Love Me To Death

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Steve Jackson. Love Me To Death

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SAVAGE SURPRISE

Cody Neal had promised Candace Walters a surprise. He had her sit down, and with a flourish, he produced a briefcase. It was heavy, as though filled with cash. He wanted the weight to be a distraction, so he had filled it with newspapers. He tried to place a blanket on her head.

.....

Of course, none of the same rules applied to him. He came and went as he pleased, and once he got settled in, always seemed to have plenty of cash, though his only job was as the apartment complex’s maintenance man. That job seemed to take him out of the apartment at all sorts of strange hours. He’d get a call and say that he had to go fix some woman’s toilet. Later he’d come back, snickering about how the tenant met him in a negligee. “She just wanted to get in my pants.” She never asked if he had let her; she always trusted him. But as far as he was concerned, she couldn’t be trusted, even though she was never unfaithful to him.

She should have left him, but she was too close, too much in love, to understand how he was breaking down the tough, independent young woman she was when they had first met. He’d taken her away from an environment where she was secure—away from her parents, away from her job, away from her friends. She was dependent on him for everything. She had no family nearby, and he wouldn’t let her have friends. She was rarely allowed to go anywhere—except to work—without him. He demeaned her every chance he got, until her self-esteem had tumbled. She couldn’t leave, not when she thought that she was the one who had done wrong. If he was unhappy, then she was the one who was making him unhappy. She had to stay and make things right. It’s what you do when you really love someone, she told herself.

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