Severed Ties: A Dark Stalker Romance (Tainted Love Book 1)
Severed Ties: Chapter 36

If I ever needed confirmation that I’m a crazy fuck, this might be it.

Because not only did the woman I’m obsessed with shooting me after replaceing out I’ve been stalking her for months, which turns me the fuck on, but now all I can think about is fucking her. Images of my blood smeared across her milky-white skin fill my mind and blind me. I need it. I need her. And nothing on this earth can stop me from taking her. Certainly not a fucking bullet.

Her small body presses further into the wall as she tries to escape my heat, but she’s not going anywhere. If I have it my way, she’ll spend the rest of the day pinned beneath me, taking my cock over and over again. She snapped the only restraint I had left when she shot me, and now I’m going to take what I want.

I take a step back and pick up my knife from where I’ve deposited it on the bed. I’ve never used this one to kill anyone, always saving it to cut my own skin when my demons overwhelm me, but tonight it will be Clara who bleeds beneath the blade. I hold her still by the cuffs around her wrist and carefully slice the back of her sweater. The fabric gives way easily and Clara hisses in a sharp intake of breath at the sudden cold on her back as the wool parts.

“Tommy,” she whimpers, but she’s dead still, not brave enough to move a muscle with a knife so close to her. “I really think you need to see a doctor.”

And give her a chance to run? I don’t fucking think so. This ends today. The back-and-forth. The stalking. The tiptoeing to make sure she doesn’t get freaked out by my intensity. My aversion to touch. It all ends here.

I crouch down behind her until my face is level with her delicious ass. Fuck, this thing is a work of art. Pert and round, firm but soft. I don’t know how she’s managed to keep men away from her all this time, but I’m fucking glad for it. The body count on my conscience is long enough without adding a list of men who have touched my woman.

Her body trembles beneath my touch and I’m addicted to her fear. As if this woman didn’t already own my pitch-black soul, now her fear calls to me like a siren in the deep. I carefully slice through her yoga pants, making sure not to nick her with the blade just yet.

Clara will bleed for me tonight, but not until I’m ready.

Her breathing picks up as one of the legs gives way and I start on the other side. Each inch of skin I uncover is more delectable than the last, and I long to taste her. The thought is foreign, but it doesn’t make the demons crawling beneath my skin try to escape. It almost settles them.

Sex has always been about control. Pain. Submission. Every woman I’ve ever fucked, I’ve done it from behind roughly. There’s no warm-up, no foreplay, just fucking. Raw and dirty. And when it’s over, I get dressed, untie them, and fuck off.

But this is different.

Clara is different.

She’s everything. The light in my darkness. The angel for my demon. My very reason for existing.

I stand and shove her sweater up until it’s wrapped around her wrists with the cuffs and she’s left in nothing but a pair of black panties and an equally plain bra. I’ve never had much interest in lingerie, but I’m twitching to buy her every piece of lace I can replace just so I can slice it off her.

She’s fucking perfection.

“Tommy,” she whimpers. “Please.”

“Please what, little fawn?” Blood drips down my arm, and the wound starts to throb. The pain is almost as addictive as Clara. Almost.

I wipe my free hand up my arm, gathering the blood before smearing the crimson across her ass. The contrast is stifling, and I can’t swallow down the groan that tears from my chest. My little fawn looks so fucking perfect wearing my blood.

“I can’t. I-I…” She chokes on her words, and although I thrive on her fear, there’s something else there that I can’t place, and I don’t like it.

I stand, slowly dragging my bloody hand up her body. My cock is painfully hard, the need to sink into Clara almost overwhelming me. “Tell me what’s wrong, Clara.”

She lets out a stuttering breath. “I don’t want you to see me naked.” The words are so quiet I barely hear them over my racing heart and my own blood beating in my ears.

My first instinct is to tell her I’ve seen her naked a bunch of times on a grainy camera feed, but that doesn’t seem like a great idea, considering she just shot me for stalking her. “Because you’re shy?” I rumble against the shell of her ear, tracking my palm around her neck and leaving a trail of blood in my wake.

She shakes her head as much as the harsh bricks against her face will allow. “No. I…” A choked sob fills the room and tugs at the heart I didn’t think existed until the day she walked into my life. Darkness has plagued me throughout my whole life, but the second she stepped into my view, all there was was light.

“Clara…”

“I don’t want you to see it,” she chokes on her quiet words.

The room falls quiet aside from our heavy pants and her gentle sobs. She makes no attempt to shove me away despite my grip loosening to the point she could escape if she really wanted to. But she doesn’t. She holds still, pressed between my body and the rough bricks like moving would hurt her as much as it would me.

I suspected there was something she was keeping from me. Something I couldn’t see on my grainy security feed, but now I’m sure of it. My fawn is strong even when her body begs for her to fall apart, but this is different. The way she’s trembling in my arms, how her body presses against mine despite her mind wanting to flee, she’s not the same woman I’ve been stalking for the last year.

I shouldn’t push her on this. I shouldn’t force her to show me something she’s not ready for, but she’s my compulsion. I need to see her. I need to see all of her, even the parts she wants to hide. My shoulder throbs, but the pain only keeps me focused. It allows me to hold the demons at bay and give her the gentleness she needs right now.

Slowly, ever so fucking slowly, I turn her body. She tries to fight me, but she’s weakened by her distress. Her eyes are pressed closed tightly when I press her back against the bricks and take in the tears on her cheeks. It makes me a sick bastard, but I fucking love it when she cries. Her tears are like crack to me, and I’m addicted to every one that falls.

“Fawn,” I whisper, trying to coax her eyes open. “Open those pretty eyes for me.”

She shakes her head and lets out a pained whimper. I’m not hurting her, not physically at least, but whatever demons lie dormant that I’m about to drag free match my own, and there’s something about that that makes me fall deeper for the tiny woman in my arms. If that were even possible.

I drag my eyes down her naked body. Her perky full tits are almost impossible to drag my attention away from, but they’re not what she’s self-conscious about. How can they be when they’re the most fucking perfect things I’ve seen in my miserable life?

“Tommy, please,” her broken plea reminds me that I’m looking for the source of her pain, and when my eyes finally trail further down and lock with scars so similar to my own, my stomach turns. All I see is red.