Page 22 of Obsessive Stalker

“I need you to tell me what to do,” Damien says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that none of this is a problem anymore, if your scumbag of a father isn’t in the picture.”

I stare at him. Fiery eyes against clear, open ones. My body feels tired but not as tired as my mind does. I’ve spent the last twenty four hours in fight or flight mode, thinking I needed to defend myself against Damien when it was my own father who was the threat all along.

It’s not entirely surprising. I knew my father's friends growing up, his business associates. Several of them are in federal prison already. It’s not hard to infer that my father might have been involved in the same activities that landed his friends in prison.

He’s always been capable of something like this. Looking back, the clues and evidence are all there.

“Kristen,” Damien says, his voice urgent.

“You’re asking me if it’s okay for you to kill my father?” I ask slowly.

“Yes,” he says immediately. “Ordinarily, I would have done it right away rather than coming home to you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He looks at me, his hands traveling around my waist, holding me close to him.

“Because you already think I’m a heartless monster,” he says in that deep, soft voice. “I feared that if I killed your father and then returned to tell you the news after the fact, you’d never believe me about my reasons. You’d turn away from me for good. Right now we still have a chance.Istill have a fucking chance. And I’d like to keep it that way. So…here I am. Asking you whether it’s okay to do the thing that I know must be done. And if you tell me not to do it, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll never be able to rest again knowing that he’s out there, that a man like that posed so much danger to you and is still allowed to live.”

His voice grows darker, more threatening with every words that he speaks until eventually I realize he’s not really talking to me at all, more like thinking aloud, announcing his violent intentions and desires to the room while his eyes go black. He’s not here in the room with me right now. He’s somewhere else, imagining what he’d like to do to my father, and now I’m reminded of how terrifying Damien really is. Of what he’s capable of.

Damien is a bad man, a scary man, and right now he’s determined to keep me safe whatever the cost.

“Okay,” I say quietly.

Damien looks at me, the frown lines between his eyes fading ever so slightly as he returns to the present and to me.

“Okay,” he agrees. “I’ll make sure it’s done tonight.”

And just like that, my father’s fate is sealed. I’m certain of it, because I’m certain that this isn’t something Damien is going to allow to fail. Like the vengeance he sought on Vincent only a month before, the first time he abducted me, he won’t rest until the situation is made right.

Until my father is dead.

“Just, one thing,” I whisper to him.

“Anything, kitten.”

“Don’t…don’t let him suffer too much,” I say.

He looks surprised and disappointed at the same time.

“You have no idea how sorry I am to hear you ask me that,” he says in a bitter voice. “But okay. Fine. No torture.”

Torture.

He was already planning on it.

Would have done it, had I not asked him not to.

Everything about Damien Barlowe should send me running. I’ve done nothing but try to get away from him, all this time. And right now I think any logical person would continue to try to get away. But I don’t want to.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I lean my head on his shoulder and inhale deeply, wanting to memorize the smell of him, the feel of his hands on my waist, his body against mine.

Because my murderous stalker might turn out to be the only man who has ever treated me like I’m worth a damn.

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