Page 85 of The Girlfriend Agreement (Conwick U #1)

And I feel everything as I pound into her.

Pleasure.

Euphoria.

Complete fucking bafflement that I could ever deserve this happiness.

As she screams my name, her orgasm crashing around me, I wonder if she finds herself overwhelmed by the same feelings, the same satisfying sense of completion, like the world used to be out of focus, and it’s sharp and clear now that we’re together.

More than anything, I wonder just how deep her like of me goes. As I set her down, and she guides me over to the sofa before kneeling between my open legs, I wonder if there’s a chance, however small…

That she might love me, too.

Blondie and I spend the next several hours exploring each other’s bodies to the fullest, as if admitting our feelings has unlocked some primal need and erased any and all inhibitions.

We fuck on the sofa, against the wall, on the kitchen table.

Between the sex, me eating her out, and her sucking me off (which is spectacular, I might add), I honestly don’t know how we haven’t collapsed from exhaustion.

It’s like we’ve made fucking an Olympic sport, and she makes me orgasm so many times, I’m starting to think there isn’t a drop of cum left in my body.

I’m so spent, I feel borderline malnourished, but I can’t bring myself to move from the sofa for sustenance or even for water.

Not when doing so means untangling my limbs from hers and the warm blanket wrapped around us.

If this is how I die—with Blondie between my legs, her back to my chest, her fingers mindlessly caressing my arm where it rests across her stomach—then I will accept my death with gratitude, because nothing in this world is better or makes me happier than this moment.

My lips graze her forehead when she shifts her head to look up at me. “Not to be that person who needs to put a label on it,” she begins, her voice rough from what I’m thinking is likely sex-induced dehydration, “but…”

I notice the undercurrent to her tone as she trails off—not of uncertainty or even fear, but of expectation. She needs me to say it, not just that I like her, but where that mutual liking will now lead us. She needs to hear it out loud.

And maybe I do, too.

“Yes,” I say, answering her unspoken question, “you’re my girlfriend, Dornan.

And before you ask, no, I don’t mean my fake girlfriend.

I mean my for-real one. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

” I catch a glimpse of her smile as I pull her tight and kiss the top of her head.

“Truthfully, I’ve wanted this for a while. ”

“Really?” She shifts again to lock her big, beautiful eyes on me. “Since when?”

“Hard to pinpoint,” I admit, “but it really sank in on Halloween, so some time before that.”

Blondie stares up at me for a moment, rolling her teeth over her bottom lip.

After what she did to me earlier, those delicious lips will undoubtedly feature in all my future dreams. “Can I ask…” She hesitates as if considering her next words carefully, then finally says, “Why was Past Damian so intent on no girlfriends?”

When I don’t immediately answer, Blondie sits up and turns so we’re now lying stomach to stomach. Resting on my chest, she props her chin on the back of her arm while the fingers of her other hand trace feather-light circles across my shoulder.

I want to blame the shiver that wracks my body on her wandering touch, but I know that’s not the cause.

It’s this final sliver of truth I’ve been hiding from these last four years.

Although it’s difficult to voice, I’m ready to face it—I need to face it if I’m ever going to truly move on.

And I want to move on, I want to be free of this pain I allowed to eat me up for so long.

To do so, I just have to say it and hope to god that it really will be like that saying: that the truth will set me free.

“When my abuelo, and then Jamie, died, it left a gaping hole in my life,” I explain, and I can see the weight of my words reflected back at me in Blondie’s softening gaze.

“I was desperate to fill it, but too scared to let anyone in, certain it would end badly and I would be forced to go through the pain of losing someone I loved all over again. So, I substituted the emotional connection I needed with empty physical ones. To protect myself, I kept everything and everyone at a safe distance. No friends—not real ones I actually like, anyway, which was easy enough since people only ever looked at me and saw my family’s money.

No girlfriends. Just parties and sex. And absolutely no Repeats.

Until you.” I flash a small smile at this gorgeous, smart, incredible woman, who blushes scarlet at my profession.

“So much of my life, so much of who I was before…was until you. Until I met someone who made the risk worth it, and reminded me how it feels to live.”

Blondie’s breath catches when I stroke a hand along the length of her naked arm, then, interlacing our fingers, I slowly pull our joined hands to my lips and place a tender kiss on her knuckles.

