Page 8 of Claiming Genevieve

“Are you stalking me?” The question comes out clipped and sharp, and it momentarily catches me off guard.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Are you stalking me?” She asks the question more slowly this time, almost patronizing.

“I’m getting coffee,” I reply smoothly, deadpan, but she doesn’t seem to be willing to find any humor in the exchange.

“Conveniently at the same place I am.” She turns her head toward the cashier, her sleek dark hair sliding over her shoulders, and my palms itch with the desire to feel it against my hands. There are three more customers ahead of us, and I wish there were more. This woman is giving me nothing, and I need more time, because I want everything.

“Sometimes fate just works out like that.” I smile at her, my accent thickening a bit as I speak, and I could fucking swear I see a spark of desire in her eyes as she looks back at me—a flash of heat.

“Is it fate, or persistence, Mr. Gallagher?” She smiles, but it’s tight, and it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Rowan. And maybe a bit of both?” I keep my own smile on my face, the one that has won me over hundreds of women, though this one is proving to be much more difficult than the others.

“I’d say it’s an inability to pick up on what’s right in front of you.” She moves forward as the last customer ahead of her orders, that flat smile on her face suddenly turning pleasant for the cashier. “I’d like a sugar-free vanilla latte, oat milk.”

She hands over her card, and I look at those long, slender fingers, feeling another pulse of desire jolt through me. Everything about her fucking turns me on.

I somehow manage to place my coffee order—black drip coffee, large—while watching her gracefully drift toward the pickup counter. When I join her a moment later in the throng of other customers waiting for their coffee, I see her look at me sideways, her expression clearly irritated.

“This isn’t the only spot to wait.”

“It’s the one I want to be in.” I flash her that smile again. “You left the party early last night.”

“Did I?” she asks breezily, but I could swear I see a hint of color in her pale cheeks. She almost seems as if she doesn’t want to look right at me.

“I didn’t see you after we danced.”

“So you were looking for me.” It’s the most flirtatious thing she’s said since we met, and I can tell it startles her. She bites her lower lip, briefly, and the sight of her plush lip caught between her teeth makes desire throb through me again.

“I was.” I see no point in pretending otherwise. Flirtation is all well and good, but I want this woman fiercely, and I truthfully don’t have time for an extended game of cat and mouse. My responsibilities are pressing down on me, and I can’t focus on what I need to when Genevieve seems to occupy my every waking thought.

That tight smile crosses her face again as she reaches for the coffee that the barista hands her. “Don’t,” she says, her voice as tense as her expression, and pivots gracefully on her heel to stride away.

Every cell in my body strains to follow after her. But I let her go, wondering if I should be pursuing this at all.

—

The next day,I find myself back at the coffee shop all the same. I spent the day yesterday going over accounts with my father, listening as best as I could to his lecture on the family businesses and their profits and losses over the past year while trying to think about anything other than Genevieve—anything other than the graceful line of her swan-like neck, the fragility of her delicate wrists, the lithe muscle of her body, the way I could smell her warm, salty scent even over the intense smell of coffee beans. I did all I could to try to push her out of my thoughts, but she returned anyway, over and over again, until I finally found myself alone in my room for the night, and I could try to exorcise her for a little while.

I woke up this morning hard and aching again from dreams of her, gritting my teeth as I reached for my cock, groaning with pleasure that I wanted desperately to be fromherand not myself.I haven’t jerked off this much since I was a teenager, I remember thinking grimly as I’d spilled stickily all over my fingers, the pleasure fading quickly and leaving me with nothing but the desire to see her again.

Though she’s a few customers ahead of me in line this time, I join her again at the pickup station. “I’m surprised to see you here again,” I remark casually as I walk up next to her, and she looks at me, quickly hiding the startled expression in her eyes. It’s replaced immediately by a now-familiar annoyance.

“Why?” she asks coolly. “This is my usual spot.” She looks almost immediately as if she regrets telling me that, and I smirk.

“You don’t seem to like running into me here.”

“So, what?” She turns to look at me fully, and I notice she’s dressed in black and white again—a pair of black bike shorts this time and a slightly oversized T-shirt. Her hair is up in a tight, prim bun, and I realize she must have come from rehearsal. An early morning one, perhaps.

Heat flickers through me at the thought of seeing her dance, at the imagined picture in my head of her long legs extended out, her arms arched above her head, her lithe body moving across a stage like a work of art.

“Should I find a new coffee shop because a man doesn’t know when he’s not wanted?” She arches an eyebrow, pulling me out of my fantasy, and I chuckle, smirking as I reach for the drip coffee that’s handed to me.

“Oh, I think you want me,taibhseach.” The Gaelic falls from my lips easily, an endearment I’ve used before, but I see Genevieve flinch at the sound of it rolling off my tongue in an Irish burr. That heat flashes in her eyes again, her muscles coiling, and for a moment I half expect her to strike at me.

I’d die happily, with her sweet venom sliding through my veins.

---