Page 8 of Her Cowboy Prince Charming

Little girl, this is above your pay grade, believe me. You want romance, and that’s not what you’d ever get from me.

“Believe me. After the last time we saw each other, I hadn’t given you another thought. And I don’t need to give you another thought now.”

She moved up the stairs, and he caught her arm. And she... She felt like she was in danger of catching fire again. He was so close, and of course it was Damien. She felt like an idiot now. She’d been relieved, thinking that maybe... Maybe she wasn’t hopeless for him. Maybe she wasn’t a lost cause. But it was worse than that. She had walked into a room full of people wearing masks, and had zeroed in on her humiliating childhood crush, and he had been the only one she’d wanted. The only one she’d seen.

He smelled familiar. And she didn’t know if that was from last night, or from all the years. She wanted to bury her face in his neck, breathe him in. She wanted to touch him again.

But she pulled away instead.

“I’m staying for Christmas.” He released his hold on her.

“What?”

“Yeah. I’m down here looking at a piece of property, and Levi invited me.”

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“You’re a pretty girl with a dirty mouth. Anybody ever tell you that?”

Her lips twitched. “You’re a dirty boy with a pretty mouth. Did anybody tell you that?”

But that felt far too charged of a thing to say, and she regretted it the minute the words left her mouth.

Anyway.Prettywas the wrong word for any part of him. He was far too masculine for such a word. She was just grasping at straws. At the fences.

“Watch it.”

“So what? It doesn’t matter? You don’t want me. It’s not going to be any challenge for you to make it through Christmas without jumping me again.”

Something in his eyes went flat. “Just so we’re clear. I can’t offer you anything.”

“I didn’t ask you for anything.”

“You should’ve told me you were a virgin.”

“I didn’t even tell you my name. Why would I tell you that?”

“Because I didn’t go slow enough, or make sure I didn’t hurt you. It would have been fine if you were more experienced, but you aren’t. I wish I would have known.”

“That’s the risk you take, Damien. When you have sex with strange women that you don’t know.”

And suddenly, the reality of all that expanded between them. Sizzled. She couldn’t breathe. She was feeling warm. Far too warm. Oh, she wished she weren’t. She really wished that she could draw a line underneath Damien Prince. She had given him her virginity; wasn’t it enough? Couldn’t that be it?

Apparently not. Apparently, it still...sizzled.

One thing was sure, though; this changed things. She’d been humiliated when he’d rejected her. Thinking that she’d imagined the heat between them that day over her birthday cake, that her fantasies had all been one-sided.

They weren’t now.

He’d seen her naked, more or less, and she’d seen... Well, she’d been intimate with him. She’d felt him lose it. With her. In her.

That made her feel a lot more powerful.

She felt herself being drawn toward him. She took one step forward.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and in came Levi, stepping between herself and Damien. “Holy shit,” he said.

Both she and Damien jumped back like scalded cats, and she had a feeling their guilt was written all over their faces. “What?” they both asked at the same time.

---