Stalkers: A Dark Romance Anthology

by Ally Vance

  “Fuck,” I grunt.

  Her body stills, my hands resting on her hips.

  “I have a confession,” she murmurs, slowly grinding herself against me. “There’s a lot I haven’t done. I want you to show me.”

  A smirk plays on my lips. “I don’t handle innocence well…”

  “Oh, really?”

  My hand wraps around the back of her neck, pulling her in for a deep kiss, “Cela peut devenir très dangereux.”

  I tell her that this could become very dangerous. I’m not a gentle lover, nor do I simply make love as some may put it.

  If Emile wants me to show her more, there will be no turning back.

  I will completely own her.

  About Kat:

  Born and bred in Sydney, Australia, Kat T. Masen is a mother to four crazy boys and wife to one sane husband. Growing up in a generation where social media and fancy gadgets didn’t exist, she enjoyed reading from an early age and found herself immersed in these stories. After meeting friends on Twitter who loved to read as much as she did, her passion for writing began, and the friendships continued on despite the distance.

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  Books by Kat:

  The Dark Love Series: A Billionaire Love Triangle

  Click here

  Born Sinner

  A Corrupt Gods Prequel

  Cora Kenborn & Catherine Wiltcher

  Blurb

  I came to this college for one reason—her.

  A cartel princess.

  Mexican royalty.

  Sworn enemy of the Colombian ranks I’m destined to climb.

  I’m meant to hate her.

  Destroy her name and sacrifice her innocence.

  But Lola Carrera isn’t the delicate flower her family thinks she is.

  And I just took a match to her ivory tower.

  Obsession is a loaded gun…

  And tonight, she’s waging war with my patience.

  Chapter One

  Sam

  Obsession is a loaded gun, and tonight she’s waging war with my patience.

  She pulled that trigger the moment she stepped into my party uninvited in a backless dress and heels, wearing confidence as a color and her smile as a taunt. Now she’s piling into my Arabescato marble kitchen with her girlfriends and tossing interested glances my way.

  She wouldn’t be this reckless if she knew who I was. Danger has a scent, Lola Carrera, and I’m fucking wearing it.

  Her smile falters when I don’t return it. Embarrassed, she turns back to her friends.

  Not me.

  I never turn away.

  I watch the rise and fall of her cigarette as shitty conversation and bad music sucks everything else around us into a whirlpool of mediocrity.

  I see it all—even from halfway across the crowded room of a five-thousand-square-foot apartment that a trust fund puked up for some over-privileged offspring.

  Namely me.

  When she sparks up another—chain-smoking tonight, Lola?—I track the silver trails to her mouth again, noting the shallow inhale and the subtle wrinkling of her nose. She doesn’t like the taste, but she’s playing a role at this college that demands an addiction. Too bad it’s not the one her daddy sells.

  I see every head tilt, every flick of her hair, every curve of those luscious ruby lips. I do it with the same sick fascination I’ve been fighting since the day she arrived on New Jersey’s Rutgers campus at the start of the semester.

  We’ve never spoken, we’ve never touched, but she fucks my mind on the regular.

  Get a grip, Sam.

  I take an angry swig of my beer. Then another… I focus on what she really is, throwing cold water on my obsession. She’s a two-faced innocent; a name I’ve been taught to hate since birth. A name I had every intention of exposing when she and her cunt brother, Santi Carrera, least expected it.

  That was before I laid eyes on her.

  “You want in on this, Sam?”

  My friend, Lucas, hands me a lit stub. I accept it without thanks, declaring my bad mood to the world with a couple of savage tokes. Unlike Lola, I prefer to savor the burn of weed and nicotine instead of exhaling it fast like it’s a bad word on a priest’s tongue. I enjoy the way it fills up every space in my lungs, because nothing else in my life will ever feel this whole.

  “María! Hey, María!”

  A loud voice rises above the crowds. Some prick named Troy Davis with a jaw made for the football field is pushing through the party with a clear destination.

