With a hungry hiss escaping from his chest, his hand dropped to her breast. Angie's face paled, thinking it was about to start all over again.
He felt her defensive reaction and snarled deep in his throat as he released her breast. "Fuck."
He lifted his hand from her hair and sat back, his jaw clenching tightly as he looked away and stared out the window. He took several deep breaths and cracked his knuckles. "Goodnight." The word was rough.
Angie sucked in a breath as disappointment and relief mingled within. She looked at him with a question in her eyes as she hastily pushed her skirt below her knees.
He turned back to face her. "Go on. Get out of the car."
Angie reared back from the harsh demand and put her hand on the door handle, but still she hesitated, even though she didn't understand why.
His muscles tightened and his nostrils flared. "You remember my warning?" His eyes narrowed, almost threateningly. "You best get out of the car, Angie, while I'm giving you the chance."
She watched him for the space of three seconds, apprehension rioting within her, and then she took the advice she was given, opened the door and fled.
A week later, Damian silently castigated himself as his hair was being cut. What. The. Hell? What the fuck was wrong with him that he couldn't stay away from this place? He could have easily gone another week before getting a haircut to begin with, but coming here again? He needed his fucking head examined.
The hairdresser, Janice, was exceptionally talkative today, and although he tried to drown her out with his thoughts as he looked around for the little witch, he couldn't help but hear at least half of what she said.
"So, anyway, I can't thank you enough."
His eyes snapped back to hers. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Thank you for the money. I mean, I realize that it actually came from Angie, but you gave it to her, and without the generosity from both of you, I'd still be in a fix. I can't tell you what it means to me. I'm sure Angie told you about the situation my ex left me and my daughter in."
As she rattled on and on, Damian could focus on only one thing. Goth girl hadn't kept the money for herself. She'd given it to her friend, making any disparaging thoughts he may have had about her mercenary ways, false.
He gritted his teeth. He wanted to think of her as mercenary. He needed to think of her as grasping and avaricious. He didn't care for women who were greedy. In fact, he could now admit that he might have had an underlying reason for giving her the money and setting up the date to begin with. He'd wanted to think badly of her.
But now she'd gone and fucked that up for him. Instead of being greedy, she'd proven herself to be caring and unselfish.
Shit. It pissed him off just thinking about it.
Another nail in his coffin.
Angie finished her sandwich and glanced up from wiping down the counters in the small kitchenette.
Her stomach plummeted to her feet as Damian crowded the doorway. He glanced to the right and then to the left before focusing his attention on her with inflexible intent. He took a step forward, and she watched in appalled horror as he both slammed the door and then turned and locked it, trapping her inside the small room with him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The screech came from her throat even as she tried to sound composed. "You can't be in here."
"I think you're wrong." He lifted his hands with supreme arrogance to indicate his location. "You see me, right?"
"Did you have an appointment?"
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Why else would I be here if I didn't?"
His hair did look newly trimmed. "You can't be back here," she repeated, dumbstruck.
"I have a problem with you that we need to discuss."
The look in his eyes raised her hackles and she backed up until her spine touched the counter and she couldn't go any farther. "What'd I do now?" She'd tried, every minute of every day since she'd gotten out of his car, not to think of him, but it was an impossible task.
"You gave away the money," he accused.
Angie narrowed her eyes as she attempted to understand what his problem with that could be. "So? It was my money, right? You gave it to me, and I gave it to Janice."
"You shouldn't have done that," he said in a voice that promised retribution.
"Why? She needed it more than I did."
For whatever reason, her comment appeared to land like a hit to his upper torso as Angie saw him actually flinch. He remained silent but took several steps forward until he stood just beyond her comfort zone. She sucked in a breath and steeled her nerves. "Look, I'm sorry if you wanted me to spend it on . . . a more suitable wardrobe or whatever, but it was my understanding it was mine, to do with as I pleased."
His generously curved lips parted in a snarl. "It was yours. But you were supposed to want it for yourself."
