“Good. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice I was obsessed with you when you worked for me.” I tug at the blankets, and she climbs under them obediently. “Besides, don’t you want your family to like me?”
She snorts. “Why? I like you enough for the entire world, and that’s never been enough. So if my family likes you, too, that makes all of this that much harder.”
I freeze. “I don’t want this to be hard on you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come here.”
I rock my jaw back and forth, then go for the truth. Because she deserves it. “I couldn’t stay away.”
“That’s fucked up.” She glares up at me. “We’ve spent almost every day together for two years. You had no problem giving me a lot of space every time we almost got close over that time.”
That’s true. And I don’t look away from her stormy, accusing gaze. “Because you were my employee. And when I hired you, you were a teenage girl living in a van. I couldn’t let myself be close to you the way I wanted. But I did. I do. Even now, when I find out that you’ve been lying about me behind my back for months. I want you so fucking much it hurts.”
“I wasn’t lying about you!”
“You told your family I was your boyfriend.” I yank her blankets up to chin.
She shoves them down again. “Not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?”
“I invented a fake boyfriend. When they were starting to get concerned that I was…” She closes her eyes and swallows hard. “Tangled up over you. So I told them I met a guy named Jake.”
The way she says that name, with a tender fondness, hits me right in the chest.
Is it fucked up to be jealous of myself? Of a fictional variation of me who isn’t cold to her?
“Tell me about him,” I say thickly.
She shakes her head and blinks her eyes open again, her gaze glittering. “Not yet.”
“Don’t I need to know anything about him to continue this…charade?”
“Is it a charade?” She juts her chin up at me.Do you want me?
I lower my mouth again to hover just above her sweet, soft lips. “No,” I murmur. “It’s not. That was poor choice of language. There’s nothing pretend about this chemistry between us.”
She sucks in a breath. “Jacob…”
“Yes?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Anything.” I brush my mouth against hers, knowing I should tuck her in and go take a shower. Leave her the fuck alone, if only for the night.
“There hasn’t been anyone else.” She pushes her blankets all the way down and moves her soft, PJ-clad body against me. “Fictional Jake…he was my first serious boyfriend.”
I go granite hard against her in an instant. My cock throbs, yes—fuck—but the rest of me is rigid for another reason. “You’re a virgin?”
Her breasts lift as she inhales shakily, brushing against my body. “Yes.”
“Sienna…”
“Please, Jake, don’t tell me no…”
“Fuck, no, I don’t want to say no, but…” Jesus. And I threatened to spank her. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought you were being a seductive brat on purpose?”
“Maybe I was.”