  Her.

  Yes, her. Because “Lola” isn’t the name she trades under on American soil. “Lola” gets left behind the minute she crosses the border to disguise the fact that her daddy heads up one of the biggest drug cartels in Mexico. I’m pretty sure her clique of virgin suicides would find themselves a new ass to kiss if they knew she was a bona fide cartel princess.

  But I know… Let’s just say I have connections, no matter how hard my senator stepdaddy tries to keep them from me.

  “She’s so damn fuckable.” Lucas follows my gaze. “Word on the street is her V-card is as good as her credit rating. You should totally hit it, bro. You’ve crushed more fucking cherries than the campus juice bar.”

  “Are you still here?” I say lightly, pretending to flick the stub at his chest.

  “Hey! Watch the Ralph, would ya?” He jumps back, brushing imaginary ash from his designer shirt.

  “I’m sure Daddy will buy you a new one.”

  Lucas’s stepfather is a big-shot politician in Washington too. We both have bank accounts that reflect the need for us to stay the hell out of the headlines.

  Troy’s all up in Lola’s face now, but it’s my chest that’s burning.

  “Who ordered the jock entrees?” Lucas tracks my gaze again. “Should I call security?”

  “Security” is a cute word for the two heavies my stepfather insists on me keeping around. Senator Sanders’s history of making enemies has created a claustrophobic existence for all his kids.

  “Not yet.” I crack open another bottle of Bud. My sixth. My head is starting to buzz, but it’s doing jack for the thing I want it to dull the most.

  “Suit yourself.” Lucas shrugs and starts chatting up some cute blonde. He knows there’s no point in arguing with me. Besides, Rutgers’s star quarterback is about to get his ass handed to him by yours truly. I just saw him slip a tab of something extra special into Lola’s Bacardi and Coke when she turned to talk to her friend. I caught the crests of the smirks on his teammates’ mouths. If I’m not mistaken, Lola Carrera’s precious V-card is about to be spanked and shredded all over my apartment.

  The slow burn in my chest ignites, bursting into a dull red flame.

  Obsession is a loaded gun, and tonight my patience is dead and bleeding.

  No one, I repeat no one, gets to suck or fuck that body, other than me.

  Chapter Two

  Sam

  I sense the brunette while she’s still circling, but I’m not quick enough to dodge the swoop.

  “Hey, Sam,” she chirps, crinkling her eyes at me. “Cool party, huh?”

  “Thanks,” I murmur, keeping my gaze fixed on Lola. The roofie Troy slipped her must be out-of-this-world phenomenal. She’s already swaying in her heels.

  “Wanna give me a guided tour?”

  Oh, Jesus… I fake a smile. She’s pretty, but there’s only one woman who makes my dick so hard it’s agony.

  “Maybe later,” I lie. Troy has taken Lola’s arm and he’s guiding her toward the open glass staircase. By the time they reach the first floor, she’s all over the place—her long, dark hair messing up her face as her head flops sideways onto his shoulder; her dress riding up to expose more tan skin.

  “Okay, well, make sure you come find me later…” Brunette trails off as I push past her lik
e the devil himself is hot on the heels of my Amiri check sneakers. Meanwhile, Lola’s friends are waving her off with catcalls from below, looking as dickmatized by Troy Davis as she appears to be.

  “Have fun, María!”

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  Choke on those grins, you stupid bitches. She’s a fucking Carrera… Don’t they know she’s smarter than that?

  She shouldn’t even be at my party. Her brother would never allow it, not if he knew my real last name was Sanders instead of Colton. I took my mother’s maiden name the day I enrolled at Rutgers. Lola and I are both here under false pretenses to protect us from the war that’s raging up and down the East Coast.

  There’s an invisible line drawn down the middle of this campus. It’s the same line that divides New Jersey and New York, her family from mine, truth and lies… Me from her. We stay the fuck away from each other, or people die.

