Page 70 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

“Wait, stop,” he says, breaking the kiss.

He then plants his hands firmly on my shoulders and gently pushes me away a few inches, though whether that’s to keep me from kissing him again or to stop himself, I can’t be sure.

“Just…wait a second,” he pleads, “and tell me what’s going on.

” He searches my face with narrowed eyes, but when he doesn’t find the answer (and I fail to outright say it), he whispers, “Please?”

His breath is warm on my face, and it either robs me of sense or knocks some into me because I choke out, “I don’t know what this is between us anymore. But I look at you, and I don’t…” I step back, his fingers sliding off my shoulders, and gesture at him with a flailing hand.

Damian raises a brow. “You don’t…?” He trails off, prompting me to continue.

My mouth tightens into a disgruntled pout. “Hate you. I don’t hate you.”

Considering what he said to me in his car that day we came back from Mexico, I expected Damian to be at least marginally happy to hear this. But his face is unreadable, his expression unnervingly blank.

“I’m sensing a but,” is all he says.

I swallow, wincing at the sudden dry grittiness of my throat.

“ But so much of this place, of… this ”—I wave my hand back and forth between us—“is tainted by what happened last spring. I know you’re sorry,” I interject when he opens his mouth to cut me off, “and I believe that, I do. And on some level, after everything you’ve told me, I even understand why you did what you did.

But,” I repeat, hating the sound of that word, “I think what I”— What we both, I silently add—“really need is to wipe the slate clean. Not a fresh start, exactly, so much as a…redo.”

The furrow in Damian’s brow deepens. “A redo?”

I nod.

But he just shakes his head. “I’m not following, Blondie.” There’s a note of exasperation to his tone, and I shrink back from it on reflex—at the memory of hearing that same exasperation in my father’s voice in the weeks, months, even years before he left.

The comparison makes my insides harden.

There it is. The real reason I’ve been so afraid to confront my emotions and recognize them for what they truly are. The real reason I told Damian he didn’t have to worry about feelings between us when we both know that’s a lie.

It was never about the bet or the video; it was about the fact that I had opened myself up to him, and he fucking ghosted me just like my asshole dad did when I was a kid.

And part of me is terrified it will happen again, even though we’re nothing to each other.

Even though I have no reason to expect him to stick around once our agreement ends.

It’s a moot point regardless. Feelings or no feelings, Damian isn’t looking for a girlfriend, and he made it perfectly clear to me on Halloween that hasn’t changed.

Even if it had, would it make any difference?

It wasn’t a lie when I said being his girlfriend was the last thing I want, and while that hasn’t exactly changed either, my reasoning for it has.

If he put the offer before me now—for a real relationship, not a fake one—I don’t think I could accept, but not because I don’t feel something for him…

but because I can finally admit that I do.

Because despite those feelings, I had the nerve to tell him it’s okay to hold onto the things that matter when all I seem capable of clinging to are all the bad things that don’t.

What right do I have to expect something real if I can’t even find the courage to be real with him?

To be honest about what I’m feeling, about my mom, especially when he was willing and brave enough to open up to me?

About his parents. About his brother and the grief that’s still eating away at him.

What right do I have to any part of him when I won’t show him all the damaged parts of myself?

Still, together or not—real or not—I don’t want things to stay like this, frozen, never acknowledging the truths of our lives, however ugly they seem.

And while I might not be ready to face all of them, to unburden my mind and heart of the baggage constantly weighing me down, there is one truth I’m ready to confront.

One wall I’m finally ready to tear down.

“When we were here together in January, you only had sex with me for the sake of a bet, correct?”

There’s no accusation in my tone, but Damian must mistake my blunt question as one because he asks, his voice strained, his eyes glinting with guilt and hurt, “Do I really have to answer that?”

I chew the inside of my lip for a moment. “Let me rephrase. Why are you having sex with me now?”

He snorts. “If we’re being technical, right now, I’m being interrogated?—”

“You know what I mean,” I retort.

Damian takes one look at my face—at the solemn expression shaping my features like fingers molding clay—and sighs heavily through his nose.

“I’m sleeping with you, Dornan, because I like it, and because I want to.

And because, up until about thirty seconds ago, I was under the impression you did, too. ”

“I do, shut up,” I grumble, my face and the back of my neck burning with a blistering heat. “My point is, there are no ulterior motives this time, correct?”

Damian rolls his eyes. “No. I have no ulterior motive for sleeping with you beside the pleasure of your company…and your vagina. And those perfect breasts.”

I glower at him.

“What?” he says defensively. “You have great boobs. Own it. Slap it on one of your nerdy T-shirts.” When I don’t laugh, or even crack a smile at that, Damian exhales, then murmurs in a soft, concerned voice, “Come on, Dornan, what is this really about?”

An uncomfortable tightness clenches my chest as the words tumble out of me in a rush. “I don’t want to stay stuck in the past. I want to forgive you. Fully. But to do that, I need you to help me overwrite it.”

His eyes widen as the meaning of what I’ve said begins to sink in. With a hesitant breath, he asks, “The past?” At my confirming nod, he adds, “How?”

I step forward, erasing the distance between us.

“The last time you fucked me here,” I rasp, bringing my lips to his ear, “you only did it to tick a box. But after everything you’ve said to me, after everything we’ve been through, I have to believe I’m not just some nameless Poor Girl to you anymore. ”

“You aren’t,” Damian growls, once again carefully pushing me back, but only enough to look me in the eye. “Dornan, I?—”

“Then help me,” I plead, interrupting whatever he was going to say, because if I don’t say this now, I know I’ll lose my nerve. “Let’s replace the bad memories we left here with new ones. Better ones. So, we can both move on, and leave all that hurt and pain behind us.”

