Release Blitz: Stranger by Robin Lovett
Stranger
(Dark Stalker #1)
by Robin Lovett
Release Date: June 13, 2017
About Stranger
Warning: Stranger by Robin Lovett is a scorching, intense romance novel featuring an anti-hero out to get revenge against the trust-fund woman whose family destroyed his life.
This isn’t supposed to be a love story. This is not the kind of book where a girl gets swept off her feet. Where the hero is her knight in shining armor. This is a novel about ruining someone’s life. But even the simplest plans for revenge can go wrong.
I like the way he watches me, this man I don’t know. It’s something I’ll never confess to, never tell a soul. But with one look of those penetrating eyes, I feel as if he’s unwrapped me, turned me inside out, rubbed away at my trust-fund-holding, good-girl exterior until I’m raw and exposed.
He looks like he wants to destroy me. Like he wants to obliterate me and my shallow, perfect life until there’s nothing left.
And once I meet Logan, the crazy part is, I want him to.
* * *
I hate Penny Vandershall.
I hate her money and her family and her privilege. I hate her innocence and her smile and her shine. I want to annihilate her lightness and consume her with my darkness, my anger, my red-hot rage until there is nothing left of her.
I know the truth about her, the truth that will make it easy to bring her down. To ruin her for good. But through the blinding haze of my hatred, my burning need for revenge, she's starting to get to me. She looks at me in wide-eyed fear, like a girl approaching the tiger’s cage. And yet she refuses to walk away; edging closer until she can meet the beast who wants to rip her apart.
And even though I set out to ruin her, she may be the one to destroy me.
This is a series of standalones that can be read separately or in this order:
Book 1: Stranger, a dark stalker romance
Book 2: Deceiver, a dark revenge romance
Book 3: Keeper, a dark captive romance
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An Excerpt from Stranger
I’m cooking when she opens the door.
I shouldn’t be in her kitchen, but I haven’t had a kitchen in weeks. I need to eat and she has food in her fridge.
She drops her purse on the table and stares at me.
The circles under her eyes are a lot bigger than they were two days ago.
It’s because of me. I’m stressing her.
Good. I’ll make it worse, inflicting it on her body and her mind. My plans have solidified today. There’s nothing more torturous than being denied something you want. And if she wants sex, I have to find out how badly that includes me. If it’s as bad as I think, my new plan is by far the best I’ve ever thought of.
“You’re cooking,” she says.
“I do eat.” I stir the pan.
“What are you making?” She walks into the kitchen and I don’t like it. It’s too domestic. Her, coming home to me cooking. It’s too familiar. I should’ve made ramen on my cookstove out on her deck.
“Stir fry.” I frown at the vegetables and meat frying in the pan.
“Smells good.”
She comes close to me. Too close. Despite everything I’ve done to make this woman afraid of me, the more scared she is, the more she can’t stay away. Her arm brushes mine and I can smell her.
Over the sesame seeds and the soy sauce, stronger than the steam or the food, it’s her.
She smells like girl. Like too much sugar, too much sunshine, and way too much soap. Why does she have to be so clean?
“I’ll make rice.” She too gracefully goes to the cupboard.
I refuse to watch her. But I can feel her behind me. Her softness and too gentle movements. It should make me want to get rid of her. I don’t have to hang out in her house. Why am I here? I should be down on the beach.
But I’m not.
I’m in her kitchen with her pulling out pots and pans behind me. And I want to touch her.
It’s a strange sort of want. Like a physical pulling. Like a rubber band pulled taut begging to be released. Like it’s harder for me not to touch her than it would be to haul her against me and bury my fingers into her skin and my tongue in her mouth. It would be easier to take over her the way I couldn’t stop myself yesterday. My hands beneath her clothes, her fingers clutching my hair, begging to go deeper.
And it’s almost like she’s begging for it again. Reaching in front of me to plug in the cooker, when there’s a perfectly good outlet on the side. Pulling open the drawer next to my hip for a spoon when there’s a perfectly good one in the jar by the stove.
I turn the burner down to simmer, then back her into the corner.
I cage her with my arms on either side of her, and her eyes widen in fear.
“You want to play my game?” I can’t help my eyes roving over her face: her mouth, those pert little lips, her eyes, even her nose with these tiny freckles you can’t see except up close. She’s sickeningly sweet.
Makes it all the sweeter when she stutters her answer. “I’m, uh, h-hungry.” She’s panting, her mouth open. I catch a glimpse of her pink tongue.
I lean over her and mock her. “What do you want? Do you want more of me? Are you aching for me to give you the fuck of your life?”
She shakes her head. “N-no.” But her chest is pumping air at a fierce rate and her tone goes up in that way it does when she’s lying.
She does want more of me.
I don’t understand why. But I can use this. I can work her to my advantage. Toy with her. Torture her. I would enjoy that. I would enjoy seeing her driven mad with wanting me—the man who’s out to destroy her life.
Fear. And Need. Her body is stiff like she wants to run, but her eyes scream wreck me, use me, make me into something other than me.
I lean toward her ear. “Are you tired of being a good girl?”
She moans.
“That’s not an answer.” I breathe against her skin.
“Yes.” She shivers.
“You like it when I scare you.”
Her eyes fall closed. “Yes.”
“You’re afraid I’ll make you do things you would never do.”
Her throat works on a swallow. “Yes.”
“You want me?”
Her eyes flash open, those light blue ovals that are so clear, I can almost see myself.
She wants me.
I stand back and go to the stove.
I have my answer. It should disturb me, surprise me: I don’t want her to want me. She doesn’t know me. No one does. No one will.
I don’t want them to know me.
But it doesn’t matter. My plan is accomplished. Now she knows she wants me. She’ll long for it. I’ll never give it to her.
But I’ll taunt her without mercy.
About Robin Lovett
Robin Lovett is the author of Stranger. She enjoys writing romance to avoid the more unsavory things in life, like day jobs, housework, and personal demons. Reading romance has always been her addiction of choice. When not writing or reading with her cat, she’s busy embracing untamable curly hair or adventuring into the outdoors with her husband. She loves chatting about life and romance on Twitter and Facebook, so don't be shy!
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