Stalkers: A Dark Romance Anthology

by Ally Vance

  This street is dark. That’s good for me, but it’s shit for her. What the hell is she thinking walking around at night in this neighborhood? Can’t she feel all those eyes on her? The predators, the criminals, the psychos?

  I have a lot to teach my little Charlotte. So much more than just how to control her emotions.

  Have to teach her to heel, and bend, and take every inch of my cock without gagging.

  My semi becomes a raging hard-on, and I shift in my seat. I could have ignored it, forced it to go away, but then a shadow falls over the window and resolves a moment later into Charlotte’s silhouette.

  Fuck.

  She’s no longer wearing her bulky clothes. In fact…I don’t think she’s wearing anything at all.

  Temptation washes over me, too hard, too fast to push back.

  I can’t do this here. This street is dark, but is it dark enough? If someone walked past my car and looked into my window, would they see me with my cock in my hand?

  Groaning, I unzip my pants and haul out my dick before it snaps in two. Charlotte stands by the window, and it takes me a second staring up at her through slitted eyes before I figure out what she’s doing.

  Smoking something. A cigarette? No—I didn’t smell tobacco smoke when I was up there yesterday. A joint?

  Bad girl, Charlotte, standing there naked smoking weed. Don’t you know the entire street can see you? Or is it that you don’t care? She’s on some strong anti-depressants. If she already took her nightly dose then she could be on the no-fucks-given spectrum of things already.

  I stroke my cock, imagining she’s kneeling in front of me, mouth open, ready to swallow my cum. Ready to swallow my dick.

  I climax before she’s done with her joint. And by the time I’ve cleaned up, she’s already stepped away from the window.

  But her light stays on.

  I need air. To clear my head. I can’t stay out here all night, but it’s as if I’m glued to the spot. A quick walk up and down the street should clear out the cobwebs.

  I make sure not to slam the car door. Then, shoving my hands in my pockets to ward off the brisk wind, I head for the end of the street.

  A man is standing a few yards away. A street pole had blocked him from my view. I doubt he could’ve seen anything through the windshield, but as I draw near I hunch my shoulders and give him a sidelong glance, just to make sure.

  It pays to be careful.

  The man notices my look and gives me an amiable nod. There’s a dark light in his eyes that I don’t like one bit, but I straighten and head away from him.

  “Every Saturday night,” the man says.

  I stop walking. Did I hear him right? When I turn back, he’s staring up at Charlotte’s window.

  My stomach twists. Acid shoots up my throat, and for a wild second, I’m convinced I’ll puke.

  But I breathe instead. Fight past the physical response to a psychological reaction.

  Charlotte? My Charlotte?

  I look up. Her light is off. The man pushes away from the wall he’d been leaning against and gives me another smile. Like we’re brothers, him and I. Sick, perverted kin lurking out here in the dark, spying on an innocent girl.

  My girl.

  “The fuck you say?” I growl at him.

  He shrugs, laughs. Pulls a box of cigarettes from his pockets and even dares to offer me one. “Relax. Why do you think I’m here? Never could resist jailbait.”

  My entire body tenses. He takes back the box of cigarettes, lights himself one. “Nearly got me thrown behind bars.” He waggles a finger in the direction of Charlotte’s window. “And she knows it. They all know it. With their short skirts, and their slutty makeup.”

  It’s dark on this street, but even so, I should never have done what I did.

  It’s a culmination of so many things. The man’s filthy mouth. The fact that he dared look at my Charlotte. That he called her a slut. Jailbait.

  So many goddamn things.

  I walk back to my car, the man’s phone a dead weight in my pocket. I don’t know why I took it, except it probably makes sense that I did. Thinking is too difficult right now—all I can smell is blood.

  When I climb into my car, I sit for a second and let that smell suffuse the pocket of air inside the cab. Then I roll down a window and let the crisp wind chase it out.

  I look up at my girl’s dark window.

