Page 16 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)

Birdie

Sleep has found me again. The soothing sounds of nature and waves, along with the sense of freedom no one knows where I am, have silenced the havoc and allowed me some peace at last. In these precious moments before consciousness fully claims me, I float in the space between nightmares and reality, where I can pretend I’m just another soul seeking solitude on this island.

Then I wake up, and the weight of facts crashes over me, each truth a rock pressing against my chest until breathing becomes an act of defiance.

I curl up by the window, my laptop on my thighs—Brandon brought it and some clothes with him yesterday—a cursor blinking on a blank page.

He’s splitting wood outside, shirtless in March, I might add. Tristan is in the kitchen. He’s chopping garlic and herbs with military precision.

For a romance author, this is a deluge of inspiration.

Based on this scene alone, my mind plots four and a half books with thirteen steamy chapters I won’t even write.

For a woman, in a secluded cabin with two muscular bodyguards all to herself, it’s a pleasant distraction, a fantasy coming true and a dangerous temptation.

For me, a woman and an author, however, it’s a nuisance. Because one of them looks like he needs a fake ID to drink, whose eight-pack can’t distract me enough from the face that reminds me of my worst mistake, and the other is…well, Tristan.

And somewhere out there, the stalker’s deadly obsession that has driven me into hiding, is lurking, taking over my life, potentially orchestrating more murders I can be framed for if I don’t comply with his psychotic demand—becoming Butterfly Man’s fucktoy forever.

My fingers vent on the keyboard.

I have a stalker. He is someone I knew eight years ago when I was teaching at the school in Miami and has been stalking me since. He is here now on Martha’s Vineyard. He is tech-savvy and has expensive equipment that can hack encrypted comms and complicated security systems.

The words feel clinical on the page, a writer’s attempt to distance herself from tragedy, to turn personal terror into plot points that can be controlled, managed, edited into submission.

He kills for me.

Four words that I’ve written and rewritten, as if changing their order might change their meaning. As if the act of writing them down might reveal some hidden truths I’ve missed, a way to wake up from this nightmare I’ve been living.

Aaron is dead.

My fingers tremble as I write his name, knowing that somewhere on my computer lies a fragment of the truth of what happened between us.

His parents, the principal, the therapist and the lawyer are also dead.

Each name represents a thread in this tapestry of horror, a pattern, all of them connected to that time, to that school, to those choices I made, thinking I could outrun their consequences.

Saldana is dead.

Gia is dead.

The names blur on the page. Each death another step closer to me, another piece of my past erased by someone who thinks he’s writing our future in blood.

The only one left on the list is Blake. The final gift before Butterfly Man comes to collect his prize.

My stomach churns at the nickname I’ve given him in my head—another writer’s trick to make the monster manageable, to give shape to the shapeless fear that stalks my nights.

Tristan thinks my stalker is Jacob. I think it’s one of my bodyguards. Morrison fits the profile. But how is he connected to my school? I’ve never seen him before in my life.

Words on a page, suspects lined up like characters in a story, but this isn’t fiction I can control. This is my life unraveling in real-time, and every theory feels simultaneously possible and impossible.

The police think Blake is connected to the murders. His gun is a murder weapon.

Blake… My husband told the press about my stalker, exposing one of my many secrets. Vengeance for the divorce or war, the first battle of many to come if I don’t retreat?

My writer’s mind spins possibilities, each scenario more devastating than the last. I see the headlines that haven’t been written yet, feel the judgment of readers who don’t yet know my shame.

What if he’s ready to expose more? What if he tells the world about Aaron? The video I have on Blake can put him in prison. The secrets he has on me can end my career and ruin any future I try to have.

I write these questions knowing there are no good answers, only choices between different forms of destruction.

Whose stakes are higher, the man who has lost everything or the woman that has everything to lose?

The author in me appreciates the symmetry of this dilemma, when the woman in me drowns in its implications.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, wanting to write more, needing to write more, as if putting it all down might somehow force this chaos to make sense. But some truths resist narrative structure, some fears can’t be contained by paragraphs, and some choices can’t be edited once they’re made.

