Page 14 of Darling Psycho

Did it make him a bigger deviant to admit he’d installed the hidden cameras the week before he was arrested, knowing he was going to give Angela the keys to the cabin one day?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Every move had been calculated.

Dark and forbidden down to the last inch, with no wiggle room for excuses.

Taboo, some might say, since she’d been his teen shadow.

But it only mattered what people thought if Lawless held stock in the opinions of bad fish.

He knew what he was.

And he’d taken over a thousand days to get okay with that man.

Now, as Angela was bathed in luminous light, he could look his fill until the hunger roared through his white meat.

Able to see how she’d changed in small, subtle ways.

She’d grown into her gangly limbs, no longer hanging like ropes by her body she didn’t know what to do with. She carried herself with sexy confidence.

His dirty pulse gave a sloppy kick beneath his skin when she bent at the waist, presenting her silk skirt covered ass to the camera when an orange and white ball came bounding down the hallway and started sneaking around Angela’s legs. He’d warned her never to get attached to the stray cats he took in to nurse back to health and then re-home. It was like telling a bull not to be a bull. She attached to them all like Velcro and cried when he gave them away, leaving him to console a weepy girl with English toffee, stern words, and awkward pats.

With Oscar, it was different.

Weak human and feline emotions attaching to one another.

It never ended well.

But there they were, on his kitchen floor, loving each other.

And then he watched the girl trek upstairs. Every part of the cabin he’d designed was familiar to him, and for a man who guided his privacy, it wasn’t weird seeing someone else wandering around his home because that someone was Angela. His eyes followed her down the stairs minutes later, and his heart kicked up a pace to a dull roar inside his tight chest when he watched her head toward a room he knew well.

He could say he only turned on the camera feed to make sure Benz didn’t go home with Angela, but where the fuck would he slot that convenient lie into?

Ethics was the difference between knowing what you must do and what was the right thing to do.

His veil dropped.

His lies melted away.

His dark solitude yawned to grab someone into it with him.

Facing the truth like a big boy, Lawless’ gaze observed the girl he had a hand in helping to raise because she’d attached herself to him like mold against his will.

And the truth was glaringly bright now, as it was over a thousand days ago.

She was as beautifully sinful now as she was on the day he left her behind.

Who could say when the grain of heat flourished inside his chest. Only that it was there, coming alive.

In the bedroom—She’d chosen to use his bedroom—he watched as Angela picked sleepwear from the drawers, tossing them on the enormous bed. When she unzipped the skirt, after whipping off the long-sleeved shirt, flashing a shade of red on her naturally olive-colored body, Lawless moved his finger over her image only once.

Like a monster would stroke its favorite caged pet.

I’m home. I’m here for you now.

And then he switched off the screen.