  There’s another reason I did what I did. And it’s because of you, my girl.

  I have your file, Charlotte. I know what happened to you. No names, or dates—I’m not privy to that level of detail for security reasons, but that doesn’t matter.

  I know you.

  I know what happened to you.

  How it changed you.

  Why you’re in my class in the first place.

  And I’m happy to inform you, Charlotte Ash, that before we part ways, you’ll be back to your old self, with one important distinction.

  You’ll be mine.

  Chapter Six

  Charlotte

  I wake up with a pounding heart. For a second, I think I’m still trapped in my nightmarish dream. Someone holding me down, the click-click-click of a camera nearby.

  But the sound isn’t coming from my dream. It’s coming from my living room. And when I sit up in a rush on my bed, I can see a pale glow under my bedroom door.

  Someone’s in my house.

  There’s a scream bottled up in my throat, held captive by a sudden restrictive terror that refuses to let me go.

  Click. Click.

  No.

  Please God.

  It’s him.

  It’s the man who locked me in his special room. The one who stole my freedom for seven days.

  Not just my freedom—my sanity.

  I choke out a sob before I can stop myself, and then clap my hands over my mouth. The light winks off. There’s sudden quiet in my home. The only sound my hitching breath.

  Then footsteps.

  Heavy. Hollow. Footsteps.

  My hand darts out. I barely manage to control myself before sliding open my nightstand drawer.

  He’s getting closer.

  Oh my God, he’s almost here.

  My hand quivers, knocking around the various knick-knacks inside my drawer as I search for the knife I’ve kept in there ever since I was released from the hospital.

  Ten months it’s been, and I still can’t get to sleep without it. It doesn't matter where I live—I’ve been hopping from apartment to apartment like a fresh set of walls around me is all I need to stop replaying my week of hell.

  Seven days. Almost, nearly, seven nights. But he made a mistake, and I gathered every iota of courage I possessed, and I escaped.

  Malnutrition. Shock. Cut and bruised all over. I almost didn’t make it to safety. He was on my tail for the last mile I had to run. But then there was a car, and the middle-aged couple stopped for me.

  I would be dead if they hadn’t stopped.

  Or worse.

  Or fucking worse…I’d still be there in that special room.

  My heart shudders in my chest as I wrap my fingers around the knife’s handle. I draw it out and slide my legs over the side of the bed at the same time. I try and move fluidly, like a snake, so nothing creaks or squeaks, or groans.

  Hand tight around the knife.

  Thump. Thump. Footsteps right up to the door.

  The handle turns.

  I slip under the bed in a rush as the intruder pushes open my bedroom door. I clamp one hand over my mouth, the other holding the quivering knife beside my head. Ready to jab out at his ankles if he comes close. Ready to stick it right through his fucking eye if he bends down to peek under my night frill.

  This time, I’m ready to kill.

  But he just stands there by the door. Not moving, not coming closer. Is he looking for me? Wondering if I’m in the closet or under the bed? Those are the only two options. I couldn’t very well have climbed out the fucking window.

&nbs
p; I barely hold back a cackle.

  It’s as if I didn’t take my medication. As if I didn’t smoke that blunt. I’m right back there on the edge of the world, rocking, rocking, rocking as I stare down at the black abyss of my hollow mind.

  It would be so easy to tip forward and just let go. Just let whatever is going to happen, happen.

  It’ll be over soon anyway, won’t it? One way or the other.

  A tear flashes down my cheek and tickles its way over the back of my hand.

  The intruder steps into my bedroom.

  And then he closes the door behind him.

  It’s when he’s standing less than two feet away from the bed that I smell it. Rich, metallic. It fills my bedroom like an expensive perfume.

  Blood.

  And that scent, so strong I can taste it in the back of my throat, whips my frantic mind into a frenzy.

  I lash out with the knife, screaming hoarsely.

