Page 193 of Screwged for Christmas

“Damon here has signed on to be yours all day after the race. A personal guide at your beck and call.”

Damn her sister. More heat flooded her cheeks.

“Thanks.” She made quick eye contact with Damon who only smiled back in that home town lazy relaxed way that made her wonder if anything ever riled him up. He’d fit right in back home with all the Texan boys.

Ivy tried to act nonchalant, but that was hard to accomplish with her pants down around her knees. A harsh swallow worked her throat and that caught his gaze next.

Hers? All day? Christmas wishes did come true. Her inner vixen whipped out the cuffs and whipped cream ready for the party while, on the outside, Ivy worked her expression into cool and calm.

Besides, who was she kidding? Her land him? Nerdy doctor dropouts didn’t get the town’s gorgeous bachelor. Three days, a week or a month wouldn’t change that little fact. Not for her. Just how it was and she accepted it as fact a long time ago.

Quickie hookups and one-night stands never suited her anyway. Or rather no one ever really considered the quiet girl in the corner of the library poring over research books as sexy. Long hours in the library and her six-week rotations at the hospital kind of bit into her non-existent love life too. Not that she hadn’t fantasized about a man just like Damon taking her in the back among the empty aisles.

Oh, how she wished.

Damon’s smile broadened until and brightened his light brown eyes with a warm glow.

Beautiful. Love at first sight was a myth for idiots, but damn, lust at first sight… totally a thing and it had her panties dripping wet.

One more layer to go.

“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 themagic, 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.

---