I’m fading away.
And not even Marcus Constantine can save me.
* * *
I wake with a loud sob, my body still shuddering from the remnants of the orgasm as sorrow and burning pleasure collide inside me.
Gasping for breath, I haul the covers over my head one-handed, then curl up on my side in the artificial darkness. Sunlight peeks in through little cracks between the blanket and the mattress, and I blink at the bright spots of light, letting my eyes adjust.
Goddammit.
This has to stop. This has to fucking stop.
Marcus Constantine has invaded my dreams since the night I stopped three bullets meant for him. But now that he’s invaded my life too, it feels like he’s everywhere. Like he’s in my fucking head, in my soul, tearing me apart from the inside out.
And instead of doing any of the normal things someone might do when they find out they’re being stalked, I went over to his house last night and had sex with him.
Unprotected sex.
I’ve been on the pill since I was fifteen, and even though I hadn’t even kissed anyone in years before last night, I never went off it. So it’s not that I’m worried about getting pregnant.
What scares me is that I didn’t even think about this until now. Marcus’s cum was inside me, is still inside me, and I didn’t even try to make him stop. In fact, if he had tried to pull out, to come on my stomach or something, I don’t think I would’ve let him in that moment.
Because I wanted to feel him.
All of him.
I wanted his cum to bathe my insides.
And that is so unbelievably fucked up.
It’s one thing to have a stalker, but that’s not just what this is. Because whether I want to admit it or not, my level of obsession with him mirrors the obsession he has with me.
I may not have been watching him for the past two and a half years, but I’ve been holding on to him all the same.
I barely know this man, and I don’t believe his insistence that some kind of blood bond exists between us, binding our souls together. I don’t believe that I’m responsible for one hundred million beats of his heart.
But that doesn’t explain why I’ve begun to crave his touch the way I do. Why he’s managed to break down defenses I spent years building up and perfecting.
He’s gorgeous and enigmatic and sexy as fuck, but it’s more than that.
I get hit on all the time at the bar—sometimes by men who actually seem interested, and sometimes by guys who just want to fuck the one-armed freak. But I’ve never had a problem telling any of those assholes to go screw themselves.
So why does this man have such a stranglehold on my soul?
Shoving away the remnants of my dream, and the flickering images of Marcus, Theo, and Ryland’s faces hovering over mine, I throw the covers off and slip out of bed.
As my feet hit the floor, a jolt of pain moves through my pussy, and I wince. I wasn’t wrong last night about being sore in the morning. My body feels raw and abused, and when I step into the bathroom and flick on the light switch, my mouth drops open slightly.
I can see Marcus everywhere on my body.
Little red marks decorate my collarbone, courtesy of his teeth. Bruises and little hickeys are peppered around the scar that sits high on my chest, and my wrist bears teeth marks too.
Reaching into the shower, I flip the water on as hot as it will go. As the bathroom begins to fill with steam, I step under the scalding spray. The heat sears my raw skin, but I scrub hard with a loofah anyway, as if I can somehow erase the marks and bruises Marcus left on me.
As if taking off a layer of skin will somehow erase the insane connection between us.
My hand slips between my legs, cleaning my pussy and easing the soreness there. I told Marcus he was too late to claim my virginity, but it barely feels like that right now. Before last night, it’d been so long since I’d had sex. I was so tight, and he was so big, that he might as well have been my first.