All at once, Angie thought she understood. "Oh. Okay. You thought I was a greedy little bitch and now you're pissed to find out that I'm not. Well, that's too damn bad." A flare of temper hardened her voice and every curve of her body radiated defiance, "So you can leave now."
He didn't move a single muscle. Unless you counted the tic flaring in his cheek, he was absolutely still as he watched her, like an animal ready to pounce. The accusation in his eyes was menacing, sinister even, but the sexual threat that lay just underneath the surface had Angie hyperventilating.
As she stood rooted to the floor, he came another two steps closer and lifted his hand toward her hair. He did so very slowly, as if giving her a chance to rebuff his advance, and when she became too paralyzed to move, his fingers landed in her hair and spiked through her tresses, holding her scalp within his palm. As he held her hostage, he leaned down and bit at her bottom lip, just a tiny bite, but it reflected his impatience, and it sent currents of thrilling heat radiating through her bloodstream.
She closed her eyes against him, and when she did, his hand tightened on her scalp and his arm wrapped around her waist. "Yeah, you were supposed to be greedy," he said with anger. "I don't like greedy women."
Her eyes flew open to find him staring down at her, his nostrils flaring. His belligerent words struck her in the heart. "Douche bag," she bit out.
A ferocious look crossed his features and he looked as if he wanted to shake her, but he didn't. "Not. Nice," he bit back, and if possible, his hands turned even more vise-like.
"Too damn bad if you don't like it. You're not the boss of me; you don't tell me how to act."
"I don't give a shit about being the boss of you. I don't want to tell you how to act. All. I. Want. Is. To. Fuck. You."
She took a quick intake of breath and ignored the tingle between her legs. "Too bad. You're an ass. A fucking--"
Her words were cut off when his mouth swept down onto hers and every thought in her head splintered as heat, an amazing heat slid down her spine and coalesced within her veins. A great wave of pleasure inundated every cell in her body, a feeling unlike any she'd ever experienced exploding within and consuming her in its entirety. Her blood began pumping rapidly as his arms held her imprisoned, her femininity no match against his masculine virility as he held her with a barely suppressed violence that excited her so much she could barely manage to breathe.
Angie gave herself approximately ten seconds to enjoy his kiss, maybe twenty, possibly thirty, and then she slid her arms between them and began pushing against him. His chest was like a solid wall of iron, with no give at all, and her fingers spread out over his muscles, testing his strength and trying without much success to force herself to step away from him.
He must have felt her conflicting emotions and he lifted his head, his eyes dilating before focusing on her. A tinge of red colored his cheekbones, and the fervor reflected in his eyes both fascinated her and threatened her ability to stand on her own two feet. When he spoke, his voice was gruff. "I may be an ass, but it's your fault. If you weren't so fucking beautiful, maybe you wouldn't have my head so fucked-up." As he spoke, the arm that held her slid down and his fingers grabbed the fleshy part of her butt and squeezed, sending new currents of electric heat along her spine. "It would be good, angel," he said, self-assuredly. "What time do you get off?"
Abruptly his question bled through her messed-up brainwaves, and she realized what he was asking her. "What time do I get off? That's it? Where's the sweet talk?" His arrogance and conceit knew no bounds. As she waited for his answer, Angie admitted she wasn't in any danger of falling in love with him, but she was captivated by his irrefutable strength and masculinity; she knew she shouldn't be, but she was. The window for imposing her will was narrowing, she could feel herself literally falling under his spell as she wondered for the zillionth time what it would be like to go to bed with him. She ached to sleep with him, and that exasperated the hell out of her. How in the hell could she want to sleep with somebody she didn't even like?
His eyes narrowed in confusion. "Sweet talk?"
"You warned me that you might try to sweet talk me into bed. What? You can't even be bothered with that?"
He shrugged a shoulder but made no attempt to release her. "Okay. How's this?" A frown of concentration came between his brows. "You're gorgeous and it wouldn't be just for me. I could get you off, too, baby."