“What I was doing before wasn’t living. Shit, I wasn’t even surviving.

I was drowning , and you pulled me out.” I shift my other hand to her face and trail the pad of my thumb across her bottom lip, which quavers at my touch.

“You not only saved me, but you made me want to re-examine my life. What I want to do with it. Who I want to be. And I think I finally found that answer.”

I spend the next several minutes telling Blondie about my abuelo, about the dream I was raised on, and the hope I have to turn that dream into a reality.

Her eyes brighten with quiet pride when I tell her I want to use my name and family’s wealth for good, and when I eventually tell her how I plan on taking that first step—about my proposal to convince the board at Hallazgo to implement a program that would aid families struggling to afford life-saving medication and care—that admiration in her gaze becomes silvered with tears.

But as much as I want this, as much as I believe in it, I can’t ignore the shadow hanging over it all—the threat that I might not even be allowed to work for Hallazgo.

That the means to instill real change might be taken away from me, no longer mine to inherit.

I’ve spent four years purposely destroying my life; my grades had already dipped from dealing with the loss of my abuelo, but after Jamie, I ended up nearly failing my senior year and only graduated high school at all due to “extenuating circumstances” and a sizable donation from my parents.

I wouldn’t have even gotten into Conwick if my dad hadn’t bought my way in, and I proceeded to float by doing the bare minimum since and fucking up everything in my path.

I think my parents assumed I would grow out of it, out of this “phase” they refused to acknowledge for what it really was: grief.

And when I didn’t…well, they made their feelings clear: step out of line again and they’ll cut me off, not just financially, not just from the family, but from the company my abuelo built.

It doesn’t matter that I’m their son. If they don’t approve of the man I’m becoming, they won’t let me be a part of their empire.

And without their backing, I don’t know if I’ll even get the chance to pitch my proposal, let alone make it happen.

Still, Blondie’s approval means more than I can put into words, and for the moment, it’s enough to quiet those fears.

“Damian, that’s…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to say except I think it’s an amazing idea.”

“I want to make a difference.” And I think that’s what my abuelo and Jamie would want, too.

They wouldn’t want me to waste my life wallowing in sadness and self-destructive despair.

They’d want me to live . To be a positive force in this world…

and use what I’ve learned from their loss to leave a mark, even if it took so much heartache to get here.

“The only thing is,” I say after a beat, “I know my dad and the board will never go for it if I can’t make the program profitable in some way to Hallazgo, and while I have some ideas on how to do that, I’m not a numbers guy.

I can use a calculator like the best of them, but this is going to take something special, like a math genius, to make this proposal foolproof. ”

Blondie’s lips press into a coy little smirk. “Did you have someone in mind?”

I beam, and she bursts into the most hard-on-inducing giggle fit when I roll her onto her back and tickle her.

“What do you say, Blondie?” I ask, punctuating the words with open-mouthed kisses to her neck, collarbone, and chest. Resting my chin between her ample breasts, I peek up at her with a smile full of so much affection and love it seems to spill out of me. “Want to change the world together?”

She considers me with a pensive hum. “Like Batman and Robin?”

“I mean, I’m definitely Bruce Wayne in this situation with the handsome looks and butt loads of money, but you”—I drag my lips along her sternum, then rise until I’m hovering over her—“are certainly no Robin.”

She arches a brow. “Yeah? Who am I, then?”

“Superman,” I answer. “Obviously.”

“Superman?” she parrots.

“Mmhmm. You have that whole Clark Kent thing going on with those glasses. It’s very sexy.”

Her face scrunches up in confusion, and she wrinkles her nose, jostling said glasses. “I thought Clark Kent was the nerd, and Superman was the sexy one?”

“Oh, he is,” I say, brushing a rogue curl from her forehead. “But lucky for you, I dig nerds. Speaking of”—I sit up, looking around the general vicinity—“where’s that cute ‘I love pi’ T-shirt of yours? I’ve had way too many sex dreams about it, and I want to see if the dream lives up to reality.”

She giggles again. “You’re incorrigible,” she scolds, shifting upright and pushing me back against the sofa to straddle me.

I shrug and lean back to admire the view, my fingers languidly caressing the sides of her naked body. “I don’t know what that means, but I’ll take your word for it. Now, kiss me, Blondie. I’m dying over here.”

Although she rolls her eyes, she obliges.