Read HAYDEN (Dragon Security Book 5) for Free Online

doorknob.
    “Come sit down,” Hayden said. “I ordered some tea. It should be here in a minute.”
    “Tea?”
    “Hot tea. My grandmother always said nothing can be so bad that tea can’t fix it.”
    He was watching me, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room as though he didn’t know what to do with himself. His phone buzzed, but he ignored it. He’d stripped off his tie and pulled his shirt free of his pants, standing there so rumpled and casual that I could almost believe that this was just a normal day and we were just sharing a normal moment. But there was nothing normal about it. The look on his face, the concern and the uncertainty written in every line, made me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
    And the idea of Hayden sipping a cup of tea—a delicate little tea cup in his big hands, his pinky raised properly—amused me.
    I smiled, but the cut on my lip split with the movement and I hissed, touching it lightly.
    Hayden was immediately in front of me, his finger touching the spot lightly. When he pulled back, there was blood on his fingertip.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled, turning to find a tissue.
    “When I saw that guy pull you into that alley…” He seemed to choke on something, his own emotions, maybe. “I can’t stand the idea of anyone hurting you.”
    I snorted as I grabbed a tissue from a box sitting on the small desk in the corner, near the windows. I pressed it to my lip, slowing the blood.
    “Only you can hurt me, then?” I asked softly.
    “Me?”
    I glanced at him. “All the jokes about my clothes? You always calling me a grandma?”
    “That’s just in fun.”
    “It doesn’t feel fun.” I turned to the small mirror that hung over the desk, dabbing at my lip to make sure it had stopped bleeding again. “It feels like I’m back in school, back with the kids who thought it was funny to torture me with jokes like that.”
    “That wasn’t my intention.”
    I wadded up the tissue and tossed it into the wastebasket. “But that’s what you do. You flirt with every other girl in the office, but when it comes to me, you can’t seem to help yourself. You have to make me feel as ugly and frumpy as you can.”
    He didn’t respond. I looked at him and saw how stunned he was by my words. He must have been shocked that I’d actually stood up for myself for once.
    I was a little shocked that I stood up for myself for once.
    He stormed toward me, his hands raised. I backed up, not sure what his intentions were. He grabbed my arms and forced me to turn and look at us both in the mirror.
    He leaned close and whispered in my ear.
    “You’re beautiful.” He touched my face, my eyes falling to his bruised and raw knuckles, damaged by the beating he’d given the mugger.
    For me.
    He brushed his fingers over my jaw. “You have this heart shaped face like nothing I’ve ever seen before, a beautiful face with the most serene green eyes. Your every emotion is in those eyes, always shining out onto the world without the shame or fear that most people hide behind. You look at the world with a sense of innocence that I admire. I wish I could do the same thing…that I could see the world the way you see it because, quite frankly, this world scares the shit out of me.”
    He lifted my wet hair, laying it gently over one shoulder.
    “Your auburn hair is a perfect contrast to your pale skin. Your shoulders are so dainty that sometimes I wonder how you can hold up all the chaos and stress of the office the way you do on such fragile shoulders.” He touched my throat ever so lightly, his fingertips lightly gliding over the tender skin. “When you wear your hair up, I find it incredibly difficult not to stare at your throat, to not imagine what it would be like to kiss you here”—he brushed his fingers over my throat again—“to taste you here.”
    I shivered even as my eyes fell from the mirror.
    “Don’t lie to me just because you feel sorry for me.”
    “I don’t feel sorry for you, Sam.”