Page 119 of Hayden's Stalker

Her cheeks turn bright red, and her breathing rate gets faster, but she puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “I’m pretty sure I know why, and it’s completely baseless. Daniel is afriend,and you’re acting more like a jealous boyfriend right now than a client. It’s not very attractive, you know.”

I stand and stride over to stand directly in front of her. She’s so close that I can smell her scent and hear her fast breaths as she tilts her head up to look at me. Her arousal is so obvious, but I know that she won’t give in to her desires, despite the fact that she clearly wants me.

“Isn’t it, Tati? Why do you look like you could happily ride me all night long, then?”

“I don’t,” she says in a breathy voice.

I raise an eyebrow at her and run my gaze over her body. Her nipples are hard in her top, and the way she’s looking at me, I know that I’m right. I dislike that she won’t admit it and that she’s denying it.

“You’re lying to me. You said you’d never do that.”

“It’s not a lie because I don’t know what I look like to you, Hayden,” she says with a casual shrug.

Her eyes widen in the silence after she speaks, and I look down at her. If she wants to know what she looks like to me, I ammorethan happy to tell her.

I give a slow smile and decide to tell her the truth about exactly how she looks. “Well, allow me to enlighten you, then. You give me this wide-eyed look that screams ‘fuck me, Hayden,’ and your breathing gets all fast. Then, the second I get too close, you push me away and I’m left jacking off while imagining all the things we could do if you would let us.”

Her reaction is glorious as she blinks at me, looking sexy as fuck, so I continue.

“Like right now, for instance. I could slip my hand into your jeans and give you an orgasm. I can imagine how enjoyable thatwould be because I’ve heard you masturbating on more than one occasion now, and it makes me hard every time.”

She gasps softly as I let her know that I’ve heard her masturbating because she’s been about as subtle with her masturbation tendencies as I’ve been.

“Are you wet from thinking about it?” I ask her outright, knowing that she can’t lie to me.

She shifts in place but doesn’t respond at all. If she thinks that keeping her silence will prevent me from knowing the truth, then she’s sorely mistaken.

“Tati? Are you going to answer my question?” She shakes her head, and I chuckle under my breath. “I knew you wouldn’t. Meanwhile, I’m more than ready to fuck you if that’s what you want.”

She swallows heavily and says quietly, “What I want doesn’t matter. I do what I have to do. Not what I want to do.”

“What you want matters to me, though. I know you don’t want Daniel, even if you won’t tell me that you want me. It doesn’t stop me from hating him for having fun, casual conversations with you. Not because I think he’s going to actually get into a relationship with you, but becauseIcan’t have that with you. You keep shutting me out, and I hate it.”

It’s the painful truth. I stop short of telling her that I’m in love with her because that is a truth that’s a thousand times more painful still. Here I am, in love with a woman who won’t even allow herself to come near me, let alone be in a relationship and fuck me. A woman who seems absolutely determined to keep me as nothing more than a job for her. I hate how much it hurts.

“Believe me when I tell you that I’m not shutting you out anywhere near as much as I should, Hayden.”

“Right. If you say so,” I scoff because she shuts down any time I get even the tiniest bit too close to her.

She narrows her eyes at me. “If I were shutting you out the way I would normally shut a client out, you would know maybe a fraction of a percent about me. I wouldn’t have kissed you or hugged you or repeatedly masturbated while thinking about y—”

There it is. She admitted that she masturbates while thinking about me. I can tell she knows how badly she’s fucked up because her eyes go as wide as saucers. I desperately want her to keep going and tell me more.

“Tell me what you fantasize about me. You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.”

“No, Hayden. I’m not going to swap masturbatory fantasies because that would be yet another line crossed with you that I shouldn’t. Not to mention that it is hard enough for me to resist fucking you on a daily basis as it is, and I’m not dumb enough to think that conversation wouldn’t end with us fucking each other stupid.”

I look over her body again and ask her, “Why are you fighting so hard? I know you want it. You know I want it. Why not give us what we both clearly want.”

“If you don’t know the answer to that, I’m not telling you,” she says, her jaw tight.

She spins on her heel and strides off to her room, closing the door shut tight behind her. I want to follow her and beg her to tell me exactly what the fuck that was supposed to mean.

I don’t.

I make my way to my bedroom and collapse on my bed, turning her words over in my head for hours before I finally fall asleep. Tatiana Swanson might be the woman I love, but she’s also doing everything she can to avoid the way she feels about me, and I wish I knew why.

18

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