Page 9

EIGHT

Damon

Her little shriek of surprise was cute.

Her listing off the various “crimes” I’ve committed was funny as fuck.

Her befuddlement at me asking if she ate was adorable.

But the way her cheeks go bright pink and her hands clamp over her belly when her stomach rumbles may be the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

Except for the fact that she’s clearly hungry.

I push down the anger…along with the urge to wind my hand into her hair, tilt her head back, and kiss her until other things turn pink. In fact, the urge to taste her is so intense that the only thing that stops me from taking what I so desperately want is…everything she told me last night.

I’m trying to fix this shit for her, not add to her trauma.

So, instead of doing what I want, I grasp the top rung of her chair, drag it back from the wooden table that looks like it should have been put out of its misery a decade ago. I reach forward, snag her mostly empty glass of wine, shove it into her hand, and then stack all the shit she has out here into one pile.

“What the hell are you?—?”

I lift the pile, thinking it’s a fucking miracle I manage to corral all the pens and pencils, then turn for the house. “Come on,” I tell her as I push inside.

“Damon—”

But I let the door swing shut behind me, cutting off her protest.

I stride through the hall, turning right, moving into her office. The desk and shelves are pristine…something I know is always the case because this woman never wants to work behind a desk. She’s always on her back deck or in the arena, papers strewn around her, the pens and notebooks and laptop and tablet in easy reach.

Gotta be hell for her ergonomics.

I dump the papers, pens, and other shit on the empty desk, plug her laptop into the charger, and turn around.

She’s standing in the open doorway, fury pulling the lines of her face into sharp relief.

Her mouth opens again.

I move close, snag the now empty wineglass, and gently flick up beneath her chin. “Yell at me in five minutes, Red,” I order lightly, on the go again, this time turning in the direction of the kitchen and opening her fridge.

It takes thirty seconds of those five minutes to pull out the bottle of wine, to top off her glass. Then another thirty to return it to her hand.

“I’ll be right back.”

Another drop of that mouth. This time it snaps shut after a heartbeat, the click of her teeth loud enough that I bite back a wince.

“Easy, Red.”

Her eyes narrow, but I just grin and tug at a loose strand of her hair, the same one that always escapes from her ponytail to lay across her eyes.

“Stop it,” she mutters.

I take advantage of her batting my hand away, of her scraping her fingers through that wayward strand, battling with getting it tucked behind her ear, and zip back into the hall, walking to the front door, and tugging it open.

I bend and grab the bags I stowed there when she didn’t answer the door and I knew I’d have to track her down on the back deck, straighten, then shift back inside, closing the door and locking up behind me.

“What the hell are you doing, Damon?” she snaps as I turn around.

Her hands are on her hips, one toe tapping impatiently.

Fuck, she’s adorable.

And she’s asking a question for the ages, one I already knew the answer to and yet wrestled with far too late last night.

An answer which inevitably means…I’m here now.

“You haven’t eaten,” I say instead of providing her with an actual answer. “And I brought you something you’ll love.”

Her eyes flick down to the bags in my hand then back up to my face and my dick twitches when she licks her lips, desire sliding through her expression. “You brought Dragon Delight?”

I start for the kitchen again. “It’s your favorite,” I say by way of explanation.

“But—”

I drop the bags on the counter, start pulling out containers, naming their contents one by one. “Wonton soup with extra wontons. Pork fried rice. General Tso’s chicken. Lo mein with extra bean sprouts and crispy tofu. And for dessert”—I open the other bag, grab out the box that’s not from Dragon Delight, but from the bakery down the street, Sweet Treats—“Peanut butter sundae pie.”

Her mouth opens.

Closes.

Then opens again.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers, her eyebrows dragging together.

“You’re hungry,” I tell her, tugging on that loose strand of hair again before turning for the freezer and safely stowing the dessert where it won’t melt before we can devour it. “I’m feeding you.”

Confusion in gorgeous green eyes. “But you didn’t know I was hungry.”

“Hungry or not, are you ever going to turn down food from Dragon Delight and Sweet Treats’ peanut butter sundae pie?”

For the first time since I showed on her porch, humor slides into her eyes.

But when she opens her mouth, I know she’s going to lie.

“Truth,” I press.

Her mouth ticks up even though she gives a beleaguered sigh and begrudgingly agrees, “Truth.” Then she sighs again and this time it’s quiet, her eyes sliding away from mine, discomfort bleeding into her expression.

“Good girl,” I say, because when she’s mad at me she forgets to be embarrassed.

And maybe also because I want to see her reaction, because when she’s full of fire and steel instead of sadness and shadows, I feel like I’m not totally fucking up this with her, that I might seriously have a chance at fixing it, of filling that emptiness inside her.

And also because when she’s spitting fire, her eyes sparking, the color high on her cheeks…

I want to kiss her.

Maybe that makes me a glutton for punishment.

But I don’t care.

“Just when I’m starting to think you’re not an asshole, it comes right back out again.”

I snort, tug at her ponytail this time, and turn for the cabinet I know houses her plates. I’ve been here often enough for planning sessions that I know where everything is, and maybe I’ve also…dreamed about fucking her on nearly every surface. “You’ll think differently when you have some wonton soup and lo mein filling up your mouth.”

There’s a blip of quiet.

I turn back.

She lifts her eyebrows, the blip of humor sparking across her face again. “You wanna rephrase that, boss man?”

I lift mine right back. “You want me to?” And fuck it all, I don’t know why I say what I say next.

There’s no excuse for it.

But it just…fucking slips out.

“Or do you want me to fill your mouth up with something else?”