Chapter 8

8

Cash

The world is on fire.

I can’t find Scout and I could rip my skin off, it’s so painful to be alive.

I continue to function, to breathe and move and think, but it’s only to find her.

She tricked me in the movie theater, looking up at me with drowsy affection, when all the while, she was preparing to run. There’s a part of me that is impressed by how well she played me, but I can’t appreciate it fully now. Maybe ever.

Not until she’s back in my possession.

After I leave the theater, my first order of business is tracking down her phone and when I find it on the side of the highway, I have the urge to step into traffic. Right into the path of the speeding cars. Not in order to kill myself. No. Because in my current state of galvanized agony, I am positive the vehicles would bounce right off me, but perhaps the impact would take my mind off the distress causing my heart to collapse.

I go to my off-campus apartment. Her dorm.

She is not in either place.

I roam the campus like a bleeding animal, incapable of responding to people who call my name, recognizing me from baseball. They call things to me like “good game” as if a sport matters when I don’t have Scout. She is my lifeblood, and she has drained herself from my veins, leaving me in a zombie state.

Does she hate me for stalking her?

Is she scared of me?

Where the hell is she? Is she huddled somewhere hurt and terrified that I’ll find her? Hurt her? I wouldn’t, I swear. I would just tie her down securely and make her understand that she has made me like this. That I have no control over my response to her. Yes, I will imprison her and reason with her until she agrees to stay with me forever. That’s not the same as hurting her, right? No. It’s as humane as I can be.

At the edge of campus now, I stare out into the trees that surround the grounds, shoving five shaking fingers through my hair, realizing my hands are covered in blood and dirt. Where have I been for the last six hours? What have I been doing? The search for Scout is all a blur, but…I think this is my own blood. After I found her phone on the side of the highway, I have memories of searching in the woods, falling to my hands and knees and tearing at the earth. Bellowing her name again and again until my voice turned hoarse.

A tingle climbs the back of my neck and I spin around.

My breath in the night air creates a thin cloud of fog.

Is someone watching me?

In the distance, I hear the snap of a twig and the pulse at the side of my neck begins to pound. I’m delusional at this point, though. I’m not thinking straight. I’m looking for Scout in a place she would never be. In the woods at night? Watching me? That’s ridiculous.

Still, I reach for the last reserve of strength inside of me and shout her name, “Scout,” listening to that single syllable echo through the misty pines.

Nothing.

No one answers.

Oddly, I still have the sensation of being watching. Could it be the police? Preparing to take me down? Take me somewhere and question me about my eternal obsession with Scout? No, they wouldn’t be holding back like this, watching me in silence. They would move in and arrest me. My imagination has been turned upside down, just like the rest of me. But I’m positive that as soon as I return to my apartment, the police will be there, cuffs at the ready.

I’m almost eager for that outcome, simply so I can find out where Scout is located. If she’s all right. If she called the police, at least I know she’s safe—and I will be back out on the streets in no time, more than willing to violate whatever protective order she slaps on me.

But when I get home, there are no police.

There is nothing but quiet.

There is a buzz of electricity in the air, though. A charged silence.

Cautiously, I unlock my apartment door and push it open—immediately catching the scent of her perfume. And it’s not lingering from earlier. No. This is fresh. She was here. She was fucking here. With a bellow building in my throat, I stumble into the apartment and draw up short, my chest nearly caving in at the sight that greets me. A fresh bouquet of pink peonies sits in a vase on my kitchen table.

Pink peonies. Scout’s favorite flower.

“What the fuck…” I rasp, gently touching the petals that remind me so much of her skin.

That’s when I notice the envelope.

My fingers are numb as I pick up the white square and open the flap. Inside, there is a Polaroid picture of me looking out into the woods. Taken only an hour ago. Less.

Time seems to freeze around me.

There are only the harsh intakes and exhales of my breath, the buzz inside of my skull. I look down at the picture and know…I know Scout took it. It wasn’t my imagination. She was watching me from inside the cover of the trees. And she hasn’t called the police. Nor her brother, who would definitely be here by now, demanding answers.

What does this mean?

I don’t know, but my pulse is beginning to clamor. Eagerly.

With anticipation. With awe.

My God, is Scout…stalking me back?

Suddenly I wish more than anything else in the world for her to be standing in front of me, because I would put her over my knee and spank the breath out of her. I’d paddle that ass until it bore my handprint for a week. Who the fuck does she think she is? I’m outraged and pissed and…enlivened and turned on. Proud. I’m proud of her. I’m worshipful and I want to teach her a lesson, all at the same time. My love for this woman is a constantly shifting enigma and it just got a whole lot vaster. Deeper.

I can feel myself slip past obsession into something even more dangerous. All encompassing. She becomes a part of me, as vital as my beating heart.

