Page 106 of Creep

The sight somehow broke my heart in two.

He smiled. I smiled back at him, trying to keep the hurt off my face, but Mael had always been so adept at reading me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he replied, his eyes roaming over my face and not missing much. He didn’t comment on that, however. Mael was a smart man. He wanted to see how this would play out. Did he know that I knew?

I moved to the side. “Come in.”

He walked into my apartment, looking around. I shut the door behind me and locked it, feeling like I might have made a mistake somehow. Mael was dangerous, but he wasn’t dangerous to me… right?

I didn’t know anymore.

I wouldn’t have thought of him as dangerous had I not been with him as my stalker.

I swallowed and pushed away from the door. “Do you want something to drink? I might have coffee or wine or water…”

I was rambling.

I was a rambling, nervous mess, and I was sure Mael could see right through me.

I was about to walk to my kitchen when he snaked his arms around my waist and pulled me in close to him.

I sucked in a sharp breath at the contact, feeling his hard body pressed against me. I closed my eyes, imagining my stalker in Mael’s place. It was almost comical that I had even doubted it in the first place.

They were the same. The only things different were their voices and their scent, which threw me off, but both of those things could have been changed, right?

He pressed in close to me, burying his face into my neck and breathing me in. I closed my eyes as my common sense and survival instincts fought with my desire and my stupid, hopeful naivety that Icouldbe wrong.

“Relax,” he whispered against me.

I took in a deep breath and allowed myself this one moment to be in his arms.

I turned around and buried my face in his chest, feeling tears pricking my eyes.

I thought he could be different. I thought he could be my Prince Charming. I thoughtIcould be different.

That I could be a normal girl, not weighed down by her brother’s death or loneliness, or be directionless, and he could just be… anormalman, not with the shitty childhood or the tendency to stalk women he became obsessed with.

I wrapped my arms tightly around him.

“Hey, what’s this?” he asked, pulling me back so he could look at my face.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just… tell me everything is going to be okay.”

“Everything is going to be okay,” he said with no hesitation.

I smiled at him, trying to memorize his face.

“Won’t you make love to me, Mael?”

I wanted him to make love to me, not as my stalker and not even as this person he pretended to be in front of me. I wanted him to make love to me as himself. To show me who the real Mael Beckett was.

He looked like he was debating whether or not he should address how weird I was acting. In the end, he nodded and scooped me up into his arms.

I wrapped myself around him, leaning down and taking his lips with mine, kissing him like I knew it was going to be the last kiss we ever shared, just as he walked us into my bedroom.

He carefully laid me down on my bed, as if I were the world’s priceless treasure and he was afraid to break me.

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