Page 22 of My Stalker, My Protector

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…enlivenedandturned 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’mstill hardwhen 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 ofher.“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.