Page 51 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
Absurd. She's not going to call. She's going to sit at her kitchen table and read the contract over and over, looking for loopholes that don't exist, escape routes that will never open. She's going to wrestle with her conscience and her fear and her desperate need for the money I'm offering. And eventually—tomorrow, or the day after, or Monday at the latest—she's going to sign.
And then she'll be mine.
Officially. Contractually. Legally.
But that's not enough. That's not what I really want.
I lean back in my chair and close my eyes, letting myself sink into the memory of the lunch. The way she looked in that navy blouse, professional but soft, the fabric moving against her skin when she breathed. The way her voice trembled when she asked about exclusivity, as if she knew exactly what I meant by the word. The way she met my eyes, even when she was terrified, refusing to look away.
She's strong. Stronger than she knows.
I want to break that strength. I want to shatter her composure, peel away her defenses, expose the raw, vulnerable creature beneath. I want to see her cry, hear her beg, feel her tremble in my arms.
But I also want—
I open my eyes, disturbed by the direction of my thoughts.
I also want her to choose me. Not because she has no other options, but because she sees something in me worthchoosing. Because she looks at the monster and decides, against all reason, that she wants it anyway.
The way I saw something in her, that night in the doorway. The recognition that passed between us, predator to prey, darkness to darkness.
She has shadows in her. I've seen them—in her sketches, in the way she tends dying flowers, in the way she kept my dahlia alive instead of throwing it away. She's drawn to darkness, even as she fears it. Even as she runs from it.
I want to be the darkness she stops running from.
Is that love? I don't think so. I'm not capable of love, not the way normal people mean the word. Whatever capacity I might have had for softness was burned out of me at St. Augustine's, in the years of torment and the blood-soaked aftermath.
But it's something. Something I've never felt before. Something that defies categorization, that resists the neat labels I usually apply to my emotions.
Want. Need. Hunger.
Mine.
My phone buzzes. Hutton again.
"Sir, update. The subject has stopped reading the contract. She's... crying."
Crying. Tears streaming down her face as she stares at the document that will bind her to me.
I should feel triumph. Satisfaction. The pleasure of watching prey finally understand the trap.
Instead, I feel something else entirely. Something that might, in another man, be called concern.
"Is she—" I stop myself. What was I going to ask? Is she all right? Of course she's not all right. I'm the reason she's not all right.
"Sir?"
"Nothing. Continue monitoring. Inform me when she signs."
"Yes, sir."
I end the call and stare at the phone in my hand.
She's crying. Because of me. Because of what I've done to her, what I'm doing to her, what I'm going to keep doing until she has nothing left except me.
The game is entering a new phase. Once she signs that contract, she'll be in my world regularly. At the estate. In my space. Close enough to touch, close enough to smell, close enough to taste.
The proximity will either satisfy this hunger or make it unbearable.