“A clean slate,” Damian whispers in awe, and the hopeful look in his eyes nearly undoes me.

Lifting my hand, I cup his cheek just like I did in Guadalajara. Then I whisper back, “A clean slate.”

Before I can get another breath out, his mouth is on mine.

Our kiss this time is a near identical re-enactment to how it went down when we were last here together—a clash of teeth and tongues, urgent and frantic.

But unlike before, when I stopped things from going too far, now, I’m begging for it, leaning into every eager graze of Damian’s fingers and spurring him on.

His hands glide over my waist, then slide beneath my shirt to fondle my breasts, his thumbs pushing the fabric of my bra aside to lightly tease the sensitive peaks of my nipples. His touch coaxes a gasp out of me, and he swallows it eagerly, his lips curling into a smile that I can physically feel.

I smile back, losing myself to the sensation of his muscled body against me, of his hard length pressing into my thigh.

I reach down, rubbing him through his jeans, and he groans into my mouth, his breath hitching.

I never knew a sound could turn me on, but hearing Damian moan like that, and knowing I’m the one who caused him to do it, is a drug I could get high off forever.

He trails one hand down my stomach then and, stopping at my waist, unfastens my jeans with a deftness I would be impressed by if I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the hungry heat building in my core.

As soon as the button is free, he dips that hand under my panties, reaching down to touch me where I need pressure most. A moan of my own slips out when his finger swirls over my aching bud.

“Fuck, you’re already so wet,” he purrs in my ear before plunging one finger inside me.

I bite into the fabric of his Henley to keep from crying out. I could come just from this, with his hand in my pants, his palm grinding against my clit, but that’s not how things played out last January, and that’s not how either of us need them to play out now.

“Fuck me,” I manage through my panting breaths, the words husky. “Please?”

I don’t have to ask Damian twice. Retracting his hand, he grabs my waist and shifts me, switching our places until I’m pressed to the bookcase where he was standing only a moment before. My back meets his chest when his lips skim the curve of my ear, sending a shiver down my spine.

“You’re sure about this?” I note the hesitation in his tone behind his own ragged breaths, and hearing it unknots something inside me—whatever ember of reservation I was still holding onto regarding this.

I nod against the lingering brush of his mouth. “I’m sure. Now, hurry before Mrs. Everly catches us.”

Damian snorts. “You know the librarian’s name?”

I scowl at him over my shoulder. “I’m here literally every Wednesday. Why is that surprising to you?”

He chuckles into my neck, sending a shudder of pleasure racing through me, and I unwittingly arch my back until my ass is rubbing against his length. Whatever other snarky comment Damian was about to say dies on his tongue as he yanks down my jeans and panties.

The air-conditioning nips my skin as he puts one hand on my back, pressing my upper body down a little. With the other, he swipes a finger up my seam from behind, and that single touch nearly turns my legs into limp spaghetti noodles.

I reach back, my fingers brushing across the warmth of his thigh, and my heart skips a beat when I realize his pants are already down, leaving him as bare as I am.

The heat of him is unmistakable, and I shift, searching for more.

A second later, I feel it: the blunt head of him pressed to my entrance, hot and eager, sending a jolt of anticipation through me.

Damian’s hands clamp down on my hips as he pulls me back onto his cock, and as he slides inside me, each inch of him makes my body coil until I’m a spring about to snap. I’m so wet, it only takes one deep push for him to be fully seated, and I nearly cry out from the sudden feeling of fullness.

I throw my head back onto his shoulder as he reaches around me, planting one hand against the bookcase for support.

The other inches up my chest to my throat, and as he pumps into me—slowly at first then faster, like he’s feeding a need that’s consuming us both—I half expect him to cover my mouth to stifle my cries just like he did the last time we were here in this position.

Instead, he curls those long, skilled fingers around my chin and turns my face toward his to kiss me.

We lose all sense of reason after that, and as he slams into me over and over again, hurdling us closer to our impending orgasms, I realize this time together feels less like the lie we keep telling ourselves and more like a foregone conclusion.

Though, what that conclusion is, I still don’t entirely know.

There’s only one thing I am sure of as the heat inside me rises to boiling point, and I clench around his cock, his mouth devouring my cry of release. And as he follows suit, groaning against my lips as his pistoning hips slam into me one final time, I sense that he’s aware of it, too.

That hate that engulfed us, that tension…

it’s gone, like a candle snuffed out by the wind.

I can feel the weight on my chest lift at once, and I know then we’ve succeeded.

That by coming together again here of all places, the past between us raw and exposed, we’ve managed to rewrite whatever complex equation we were before, those variables of hate and tension canceling out to leave…

this. Something new. Undefined, maybe, but real.

Damian props his chin on my shoulder, but doesn’t pull out, as if he doesn’t want to lose this physical link tethering us.

I know I don’t. His cock throbs inside me, and I wish we were anywhere else—his room, a hotel.

Fuck, I’d even take the back seat of his car.

Anywhere that would keep this moment from ending.

In my peripheral vision, I catch the mischievous grin spreading across his face.

“I’m starting to think libraries are severely underrated,” he breathes, wrapping his arms around me from behind and pulling me tight to his chest.

And as he turns my chin to kiss me again, I notice that, for the first time since what happened last spring, this thing between us doesn’t feel like something broken.

It almost feels like a beginning.