Stalkers: A Dark Romance Anthology

by Ally Vance

  “That is a metal slab at the medical examiner’s office…And that, dear sister, is the same scarlet letter carved into her chest.” Santi’s warning blares like a siren in my head.

  Sam Colton doesn’t want to fuck me. He wants to kill me.

  “Dios mío, what the hell’s wrong with me?”

  Shame burns my cheeks as I draw the curtains, gathering my dress from the floor and quickly buttoning it. Backing away, I disappear into my bedroom and pull my suitcase from the back of my closet, my mind a cyclone of self-loathing and sadness.

  My family is right. I’m just a pawn.

  A stupid little mouse who’s about to get her neck snapped.

  Chapter Eight

  Sam

  It takes me less than sixty seconds to hack into her apartment’s maintenance system and cut the lights dead. It takes me another five to ram my fist into her bodyguard’s mouth so hard, he’ll be spitting up teeth for a week. Lust and jealousy are dangerous weapons, and after watching Lola Carrera come so hard against a window the fucking glass fogged up, there’s no army in the world that could stop me from sinking my cock into that virgin pussy tonight.

  “I’m leaving, Sam.”

  Never.

  Her whispered admission sliced through the strands of my sense and reason. Her breathless taunts made a bonfire out of my obsession. Lola’s only going one way tonight, and that’s with me. Predators don’t barter with their prey. There are no pretty deals, sneaky underhands, or backstreet bargains. They stalk and they pounce, they steal and they break…

  Her front door is open and it smells like an invitation.

  I don’t make a sound as I slip inside, the heavy stillness crushing me like a velvet fist. I move slowly, cat-like, along the hallway, even though I know every inch of this apartment by heart. I head straight for the bedroom because that’s where she’s leading me. The sweet scent of her arousal is unmistakable beneath the generic florals and citrus.

  I pause in the doorway, my anticipation turning my cock to stone. We’re breaking the rules together now. We’re crashing through unseen barriers. Do bad things with me, Lola… Sharing our pleasure will be double the fun.

  I push the door open, the smallest creak shattering the silence. I hear her breathing in the darkness. Rapid, shallow rasps. Sounds that are so easy to make screams out of.

  The curtains are closed. The moon is in hiding. I’m a thief in the night as I cross the room to reach the bed, stealing hearts and virtue with a fucking smile on my face. That’s when she makes her move, darting for the hallway in a flurry of frantic footsteps. Her soft cry shatters the silence again as she runs straight into me.

  I grab her arm and throw her up against a nearby wall, pressing a hand over her delicate mouth as my hips hold her body prisoner. “Strike me a pose, Lola Carrera,” I say huskily, drunk off her fury and fragility. “The show’s not over until I say it is.”

  Her muffled cries grow louder against my palm, and her sharp teeth snag on my skin.

  Frustrated, I spin her around and crush my throbbing erection into her ass. Holy fuck. The feeling of her heat pressed up against me is blowing all my late-night fantasies out of the water. It’s enough to make my hand slip from her mouth.

  “Get the hell off me!” She leverages her foot against the wall to try and tip me backward.

  “Is that really what you want?”

  “Want?” She toys with the word like it’s an unwanted gift. “You don’t want me, Sam Colton… Sanders… Whatever the hell your name is. You can drop the fucking facade right now. I know where your allegiances lie. You saw Troy Davis roofie me, so you took your opportunity. You branded me for him… You branded me for Dante Santiago.”

  “I branded you for me.” I drop my mouth to her shoulder as she hisses out a single rebuke.

  “Bullshit!”

  Incensed, I suck on her skin as hard as I can, creating another mark that won’t be so easy to cover up. She yelps and shudders, but, again, she’s not so easily conquered.

  “My brother will be back any minute, and when he sees you—”

  “He’ll what?” I wrench her dress up around her hips, grinning to myself when she doesn’t yank it back down again. “Tell me something, Lola… Is he coming here to drag you back to Mexico? Will you be a willing passenger, or will you be screaming inside the whole time because Daddy’s taking all your dreams and wishes and drowning them in a river named Carrera?”

