Page 155 of Stutter

But then Raven re-enrolls at RMU.

Catching Damon in her room made me furious, but I allowed it. Then it was Jonas and goddamn. I was almost impressed. But the envy I felt was complete and utter torture.

Finding her with a broken heart makes me murderous then giving her a bath… it takes everything in me not to take what I want. To take her away. But there’s another place Icantake her to.

I treasure our time together at her lake house, feeling her slip into bed with me one last time, holding her close, breathing her in. My slice of heaven.

But then it all goes downhill from there.

I drop out of Hartford to keep a closer eye on her and thank God I did. I jerk off, watching as Chase licks her pussy silly, becoming a green-eyed monster in the flesh but then… a splash inthe water makes me jerk off harder when I realize what she’s doing and come so hard I’m breathless when’s he gets back on the dock, naked, and she pushes Chase's body away with her toe.

I watch everything,seeeverything according to the cameras I placed about the lake house, fisting my cock so much it’s raw. I tell Stephen only what he wants to know.

No, she isn’t talking.

No, it can’t be her behind these murders because when I see her signing, when she’s talking to me… I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.

I only have less than a year in my sentence.

It’s when Riordan burns her house down and she moves in with Maverick that I see red, sneaking in is difficult but soon I know the entire layout to his house.

When Arlo asks for the best way to break in, I already know the answer and how to get into his backyard. But I tell him to go when I know Mav will be home. I already know the outcome to that scenario.

And I was right.

One less Prescott, Cookie…

________

I look at her, standing before me, my father’s blood slowly dripping from the dagger in her hand, as I tell her about Riordan and then having to kidnap her for Stephen only to end up watching him drug her. I couldn’t stay to watch it. Duties or not.

“Don’t you see, Ray? I made sure you knew how to get to the restricted section. I made sure you found the ledger.” It was the last thing I did before I left RMU campus after dropping her off that first day. “I did what I could to help you from afar.”

“You… you killed me.” She rasps but there’s so much emotion and turmoil in her eyes that I can’t stand it.

Tears spring to my eyes. “No! I didn’t touch you! I would never hurt you. I love you!”

“You… killed me. I… d-died.”

My brows shoot up.

“For one minute and sss-seventeen seconds I was dead.” The word lingers in the air but all I can hear is the blood rushing to my ears.

“I didn’t want that to happen, Cookie. I swear. I-I didn’t see any other way out of this for you. You wouldn’t have been happy. If not one then it would have been the other.”

“You did this… t-to me! You mmm-made me like this.” The venom in her voice kills me. She’s never used that tone with me. Not even when she would get in trouble for getting me sick, or me tattling on her when she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

My knees buckle at her accusations, my heart thumping so loudly in my ears but I can’t look away from her. Not then. Not now. “Don’t say that, Ray. Don’t say that! I love you! I found the only way out of this I could! They would’ve kept you a bird in a gilded cage with nowhere to go. Nowhere to fly! You would’ve dwindled and died! Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that I… I love you enough to kill you? I love you enough to set your soul free!” I sob, tears streaking down my face.

“I loved you.” A tear falls from the lid of her left eye, clearing a path through the blood caked on her cheek but I don’t care that it belongs to my father. With shaky breath and a war cry, she’s on me. “I loved you!” She screams as we go down and the knife is at my throat and her salty, bloody tears drop onto my face, warm and decadent.

Like her love.

“Istilllove you.” I sob. “Every moment of every day of the last fourteen years I have loved you. Kill me. I won’t stop. You were always meant to be mine, Ray. Can’t you see it?”

Honey eyes lock on mine, full of fury and exasperation. I’m as wrecked for her now as I was when we met. “You… betrayed me,” she breathes against my lips. She trembles in my arms, the weight of it all crashing down around me.

“No I didn’t!” But I did.

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