Page 94 of The One Night Dash
I smile against her lips. “Said my old man was abusive. The old man isn’t my dad. Ex-stepfather. A piece of shit coach who tricked Mom into marrying him and was controlling and abusive to her. And when we left, he took her to court, got visitation, started his shit with me, threatened to do the same to my sisters if I said shit.”
She springs back and takes my face in her hands. “He hurt you.”
“He left a few bruises and shit. But you and I, we’re too strong to let anyone hold power to continue letting them hurt us anymore.”
“He hurt you.” Her brows start to turn in.
“I used it to become stronger, better. When I made pro, I thought all he did, my past did, was buried, gone.” I take her face in my hands. “Remember English? Byron, Keats, those poets who wrote like they were bleeding out through their dicks and their pens? I used to mock the hell out of them.”
She laughs, her eyes lighting up, and I can’t get over how good it feels to make her laugh. “You absolutely did,” she says, brushing a thumb across my jaw like she’s erasing the old me.
“Yeah, well, they were idiots,” I say. “All that overblown suffering, all that star-crossed nonsense, and then they’d write some sonnet about being pillow’d on a girl’s breast. I thought it was pathetic. But now I get it. They didn’t dare reach for what they wanted. They were scared to get burned. But I’m not, not anymore. I used to look at you and think, you don’t deserve her. But now I want to burn. I want you to set me on fire.”
Her lips twitch, and she clenches my shirt. “That’s … really intense,” she says, but she’s not pulling away; she’s pulling closer, her lips so close I can taste her words.
“I’m done letting all that shit—my past and poets—tell me I can’t love you,” I say, my voice going rough even to my own ears. “Done letting it win. I want you to know that I can love you the way you truly deserve, and take care of you the way you deserve to be taken care of. I love you, Pembrooke. That makes me the perfect man for you.”
And then her lips crash into mine, hands clawing at my hair, and suddenly, I’m not sure whose teeth are in whose lip, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s up on her knees, straddling me, and the world is just us. Her tongue against my teeth and the taste of her … alive. I am fucking ready for this—us.
I’d wanted to take this slow, show her I could be gentle, but the way she’s grinding against me says we’re way past slow. She wants it like this, fast and desperate, and fuck if I don’t want it exactly the same way. I remember that fantasy she shared even after the shit that went down last night—being fucked against the bookshelves in her own bookstore.
I’d call it opportunistic, but honestly, it feels more like fate.
Her legs locked around my waist and her hands tearing at the hem of my shirt. I don’t even notice standing up, but her arms are suddenly clamped around my neck and her thighs are squeezing my ribcage, and one of her hands is already up under my shirt, nails digging lines into my shoulder blades. The other hand is yanking my shirt up from the back, and the desperate, whimpering noises in her throat are making me lose track of gravity, of everything but her.
We crash into the bookshelves, hard enough to set the paperbacks shivering, and she laughs against my mouth, a throaty, delirious sound that makes my knees go weak. I wedge us between two shelves. I don’t know what genre we’re about to scandalize, but it’s about to be my favorite. I let her pull my shirt off over my head. She bites my shoulder, hard, and I grunt, but it’s the good kind of hurt, the kind that makes you want to earn more. I want to see her like this, wild, and gorgeous, and hungry for me, and I want to know every inch of her skin with my teeth and tongue. Most of all, I want her to lose herself in this.
I’m shaking as I pull her sweater over her head. She’s in this ridiculous little tank top underneath, no bra, nipples hard through the thin fabric.
“Fucking love your tits, Noelle.”
I run my hands up her sides slowly, just to hear the gasp, and she arches into me, fucking shivering, and I lose my last thread of self-restraint.
“God, you smell like heat and old paperbacks,” she says, and I laugh because I’m pretty sure I just smell like sweat, adrenaline, and terror, but I wrap her tighter anyway, set her ass on the edge of the empty returns cart, and kiss her until she’s moaning into my mouth.
She tugs my head back by my hair and looks at me, pupils fucking blown, eyes sharp and hungry. “You waited years to give me what you knew was mine,” she says. “Don’t you dare stop now.”
So I don’t. I dig my hands into her hair and kiss her like she’s the only oxygen left in the building, and maybe that’s true, because every other thought is gone.
Her legs are still locked around my waist, and she’s grinding on me like she wants to fuse us together. When she tugs my head down to her neck, I bite, not gently, and she gasps, shuddering. For a second, I’m worried I’ve gone too far.
But then she moans, “I love you,” and claws her nails down my back. “Sorry.”
“I hope that leaves a mark. I want to have that tattooed on my fucking back.”
We’re both shaking, frantic, giddy, stripping each other between kisses and bites—her tank top first, then her sweats and …
“Fuck yes,” I groan when I see the boxers.
Then she’s naked, and I’m almost there, so hard it almost hurts. She’s not shy, not hesitant; she wants it messy, honest, and now. Her hands are everywhere, her mouth everywhere else.
I want to ask her if she’s sure, but she’s already pulling my track pants down with an impatient growl, so I let the words die on my tongue and kiss her instead, softer this time, the kind of kiss that says thank you, and please, and don’t you fucking stop.
She’s wet. Like, so wet I wonder if I’m dreaming. I run my fingers over her, watching her face, and she whimpers, clutchingat my wrist, guiding me in with no hesitation. She’s so tight I have to grit my teeth, just like last time, but she doesn’t stop, just rocks against me, greedy for all of it, and I give her everything.
The friction of it, the heat, the impossibility of being this close and not just dissolving into her—every sensation is dialed up, every nerve ending screaming.
She clings to me, nails in my back, mouth at my ear. “Don’t you dare slow down.”
