An Innocent Obsession

I start to fall asleep afterward. How can I not? I’m cradled against the most magnificent man in the universe, his fingertips coasting up and down my spine. Before I can doze off, though, Clarke nudges up my chin and begins to feed me bites of food.

Being cared for like a child awakens another, secret part of me.

One I keep all to myself, not even telling Karen.

It’s twisted and wrong, but these urges and feelings have been with me since I was fourteen. When my father abandoned me at the orphanage, unable to care for me after my mother passed away, and I was cast adrift. Until I saw Clarke Carroway in the newspaper…and he became my imaginary caretaker. My disciplinarian. The man who comforted me when I was sad or praised me for being a good girl. One day, I stopped merely looking up to Clarke. I started to want him. On top of me. Using me. A lover and a caretaker. The two perceptions I had of this man twined together into something…forbidden.

I accept a bite of steak and chew it dutifully, a rush of pleasure and contentment washing over me when Clarke murmurs his approval and strokes my hair.

If only this could last forever.

My appetite wanes when I remember why it can’t.

Clarke is getting ready to take me home…and I’ve already been there thousands of times. Touched his things, stolen some of them, rubbed his boxers against my open mouth, down my body. I’ve kissed his pillows and sipped from open bottles in his fridge, euphoric in the knowledge that our mouths would touch the same place. I’ve watched him from afar, hidden in shadows, and cut his image out of countless magazines, newspapers.

He lusts for me now, but once he slakes that desire and the edge isn’t quite so sharp, he’ll want to know more about me. He’ll hunt…and while I’ve hidden my trail well, it’s only a matter of time before he finds out I’ve known him much longer than he’s known me.

I won’t be his angel for long.

After we finish eating and Clarke pays the bill, he holds my hand and walks me to his limousine waiting at the curb. He sits me on his lap in the backseat and kisses my face, my hair, his stroking hands coaxing another fire to life inside of me. One that will never go out.

It doesn’t occur to me until we exit the limo and we’re approaching the forty-story building where he lives that I could be recognized by the doorman. No, it’ll be fine. I look completely different today. Don’t I? The familiar gentleman opens the door, tipping his hat to Clarke, his eyes narrowing on me in speculation. Thankfully, he says nothing as we pass and then…it’s happening. I’m walking into Clarke’s home. Once again.

Only this time, he’s by my side. Wanting me there.

CHAPTER THREE

Clarke

I’m beside myself just watching her enter my home.

This is where she belongs.

If it wasn’t obvious from the moment I saw her in my office that she was mine, it would be now. The presence I’ve felt for the last five years in my apartment…it seems to be at rest now, just having Emery there. This place has been missing something all this time—Emery. My angel. She walks in through the door, her petite figure outlined by the city skyline view, and I want to kneel on the spot. Ask her to be my wife and never leave. Already, I’m anxious about tomorrow. What if she wishes to go somewhere without me? To see this Karen? I don’t want to smother her, but I’m afraid there’s no choice. The only way I’ll know she’s safe is if we’re in the same room, preferably touching.

Touching.

God, she turns me into an animal.

I’m stalking her as she floats through the penthouse, the blue dress molded her to delicious ass, her long hair swaying, tickling the small of her back. Self-control has never been a problem for me, but all of my willpower is being poured into not dragging her to my bed and fucking her mercilessly. I’ve got to get a hold of myself.

Any hope I had that sex with Emery would ease some of this relentless hunger I have for her…it’s gone. The way she rode my dick in the restaurant, her ankles smacking off the chair legs, fingernails digging into the back of my neck…I already know I’m in for a lifetime of obsessive need for this girl. I haven’t even been inside of her yet and I’m already desperate to fill her full of my seed again. Again. Again. Until she’s swollen with my child.

And look at her, innocently trailing her fingers along my hallway wall, no idea I’m barely leashing the beast she woke up inside me.

Soon enough, she’ll meet him.