Chapter 10: October 27 - Your Halloween Stalker

Hello gorgeous,

That photograph under your windshield wiper this morning was taken in June last year, and of course the first thing you noticed was the date in the corner. You stared at it for a few seconds, frowned, then finally looked at yourself and said, "God, I look awful," which made me want to bite something because you were sitting barefoot on the grass in the park, laughing so hard at something your friend had said that your head was tipped back and your hair was all over the fucking place. You weren't posing, checking your stomach, worrying about your face or trying to work out which angle made you look best. You were just happy enough to forget anyone might be looking, and somehow your first thought this morning was still to tear yourself apart.

That's why I took the picture, sweetheart. You look alive in it, properly fucking happy, and you look beautiful whether you believe me or not. I'm getting really tired of watching you find something wrong with yourself every time you see a photograph you didn't get to approve first, because there is nothing wrong with the woman in that picture. She was laughing, her hair was a mess, she had grass stuck to the back of one leg and she still looked gorgeous enough that I stood there like an idiot and took a photograph I had absolutely no right to take.

The date matters too, because my obsession started long before the first black envelope. October didn't create this problem. The letters are only when I finally stopped keeping the obsession to myself.

I first noticed you a long time ago in the bookstore while you were arguing with the guy behind the counter about a horror novel. You said the scariest monsters were the ones who could explain themselves well enough that the reader started agreeing with them before remembering what the bastard had actually done, and I remember standing there thinking you were right before following you outside without even bothering to come up with a good reason.

For the first week or so, I told myself the next few times I saw you were coincidence because apparently I was still capable of lying to myself back then. After that I stopped pretending and started making sure I was where you were. I learned your coffee stop, your Sunday walks through the park, the nights you stayed too late at work and came outside rubbing the back of your neck because ten hours at that desk always fucks with your shoulders. I learned which people made you relax, which ones made you polite in that way you get when you actually want someone to leave you alone, which jokes make you laugh even when you're trying not to, and eventually I learned about the guy in August.

You know what happened now, and no, I still don't regret it.

Your friend called while you were sitting in the car with the photograph this morning, and you watched her name flash across the screen until the phone stopped ringing. At lunch she came to the office anyway, and that argument was bad enough that for once listening in didn't feel particularly entertaining. She said the letters were changing the way you thought, you told her she had been treating you like you were too stupid to know your own mind, then she said she was scared for you and you told her you understood that but you were getting fucking tired of everyone acting like fear was the only response you were allowed to have.

Then she finally asked the question you've both been dancing around.

"Do you like them?"

You stared at her long enough that I thought you were going to dodge it again, then you said, "Maybe I fucking do."

Christ, beautiful.

I've done violent things with a steadier pulse than I had after hearing that, and that's embarrassing enough that I considered leaving it out of this letter. I actually had to walk away for a minute because apparently following you for months, breaking into your apartment and writing increasingly filthy things about you every night are all perfectly manageable, but hearing you admit you might enjoy any of it turns me into a fucking idiot.

I wanted to hear you say it again for the rest of the afternoon, preferably somewhere private where I wouldn't have to stand there pretending those words didn't feel like they belonged to me.

Your friend cried before she left, and you nearly followed her out, which killed whatever smug satisfaction I'd been getting from the argument. Don't lose her because of me, sweetheart. I mean that. I'm jealous of stupid shit, I get annoyed when strangers make you laugh too much and I hate seeing another man touch your arm even when you clearly don't give a damn, so I'm not pretending I'm suddenly generous. I just don't want you cutting someone you love out of your life because I barged into it and made everything weird. That would be fucked even by my standards.

You asked her for some space and she left angry, then after work you went home and put the June photograph beside the velvet mask.

I liked that.

Then you finally dealt with the laundry and realized I'd taken something.

Yeah, gorgeous. The black lace pair.

Those ones.

The pair you wore that night while you touched yourself with my letter lying open beside you, the same pair you were still wearing when you eventually fell asleep and then dropped into the laundry basket after you changed the following morning. I took them that following morning, and before you ask yourself whether I just grabbed the first thing I found, I didn't. There were clean pairs in your drawer, plenty of them, and I didn't give a fuck about any of those.

I wanted that pair.

I wanted the lace that had been against your skin while you were lying there reading my words and getting yourself off, because apparently my obsession has reached that point. I picked them up from the basket and stood there holding them for a long time. The lace was soft between my fingers, still slightly twisted from where you'd pulled them off before throwing them in there, and the second I touched them I was back behind those wardrobe doors watching you again. I could remember exactly how your breathing had changed, the way you'd shifted on the bed, the little sounds you tried so hard to swallow even though you thought you were alone, and knowing I was holding the underwear you had been wearing while all of that happened made what was already a fucked-up fixation considerably worse.

I brought them home and put them on my table because apparently some tiny piece of my brain still thought I was going to behave like a normal fucking person.

That lasted maybe ten minutes… probably less.

Every time I looked over and saw that black lace sitting there, all I could think about was you wearing it the night I watched you from six fucking feet away trying not to make a sound while you unknowingly drove me insane.

So I stopped pretending and picked them up again, ran the lace between my fingers and held them to my face.

Then I breathed you in.

Fuck, sweetheart.

That was either a mistake, or the best bad decision I've made all week.

The second your scent hit me, I was right back in your bedroom, remembering every tiny movement you made and every sound you tried to swallow. I could picture the way you shifted, the way your head tipped back when whatever you were doing to your pussy finally got good enough that you forgot to be quiet for a second.

And I was holding the fucking underwear you'd been wearing through all of it.

They're mine now, apparently.

Yeah, I know, I'm getting worse. I don't even particularly care anymore.

I wrapped the black lace around my cock and stopped pretending I was going to do anything else with them.

