Free DAMON: A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel by Meg Jackson

shaking her head. “I just keep thinking, how crazy am I being? I mean, I must not really be over anything if...”
    Her voice trailed off and she buried her head in her hands. She had made a pretty serious habit of never saying she wasn't “over it”.
    “Who expects you to be over it?” Damon asked.
    “Myself,” she said, speaking into her own palms.
    “Well,” he said, pausing for effect, “stop.”
    “Okay,” Tricia said, laughing slightly. “Okay, Damon, I'll stop. ”
    “I don't expect you to be over it, ” he said. “So for now...for this trip...don't try to be.”
    Tricia didn't respond, but she dropped her hands, revealing her face to the flames. After a long moment, she spoke again, her voice strong.
    “I'm doing really well,” she said. “I am. Almost all my days are good days. I don't want you thinking of me like I'm some lost kitten you have to take care of.”
    “I don't,” Damon said, and he reached over, placing his hand on her thigh. “But I kind of like the idea of you as a kitten...”
    Tricia turned to him, mouth dropping open in a dumbfounded gape. What had he just said? And what was that smile on his face? He took his hand away, and Tricia felt unnaturally disappointed about it. And then she started laughing. A big, hearty laugh that filled the woods around them with its noise.
    “Are you serious?” she managed to speak between gasps of much-needed air. “Damon, you are...oh my God, was that supposed to seduce me? That was the worst, the worst... ”
    He kept laughing with her, but now he leaned back, relaxing as the sound of her happiness swarmed him. When it died down, he was still smiling.
    “I wasn't trying to seduce you,” he said, shaking his head as he looked into the fire.
    “Oh no?” Tricia said, wiping tears from her cheeks. He thought he might have heard some disappointment in her voice. He might have imagined it, too.
    “I just wanted to make you laugh,” he said with a shrug.
    “Well, mission accomplished,” she said, rising once more to lift the stick and poke at the dwindling flames. “And that's a pretty good cover story.”
    “Trust me,” he said, looking up at her. “When I decide to seduce you, you'll know it.”
    That made her turn around in a hurry, their eyes meeting in the red glow. Tricia's mouth went dry. His eyes, looking up into hers, were nothing but heat, reflecting the flames in front of them. The heat of the fire licking at her flesh seemed to invert, and she felt warmth burning her from the inside out.
    “What are you waiting for?” she managed to croak out, the night suddenly seeming very still and quiet. “Who's to say I don't...”
    “I'm waiting until you stop asking me why I want you here,” he said, voice low but almost flat, matter-of-fact. “I'm waiting until you feel like you deserve to be here.”
    She couldn't look away, caught in his stare like a deer in the headlights. With his dark hair and beard, he almost seem to fade into the background, only his eyes and the pale pink of his lips remaining. His words did things to her that she couldn't understand, and didn't want to try to understand. They made her feel new.
    “Okay,” she finally said, feeling as soft and malleable as her voice. When he decided to seduce her. When he decided to seduce her.
    “Put some more wood on and come sit down,” he said, breaking the tension by looking away and nodding at the wood gathered by the side of the fire. “I like having you near me. I like hearing your voice close by.”
    “Okay,” she repeated, and bending down she added more wood to the fire, satisfied only when the flames began to catch and lick up the branches. And then she did what he said, and sat beside him, close enough to touch but not touching.
    “Tell me about your folks,” Damon said.
    “My folks?” Tricia asked, surprised. That was a pretty big leap from the topic at hand. Nothing seemed less seductive, in fact, than a conversation about her parents.
    “I