  Her body sags. I’ve just deconstructed her truth into something real and ugly.

  Like a dick, I take advantage of the situation and ram my knee between her legs, spreading them wide.

  “How long have you known?” she rasps. She’s almost compliant as I brush my thumbs against the underside of her breasts.

  “The day you started at Rutgers.” I slide a hand between her thighs, trailing upwards; smirking as she pushes back on me, biting out a moan.

  “That was over a month ago… Santiago could have come for me anytime—”

  “But he didn’t.” I reach the damp apex of her thighs and slide a finger inside the crotch of her soaking-wet panties. I’m so close to losing my shit over this woman it’s unreal. One more breathy moan and I’ll be destroying her virginity for the rest of the night.

  “Am I supposed to offer my gratitude?” Hissing out the word, she tries to push me away again. “Do you know what he did to mamá eighteen years ago? To me?”

  “Toss a story in the air and the facts will fall differently every time, Lola. Your father sent him and my stepfather an invitation to their own fucking murders. They got lucky. Your dad got pissed. Cue two decades of East Coast anarchy.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  “And you’re a fucking lunatic,” I roar, losing my temper. “Flashing your pussy to the night like that… Not to mention sucking that asshole’s face earlier.”

  She stills. “Did you hurt him?”

  “Damn right I did.” I pinch her swollen clit in delicious punishment, inhaling her pained groans like oxygen.

  “Ay Dios mío,” she gasps, and shudders, cursing me in Spanish. “¡Hijo de su puta madre!”

  She’s right. I am a son of a bitch. In more ways than one. In response, I drive my middle finger so deep inside her she loses her balance, slamming her palms against the wall as I circle and stretch her, prepping her for an even bigger surprise.

  “You’re sick!” she cries, angling her hips for more. “I know you’ve been stalking me.”

  “Did you like it, Lola? Did it pique your interest? Did you climb down from your ivory tower to take a closer look? Maybe we should climb back up together?” With this, I give her exactly what she needs, ramming a second finger inside her. I pump mercilessly in and out of her body as she curses again.

  “God, I hate you!”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  “You’re a creep,” she groans, squeezing my fingers as her pussy starts quivering.

  “You’re a tease.”

  “You’re a filthy Santiago pendejo!”

  “And you’re mine!”

  Ripping my fingers away, I spin her back around, smashing our mouths together to drown out her next insult. I taste peaches and cream, relief and desperation, before shouts and heavy footsteps in the parking lot outside send us spiraling back to earth.

  Shit.

  Tearing my mouth from hers, I slam my hand down in its place. “Don’t make a fucking sound. I mean it, Lola. There’s a fine line between the two factions of this war, and we’re slow-dancing on the edge of it.”

  I think fast. I have exactly three minutes before Santi Carrera sees what I did to his sister’s bodyguard and starts redecorating her apartment in my blood.

  There’s a stairwell at the end of her hallway. It leads to the front of the building where my car is parked. I hear Lola’s silent question in my head, and my mind is made up.

  Wherever I’m going, she’s coming too.

  If looks could kill, Lola would have sent me to hell a
nd back a couple of times over by now.

  She’s in the passenger’s seat of my black Bugatti, her hands tied to the Jesus handle above her head. I can’t tell if she’s madder at me for kidnapping her or at herself for coming all over my fingers as her brother was storming the stairs. We made it out with seconds to spare, and now we’re speeding down the freeway and into the eye of the storm.

  The last few days have been hell. Not knowing Santiago’s intentions toward Lola pushed my obsession into a wasteland of uncertainty. I followed her back to her apartment this evening, like every other, and then she hit me with that sexy-as-fuck floor show.

  In that moment, ambition, lust, Santiago…all that other stuff ceased to exist. There’s only her to drown in now, and what a glorious death it promises to be.

