Prey Drive (Parallel Prey, #1)

by Jen Stevens

I woke up a few hours later to the room blanketed in darkness and a shadow standing over me, peering down at my wrist lying beside me on the bed. “What's this?” He gently pulls my arm up and turns it so the moonlight shines directly onto me, frowning at the bruises peppering the delicate skin of my inner wrist.

“It's nothing.” “It's not nothing,” he spits out the word like it's spoiled food against his tongue. “These look like fingerprints. Who did this to you?” “You're about to add more if you don't let go,” I whine, tugging my arm even harder. Without warning, he releases his grip, and I go backward, nearly falling onto my pillow. I scowl back at his smug smirk, rubbing the spot dramatically.

“Who. Touched. You?” he demands in an angry, gravelly tone.

“My asshole ex came to visit me at work.” Apparently, that was the wrong answer.

“Has he laid his hands on you before?” Bash asks, breaking my train of thought. I don't have to answer when my eyes fall to the floor. “I need your words, Stardust. Tell me that this fucker has hurt you worse than this, and I'll have all the permission I need to handle him.”

“I told you, you're mine now, and I don't like when people touch my things. Anyone with the balls to do so is going to deal with the consequences. Do you understand?”

“Would you like to spread your legs for me now and give me a taste? I thought it might be uncouth of me to lick your pussy so soon after your ex scared you, but I'd be more than happy to chase him out of your thoughts with my tongue. All you have to do is ask, baby.”

My gaze locks on her, and my mouth instantly begins to water. I need a taste.

Besides, I haven’t seen Bash in a while. It’s only a matter of time before my crazed stalker makes an appearance. As I'm about to give up and drop my gaze on the menu, it locks in on him, and my breath catches in my throat so abruptly, I nearly choke. It’s almost as if my thoughts have conjured him before me.

He’s got a whiskey glass tilted back against his lips this time, but his eyes are still focused on me over the rim, instead of on his date. When he notices me looking again, his brows raise in a question. Am I going to confront him in front of all these people?

“Sexually assaulting you? If memory serves, you loved every second of it. Never even told me to stop,” he counters darkly, leaning his shoulder against the wall. “In fact, you begged me for more.”

“How can you be so sure?” His nose grazes my jaw as his fingers swipe a few loose strands of hair away, fully exposing my neck to him. Sharp teeth graze against my skin until he nips at my shoulder, and I jump, hating the way it sends tremors pulsing between my legs. “Because you like it too much.”

“You loved having a strange man come for you in the dead of night. To make you scream like no other man has before.” “Bash…” She shivers against me, but shakes her head soberly. “No. You're clearly unhinged.” I smirk at that. “Am I?” Maybe I am. This whole thing has seemed so fucked up since the beginning, yet when I'm with her—against her—it feels so right.

That's got to mean something. Right? Or am I just completely fucked up, moving from one criminal addiction to the next? Killing. Stalking. Sexually assaulting, as she says.

“Yes,” she hisses, and I'm not sure if it's in response to my question or my hand snaking up her leg and hiking up the sexy, silk minidress she's wearing.

“You're so fucking sexy. So responsive to me,” I say into her ear, and she responds with a quiet whimper.

But I don't, and she makes no move to get away. Instead, she shifts her hips so my two fingers waiting at her entrance are pushed inside the slightest bit, and all my restraint disappears. In the next breath, I'm ravaging her. My left hand works against her delectable bundle of nerves as my right hand moves upward, pinching and kneading her nipples through the soft fabric of her dress. Her neck cranes backward as I capture her mouth into a sloppy, sensual kiss.

Within seconds, she's throwing her head back against my shoulder again with a loud moan that I have no doubt the entire restaurant can hear. “That's it, baby, come for me,” I encourage into her ear.

But I don't have time to enjoy it before she's tugging at my belt. She raises her brows at me as she sucks her bottom lip into her mouth and chews on it seductively. And I want to. Holy fuck, do I want to watch her sink down on her knees and choke on my impossibly hard cock. But I push her hands away and shake my head.

