Epilogue
SHAY
I woke to a hand on my lips. A man pressed me into my mattress with his hand. My eyes darted to the side, to my window—open.
Warm summer air drifted through.
“Does your fiancé know where you are?” his mechanically altered voice asked.
His free hand slid down my stomach, sliding beneath the satin hem of my pajamas—
I elbowed him. He grunted, falling to the side, giving me just enough space to get up and run. I scrambled out of bed, kicking off the sheets tangling around my legs, and ran.
My hallway was cast in an iron-blue glow as the sun rose over the mountains—
Thud.
The intruder pinned me against the wall. He dragged both my hands over my head, holding my wrists in one of his. I stared up at him, at the black skull mask covering his features.
“My fiancé will kill you,” I said.
“That so?” He spun me around, pressing my face against the wall. Then he ripped my pants down to my ankles, his supple-leather hand sliding up between my thighs.
One digit slipped between my lips, and I arched backward, attempting to knock him off.
In response, he pressed against me, the weight of him encompassing, forcing me still.
His cock was hard at my back, branding me.
A moment later, the metal hiss of a zipper sounded. “I think your fiancé would want to know how wet you are for your stalker.”
“I’m not—”
He slammed inside me, the force of it jolting me harder against the wall. I moaned involuntarily at the fullness.
“What were you saying?” he asked, sliding out and then sliding back inside me. Another whimper left my lips. “You’re not wet for me?” Even through his altered voice, I heard the laugh in his words.
He dropped my wrists, hand sliding around my throat, pulling me tighter against him as he fucked me. I was boneless. I couldn’t move. Held up only by his grip on my throat and his cock in my pussy.
When he spoke next, his voice was in my ear. “You take your stalker’s cock so well.”
He slammed into me again.
And again.
I wound my hands up and around his neck.
“Come, little Maniac,” he said. “So you can tell your fiancé how well you came on your stalker’s cock.”
He punctuated his words with another hard thrust that sent me toppling over the edge. A rough, metallic groan followed as he came inside me.
Just as a tinny, musical bell sounded.
My alarm.
He spun me around, still pressed against the wall, but his body weight sagged, as if he was using the wall to hold himself up. Lazily, he fucked the come back up into me with the gloved hand.
I tore off his mask, meeting cobalt blue eyes and a mess of silky, wavy brown-black hair. I crushed my lips against him, kissing him wildly, tongues tangling.
Calder.
My fiancé.
“I thought I made it clear you weren’t to run,” he said against my lips, pulling back slightly.
I bit my bottom lip in lieu of an answer. When we’d planned this, Calder had told me no running. That it was already going to take enough spoons.
I hadn’t disagreed.
But I didn’t agree either.
“Brat,” he said, laughing at me. Then he pulled me off the wall, spinning me back toward our room. “Time to get to work, big-time grant winner.”
He smacked my ass and I yelped, running to get ready.
I quickly threw on some clothes and grabbed the avocado toast Calder always made me in the morning. I shoved it into my mouth quickly, the egg yolk dripping down my hand.
Some unknown emotion warmed Calder’s eyes.
“What?” I said, reaching for a napkin.
He shook his head, smile soft.
A year had passed since I shot Graham’s dick off, and in that year I’d won the grant, moved in with Calder, and gotten engaged. I could have lived with him in his massive mansion, but…
I opened the door, finding Olly and Eames leaning against the wall. I was next door to my sister, and still across the hall from Olly and Eames.
This was better.
“Were you fucking again?” Olly asked.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
They rolled their eyes, muttering something about a chaotic ball, and I followed them down to the parking garage so we could carpool.
Utah didn’t used to have a dedicated lab for my field of research, and it was so surreal that I was the reason we had one now. I even got to work in the same building as them, but now I ran my own lab and got to really focus on answering the unanswerable.
“Are you coming to book club tomorrow or are you too busy fucking?” Olly asked at the end of the day, leaning in my office door.
“Definitely coming,” I said, grabbing my bag to join them in the car.
On the way back home, Olly and Eames discussed our newest book. It was a why choose Mafia romance, with a particularly heinous villain.
“I don’t think death will be enough,” Eames said. “When the book ends, I need him, like…drawn and quartered.”
“Maybe his dick will get shot off,” I said.
Olly glanced at me in the rearview. “That’s unbelievable. Even for the Mafia.”
“Yeah…” I said as they pulled into the garage. “You’re right.”
“Tell Calder we say hi,” Olly said as we made our way to the elevator.
“And that I want more lemon bars,” Eames added.
They gave me a brief hug, then got in the elevator. I dashed to the opposite side of the street, where a small bakery had just opened.
Criminally Good Desserts.
A brassy ting sounded as I entered the bakery. The scent of warm butter and sugar immediately filled my senses. A chalkboard menu displayed the daily-rotating selection of baked goods. There was only one baked good always available. The signature dish: a macaron soufflé with sesame ice cream.
The kitchen was visible to customers with just a thin, plastic screen separating them. A man with red knuckles kneaded the dough behind it.
Calder glanced up, catching my eyes through the plastic with a smile. Beside him was his brother, Stone.
I knew Calder and his siblings had a strained relationship, but over the year they’d seemed to be trying to close the gap. Every month they begrudgingly met at Utah’s Chuck E. Cheese knockoff—the reason for that still unclear.
But, even with all that progress, I rarely saw Stone.
The brassy ting sounded again, followed by my sister’s voice. “There you are!” She walked to me, stopping short, gaze wandering over my shoulder.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Lithie blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Mom wants to know if we can do dinner tonight.” She reached for a confection laid out on a porcelain plate labeled Free Samples.
“Don’t eat those,” Stone said. “They have gluten.”
We all paused.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d heard Stone speak, and even then it was in one to two words. Now he was speaking in full sentences. About my sister. And her dietary restrictions.
“Do you guys know each other?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Lithie said, dropping the scone and popping out a hip. “Do we know each other?”
I looked from her back to Stone. What the hell was happening? He said nothing, jaw clenched.
Lithie shot me a tight smile. “Guess not.”
Stone mumbled something to Calder I didn’t catch, then left, eyes on the floor. Lithie watched him the entire way.
“So yeah,” Lithie said. “Can you do dinner tonight?”
After letting her know that yes, I could make dinner tonight, she gave me a hug and left.
“So…” I said. “That was weird.”
“Very,” he agreed, just as another customer walked into the shop. I came around the plastic divider as Calder finished ringing her up.
“Thank you,” she said, grasping the thin brown paper bag that held her cookie for dear life. “Thank you so much.”
I wrapped my arms around Calder, watching her leave the shop.
“Another red-and-black?” I asked, craning my neck to look into his eyes.
Calder had thought I’d want him to quit his, as Taylor Swift would say, vigilante shit. But I’d wished I’d had someone like him with Graham. Imagining the women in the same position I’d been in kept me up at night. It was a fucked-up club that no one should be a member of.
So instead I’d proposed this.
His dream, a bakery.
Instead of meeting women randomly with grocery bags, they would come in and order a secret dish off the menu, the red-and-black cookie.
I reached behind him and grabbed the same cookie.
“I know these are a signal, but, oh my god.” I groaned. “They’re so good.”
Calder’s eyes darkened at my groan, and he wound his arms back around me. Before I could even finish, his tongue was in my mouth. One hand left my waist, fisting my hair, angling me so he could get deeper.
Only when I was panting, clutching him, did he pull back.
He placed a knuckle beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to his. “How many spoons?”
“Ten.”
He smiled, then reached under the table for a black mask. “Ready to knock another thing off your list, Maniac?”
The End.