  The man steps back with a demonic calm, the knife whisking as it brushes his pants. And then he brings his shoe down on the back of my hand, crushing my bones. My hoarse yell disintegrates into a pathetic whimper as I fight through the pain.

  He wrenches the knife from my unresisting fingers and then reaches under the bed and grabs a fistful of my hair. My lungs claw for air as he hauls me out with that grip alone, but before I have enough for a new scream, he spins me around and shoves me against the wall.

  Lights flash and dance in the darkness of my room.

  The smell of blood lies thick in the air.

  Something cold and hard touches my throat. The flat of the knife—not the edge. A warning. Just a twist of his hand and my throat is sliced.

  It’s too dark in here to make out anything but his shape, but I know he’s big.

  My frantic mind conjures up the only person I know who could logically be standing here in the middle of the night with a knife to my throat…and my bladder releases a rush of warm urine down the inside of my thighs.

  Peter Monroe.

  An architect, once. But something had happened in his life, something had triggered a change in him.

  That led Peter to start work on a top-secret project at his lake house out in the Waspwood forest. When he was done, he had a playroom no one knew about, that no house plans would ever show and no one—especially his victims—would ever be able to escape from.

  I was victim number three.

  They still haven’t found the bodies of the other two girls he kidnapped, but as far as I’m aware, they searched every inch of his land for their graves.

  It’s him holding me against the wall. It must be. And that blood I smell in the air? Could only be the blood of another hapless victim. He’s come to finish the job, even though he doesn’t need to anymore. Come to make sure I can never testify against him if some kind of miracle made that possible.

  I’m convinced of all of this right up to the point where Peter ducks his head and presses his lips against mine.

  Then everything changes.

  Everything.

  Chapter Seven

  He doesn’t care that I’ve pissed myself. He grips me, squeezes me right through that wet fabric. Maybe it even turns him on, because the sound he makes when he massages my pussy through my clothes is urgent and fierce.

  He yanks down my pajama bottoms and uses his knee to part my legs. He keeps his leg wedged between mine so I can’t close myself up, so I’m bare and exposed.

  His breath is warm and sweet on my face. I’m squeezing closed my eyes so I can try and vanish from this moment, but then he searches out my mouth with his.

  My lips bruise how he kisses me.

  My pussy clenches when he shoves his fingers inside me. The smell of blood mixes with my pee, and then with something else.

  It can’t be possible, but his mouth is forcing me to come undone.

  Maybe it’s because that, with my eyes closed, I don’t have to know it’s him. I can pretend Peter Monroe is in prison where he belongs and not keeping me pressed to my bedroom wall.

  Peter can become Fyre.

  Fyre is the one forcing my legs open. He’s the one exploring my pussy with his blood-drenched fingertips. He’s the one kissing me breathless as he starts stroking me so softly, so gently, it’s as if I’m delusional and none of this is really happening.

  Then it hits me.

  I’m dreaming.

  It’s obviously much earlier than I thought. I must have slipped off to sleep.

  It happens sometimes. These strangely erotic dreams. They’re never this vivid…but then again, I can hardly ever remember them when I wake. But I’m in one right now, aren’t I? Experiencing it right now.

  And when you’re inside a dream, it’s all there is. It’s your entire world. So it feels just like real life, doesn’t it?

  My legs aren’t trying to slam closed anymore. Instead of clamping my jaw shut, I open my lips and let Fyre in.

  He growls deep in the back of his throat and shoves two fingers deep inside me.

  I whimper against his mouth.

  He exhales a warm breath over my face.

  My hand travels down his hard stomach, then I tug at the button on his jeans. I can already feel the swell of his hard cock as I try to twist open the button, and as if to tease me with it, he steps closer and crushes his erection against my stomach.

  He starts finger fucking me harder and harder. Filling me deeply, Fyre grinds the base of his palm against my clit. I gasp as my pussy clenches, sending tight waves of aching bliss through my core.

