Page 3 of Obsessive Stalker

Though I chew slowly, eventually I finish the burger as my mother sits at the table, looking down at her phone and pretending she’s not waiting for me to finish so that she can finally drill me for information.

“So,” she says as I swallow the last bite, pocketing her phone. “I wanted to ask you about Damien.”

Damien.

The man who kidnapped me. The same man whose face haunts my nightmares. Only, I’m not sure they’re nightmares. Like nightmares, my dreams of this man make me wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, drenched in sweat, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

But unlike nightmares, my heart doesn’t pound out of my chest with fear. Instead, it pounds with need.

It’s always the same. We’re back in the basement at the hotel, in that tiny room with the table and chairs. He walks in, those emerald green eyes glowing with a promise of what’s to come. He crosses the room, stands behind me, and smooths my hair back like he did in real life. Only instead of his hands going to my shoulders, they go to the buttons of my shirt. Unbuttoning slowly until the shirt slides down my arms. Then those large hands dip beneath the cups of my bra, and…

And then I wake up. Out of breath, body tingling, the space between my thighs wet and hot and aching.

With shame, I usually finish myself, my fingers stroking between my legs as I close my eyes and replay the dream again and again, imagining what would have happened next, if I didn’t wake up when I did.

I shouldn’t be lusting after the criminal who kidnapped me and threatened my life.

But I am.

“Our investigator was able to trace his location to Brazil this week,” she continues.

“What?” I ask, sitting straight up, suddenly feeling very awake and interested in talking to my mother.

She shakes her head and frowns, her sleek white-blonde bob swinging over her shoulders.

“Kristen, you sound almost disappointed,” she says. “I thought you’d think this is good news. He’s been traveling abroad, while we’ve been concerned that he’s in California searching for you.”

“I do think it’s good news,” I reply quickly.

Do I? Am I sure? Am I sure I haven’t actually been hoping that Damien would make good on his promise?

I’m terrified of Damien. But that doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to the sexual attraction I felt towards him. It was immediate, from the moment he shook my hand.

There are times when I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he found me here in Tahoe, taking me away from the pristine lake house. As it always did when I was growing up, the world that my parents carefully constructed for me feels stifling, not to mention boring. Being kidnapped by Damien was the opposite of that. It brought me alive.

And when his hands touched me…

“Do you have any idea why he’d be in South America?”

I shake my head, lying to my mother once again. I know exactly why he’s in South America. But I promised Vincent, Damien’s old friend and former partner in crime, that I wouldn’t tell. That I’d leave this between him and Damien, allowing their underworld of crime to go undisturbed by law enforcement and my parent’s investigators.

My mom sighs, picking at the sad, wilted, dressing-less salad in front of her.

“I just don’t understand all of this,” she says. “A man kidnaps you and your friend at a business conference, but doesn’t harm you, doesn’t assault you, doesn’t plan to hold you for ransom. Then you escape and, days later, he sends you that threatening text message from a burner phone, promising that ‘this isn’t over’.Whatisn’t over, Kristen? What could that mean?”

I shrug, avoiding her eyes.

“I don’t know,” I say, refusing to disclose the sexual tension that Damien and I experienced, the flames that rose low in my belly and that I know he felt too.

That there might be a sexual motive for Damien’s interest in me has never crossed my mom’s mind. And I already know why. Because in her world of calorie counting and cardio, fat girls don’t get the guy.

Especially not a guy like Damien.

2

Kristen

After walkingmy mother through the details of the kidnapping for the hundredth time, she finally leaves.

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