Focused: A hate to love sports romance(51)

"Molly," he said, sliding his hands around my waist. "It's clear something is wrong. Talk to me."

I took a deep breath. "We have one night, Noah. Do you want to spend it talking? Because I don't."

Indecision warred in the handsome, chiseled features of his face. "I do if there's something important on your mind."

With a self-control I didn't know I possessed, I slid my hands up my chest and pulled his face down to mine. A groan came from his lungs when I tugged on his lip with my teeth. Goose bumps broke out over my skin at the sound of it.

I pushed down everything except the way he felt under my wandering fingertips, every worry, every doubt, every instinct that told me that this one last time would only make it harder for me when we got back to Seattle.

But I wouldn't ignore the opportunity when it was given to me.

Making this choice felt important.

I leaned up on my tiptoes and kissed him, digging my hands into his lush, silky hair and tugging. He changed the angle of the kiss, and I felt the moment when his brain switched off and his desire took over.

For the rest of the night, that impulse reigned over us, and we allowed it with every touch and kiss and whispered plea into each other's skin.

When he wanted to see all of me, I straddled his hips and rose above him, hands braced on his chest, for a slow, sweet round that left my body gleaming with sweat from delayed satisfaction.

When I wanted him to unleash every ounce of his strength, he turned me over onto my stomach where the pillows muffled my sobs of gratification when it finally broke wide open.

And when we knew he should've been leaving the room, we allowed ourselves one last time. Not a single word passed between us, but he touched me everywhere, tasted me everywhere, and I did the same. He moved so slowly and with so much purpose, letting the desire grow and grow and grow until I swallowed a scream when we finished at the same time. A tear rolled down my temple as I lay under him, trying desperately to catch my breath, and he caught it with his lips.

I watched silently as Noah pulled on his shorts and T-shirt, his face an unreadable mask.

The blinders were going back on.

So were mine.

He stood over the bed and looked down at me, and when I thought he'd turn to leave, I scrambled out of bed. He caught me, wrapping his arms tight around me and taking my mouth in a searching, searing kiss.

It came down slowly until he did nothing more than hold me while I breathed him in.

"I know this is the right thing to do," he said into the crown of my head.

My eyes fluttered shut as I snuggled my face into his chest. "I do too."

I didn't, though. I wasn't entirely sure I believed that. Right. Wrong. They were so subjective based on who you were asking, weren't they?

Maybe the statement that I could agree to was that this was the smart thing to do instead. The most likely to allow him the success he was still chasing after with both hands and give me the same result.

"But I'll think about this," he admitted in a rough voice. "I'll think about you, Molly, and I want you to know that."

I had to roll my lips together to keep from telling him that I was falling in love with him. Because he had no space for something like this in his life, and I had no room for that kind of complication in mine. So all I could do, knowing we were leaving the next day, back into a world where we'd pretend this hadn't happened, was give him another soft kiss and lie about what he meant to me.

"I'll think about you too, Noah."

He pulled away from my embrace, and in a few strides of his long legs, he was gone.





Chapter Twenty-One





Molly





The strangest part of returning to Seattle was the fact that no one seemed to notice that anything was different. When I got home, