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Everyone chatted during lunch, with lots of good-natured teasing and laughter thrown in too, but I couldn't make myself get as involved in the conversation as I used to do. Maybe the old me would come back eventually, or maybe that version of me had been an illusion. Recent events had made me gun shy about pretty much everything, so I probably shouldn't condemn myself as a lost cause until I'd recovered from my own mistakes and come to terms with my opposite-of-perfect family.
Damian kept squeezing my thigh occasionally and giving me supportive smiles. Tender smiles. The kind that made my tummy flutter.
I couldn't help smiling at him too. Whenever our eyes met, our lips curved up. I wondered if he felt the same chest tightness and tummy flutters every time we looked at each other. I hadn't spent much time around Damian until this week, yet I'd started to feel like I'd known him forever. Which was crazy. But it felt too good to fight it.
After lunch, as we exited the dining hall, Damian pulled me aside and waited for everyone else to file out of the building. They were headed for the lawn where Eve and Val had arranged to hold a soccer match. Once they had all departed, Damian grasped my hands and tugged me closer, our bodies almost touching.
"I need to have you all to myself," he said, "at least for a while. Family time is great, but we're still figuring out this thing between us, and having everybody else hanging around makes that more difficult."
"Yeah, it kind of does." I inhaled a deep breath just so I could enjoy the enticing scent of him. Why did he always smell so damn good? It wasn't cologne. He had a naturally delicious scent. "What did you have in mind?"
"Let's go to the hot spring."
"You mean the place where couples like to go to get it on?"
His lips twitched upward the tiniest bit, and he tugged me even closer, wrapping his arms around me. "No, I mean the hot spring where people who aren't total horndogs go to relax. The getting-it-on part is optional."
"I'd love to go there with you, with or without sex."
"Good. I haven't gone there much since I started working here. Too busy."
Hand in hand, we left the guest house and ambled past the lawn toward the nature trail. The soccer game was in full swing, with Val and the younger guests competing against the Silver Foxes. Val had been a professional soccer star—though in the rest of the world they called it football—and his team even won the Olympics. Still, the Silver Foxes always made him work for every goal.
Damian accelerated his pace as we entered the woods.
"In a hurry?" I asked.
"Of course I am. You won't strip naked for me until we get to the hot spring." He eyed me sideways. "Unless you aren't going to do that at all."
"You didn't give me a chance to grab my swimsuit, so I won't have much choice, will I?" Smiling, I bumped my shoulder into his. "Planned it that way, didn't you?"
"No, I would never do that. I'm not, like, an exhibitionist or anything." He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, strapping me to his side. "Okay, yeah, I am an exhibitionist."
"Uh-uh. You're a sexy Ludar prince with magic palm-reading skills, but I haven't seen you do anything that might qualify as exhibitionism."
He grinned. "Not yet. Maybe I've been holding back for professional reasons."
I spotted the sign that announced the hot spring was to the right, and I broke into a dead run, sprinting down the offshoot path. Over my shoulder, I shouted, "Catch me if you can."
Damian grinned again and took off after me. "The chase is the best part."
Our laughter echoed through the woods as we raced down the trail. I kept glancing back to see how close Damian was getting, but I decided he must've been holding back because he never got closer than fifteen feet or so behind me. The second I burst into the little clearing around the hot spring, I tore my clothes off and flung them away, not caring where they landed. I was breathing hard, but smiling too, and I hadn't felt this exhilarated…ever. How could letting Damian chase me become the best time I'd ever had? It was a silly, frivolous thing to do.
Maybe that was why I loved it. Silly and frivolous used to be my forte.
Damian dashed into the clearing, stopped a few feet from me, and got rid of his clothes. He was still grinning, like he had during our entire chase, and he breathed even harder than I did. He bent over, hands on his thighs. "Gimme a minute. I'm too old for high-speed pursuit."
He turned his head to the side to smirk at me.
"Yeah, sure," I said, "you're totally wiped out. Guess you aren't as manly and athletic as I thought. Oh well, we can put off swimming in the hot spring until you're feeling better. I'll get dressed."
I leaned over like I was about to pick up my shirt.
Damian straightened and pulled me into his arms. "No clothes. Once you take them off, they stay off until we go back to the resort."
"Is that the Ludar prince's royal decree?"
"You're damn straight it is." He shuffled toward the hot spring, forcing me to back up to it until my heels reached the rocky edge. "Dive in, Heidi. The water's warm, but not as hot as you."
