Damaged and the Knight Read Online Free PDF Page B

my pancakes. “Maybe I’ve got my eye on someone else.”
    “Right,” he muttered, squinting at me.
    “Farah told me about this guy she thinks I should date. She said he’s really hot and I’m super shallow. I plan to date him and smile at him and get naked with him. It’ll be so great.”
    Staring at me, Judd almost thought I was telling the truth. That part of him was jealous.
    Seeing this, I smiled. “Do you date a lot?”
    “I like dating,” he said in a low voice. “It’s relaxing.”
    Rolling my eyes, I shuddered. “Men are gross.”
    Judd gave me another one of those smiles. “Trust me, kid. You don’t know the half of it.”
    “Stop calling me that.”
    “No.”
    “Fine, if I’m a kid, I get to call you daddy.”
    “Don’t,” he growled.
    Instead of responding to his implied threat, I laughed. “You growled like a dog.”
    “Just eat your food.”
    “Okay, Daddy.”
    “Fuck. Stop it.”
    “Stop it what?”
    Judd tensed his body and I watched all of those tanned muscles flex then he sighed. “Stop it, Tawny,” he said then added, “Or else.”
    “Why did you call me angel this morning?”
    Judd shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
    “No one’s ever called me something pretty like that before.”
    “You never had a guy call you anything nice?”
    “Farah and I weren’t allowed to date.”
    “If every kid listened to their parents, the world would be less crazy, but considerably less fun.”
    “You ever try to sneak out of a motel room you share with your dad?”
    “Can still have a boyfriend. Just harder to hook up.”
    “Do you wish I had a boyfriend?”
    Judd studied me in a soft way. “I wish you had someone to say sweet things to you.”
    If I was braver, I would have jumped across the booth and kissed him. I’d hold him and never let him go. In my heart, I knew Judd was safe. Yet, my head viewed him as a threat and it had no interest in jumping across the table and kissing anyone. My head wasn’t running the show at the moment.
    “I want to know why you called me that,” I said, slightly breathless between my nerves and growing lust.
    Shrugging dismissively, he muttered, “No reason. I was dreaming.”
    “You were awake when you said it.”
    “I thought I was still dreaming.”
    Sensing he wanted a reason to share, I offered, “I’ll tell you something if you tell me that.”
    “Tell me what?”
    “What do you want to know? It’ll be like an exchange of info.”
    Judd poked hard at his food like he was working out an internal struggle in his head. Finally, he nodded.
    “Fine. I want to know why you stayed in that room starving? I know you couldn’t move the dresser, but you could have climbed out the window.”
    “I had no money and what was waiting outside was worse than starving to death.”
    Studying me with his cold eyes, he asked, “If I hadn’t come, you would have let yourself die?”
    “I figured I would die either way and my biggest fear is to die violently.”
    “Why?”
    “Would you want to die violently?”
    “No, but most seventeen year old girls…”
    “I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.”
    “You can say that a million times and it doesn’t change anything in my head.”
    “How about a million and one times?” I asked, giving him a grin. “I think you want me to change your mind.”
    Judd watched me with those sad eyes. “Of course, I do. Any man would want an excuse to do something naked with you. Only an evil man would let you con him into it though.”
    “It’s not evil to be close to someone you like.”
    “You’re young.”
    “Tell me why you called me angel.”
    “Tell me why that’s your biggest fear.”
    “No way. I shared my greatest fear with you, something only my sister knows, and you’re stalling. Don’t be a cheat. Just tell me.”
    Placing his hands flat on the table, he glared at me. “I tell you this and you don’t make an issue of it. You don’t make it mean anything or get goo-goo eyes over