I slam the computer shut and distract myself with a more tolerable rage. Brandon shouldn’t be freezing his ass out. He’s just a kid.

“He needs to finish that woodpile,” Tristan says without taking his eyes off the knife.

That man reads me too well, and his peripheral is too good; sometimes I suspect he has eyes in the back of his head. “You should be the one chopping wood, not him. It’s freezing out there.”

“And you care because? I thought you hated Brandon.”

“I don’t hate Brandon.” I just don’t like to look at him for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with his person.

“He’s just a kid, really, trying too hard to prove himself useful.

” A maternal instinct replaces my initial unease when I catch him axe another log in the cold.

“Tell him to get inside and you do it. I’ll take care of food.

You’re not as great in the kitchen as they say anyway. ”

Tristan rolls his eyes. “Brandon isn’t a kid. He’s a soldier like the rest of us. He can handle it.” Light catches his perfect hair when he glances my way. Mischief glows over his curving smirk. “But if you want to get me out of my shirt, you don’t need an excuse. You can just ask.”

Even in mischief, his voice carries commanding confidence. Everything about him radiates competence and control. It’s begging to be ruffled up. I’m itching to see what happens when all that careful restraint finally snaps. He was this close to shattering last night. How much will it take today?

I take my time getting off my seat and sauntering toward him. “How does it work?”

“Taking off my shirt? Easy, I pull it over my head and then slide the arms out.”

Someone had a clown for breakfast. I squeeze in the tiny kitchen and slouch, my back to the counter.

My eyes roam his body until his shoulders tense.

I bend my head, coaxing my way into his space, demanding he looks at me.

When his hand stills on the knife, and his gaze holds mine in warning, I strike.

“ Sex , Tristan. How does it work for you? What happens after you take off your clothes, and you’re alone with a woman you’re so desperate to fuck ? ”

His infamous smirk reappears, as if he’s unfazed, as if he’s still in control, but the way his pupils dilate and the slight tremor in his fist he hides in his pocket tell on him.

“Fucking? You want me to educate you on fucking, Mrs. Abel? I thought you were the expert. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from you.

” He shrinks the distance between our faces, his eyes on my lips, and his tongue darts and licks his.

“But I’m happy to show you how much of a good student I’ve been. ”

We both know he’s read my books—every steamy scene, every passionate encounter, every dark fantasy that screams THERAPY. The thought of him studying them, learning from them...

My heart echoes over the sound of the axe splitting wood outside. Vivid images of the forbidden man, when the wolf beneath the guard dog comes to play, race in my head, but I hold my ground. “I doubt you can. For someone who doesn’t like to be touched, it must be…challenging.”

His jaw works, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, and his fingers twitch toward his hip where his gun usually sits. An unconscious tell—reaching for a weapon that isn’t there when he feels cornered. Not by physical threats, but by words that cut too close to home.

“Not if I’m in control.” There’s a roughness to his voice that hasn’t been there before. The confidence in his voice sounds forced now, like he’s reading from a script of how he thinks this scene should play out rather than letting himself feel it. “Women love that, don’t they? A man in charge.”

The kitchen feels even smaller as he uses the height difference to his advantage, looming over me with predatory intent.

“Isn’t it every woman’s dream to be tied up to a strong man’s bed while he chokes and spanks and pulls her hair as he fucks her senseless every way he wants? A good girl to a very bad boy.”

Every letter is a match on gasoline, and for a moment all I can think about is rope against my skin and those capable hands putting me exactly where he wants me.

But there’s something mechanical in the way he describes it, like he’s reciting what he thinks he should say.

The fantasy he assumes I want, pulled straight from the pages of my books.

“Maybe.” I lean in, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him, but careful not to touch. “Is that what you think I want?” My voice comes out huskier than intended. “Or is that what you need, complete control so you never have to let anyone close enough to really touch you?”