Page 14 of Stalker's Valentine

Your secret admirer.

Secret admirer.

“Who the hell could be my secret admirer?” I wondered. I didn’t go out enough to meet anyone.

I didn’t even talk to people online or have guy friends. The only men I might slightly talk to were my brother’s friends, but that was mostly to give them my drink order or small talk about the brewery.

“Who could it be?” I said out loud. No one came to mind. I was completely blank. I knew who I would want it to be. Who I’d love to find out was my secret admirer. It was crazy and way out of this world. There was no way.

Even so, my lips twitched, and I relaxed back onto the couch. I let myself daydream for a minute. My eyes fluttered shut as my thoughts drifted to the one and only man who had driven me to the edge of bliss time and time again.

All without ever touching me.

The one man who plagued my dreams and free moments. One I had been thinking about every night since I had bumped into him at the start of the new year.

Suddenly, I sat up straighter and chewed on my bottom lip. I looked around, getting that feeling I hadn’t been able to shake off for the last couple of weeks. That feeling someone was watching me.Closely.I shook my head and dropped the note onto the couch next to me. I was being ridiculous.

I was home, not out and about. It was all in my head.

I should just introduce myself to Austin’s brother. More than likely, the man would open his mouth and say something stupidlike every other man ever had. Or he would look at me like a fly he would like to swat away.

“This has to be one of Raven’s stupid jokes,” I muttered to myself, convincing myself she was pranking me.

But prank or not, I was going to have a sweet treat! The delicately cut-up fruit arrangement was my favorite. Something only someone super close to me would know. Maybe it wasn’t Raven but all three of my annoying sisters?

The arrangement cost a pretty penny, and it wasn’t like Raven, as a twenty-one-year-old, would have the money to toss on a joke. But then again, my baby sister’s sense of humor was sometimes a little wonky, so who knew?

Either way, I decided to pour myself a glass of white wine, turn on one of my favorite movies, and snack away the rest of the night.

merritt

. . .

I turned the knob carefully,sure that lights and sirens would flash at my back at any moment. Cops would come storming for me any moment, pushing me down to the ground to place me under arrest.

But when I closed the door behind me, I was left in nothing but the light purple hue of the TV screen my girl had left on. I almost wished someone would catch me in the act.

“I can see why you like her,”Oleg had drawled tauntingly over the phone. My jaw had clenched when Oleg said that to me. I’d known it was a mistake to ask him to get some things delivered to her. I didn’t want just any random man coming to her doorstep. His men had been doing it, posing as Amazon or UPS drivers for the last week.

But this last one, he had done himself for some fucking reason.

“Relax. Not for me. I can see her with you. Though, maybe you should make a real move soon, eh?”he’d advised. I shook away the conversation.

Soon.The word played in a loop like a prayer and a promise while I stood at the closed door. My eyes locked with hersleeping body on the lumpy loveseat. The thing looked like it had been bought used a couple of generations ago. Not that her face would tell you it was uncomfortable. If you tried to guess, just by looking at my cutie, Scarlett looked so damn relaxed, you would have thought she was sleeping on a fucking cloud.

But I knew how lumpy and hard it was.

I’d sat on the couch multiple times when I’d stopped by at night to watch her sleep. To be closer to her. The first two nights, I’d stayed exactly where she was sleeping. On the couch. Lumpy and hard. I’d paid for it the next day. I’d sat there those two nights, forcing my body to stay in its place, ignoring the way everything in my body yelled at me to step foot into her most private space.

But by the third night, the temptation had mounted to insurmountable heights, and I’d caved. Me, the man who could live without anything, was made weak by a sweet cutie with bedroom eyes that called to me like a siren song.

I’d stood at the threshold of her room like a sentry. Watching over her as she dreamt. Every night since, I couldn’t take a full breath, afraid her scent would burrow itself deeper inside my lungs, engrain itself into my DNA. Not that she wasn’t already there. I was sure of it. I worried she would wake up and see my shadow in the darkness.

But not once did she stir.

Every night, she lay there, facing towards the door, dark lashes fanning over her cheeks and the peace on her face making my knees weak. Night after night, I stood in the shadows and didn’t give in. My hands itched to touch her, and my body ached to lie next to her, but I didn’t break..

I simply watched.

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