Page 60 of Stalker
“I think so.” She rubbed her hands over her arms. “He didn’t touch me. He just scared me.” Her shoulders shook as the weight of it all came crashing down. “I woke up to him walking into my bedroom and I—” She stared off at the wall, remembering her fear, “I guess I went into fight-or-flight mode.”
“You went into fight mode, Peyton.” I nodded to the broken shards of glass and porcelain on the floor of her bedroom. “Rightfully so.”
“Sorry.” She sank in on herself slightly. “I’ll pay for the broken stuff.”
“Stop it.” I shook my head and took a step toward her, with my hand fisted to keep from actually pulling her into my arms like I wanted to. She didn’t know me as Lincoln, only as Dane, and she didn’t want Dane. And I couldn’t separate the two anymore, so I was hopeless. “Stay right here.”
She sank down on the couch and watched me as I went into her bedroom. “What are you doing?”
I took her duffle bag from underneath of her bed, not even pretending not to know where it was, and started putting some clothes into it for the next day or two. “You will stay in the main house until I can repair the door.”
I caught her glance over at the side door as I moved to her bathroom, grabbing her toiletries and putting them into the bag too. “Oh, dear.” She stared at the wrecked splinters of her door and then stared up at me as I came back out to the living room. “You did that?” She looked down my body, “To get to me?”
I put her bag over my shoulder and tried to convince myself to stay silent, but I couldn’t. “I’d do far,farworse to get to you, Peyton.” While helping her up, I abandoned my attempts to avoid touching her and reveled in the way the bare skin of her arm felt against my palm. I held out her bathrobe from the back of her door and pushed it ontoher arms. The sooner her hard nipples were covered up, the sooner I’d be able to think straight. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She let me put my hand on the small of her back and lead her across the pool deck into my home in a trance. When we got to the bottom of the staircase, her steps faltered, “You don’t have any guest beds.” She chuckled lightly, looking up at me as I herded her up the steps. “I know, because I clean all the empty rooms.”
“That’s so I don’t get any visitors.”
She mulled that over for a moment, no doubt taking longer than normal because of the events that happened and the ungodly hour.
When we got to my bedroom door, though, she snapped out of the haze. “Wait.” She turned and faced me in the now open doorway. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you settled in my room so you can get some rest.” I walked forward, forcing her to go into my bedroom, and shut the door behind us. Her eyes were wide and her lips parted as she licked them, looking up at me.
“Your room?”
I grinned for the first time in days, setting her duffle bag down on the footstool at the end of the bed, and then pulled the blankets back. Twenty minutes ago, I couldn’t wait to slide under those blankets and sleep for the next few days. Yet there I was, welcoming her into my bed while simultaneously trying to convince myself not to join her.
She doesn’t want you.
“As you stated, I have no spare beds in the entire house.” I walked back over to her and she held her ground, staring up at me. She probably hated Lincoln as much as she hated Dane after how I treated her at dinner the other night. Or better yet, right after dinner. “Get into the bed, Peyton.”
“What about you?” Her eyes roved over my face as she stared up, unmoving. “Where will you sleep?”
“I won’t cross boundaries with you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I stepped back, indignation burning from her recent rejection aligned with the new one.
Her hand shot out and grabbed mine before I could back away completely. “I didn’t mean that.” She licked her lips again, and I fought the urge to growl and take a bite of them. “I mean, you look dead on your feet. You obviously need to sleep too.”
I took a step forward. “Are you worried about me, Peyton?” I tilted my head the way Dane always did, tempting fate to burn my hopes and dreams at my feet just so I could get out of the perpetual limbo I got myself into.
Her green eyes parted wide and her breath hitched, before she blinked and let go of my hand. She opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her.
“Go to bed,” I moved around her tempting body, gripping my doorknob with enough strength to crush it in my palm. “I’ll sleep on the couch in my office.”
I didn’t wait for her to agree or not, closing the door behind me and heading into a conversation I didn’t want to have.
When I found Tamen behind my desk with his feet up, he was staring at the screens and observing Peyton standing in my bedroom, who was lost in thought and not moving.
I clicked the kill switch, effectively locking down every screen so he couldn’t see anything else. “You’ve got five seconds to explain yourself before I leave bits and pieces of you on the floor.”
He grinned in his usual asshole way and dropped his feet when I shoved them off my desk and dumped his ass backward out of my chair. I knew he could have deflected my move, always one to be fastas a cat, but he fell to the ground with a thud. Laughing, he got up and exaggeratedly brushed off his clothes before choosing to sit on the couch across the room instead of going back for my chair.
“Hello, dear brother. I missed you too.” His thick English accent grated my nerves like it usually did, when I first spoke with him after a long time apart. It reminded me of everything he got that I didn’t.
It reminded me of the life he lived that should have been mine.
“T.”