Page 14 of A Guardian for Christmas

“If I can’t tell the doctor when my last period was, I definitely don’t remember the last time I had my feet done.”

I mean it as a joke, but Sagan doesn’t take it that way.

“Are you pregnant? Did someone…”

There is a beast in him, just under the surface. I see it in the rise and fall of his bare chest, the midline visible in his unbuttoned flannel.

I shake my head virtuously. “No, no. It’s not that. I just… don’t remember.”

“You’re sure no one…”

“No,” I say quickly. “An immaculate conception, I would remember.”

He thinks someone hurt me. Or that I was with someone and was abandoned pregnant.

The tiny moment when Sagan believed someone hurt me made me realize what he was capable of.

His hands move tenderly over my feet, but his shoulders are tense. My eyes read his knuckle tattoos. S-T-A-Y D-O-W-N.

Not many people could wear that without looking like a huge dork.

But I believe it.

I believe that if someone hurt me, Sagan would see red.

For all his calm zen, I do believe this is a man who would put an end to anyone who touched a hair on my head.

And the thought makes me shiver from the inside out.

I have nothing to worry about with this man.

Except for the fact that I just accidentally admitted that I’m a virgin.

If he was only interested in me as a patient before, he definitely won’t have any more interest in me now.

Chapter Eight

Sagan

I’m scaring her.

Shit. I do that to people, sometimes.

I gotta find my zen.

No one hurt her, Sagan.

She’s safe because she’s here with you. You are literally warming her feet with your big, ugly mitts.

I have to convince myself to take her at her word because the only other option is to scare her away.

Just like I almost did at the fall festival last year.

I remember how her eyes went wide when I told her there was no way in hell she was getting a neck tattoo.

“But I need a sigil of protection,” she’d said, undaunted.

That was the spookiest shit any chick had ever said to me, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

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