  I lean into his thrusts, my hips rocking backward and forward. He keeps his lips on mine, fierce and demanding, as his fingers thrust harder and harder into me.

  I climax before I’ve even had a chance to open his jeans.

  He pulls away from me, and I can feel his eyes on me as I come undone under his touch.

  But his face is in shadow. His form barely a silhouette.

  He stands there, drawing out my orgasm with a skilled thumb on my clit, and watches me melt away to nothing.

  Then he drags his fingers out of me and lifts a hand to his face. I can hear him sucking on his fingers.

  Before I can gather myself, before I can make sense of anything, he grabs both my thighs and wrenches them open even further. Then he ducks down and sucks my clit between his lips, biting down so hard I let out a strangled scream.

  My hands are in his hair, trying to yank him away, but he simply releases that tiny nub of tender flesh and instead licks the length of my slit with a warm, hard tongue before standing.

  His hand is around my throat.

  He pushes me back into the wall and stands there for a moment as if he’s going say something.

  But he doesn’t.

  He squeezes my throat once, hard, and then releases me.

  I collapse to the floor, shaking, a sob dragging its way up my throat as he walks out of my apartment.

  I should have known then that it wasn’t a dream, but instead of facing reality, I lie on the floor in a puddle of piss and drift away.

  This time, I’m not sure I want to come back.

  Chapter Eight

  Charlotte

  I stare down into my cup of coffee with disgust. It’s not the coffee’s fault—it’s the best cup I can produce in my apartment. It’s me.

  I thought I was getting better. I thought I was improving.

  I wasn’t.

  I’m just as fucked up as the day I flagged down that couple’s car in the woods.

  Maybe even more.

  At least, before, I could convince myself that my strange urges, my almost obsessive interest in sex and fucking was just a phase I was going through. I never mentioned it to my counselor. I wouldn’t dare. As it was, they had me under psychiatric evaluation at the hospital when I tried to slit my wrists with a scalpel I dug out of a hazardous waste bin in the ER. I wasn’t going to give them any reasons to keep me there indefinitely.

  I’m not a psycho.

  I’m damaged
.

  There’s a difference.

  I try a sip of coffee, but it coats my tongue like rancid oil. This is always what happens when I let the fantasy take control. When I lose myself to these new, horrifying urges.

  I woke up still thinking it was a dream. Then I realized I was on the floor, the smell of urine and blood so strong in my nose I had to run to make it to the toilet in time to go puke.

  Blood on my thighs. A faint line on my throat.

  My knife is gone. That scares me more than anything. I have other knives, but I want to know if Peter kept it as a memento, or so that I have even less chance of defending myself the next time he visits me.

  My stomach roils, and I gag before I can fight down the urge to vomit again.

  How many of the dreams I’ve had the past few months were real? How many times has he been standing at the foot of my bed when I wake up groggy from the drugs, my primal instinct to survive desperate to push me out of my lethargy.

  And failing.

  I often woke up with dried streaks of my arousal in my underwear.

  That happens in dreams too, doesn’t it?

  I reach for my coffee again, determined to wash away the bitter taste of bile that remains. Despite the toothpaste, despite the fucking mouth wash. The cup pauses halfway to my mouth.

  Eyes glued to the cup, I watch in fascination as the surface of the liquid trembles like there’s an earthquake on the way. I tighten my grip, but it doesn’t help.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  The trial should have been the end of it. He should be in prison right now. Safe behind bars.

  I should be safe.

  But I’m not. I’ll never be, will I?

  I stand in a rush, tears flooding my eyes, and walk with heavy steps to my bathroom.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  The closer I get to my nightstand, the heavier my body becomes. It’s resisting me, fighting for survival.

  Like I did in that special room.

  I fought.

  I fought until I couldn’t anymore, and then I fought some more. But it didn’t matter. He was stronger. He was faster. I didn’t stand a chance.