Page 104 of Mountain Men Heroes

“Looks like your sister bribed or conned you too.”

Air failed to enter her lungs as she searched for something to say and rethinking her whole decision against a quick roll in the hay. Technically, a whole day wasn’t considered a one-night stand. Nothing in her rulebook about those. She gave herself a swift kick in the pants. Well, she was in the process of taking those off. But with three days on her schedule, she didn’t have time to maul a poor innocent bar owner with her sex-deprived needs and wasn’t that a shame.

She took in the shape of his lips and the way his dark hair brushed his shoulders. Asgardian, as clear as the snow in front of her. How else could she describe the god-like jawline and honey-colored eyes framed with those thick black lashes?

“I sighed like that when I first spotted my men too,” her sister quipped close to her ear, and Ivy nearly died in her long johns.

Damon choked out a laugh as he ducked his head.

What the hell did her sister just say? “Uh, yeah. I don’t think so. Just caught me off guard,” she reassured them. Come on, Ivy, get it together.

Ivy turned and threatened every cell in her body to the terrible death of frostbite if they dared to make her blush. Of course, her body betrayed her.

A thick finger tucked a strand of her hair back with a smoky laugh, the kind heard in jazz rooms that left you wanting to slow dance all night long.

“Sorry,” he offered with a shrug. “Your hair has a mind of its own and it looks like you have your hands full.” He looked pointedly at her hands clutching the materials of her pants.

Around her knees. She quickly peeled them off. Gah. Seriously! Could this day get any worse?

Ivy brought her gaze up and smiled, “Siblings,” and narrowed her eyes on the back of a retreating blue parka. “Right? All you wanna do is kill ’em half the time.”

“I know the feeling. I have a few of my own.” As he spoke his gaze lit lightly on her lips before roving over her long midnight black hair piled around her face and draped over her shoulders from beneath the largest matching white beanie she could find.

Damon raised a hand between them, and she peeled off her gloves.

Ivy didn’t believe in magic but she didn’t know how else to describe what happened from one second to the next. She sucked back air, harsh and loud as his expression flashed to pure shock.

Electricity. Purer than the fresh snow piling at their feet. Raw and unrestrained jolts of it zinged over her skin and zapped her system as their palms slid together, large fingers wrapping around her more slender hand. Locked together, she couldn’t pull her eyes off their connected hands.

Before their mom died, before the drugs ate away the woman, she had once imparted in Ivy and Zahara that the day would come when the magic, she’d called it, would happen and they would be helpless against fate.

Not on Ivy’s watch. Steel slipped into her spine. Not now or ever. Nobody would ever take that control from her.

She shrugged off the haunting words like she did everything else the woman had ever told her.

Curious, she flicked her gaze to Damon’s. Big mistake. The unreadable mask slipped and the surprise she felt was perfectly portrayed back at her for a brief second before heat simmered in his irises.

Sex never sat high on her list of interests. Medical school had always taken precedence for her. Every once in a while, when the night grew longer or one of her colleagues would gush about their boyfriends, she would fantasize about the what-ifs. Waking to the sensual touch of a lover and the euphoria of an orgasm not by her own hand. But those were fantasies that stayed in her head and dissipated the second she woke in the morning. Besides, when did she have time to get to know someone that well? And there was never any guarantee whoever she hooked up with was good in bed to begin with. Her time was precious. Wasting it on an unknown factor like that seemed pointless.

Her gaze slid over the broad shoulders and hard dips and valleys of Damon’s bare chest and she’d be lying if she didn’t wonder the size of the package behind the tiny scrap of leather.

She had deep suspicions anything with Damon would leave her a boneless puddle. She didn’t need hours with the man to know the intensity within him would burn her beyond recovery.

That gave her pause.

“Ivy.”

Although a secret part of her wished he’d said her name like that because he felt the same tug to kiss her as she did him, Ivy knew better. A wispy fog tangled with her thoughts as sensual images of her legs intertwined with his, their bodies pressed together and surrounded by snow filled her mind.

She blinked and slowly the sight of snowflakes caught in his rich sable hair filled her visions, this time for real.

His brows a shade darker than his hair pinched together in a crease. “Ivy?”

Like tethers fraying, the connection snapped. She cleared her throat and took a half step back, the sights and sounds of the town party slamming into her like a thousand trumpets in her ears. Her gut lurched and for a second she forgot to breathe.

He felt it too. Or he was damn good at faking surprise. But the shafts of raw emotions shattering his irises didn’t lie. She swallowed past the tight collar that suddenly restricted the flow of air to her lungs. She jerked her hand back and stretched the material.

Magic?

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