we’d had alone together, I saw a different side of the Irish enforcer than I ever had before. He wasn’t softer, because he didn’t have that in him. If anything, he was more intense, scary almost in his laser focus. But that focus was all on me. As if his entire world had narrowed to the dimensions of my body, and his only motive in life was to get to the bottom of my soul.

It was exhilarating, as terrifying and intense as being the focus of the religious serial killer and only slightly different.

I tried not to dwell too long on the similarities. If I’d learned anything in my years studying psychology, it was to avoid self-diagnosis at all costs.

“Bea.”

Eric’s voice infiltrated my daydreaming, but it took me a second of slow blinking to pull myself from my thoughts and focus on the dark-haired man standing beside me at my desk in the sound studio.

I smiled at him. “Hey, honey, how are you?”

His scowl was fierce as he dropped to a crouch so he could be