Page 120 of Mountain Men Heroes

“Yes, sir. Same time tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Don’t look so down, boy. You’re doing fine. Your father would be proud of you. Tell your mom I’ll be by later with some things. Seen you then.”

Damon watched as the god-son he helped raise for the last four years tore out through the snow and hit the thick tree line that hugged the end of the alley. Darkness swallowed him as he took the path that connected to his mom’s property.

The cloak of night still held the town captive for a couple of more hours. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the wisp of a curtain again and smiled.

The little angel-eyed temptress was watching. Let the torture begin.

Inside the back door to the bar, he toed off his boots and he brushed off the snow clinging to his hair. His bare feet masked his progress up the back stairs as he made his way through the bar, taking them two at a time.

His dreamy temptress stood in her doorway wearing a sleepy grin.

“Ms. Kennedy,” he drawled from the landing. “Nothing like an early morning workout to get the blood pumping.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She brushed the sleepiness from her eyes, her long hair pulled to the side in a braid mussed from sleep and the tempting dark locks looked sexy as hell fanned along the side of her face. The neck of her sweater dipped over one creamy shoulder to reveal an emerald green strap.

He also noticed the pale coloring of her cheeks and dark circles brushed along the undersides of her eyes. He frowned.

“Sorry to have disturbed you.”

She gave a half moan. “After all that we’ve seen of each other,” she looked pointedly at his bare chest and dared scan her gaze lower with a flush of red to her cheeks the lower she went. God, he was in so much trouble. “I’d say you can stick with Ivy. Wouldn’t you say, Mr. Savage?”

“Okay, Ivy.” He liked the way she shuddered the slightest bit when he said her name.

Truth be told, his name on her tongue made his cock throb and his hands itch to bury his fingers into that braid and work the length free to see where the ends brushed when loose.

He moved down the hall and leaned an elbow on the doorjamb, the smell of coffee wafting out the door at her back. “Yesterday's kiss alone should put us on the path to at least sharing coffee in the mornings while you’re here. Don’t you agree?”

Her eyes widened.

He tightened his fingers around the wood of the frame until they turned white as the sexy sound tugged at the alpha in him.

Two more nights with her under his roof. Forty-eight torturous, heavenly hours and he would be free. He could send her away to the Savage home with Zahara and her husbands. But the thought had red flashing across his vision and his gut dropping to the floor.

Soft light from a nearby lamp on the opposite side of the door leaked into the hall to cast a deep shadow across her face, but he didn’t need the light to see every angle of her delicate shoulders or the way she worked her bottom lip between her teeth and fiddled with the ends of her ugly sweater, this one more atrocious than the last.

Damon reached between them and twirled several loose strands around a finger. Dark hair on a white pillow. His gaze clouded with the images of her tucked beneath him, his bed at her back and him tending to every fucking need her body craved. Phantom moans and tortured groans of ecstasy already played in his ear as he imagined luring the sweet sounds from her plump lips.

“Do you always stare at a woman’s lips, Mr. Savage?”

“Damon,” he corrected her gruffly as he leveled his gaze with hers. “And only when I can’t get the taste of strawberry out of my head.”

“Oh? Do you associate strawberries and lips often?” she asked softly.

“More and more. What’s with the sweater fetish?” That had to be a safe enough topic. He stared at her a moment longer, torn between walking back to his room and taking care of the raging need she stirred in him, or seducing her and finding out if her soft lips would feel as heavenly wrapped around his shaft as they did pressed against his own.

“What? The clerk at the counter said it looked good on me.”

“I bet she did.”

“He,” she corrected with a playful smirk.

He cocked a half-grin. His little tease wanted to play? She stood back from him then and her gaze pulled him over the threshold of her apartment.

His chest tightened as unwanted fire seeped into his blood to ignite a deep need he hadn’t felt in years. The burning need to take a woman until they both couldn’t walk from sheer excursion.

“He gave me his number if I ever need more sweaters.”

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