Page 70 of Breakaway Goal

As I’m showering and talking with the rest of the guys, I’m buzzing with anticipation to see Maddie. I have to wait until everyone else is showered and ready to go to make my excuse to break away from them.

We’re all going to Loser’s Luck Tavern, our regular bar in Cedar Shade, to celebrate the win. Once we step out of the locker room, I tell the guys I need to head back to use the bathroom, and for them to go ahead without me.

I race through the locker room to the exit on the other side, heading to where I told Maddie to meet me, my heart pounding with excitement the whole time.

I turn a corner and see her standing there, and it’s like a lightning bolt flashes up and down my spine.

My steps slow as I drink in the sight of her wearing my jersey, her sleek black hair swept back behind her shoulders,an expectant smile lighting up her face, her gorgeous blue eyes looking at me behind her glasses.

“Maddie,” I rasp her name as I approach her, eyes feasting on the sight. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?”

Her eyebrows pinch. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

I can feel my eyes growing dark with hunger as they burn up and down her torso. “Wearing this …” I breathe out a curse to regulate the emotion beating in my chest. “Are you trying to get me to reveal our secret? To make it fuckingimpossiblefor me to keep my hands off you?”

A sly smile curls on her lips. “You really like seeing me in your jersey that much?”

My hands grip her hips as I pull her close to me, feeling the soft swell of her breasts against my hard chest. “I like it more than anything I’ve seen in my entire fucking life,” I growl, my voice low and gravelly. “Turn around,” I command.

Heat flashes in her eyes at my demanding tone. She takes a step back and turns.

There it is. My last name on her back. Intensity throttles through me, a raw and sharp possessiveness until anything I’ve ever felt before.

I spin her around and press my lips to hers, my control fraying at the edges as I press my tongue past her lips, drinking her up like a man possessed, drinking her up like she’smine.

She’s breathless when I pull my mouth away, her swollen lips open to pull in a breath. Her eyelids retract and she pushes out a surprised laugh.

“I thought athletes going crazy for seeing girls in their jerseys was, like, just a trope,” she utters.

I grab her hand and hold it to my groin, right against the throbbing hard beam of my erection. “Does this feel likejust a tropeto you?”

Her throat bobs with a heavy swallow. Her cheeks turn that shade of pink that I love seeing stand out against her creamy complexion so damn much. She shakes her head to my question, desire simmering in her eyes.

She tightens her grip around my length, and a groan pulls straight from my chest.

“Fuck,” I rasp through clenched teeth. Right now, I want nothing more than to find somewhere to rip her pants off and fuck her from behind, seeing my name on her back while I thrust into her.

But the sound of steps pattering toward us from around the corner is a quick reminder to both of us that we can’t just do what we want when we want.

Besides, as desperately as I want to feel Maddie’s softness clench around my cock like I’ve felt it clench my fingers … at the same time, I’m in no hurry to go all the way. After all, that’s the whole reason we started this. So that she could have her first time the right way. And I’m damn sure going to give it to her.

But after that … all the reasons we’ve started this will have been checked off.

There’ll be no reason for us to continue, no reason for us not to go back to being just friends. She’ll have had her first time, it’ll have been good, and she’ll be as confident and unselfconscious about sex as she should have been all along.

It’ll be mission accomplished. I’ll have done what she asked me to, and all that’ll be left is for me to step back while she moves on to the kind of guys she should actually be with.

Guys who aren’t betraying the trust and confidence of their lifelong best friend in doing so …

The cold water that realization sprinkles on me makes it easier to take a step back from her as the footsteps grow closer.

“Guess we should head to the bar so everyone isn’t wondering where we are,” I say.

“Yeah,” she answers, a shadow of disappointment crossing over her features. “Let’s go.”

It won’t raise any alarm bells for Maddie and I to show up late to the bar. Well, Tuck will probably give me a smarmy look. But Lane won’t bat an eye. He’d never guess what we’re doing behind his back.

Ever since that night in the library, my emotions have been like a ping-pong ball bouncing between two extremes. Elation at the possibility that Maddie and I might develop into something more, and resignation that to even wish for that is inviting disappointment.

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