  Santi is more than happy to enforce the rules for his baby sister, but he’s not around right now and I get the feeling she had a little something to do with that. She’s fighting for her freedom, just as much as I am, and that makes her fucking irresistible.

  I move toward the stairs, fire and ice surging through my veins.

  Protect her.

  Reject her.

  This contradiction will be the death of me.

  “Nice party, Colton.”

  Troy’s crew try to block my access. A single savage look from me and they’re like sliding doors at the mall.

  “It’d be even better without the dickhead parade showing up.”

  “Aw, you serious?” They clutch at their chests, all offended, like I just gang-banged their moms.

  Fucking idiots.

  “Get the hell out of my apartment.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you won’t be playing football for the rest of the season.” I meet each of their guilty gazes in turn. “It’s hard to find your own dick, let alone run ten steps, with two fractured ankles.”

  They wince.

  “You’re a sick fuck, Colton.”

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  I take the stairs three at a time and head straight for my bedroom. I know the mind games that provocative pricks like Troy Davis like to play. There’s no love lost between us, and he’ll come twice as hard knowing it’s my bed he’s defiling as well.

  If he’s fucking touched her already…

  Behind the door, it’s a scene from every college chick’s worst nightmare. Lola is passed out on the bed, her black minidress and heels already discarded on the floor. Troy’s standing over her with his jeans around his ankles and his dick in his hand.

  He looks up and smirks. “Come to join the party, Colton?”

  “Consent’s a tough word to purchase from the comatose, frat boy.” I glance at Lola’s breasts in that black lingerie and feel my own traitorous dick stir. “You sure she’s selling?”

  “What’s it to you? Pissed I’m buying first?”

  “Wrong answer, asshole. Your libido lost its way, and the rest of you is about to pay.” Reaching into my back pocket, I pull out the silver pocket knife the senator bought me for my eighth birthday. I learned to demand respect long before I learned to drive. I learned it on an island a long way away from a man who I have every intention of working for one day, no matter what my stepfather has to say about it. You can’t keep the bad away from the bad. We’re like fucking magnets.

  Troy glances down at my hand, and the blood drains from his face. He yanks up his jeans and backs away from me like I’m the goddamn antichrist.

  “What the fuck, Colton? If you want the bitch so bad, you can have her.”

  “Did you touch her?” I tap the exposed blade against my lower lip as I saunter deeper into the room.

  I find my answer in Troy’s silence.

  I press the blade into my lip until I can feel something hot and wet running down my chin. “Did you fucking taste her?”

  Troy looks like he’s about to shit himself. “Just a kiss, man. I swear. I-I didn’t know she was your girl.”

  Damn right, she is. “Didn’t your mom ever teach you it’s wrong to steal?”

  “My mom’s best friend is a vodka bottle. She didn’t teach me nothing!”

  “Poor little rich boys of the world unite.” I swipe a hand across my jaw and it comes away red. “Get on your knees.”

  A tic jumps to life in his cheek. “Wh-what?”

  My foot connects with his thigh, and a dark satisfaction fills my soul as he goes crashing to the floor. Crouching over him, I take his jaw between my fingers as he cringes away. “You fucked up, Troy.” With my other hand, I press the blade against the nervous glide of his throat. “You just violated my property, and that shit has consequences… Lift up your shirt.”

  He freezes. “No way.”

  “I said, lift up your fucking shirt.”

  A trembling hand shoots out and wrenches up his white Moncler Polo. “What the hell, Colton?” he says weakly. “You a fucking queer now?”

  “No, Troy. I’m your fucking end game.” Changing my mind at the last second, I drop the knife from his throat and drive it down deep into the web of muscles above his kneecap, twisting as I go, severing a couple of tendons and all his hopes and dreams. Never mind a season on the bench; I’ve just gone and annihilated a promising football career at the age of twenty-one.

  I feel nothing about it, though. No guilt. No regret.

  Sweet. Fuck. All.