The fabric was soft in a way that felt almost obscene, delicate and dark against my skin, and I had to close my hand slowly because I didn't want to rush it. Not yet. My cock was already hard and aching before I'd even started, had been since I picked them up off the table again and stopped fighting with myself about it, and the first slow drag of the lace made my breath leave me in a way that would have been embarrassing if there was anybody here to witness it.

There wasn't. There was only me and the black lace and the image of you that I cannot get out of my fucking head.

I kept my grip loose at first, let myself feel every soft ridge of the fabric moving against me while I stared at the ceiling and thought about you lying on that bed with your hand beneath this exact lace. My jaw was tight. My other hand pressed flat against the mattress because I needed something to push against, something solid, while everything else felt like it was dissolving into want and heat and you.

I closed my eyes and thought about the sounds you made that night. The ones you tried to swallow, the ones that escaped anyway, that rough little exhale you let out right before you turned your face into the pillow because even alone you couldn't let yourself be loud. I wanted the sounds you weren't making. The ones you'd been keeping back, pressing down, politely swallowing like they were too much to let out into the air.

I tightened my grip on my cock as I wondered what sounds you would make if it was my cock rubbing against your pussy instead of your fingers. Whether you'd still try to muffle yourself. Whether that small, bitten-off noise would turn into something longer and less controlled once you realized I wasn't going to let you hide it. I thought about the slick heat of you, how warm you'd feel, how soft, the way your hips would shift trying to get more of exactly what I was giving you while your mouth finally opened and gave me something real.

My hand moved faster as I thought about what it would feel like if it was your pussy squeezing my cock instead of my hand. I thought about that until my whole body felt on edge. The lace kept moving against me and I kept my eyes shut and thought about the way you'd feel wrapped around me, warm and slick and tight enough that I'd have to stop for a second just to keep my head, just to hold onto one last shred of something resembling control before I lost it completely.

I don't think I'd manage it.

I think you'd feel so fucking good that the control would go in the first ten seconds and I'd stop being careful or patient or anything except entirely focused on fucking you deeper, on hearing whatever sound that dragged out of you, on feeling your body adjust around mine while your hands grabbed whatever part of me you could reach.

Your hips tilting up to meet mine, your thighs parting, that warm slick heat of you squeezing my cock over and over again. Your nails digging into my back, my shoulders, wherever you could reach, and your mouth finally open and making sounds you'd never let yourself make alone. Real sounds, honest sounds, the ones you'd been sitting on for years because somewhere along the way you'd decided wanting too loudly was the same as wanting too much.

The thought of you taking all of me, every inch buried so deep inside you that neither of us could think straight, cracked through whatever was left of my restraint.

I came so fucking hard my vision went white, gorgeous, hard enough that for a few seconds afterward I just sat there with my head tipped back and your underwear still clenched in my hand. Wondering when exactly my life had reached the point where stealing a woman's dirty black lace and getting myself off with it felt perfectly fucking reasonable.

I still didn't put them down.

That's probably the part that says the most about how far gone I am.

I sat there afterward running my thumb over the lace, thinking about the fact that you'd eventually go looking for them and realize exactly which pair was missing. I knew you'd remember the night immediately because I remembered every fucking second of it, and by then I was almost as obsessed with the idea of you finding out as I had been with taking them in the first place.

I thought about returning them before you noticed, but apparently whatever tiny piece of decency suggested that didn't have enough votes, so I kept them.

I watched you dig through the basket looking for them, then went through it again because apparently black lace might magically reappear if you looked irritated enough. After that you checked the bedroom, the bathroom and finally the laundry basket again before sitting down on the edge of the bed with it between your feet.

Then you smiled.

A small smile with only a little guilt in it. But it was completely fucking real.

Sweetheart, that smile ruined me worse than the underwear did.

Because you knew.

Maybe not every detail, yet, but enough.

You knew exactly why I had taken that particular pair, and instead of immediately calling your friend or the detective, you sat there thinking about it with that tiny smile trying to come out at the corner of your mouth.

I'm not going to tell you what that means because you're more than capable of working your own feelings out, and I've already spent too much time acting like I know every thought that crosses your mind. What I will tell you is that I wanted to see inside your head right then so fucking badly I almost gave myself a headache.

That black lace is sitting beside me while I write this, because apparently I have no intention of becoming normal about this.

But I do want you to do something simple for me.

You know I have them. You know why I wanted them. You know what I did while I had them in my hand.

Just for a moment I want you to close your eyes and imagine what I was seeing and feeling when I had your lace underwear wrapped around my cock. I want you to imagine the things I was imagining that had me coming all over my fist and that pretty lace.

That's it.

No pretending you don't know what happened.

Will you make yourself come to those images? Will you imagine hearing me call you a good girl when you do?

I like that more than I should.

I want you to know the effect you have on people, particularly me.

You walk around acting like attention happens to you by accident, like compliments are people being polite and anybody who thinks you're beautiful must have caught you on a particularly good day. I'm getting really fucking tired of that.

Be pleased with yourself once in a while. Actually, be smug, I think I'd like you smug.

I want to see what happens when you stop apologizing for taking up space and finally understand that people notice when you walk into a room, sweetheart. I noticed once and apparently never fucking recovered.

Be angry about the underwear if you want to be, because stealing them was objectively fucked.

And if some inconvenient little part of you likes knowing exactly what I did with that lace in my hand? Keep that too, you don't owe anybody an apology for being turned on.

Until tomorrow, gorgeous.

The bastard who owes you a pair of underwear.

P.S. If you call yourself ugly in that June photograph again, I'm making copies and leaving them everywhere you look. Bathroom mirror, fridge, inside the book you're reading, maybe one taped to the fucking ceiling above your bed if I'm feeling particularly petty. Consider yourself warned.