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I’m in the back of one of my fleet of Mercs. My driver, Vinny, is taking me down a familiar old road through the woods to slake my thirst so I can think. I need to take the edge off. I need a warm mouth wrapped around my cock—a blonde that looks just enough like Maddie to let me pretend for a while. And I know exactly who to go to; Brandy is always so pliant and accommodating. If only I could purge this desire for Madison, and move on to someone else—to something that resembles sanity.
It’s been three days since I saw Maddie, the first time so up close and personal in fourteen years. I almost killed those two men in the alley right there in front of her—I was so enraged that anyone would dare to touch her. But then I saw the look on her face and thought better of it. I was surprised those two tweakers had been able to develop an appetite for anything but meth, and it was their bad luck that they did.
I was angry at her for putting herself in danger. What was she thinking? And paying for her half of dinner with that loser? She should have used that cash to get herself home safely. I had a tail on her to the restaurant, and then one of my guys brushed past her inside and planted a listening device and a tracker.
As soon as I was finished making my terms clear with her father, I took over surveillance. I wanted to kill her date, but if everyone around her starts dropping dead, I will never hear the end of it from Brian.
Sloppy and emotional is what he’d say about it. He’s always thought I’m far too sloppy and emotional for the work I do. Fuck him. I’m the heir, and it doesn’t matter if some outsider thinks I’m not cut out for this. I am plenty cut out for this.
There’s a part of me that feels like Maddie should have known who I was. I mean what are the odds of her running into a stalker savior in an alley the same night some guy pays her father a visit to demand her hand in marriage? Why on earth would that be two different men? But she didn’t know her unlikely hero was stalking her. I guess she thought I was some random guy who just happened to be there. I’m surprised she didn’t see the black Merc pacing her, but I stayed far enough back to avoid spooking her. She was way more oblivious than she should have been out walking alone at night in the city.
And I look a lot different now from when we were kids. There were no tattoos for one thing. I was skinny and awkward back then, but I still hadn’t reached my full six-foot-four height. And I wasn’t working out yet, so I hadn’t filled out. Maddie was dealing with a boy then, and now I’m a whole grown adult man. My voice hadn’t even fully finished changing. I still had the voice of a boy, not a hardened killer and crime lord. That shit changes you.
So of course, she wouldn’t know it was me. I was half afraid she’d recognize me when I showed up in the alley. But while lust darkened her eyes, recognition did not. She’s attracted. For the first time, she wants me as much as I want her—at least on a pure visceral primal level. That thought sends a thrill through me. She’s scared to want me, but she does, and that’s enough for now. I can work with that.
When I drove her home I couldn’t resist stroking the side of her delicate throat unmarred by ink. If she ever gets a tattoo I will make sure she lives to regret it. I don’t want to see a single drawing on that beautiful silky skin. That is mine, and if anything marks her forever, it will be me.
Her hair was so unbelievably soft. It smelled like strawberries and rose petals and just a slight hint of citrus. I would never think to put those scents together, but coming off her it made me want to eat her.
After I dropped her off at her house, I went back to the area and hunted them and made sure they were off the streets for good. But even that didn’t minimize the blood lust that has been growing in me, a steady thrum under my skin beating in perfect time to my own heartbeat. But it isn’t my heartbeat, it’s something more, a second living thing that demands retribution… revenge. And not just for Maddie.
I was listening in on the Prescott residence through the satellite feed while driving back from handling her attackers. I’d missed the first part and had to listen to it later. But we record everything and keep it in the cloud.
She definitely doesn’t know who I am. I was struck with a deeply unfamiliar feeling while I listened to her resistance to her fate.
Guilt.
She had nightmares from me?
It hurts to know she thought I was so weird and unlovable, that I was just some complete creep she couldn’t get far enough away from. In my imagination I’d thought somehow that she’d see me as the man who rescued her from poverty when her dad fucked up and lost it all. I’d be the one who could give her everything, the one she could count on.
I’d save her from a life that no longer had enough. Even though I orchestrated that whole thing with the IRS, she didn’t need to know that. I wasn’t prepared for how strong her hatred and refusal would be. How ungrateful she would be. I never pegged Madison Prescott as someone who would prefer to be poor than to marry someone like me.
It may be my greatest miscalculation.
She seemed like the kind of person who would marry for money. And I know that sounds harsh. I just mean that she’s always been sheltered and protected and had everything taken care of for her until recently. She grew up never having to worry about how a bill would be paid, and it was unfathomable to me that she would ever want to live in a world with that kind of uncertainty if she had the option not to.
When I got home that night, I sat in my driveway and pulled up the camera feed of her in her bedroom. She was finishing up a conversation with her friend. She stripped, unworried, unconcerned and unaware that my eyes might be on her. I drank in the sight and allowed it to imprint itself upon my brain. For as much as I have stalked her, I’ve always denied myself access to her unclothed form. Maybe I’m old-fashioned that way and wanted to wait until we were engaged—until it was something real… instead of just teasing myself with something I knew I could never have.
Vinny drops me off at the entrance to The Black Gardens. I don’t need him to wait; I have another way home tonight.
It’s the most exclusive gentleman’s club in the city, though it’s not really in the city—not technically. It’s an out-of-the way place on hundreds of acres of farmland, masquerading as just another wealthy person’s hidden estate. I’ve been coming here since my uncle Martin got me on the membership list for my eighteenth birthday.
He thought he was helping me lose my virginity. No, I lost that at thirteen. After I was expelled and transferred to a private school for delinquent kids with rich families like mine I found the first person that looked like Maddie and tried my best to lose myself inside a cheap substitute, trying to forget about her.
But I couldn’t.
I drank and smoked and experimented with drugs and listened to overloud rebellious punk music and fucked every blonde that looked like her that I could find—trying to rip her out of me, trying to peel her off my soul. I know I’m not normal. I know this is not normal. I have no excuse for my obsession, for the need to completely and utterly possess this woman.
Why her, specifically? I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times.
When I was six, I thought she was just so cool. That’s what I’d told Uncle Martin as I’d obsessed about her, planning my chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles from Frosted Delights—the good bakery—for the Valentine’s party where I would make my move. I was such a stupid kid, far too innocent for the family I came from… hand-drawing her a valentine... gluing glitter on it, thinking that she would want to be my girlfriend.
I don’t know why I couldn’t let it go when she told me she already had a boyfriend. Brayden from Mrs. Hancock’s class.
The way she had so brazenly lied to me. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He’d just made her a better valentine. And he knew how to play it cool better than me. He didn’t follow her around like some puppy eager for the smallest scrap of affection.
But it didn’t matter because by the end of the next week he was her boyfriend. And if I were normal, if my brain wasn’t a fucked-up nightmare of crazy, that would have been the end of it. I would have gotten into space or dinosaurs and ignored girls for a while, and then found someone who liked me back.