Stardust nods, then adjusts herself in the mirror. The orgasm she just had is still clear across her face. Her lips are swollen from our kiss and her hair is in a disarray, but she looks as perfect as ever. My cock twitches at the idea that I did that to her. Before she steps away, I grab her jaw and turn her back toward me. “I'll be there tonight to finish this,” I say, both in a promise and a warning.

The moment their skin touches, his eyes flick over to mine, and I have to turn away before my emotions play out across my face.

She’s the one he takes out in broad daylight. The one he wines and dines as he keeps me tucked away in the darkness. I’m more furious with myself than anything. I don’t support cheating of any kind. Men can be pigs.

Of course, all of my resolve melts away when I walk through my front door and his dark silhouette is leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for me.

“Yes, soon you’ll be paying those bills with your shiny new job at Lancaster Tech, correct?”

“How did you know about that?”

“How else do you think you got th...

“You didn’t… But how… Why?”

“Have I forgotten to tell you my full name, Stardust?”

She stares up into my face, head shaking in disbelief. And because I know she’s done her homework on her new company like a good little employee, I lean forward until my lips graze against her ear and whisper, “Sebastian Lancaster.”

Sebastian. Fucking. Lancaster. As in, the CEO of Lancaster Tech. As in my new boss.

“I like you,” he says simply, as if that’s enough of an explanation. “You like me?” I repeat incredulously.

“Yes, and don’t say it like you can’t believe anyone could ever like you, Stardust–”

“I need space,” I demand, pushing against him in a panic.

Bash backs away, albeit hesitantly. “Don’t run. I’ll catch you,” he warns in a deep, menacing voice.

“Who was the woman you were with?” “Were you jealous?”

“No,” I lie, but he sees right through it. “She’s no one now. A casual hookup. A means to an end. She broke it off at dinner tonight.” “And before? Were you cheating on her when you…?”

“No. It was never cheating.”

I thought I could handle taking the time to ease her in. I'm a patient man, and I've already come this far. I don't have many answers for her because I've never done this before, but I was willing to try if it meant wiping that horrified look off her face.

I stroke myself three times before her pupils dilate and her lips part. She wants this—whatever this is. It's fucked up and backwards and unprecedented, but that only makes it that much more alluring for her.

“Come to me,” I command in an authoritative tone. She shakes her head once.

Jovie doesn’t see my triumphant expression, though. Instead, she’s gazing at my cock with a hungry look in her eyes. I resist moving, soaking in the erotic scene before me when she sucks that damn lip back into her mouth. Fuuuck.

“That's right, baby,” I find myself praising, thrusting into her grasp over and over again.

“Tell me you don't want this,” I challenge mockingly as I fuck her mouth, and she eagerly takes every stroke like it’s her last meal. “Try to lie to me again, Stardust. I dare you.”

“It's not a lie. You're a sick, toxic son of a bitch with an ego the size of this planet. Just another bored little rich boy slumming it with us lower class peasants. Wanting you is the equivalent of handing my soul over to the devil. Dangerous and fruitless.”

“I'm slumming it with you?” I ask, grinding my cock against her slick center. She's so fucking wet for me, I can't even stand it. “You think that's why I keep coming back here?”

“No, baby. I keep coming back here because you're mine, and I'm determined to claim you in every way possible.”

“Rest, Stardust,” I tell her as I lie her down onto her pillow, then take the spot beside her, tugging her close to my chest. “We've got all night together.”

“I heard he doesn’t take any souvenirs from his victims.” “My friend on the force claims there might be multiple killers, since there's so much variation with how the bodies are left.” “He doesn't even wait between victims like most serial killers. Just dumps the body and moves onto the next.”

“Charles,” I accost with a wide smile, a little too loudly. “How have you been?” He scowls the slightest bit, taken back by the fact that I haven’t fallen all over myself to offer any condolences for losing his son the way everyone else here has done the instant they see him. I killed Logan weeks ago.

“They’re saying the killer is targeting The Order specifically,” he mutters in a low enough tone to avoid anyone overhearing. “The Serpent Slayer is what he calls himself.” No, that's what the media is calling me.