  We drive for five hours straight, kissing the coastline all the way up to New England. At two a.m., I see a derelict road sign for some roach motel a couple of miles shy of Newport, Rhode Island.

  Pulling into the parking lot, I switch off the engine.

  “Are you going to play nice, Lola?” Turning to her, I trail a finger down one flawless cheek, feeling a surge of hope when she doesn’t unleash a string of Spanish insults at me.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done,” she whispers, looking vulnerable and so fucking beautiful, I want to kiss all her doubt and hesitation away.

  She’s wrong. I know exactly what I’ve done. By taking her, I haven’t just declared a new war on the Carreras, I’ve declared war on my own family too. We’re on the run from the two biggest criminal organizations in the world, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

  I think I need a fucking drink to process it all, though.

  “Let me go,” she urges, her blue eyes wide and wary. “I’ll tell Santi it was a mistake—”

  “Didn’t we cover this already?” Leaning over, I press my mouth against hers. Will she bite me or accept me? “There are no rules when it comes to you and me, Lola. Only the ones we make together.”

  She rears back, her dark eyebrows drawing together.

  Damn.

  “Is it me you really want, Sam? Or my submission? When the sun comes up, will my heart just be another casualty of this war?”

  “Like fuck it will!”

  She wants me to hurt her with a lie. She needs to convince herself that she’s not a traitor to the family she loves. That way, she can absolve herself of the guilt she tastes when we kiss.

  But absolution is for those without sin, and Lola Carrera and I have bathed in those bloody waters all our lives.

  Sinking a hand into her hair, I twist the thick strands around my fingers and hold her so damn close we’re sharing the same breath. “If all I wanted from you was a fucking conquest, sweetheart, I would’ve spread your legs that night in my bedroom.”

  “But—”

  “I want everything,” I growl against her lips. “Every piece of you… Even the confused and broken ones you try to hide.”

  Those wicked pale blue eyes flash. “Then kiss me again,” she whispers, “and maybe I’ll consider it.”

  I swallow every moan of hers like it’s a Michelin star meal. When she strains to reach me, I feel like I just won the moon and stars on a game of chance.

  “How can you be so certain about us?” She breaks away again, panting. “Up until tonight, we’ve never even spoken.”

  “Because I know you, Lola Carrera.” I hold her face prisoner between my hands, forcing her to look at me. “I know the pain you feel when you wear those red heels. I know how much you hate smoking cigarettes, even when you pretend otherwise. I know your tiger spirit would have happily carved up Troy Davis’s knee yourself if I hadn’t beaten you to it. I fucking love that when you look to the horizon it’s the world you see, and not the borders of Mexico.” I go to kiss her again. I can’t help myself. “Stay awhile,” I urge. “You might find you don’t hate me as much as you think you do.”

  “That’s a lot of hate to make right.” But there’s the ghost of a smile playing on her lips as I loosen her restraints.

  “Give me this night, Lola. I’ll wrap it around us so fucking tight, you’ll never want to break free.”

  “I’ll give you more than that,” she says, curling her arms around my neck. “But only if you swear it in blood.”

  The motel room is sparse, functional, and drenched in brown. Fortunately, her colors are blinding as we stumble through the door. We keep the lights on this time because I’m not missing a thing.

  Her skin is a roadmap to her universe, and two hours later, I’m so fucking lost. Her hair is a messy dark web across the white pillowcase, her cheeks are flushed, and her mouth is kissed raw, but I want even more from her. I want everything.

  “If this is what dawn feels like, I never want the day to age.” I drag myself away from the sweetest pussy I’ve ever tasted, my chin glistening with the residue of her third orgasm as I settle between her legs. Holding her heavy-lidded gaze, I line my dick up for the ultimate prize. “You ready?”

  “Yes,” she rasps, sinking her head back into the pillow, her small hands resting on my shoulders to brace herself.

  I drive in so deep her nails leave crimson welts across my skin. It’s her first time, but we fit together perfectly—her slick warmth gripping me so tight I’m close to shooting my load right away.