  I told you I was ready for the big league, senator.

  Troy screams, and I slam my hand across his mouth. “Inhale the pain,” I order, bringing my face in real close to his. “Inhale it until you feel like your lungs are gonna explode, because that’s only a fraction of what María would have felt tomorrow morning if I hadn’t shown up in time.” Flashing him a grin, I pull the knife out, eliciting another muffled scream. “If I were you, Troy Davis, I’d get to a hospital in the next twenty minutes. You’ve had yourself a bad accident. Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much next time. You feeling me?”

  He nods, eyes glassy with pain. Compliant as a child.

  Maybe he knows the truth about me. Maybe he’s heard about the senator’s reputation.

  Removing my hand, I wipe his spit down the front of his polo shirt.

  “Go… Get out of here.”

  “I-I can’t move.” He starts crying, snot trailing down his face like a well-fucked pussy.

  Are they tears of relief or pain? Maybe it’s the realization he’ll never score a touchdown again. Either way, I’ll doubt he’ll be slipping a roofie into another chick’s drink this side of never.

  “Then fucking crawl, you asshole. I’ll count to ten, and then I’m introducing my knife to your other knee.”

  “Shit! Fuck! Okay!” He starts dragging his bleeding body toward the door, but my focus has already switched to her.

  It’s all about her.

  I can’t stop staring.

  Turns out, I was missing the real masterpiece underneath her clothes.

  I want her.

  I fucking want her.

  My gaze drops to the soft mound barely concealed beneath the black lace. I bet she tastes like peaches and cream...

  She moans suddenly, her head falling to one side—hair strewn like dark seaweed across the flawless shores of her cheek.

  Focus, Sam. Focus.

  She’s the daughter of the enemy. It’s Mexico versus Colombia. It’s the past versus our present. It’s the fact that her daddy, Valentin Carrera, swore an oath years ago to bring death and destruction to the Santiago Cartel, an organization in which my stepfather is so entrenched, even his shit stinks of South America.

  There’s bad blood, and then there’s this—a war so dangerous it kills people by seven degrees of fucking separation.

  Dante Santiago has no idea Carrera’s daughter is in the US, and up until a month ago, I was the guy who planned on telling him.

  I needed a way into h
is organization. I’m done playing with wooden guns in safe, wooden houses, and being forced into a state of peace and tranquility when my black soul screams for anarchy. My stepfather argues that this war is the parents’ fight. That their sins should absolve the next generation from bloodshed.

  Fuck that.

  Not so long ago, he ruled the New York underground for Santiago. Now, I want a piece of his former action, and Santiago, my godfather, is the man to give it to me.

  Running the edge of my knife across the unblemished plains of Lola’s stomach, I follow the curve of her hipbone all the way to the black borderline of her panties. She moans again, and slurs out a word, but her eyes never open.

  My lips twitch as an idea forms. The blade makes a shockingly white indentation before the first bud of crimson blooms.

  I work quickly after that—a master of my wicked art—marking her flawless skin just left of her hipbone with a single letter that spans a couple of inches wide, and deep enough to scar.

  S for my initial.

  S for Santiago.

  Rising from the bed, I admire my handiwork. What I’ve done to her is far worse than what Troy Davis could ever do. I’ve fucked with her body, and tomorrow that letter will be fucking with her mind.

  I’ve finally announced my intention as a player in this war, but best of all?

  I’ve made Lola Carrera mine.

  Chapter Three

  Lola

  I wake in my apartment to the sound of my teeth chattering, each clap of enamel chipping away at my brain. Prying my eyes open, I wince at the sharp haze filtering through my lashes.

  Fuck, it’s bright.

  I lift my arm to block out the sunlight, but the damn thing feels like a sack of bricks. Since gravity is waging war against me, I give up, letting it flop back down. Big mistake. The moment it lands across the bridge of my nose, I let out a hoarse cry as dozens of sharp knives plunge into my skull.