Desperate to see if she left any other trace of herself, I walk slowly into my bedroom and find another Polaroid in the center of the bed. Pulse going haywire, I dive for the photo and snatch it up, groaning brokenly when I see it’s a picture of Scout from the waist down. She’s lifting her skirt just enough to let me see her panties, the tops of her shy, sexy thighs.

I’m on my hands and knees on the bed and suddenly, I’m grunting, unzipping my pants and beating off into my fist, my attention fastened on the picture. Imagining that I’m thrusting into Scout, instead of my own hand. Picturing her virgin blood on my cock as it slicks in and out of her tight hole, the way she pouts over the pressure of my cock’s invasion, her green eyes slowly becoming bright with need as she’s broken in, the mattress springs creaking underneath us, faster, faster as I begin to buck harder, sweating. I spit onto the photograph and stroke my fist up and down my dick, the bottom of my spine starting to tighten, my balls squeezing.

Scout is stalking me.

Does that mean she’s equally obsessed?

“Oh fuck,” I pant, that possibility too much for me to handle and I let out jets of come all over the Polaroid, my ass pumping, flexing and holding, trying to get all the lust out, but Jesus, I’m still hard when it’s all over. I see. There’s no such thing as full satisfaction without Scout. Without her pussy, I’m destined to remain this way, hard, searching, miserable, aching. “Come back to me,” I shout down at the photograph covered in my seed. “I won’t survive one more day of this. You will kill me. Is that what you want?”

There is a movement out of the corner of my eye.

I turn my head just in time to see a flash of blonde hair outside, shooting my heart into my mouth, firing every cell in my body into a frenzy. And I’m already off the bed with a yell, fastening myself into my jeans and barreling toward the window, unlatching it and throwing it open. I’m way too big to fit through the window, but in my haste, I forget.

It’s what costs me valuable time.

She’s gone by the time I exit the building through the front door and sprint to the rear, but her footprints are still there, her perfume sitting on the night breeze. I can’t see into the inky black night, but I know she’s there. My soul feels her nearby and it’s everything I can do not to self-destruct. In my frustration over having her and losing her again, I tear off my shirt and beat bruises into my chest, hoping she’s watching. Hoping she’s alarmed.

She should be.

I stumble around the perimeter of the building, trying to find her, but she’s gone.

There is nothing to do but sit and wait for morning and that’s what I do. I sit in the darkness, surrounded by the mist, staring into a void, my head locked in a vise. Eventually I begin to notice movement around me, people going to class, the sky growing lighter and I stand, drifting shirtless and filthy and deranged across campus, my remaining ability to reason telling me to follow my schedule, because if Scout is stalking me, that’s where she will be, right?

Ignoring the horrified stares of fellow students who’ve never felt the deep wound of obsession before, I fall into my seat in class, the professor’s voice muffled as she approaches me, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Mr. Jenner, I think you should go home and clean up, maybe get some sleep?” A long pause. All I can do is breathe in and out. “Maybe we should just call an ambulance. Or the campus nurse…?”

My spine begins in tingle.

I’m speared by awareness, as if I’ve been plugged into a socket. I whirl around in my seat, positive Scout is there. Somewhere among the sea of alarmed faces. Where? “Where?” I shout, lunging to my feet and pitching sideways, due to my loss of equilibrium. My loss of her. “Scout. Where is she?” I start picking my way through the lecture hall—and a hooded figure goes slipping out the opposite side. Urgency tears through my insides and I give chase, bolting from the hall and running down the hallway in the direction of the hooded figure.

She exits the building into the dreary rainstorm—when did that start? And I follow her, my heartbeat deafening in my ears, animal lust digging its claws into my gut. She is running as fast as possible toward the forest and I’m approximately thirty yards from catching her when she disappears into the trees, but I don’t stop. God no. I hurtle myself through the same break in the woods, jumping over logs and dodging branches while following her footsteps.

“Scout!” Her name leaves me, raw and agonized. “Stop this. Stop running Now. Now!”

A ripple of blonde to my right.

I change directions, increasing my pace until my sides are heaving from exertion, but it pays off—because there she is. I reach her, twisting my fist in the back of her jacket and hauling her to a stop. Throwing her face down on the forest floor, before rolling her over and looking down into two very pissed off green eyes.

She slaps me across the face.

I rip her shirt clean down the middle, filling my palms with her pert tits, straddling her hips as she squirms in the mud, rain soaking us both in seconds.

“That’s enough now,” I say hoarsely, stroking her nipples with my thumbs. “Open your fucking legs.”

“No.” Her palm cracks against the side of my face again. “No!”

I reach for the hem of her skirt. “Yes.”

We struggle in the mud, Scout leaning sideways to sink her teeth into my arm, making me shout.

