Page 209 of Texting Dr. Stalker

And love could overcome everything.

* 48 *

Zander

Sneak of Shame

I WOKE TO THE WORST CHEST PAINS of my life. A daggering sort of loss that made me gasp for air. The nonsense dream I’d had dissipated the quicker I came back to reality, but the pain didn’t fade.

It only grew worse.

I still had her in my arms, yet…I’d dreamed of her finding out everything. Of all the affection she felt for me bleeding into absolute hate.

Shuddering, I did my best to snap out of it.

I have to go.

Evening had fallen, and the fairy lights strung up over the hexagon shelving on the newly painted wall clicked on as if on a timer.

I froze, waiting for her to wake.

However, she merely snuggled deeper into the cushions, her hips scooting back to steal more of my heat.

Just that one movement made me hard again.

It would be so easy to roll her onto her stomach and take her one last time. To slip inside and—

What’s stopping you?

She wouldn’t be opposed.

But…if I woke her, I lost my opportunity to sneak out of there. I’d have to make up yet more lies about where I was going and why I was never coming back.

Christ, why does this hurt so much?

Peng yawned and popped his little head up from where he lay in an orange ball on a cushion above Sailor’s head. He eyed me as he sniffed with bristling whiskers.

I tore my gaze from his. I had no power to win a cat stare down thanks to the level of guilt I suffered.

Sailor sighed in her sleep, sucker-punching me in the heart.

The thought of never talking to her again, sleeping with her again, being this free with her again almost had me lowering my mouth to her shoulder to kiss her. I didn’t care that I still wore my mask—that the cotton would absorb my kiss not her skin.

I just had to touch her.

Hold her.

I’m so sorry.

Hovering behind her, my eyes went to half-mast as I inhaled the floral scent of her skin and gave in to the insidious creep of lust.

My eyes caught on a shadow.

A finger-shaped shadow on her skin.

Another dagger stabbed directly in my heart.

Bruises.

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