Page 90 of The Stalker

She thought that Ariana must have him beat if that was the case, but she was surprised when Ariana groaned.

“Dammit. You win.” She flipped over her cards. “I’ve got an ace-high.”

“I’m the winner! Hey, Tatiana, did you see my amazon poker skills?” He looked around the room until he finally managed to find her, standing exactly where she’d been for the last two hours, and he grinned at her.

“Your amazon poker skills? Yes. I indeed saw you win a hand you shouldn’t have been in against a person who also shouldn’t have been in the hand,” she teased him. “Are you ready to go back to the suite?”

He ran his gaze over her and said, “Definitely.”

Hayden stood from his seat and walked a few steps before stumbling. Tatiana rushed forward and wrapped an arm around his waist to try and prop him up.

He stared down into her eyes and smiled at her, “Hi.”

“You’re so drunk, Hayden.” She shook her head, then looked over at the other bodyguards by the door. “Any chance someone could help me?”

Ethan laughed and said, “Can do.”

He strode over quickly to Hayden’s other side and put his arm around him. Together, they managed to get him back to his suite.

They started walking him toward his bedroom when he shook his head and said, “No. I want to watch a movie. I’m not tired.”

Ethan looked at her over Hayden’s head, silently asking her what to do.

“Hayden. You probably need to sleep it off,” she said kindly.

“I’m not tired. I want to watch a movie,” he repeated as he shrugged off their arms and stumbled toward the sofa.

Ethan and Tatiana both rushed forward and stopped him from hurting himself on the way there. They assisted him to the sofa, then stood back as he sat there staring blankly at the empty TV screen in front of him.

“Worst-case scenario, he could sleep on the sofa?” Ethan suggested.

Tatiana laughed, “Yeah, I guess. When Jesse gets here, I’ll try convincing him to go to bed again.”

“It really is like babysitting sometimes, isn’t it,” he smirked at her.

“No kidding.”

She had the terrible feeling that she had waited too long to use the bathroom and knew that she couldn’t wait until Jesse got there to do it.

“Hey, can you do me one more massive favor? I need to use the bathroom again. Can you just watch Hayden while I do? I can’t wait for Jesse to get here.”

Hayden had pulled out his phone and was looking through it with a confused look on his face.

Ethan looked at Hayden, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sure.”

“Thank you so much. I won’t be long.”

Tatiana raced to the bathroom and cringed massively when she got there. She was correct. It had definitely been too long. She stripped off her underwear and jeans, rinsed them, and dropped them in the bath.

She cleaned herself up, brushed her teeth, and took some more painkillers. She would call Jesse the second she relieved Ethan of his duty, and she just wanted to go straight to bed as soon as he arrived for his shift.

She pulled on a nightgown, because she had zero desire to get out a clean outfit to put on, only to take it off as soon as Jesse showed up. She pulled the pins out of her hair and let her braid fall down her back before untying it and using her brush to smooth it out.

Finally, she grabbed her phone and walked back to where the two men were in the living room of the suite. They looked up at her as she did. Both men looked surprised at her appearance before their expressions changed.

Ethan’s was full of judgment, and she could see that he thought she was completely unprofessional, but she didn’t care at all with the way she was feeling.

Hayden, however, was looking at her with unbridled lust. His gaze traveled over her body multiple times, as though he wanted to commit this image of her to memory, and she felt heat flooding to her cheeks as he did.

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