  “Harder,” she whispers as I shudder to a stop. “Faster.”

  “Not if you want twenty-eight chapters and an epilogue,” I gasp out.

  She giggles and pulls my mouth down to hers.

  “How much do you hate me now?” I say a couple of minutes later.

  “Make me come again, and I’ll tell you.” At this, she lifts her hips, making her body so full of me I can’t tell where she ends and I begin.

  Turns out, she doesn’t hate me that much at all.

  She hates me even less when, afterward, lying tangled up in sheets and exhaustion, I give her my knife and instruct her to carve an L into my chest: my oath in blood, like I promised.

  Two letters.

  Two lives.

  Two hearts that refuse to beat for a war that tried so fucking hard to define them.

  Chapter Nine

  Six Months Later

  Lola

  “Hey, Daniela! Wait up!”

  Adjusting the heavy backpack slipping down my arm, I smile at the bubbly blonde waving at me from across the quad. Vanessa, I think is her name. She’s a nice girl, a little too talkative at times, but harmless.

  I should know. My father and brother personally vetted every student on Northgate’s campus. This place is nothing like Rutgers. With only two thousand students, it’s almost impossible to blend in, so my family keeps their finger on its pulse, allowing no margin for error.

  No dark corners for Santiago masks to hide.

  Or so they think.

  “Everything okay?” I ask, forcing as much of my native accent from the words as possible. No need to raise suspicion and make pretty blonde girls dead.

  She nods, her pale cheeks stained red from the biting winter wind. “A few of us are going out tonight. You should come. We can celebrate your birthday.”

  “I’m not allowed to go to bars.”

  “This is college, not high school!” She laughs. “You’re free to have fun, Daniela. Our parents have no control over us here.”

  Maybe for her. Her white-picket-fenced suburban life doesn’t know a damn thing about control. About the dangers of bearing a name the world condemns as evil.

  I grit my teeth as a looming shadow darts behind a lecture hall building.

  Free is a four-letter word where I come from, nothing more. Especially now that I have twice the security. Santi wasted no time in slitting Tito’s throat for his failure to protect me from what he perceived as Dante Santiago’s wrath. Now Miguel the Destroyer has become my three-hundred-pound shadow, stepping where I step, breathing where I breathe.

  At any given time, three other men hover about, boxing me inside
an invisible shield. One wrong move or misguided touch and the snow blanketing this campus will run red.

  I shrug. “Maybe some other time.”

  There won’t be a next time, and she knows it. Luckily, she doesn’t voice the questions pooling in her bright green eyes. “You’re a mysterious girl, Daniela Torres,” she mutters, walking away.

  Daniela Torres.

  It’s the name my father assigned me before allowing me to return to the States with my entourage in tow. It took twenty-four long weeks of solitude and repentance to earn my way back into his favor. After skipping town, hell, the state, with Sam, I had to do some fancy tap dancing to cover my ass.

  Our asses.

  So, I lied.

  Valentin Carrera is one of the two most feared men in the world. Looking him in the eye with a lie on my lips was terrifying. My father loves me, but he also has the power to lock me away from civilization, from life…

  From Sam.

  I couldn’t hide what we’d done. Not only did we leave a trail of destruction in our wake, but a neighbor saw us leave, giving the police a description of Sam’s Bugatti and his license plate. The sharp jaws of truth were already snapping at our necks.

  So I drew first blood.

  I told my family the story they wanted to hear. The story of how I ran for help when Sam stopped for gas near New Haven, Connecticut.

  Unfortunately, the reality was substantially less dramatic.

  As my beautiful captor slept, I dressed in darkness, then scribbled a note on the stained motel stationery sitting on the nightstand.

  When the mouse strays, she gets punished. I wrote, twisting his own words into a fate I must endure. Slowly and painfully until she wins her freedom. When that time comes, the hunt is on… Catch me, and I’m yours forever.

  With a soft kiss goodbye, I placed the tear-stained note on my pillow and closed the door behind me, running away from his freedom and back to the chains he shattered.