Page 71 of Dark Billionaire Stalker
I file the information away for later.
Around noon, I finally manage to leave. He doesn't try to stop me this time—just watches from the bed as I gather my clothes and dress with shaking hands. My body is covered in evidence: a bite mark on my neck, bruises circling my wrists, tender spots I'll feel for days.
"I'll have the car take you home," he says.
"Thank you."
"Poppy."
I pause at the door, looking back at him. He's still in bed, sheets pooled around his waist, looking like something out of a renaissance painting. Dangerous. Beautiful.Mine, some treacherous part of my brain whispers.His, another part corrects.
"This isn't over," he says. "You know that."
I know.
I leave without answering.
The car ride home is silent. The driver doesn't speak, and I'm grateful for the privacy. I stare out the window at the city passing by, watching the grand estates give way to modest neighborhoods, luxury fading into reality.
I think about what I've done. What I've allowed. What I'vewanted. The memories play on an endless loop—his hands on my body, his voice in my ear, the way I fell apart again and again under his touch.
I should be making plans to escape. I should be calling the police, calling a lawyer, calling anyone who might help me break free of the web he's spun around me.
Instead, I'm thinking about when I'll see him again.
What is wrong with me?
My apartment, when I finally reach it, feels foreign. Too small, too shabby, toonormalafter the gothic splendor of his estate. I stand in the doorway for a long moment, trying to remember the woman who lived here before last night.
I can't find her.
The dahlia is still on the counter, dark petals gleaming in the afternoon light. It should have died by now—cut flowers don't last this long, not without special preservation. But it's as perfect as the day he left it, as if it exists outside the normal rules of decay.
Like him. Like us. Like whatever this thing is that we've started.
I walk past it to the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror, forcing myself to look.
The woman who stares back is a stranger. Wild hair, swollen lips, shadows under her eyes that have nothing to do with lack of sleep. And the marks—God, the marks. The bite on my neck is vivid, purple and red, impossible to hide. My wrists are ringed with faint bruises from the belt. When I lift my shirt, I can see more marks on my ribs, my hips, places where his fingers gripped hard enough to leave proof.
I should be horrified.
Part of me is.
But another part—the dark part, the part I'm only beginning to understand—looks at those marks and feels something else entirely.
Claimed.
I trace the bite mark with my fingers, pressing until it hurts. The pain is grounding, real, a reminder that last night actually happened. That I let a murderer put his hands on me and begged for more.
My phone buzzes. A text from Bea:Still on for dinner tomorrow? I need details about this mystery job of yours.
I stare at the message for a long time. How am I supposed to have dinner with my best friend when I'm covered in evidence of what I've become? How am I supposed to smile and chat and pretend everything is normal when nothing will ever be normal again?
Can't tomorrow,I type back.Busy with work. Rain check?
Another lie. Another distance placed between me and the life I used to have.
My phone buzzes again, but this time it's not Bea.