“Did you like how it felt to be stalked?” She hisses up at me. “Wanting me and not knowing how to find me?”

“No, I hated it,” I growl, yanking her skirt all the way to her hips and shoving down her panties. “Don’t you ever do this to me again. Promise.”

“I’ll promise not to disappear again if you promise not to lie to me. Ever!”

I still my actions, zeroing in on her words. “Lie to you. Is that what this is about?”

“Pretending you only wanted me for one reason—to get into the head of my stalker.” To my horror, tears fill her green eyes. “It was so confusing. Our relationship felt like more, but I was so unsure. You made me unsure of myself. Of you.”

She might as well be carving my heart out with a dull knife. “I couldn’t tell you I was your stalker, Scout. You would have been scared. You would have run, just like you’re doing now.”

“Maybe I was scared at first,” she whispers. “But you could never really h-hurt or kill me, right? Those threats were only to ensure I complied. You didn’t mean them.”

"Right,” I say raggedly, not even stopping to analyze whether I fully meant them or not. I’m too eager to be back in her good graces. My quick agreement is how I get there.

Some of her tension ebbs. “The main thing I hated about your letters and emails and threats…was not knowing how to find you. I belonged to you and you weren’t coming to claim me. That lost feeling you experienced today, that has been me for months.”

“No,” I rasp, denial lancing my throat. “I’m sorry, angel. I’m sorry. I should have come for you sooner. I didn’t know you had a twisted soul that matched mine. I should have.”

She reaches up and spears her merciful fingers into my hair, scratching my scalp lightly. “No more lies. No more pretending and watching from afar. We do this up close.” She arches her back, showing off her bare tits, danger glinting beautifully in her eyes. “If we’re going to be sick, we’ll be sick together.”

“Yes,” I push through my teeth, my cock straining painfully in my jeans. “Together with my angel. Fuck food, water and shelter. You’re all I need to stay alive.” I frame her jaw with my right hand, tilting her face up to examine it closely. Every pore. “You and this pretty mouth.”

Scout wets her plump lips, leaving a sheen behind. “Use it, Daddy.” She shifts beneath me. “Use all of me.”

I’m too desperate for relief from my soul mate to do anything but walk on my knees until my lap is even with her mouth, fall forward and stuff my cock inside. With a continuous, guttural sound, I bang her little mouth, pumping myself past her gag reflex, watching her eyes water, my erection made stiffer by the broken choking sounds, the way my balls drag up and down her smooth chin.

“Good girl. You lay there and handle this motherfucking cock. Suck it down, baby.”

My hips begin to piston, her throat so fucking tight, so wet, her hands stroking up and down my outer thighs, around to my ass, which she grips and squeezes, as if letting me know it’s okay to let loose—and God, I want to. I want to drain my come into her belly, but after what we’ve been through together, I need to be face to face with my Scout.

I need our connection.

I need her to see the love in my eyes, without tempering it. Disguising it.

Pulling out of her throat with a wincing groan, I sit down on the forest floor, lifting her into a straddle on top of me, licking her whining mouth as she sinks down onto my thickness, her hips jerking up and back, riding me like a horny girl should.

“I think stalking me made you hot,” I manage into her ear, overcome by the push and pull of her cunt, the delicious twists of her hips, how hot it is inside of her. How tight and wet she became from having her mouth fucked. “Didn’t it, angel?”

“Yes,” she gasps, holding on tight to my shoulders. “It made me feel…alive.” She leans back, propping her hands on my thighs and undulating on my cock, giving me a front row seat to my struggle to get in, the wet glide on the way out. “But nothing could make me feel as alive as I do right now. You do that for me. Your touch, your heartbeat, your breath on my face. I never want anything less again.”

She’s working me so well, lifting on her knees and wiggling back down, tucking her hips back and circling on my tip before giving me one thorough scoop, taking my dick to the hilt, before starting the erotic pattern all over again…and I realize Scout owns me. Not only have I been her hidden master all along, but she has been mine.

I have no idea where this twisted ride will take us, but I know one thing…

I can’t let her get away with running away from me. Not entirely.

Scout is mewling and shaking, on the verge of coming when I flip her over hard into the dirt, face up, wrapping my right hand around her throat. Tightly. Watching surprise and that addictive touch of fear mingle in her wide eyes. “Run from me again and see what happens, little girl.”

“Sh-show me, Daddy,” she manages, blinking, her voice nothing but a thin bit of string.

I’m all too happy to comply with her request, biting and bruising and slapping and choking my soul mate to a shrieking, convulsing orgasm on the forest floor, after which she clings to me, gasping and boneless, whispering the many ways she loves me into my neck…begging me to do it all again tonight…and I have a feeling life is going to be very different from now on.

I can’t wait to live every single depraved second of it.