Page 209 of Screwged for Christmas

He only nodded.

Damon walked up to the boy who stood heaving from the exertion of their sparring. “You got this.”

“Yeah. It’s not easy though.”

“Most things aren’t,” Damon countered.

“I’m fast enough to beat you, though, old man. that’s progress. You didn’t even see the dummy knife. Sorry it cut you though.” That nervous smile turned into a rueful grin.

“Don’t be.” But damn if he didn’t feel old. Damon smiled and smacked snow on his arm to clear the drying blood away. “You think you’re fast.” Damon reached out and smacked the back of his godson's head. “But don’t get overconfident.”

“Ouch. What was that for?”

“GP. General purpose.” Damon grabbed him by the neck and pulled him in for a hug. “Now, focus. Make the grades, do the work, and be good with your mom. Remember, cockiness gets you killed. Something your dad failed to learn,” he added in a lighter voice. “Don’t open yourself up. Keep close and move fast. Speed is your friend and remember your enemy’s weakness is him thinking he knows yours.”

A frown formed on the younger boy’s face. But Damon didn’t back down. At sixteen he was old enough to get a taste of the real world.

“I understand.” He pointed at the slash mark.

“Right. I lost focus and it cost me. Take it as proof.” Speaking of, his distraction was awake. He could feel her eyes on them, and a faint light flickered on the snow signaling she’d turned on a light. Damon wrapped his hand around the boy's forearm and pulled him in until he had his undivided attention. “Keep close to your opponent, use your surroundings to your advantage and protect yourself. Never show fear. You’ll learn the rest as we move along.”

“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.

---