“I NEED YOUR HELP.” CALEB looked up from the file he was studying on his desk and stared at the woman who stood trembling in front of him. She was five-four or so, with a pleasing full figure that she had clothed in a white cotton sundress.

She was also stunningly beautiful. One of those women with a mixed heritage that resulted in skin the color of coffee with lots and lots of cream. Her full red lips pursed a little as she waited for him to acknowledge her request and he could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. It was a clear sign of her nerves, just as the way she wrinkled up her small pert nose was. It was also evident in her breathtaking green eyes that somehow managed to be light and vibrant as well as shadowed. Her hair was a riot of curls that looked as soft as down, and his hands itched to sink deep into that mass and grab hold.

It took him a full thirty seconds to wrench his mind away from her looks and focus on what she had just said. “I’ll help if I can.” Caleb stood from his seat and reached out to shake her hand as he motioned for her to take one of the chairs facing him.

“Thank you,” she said, while her hand trembled within his grasp and she sat down with a grateful sigh. “I’m sorry to barge in without calling and making an appointment, but I just came from the police station for the third time and they are just unable to do anything about this.”

“Why don’t you start by telling me your story from the beginning.” The poor thing was obviously rattled, and Caleb tried to keep his voice as soothing as possible. “I’m Caleb, by the way.”

“Oh,” she laughed nervously, “sorry. I’m Nadia. Okay, the beginning, that’s always a good place to start. I’m an author. I write very steamy romance novels, primarily for women.” She paused for a moment, as though waiting for him to comment on that, but all he did was motion for her to keep going.

“Well, as a writer, I tend to be under the radar. There’s comfort in that. Even though my books are fairly successful, I can come and go as I please and nobody ever recognizes me. It’s the same for most authors. You have to be someone huge like Stephen King or JK Rowling for the general public to be able to recognize you on sight. But for most of us, especially at my level, we never have to worry about being called out in a crowd.

“I do have fans, though,” she continued. “I get fan mail every day through email and social media. It’s always been nice. It blows my mind that people will take time out of their lives to write to me and tell me that they like my work, or that my story has touched them in some way.” She smiled self-consciously. Stopped for a moment, and a flush darkened her cheeks. “Oops, sorry. None of that has anything to do with why I’m here. God, I’m just so rattled.”

Caleb smiled to encourage her. He didn’t mind her rambling. The story she wove gave him an idea of the type of person she was, a sweet and thoughtful one. “Just keep going. You’ll get there.”

“So, about six months ago I got a really disturbing email. It was graphic and detailed.” Her cheeks didn’t just flush now, they burst into flames. “See, when I said I write very steamy novels, I wasn’t kidding. They are explicit and descriptive. Very erotic and primarily in the BDSM genre. Are you familiar with the term BDSM?” Caleb almost swallowed his own tongue. He and his business partner, Jonas, were active members of two local BDSM clubs in the area, and had both achieved Master status years ago. Not wanting to stop her momentum and get into detail however, he just nodded his assent so she would continue.

“But, it’s in the context of the story. It’s my books. Not my life. I don’t write from experience. These are just my fantasies and imagination.” She stumbled to a stop with a blush before she continued. “And lots of research. So, when this letter came and it was all about how this guy snuck in to my house in the middle of the night and ravished me, it freaked me out. It was all wrong. It wasn’t like my books at all; it was about torture and terror. BDSM is edgy, sure, but this was miles away from that.”

Caleb knew that later he would obsess about the ‘my fantasies’ part, and read her books for himself to see just what those fantasies entailed. For now he was more concerned with the way all that lovely color had just drained from her face. It was now pale and ashen as she finally touched on the fear that had driven her to come here.

“It wasn’t even well written.” She smiled—an attempt to shake some of that fear—he could tell, but she wasn’t fooling him or herself. “I mean come on, if you are going to write a descriptive love scene to an erotic author, you better know your stuff, right?”

“Right.” He gave her a token chuckle, in an effort to ease some of her tension. He could actually see her body tightening up as she braced to tell him the rest.

“The letter was disgusting. He was talking about cutting me and using my blood as lubricant, and that was the mildest thing he wrote.” She dug in to the floppy, oversized bag she’d brought with her and pulled out a file. When she handed it over and opened it, the images he first saw tore a curse from him.

“The letters kept coming. And he started sending pictures, too, as you can see.” Her eyes filled when she added, “It got really scary when he started sending pictures of me.” She reached forward and shuffled through the mass of them and started pulling out photos of herself in different settings. Some were obvious book signings at public venues and others, more chilling, were taken while she was out on various errands. Walking a dog, grocery shopping, working out at the gym.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

Her hand actually trembled when she pulled out the one of her naked in what looked like the gym’s locker room shower. “How long ago was this one?” He was pissed. The malice behind the letters and the photos was clear as day.

“I’m not sure. That could have been taken any time up to about a month ago. I stopped going after I got it.”

“Who could blame you?”

“It was pretty bad by that point. Then it got worse. He got my phone number. The texts and calls were awful. I changed my number and he got the new one too. And blocking him doesn’t work, because he calls from those disposable cell phones, and it’s a different number every time.” Tears filled her eyes, and fear and frustration shone clear in their jewel-bright depths. “Then last night I came home from visiting my parents and he’d been in my house.”

Caleb felt every muscle in his body tense. Security was his profession. He’d dealt with people in various forms of distress and danger since he’d entered this field at the tender age of eighteen, more than seventeen years ago now. Yet hearing that from the woman across from him triggered something he never let himself feel before. It just got personal. Why and how she’d gotten under his skin after only minutes didn’t matter to him. All he knew was, without a shred of doubt, she had gotten to him on a level that was beyond the job, and her safety had just become his primary concern.

“I walked in and my alarm had been deactivated somehow. My house was in disarray. Not ransacked really, but it was like he just went around and touched everything. I hadn’t dusted yet this week, and I could see that all my knickknacks and pictures had been moved. All of them. The couch was a mess, with the cushions scattered, and the throw blanket was crumpled in the middle of it instead of folded on the back. He’d even used my toothbrush. “ Her face clearly showed her revulsion, then she shuddered and whispered “And he ejaculated on my pillow.”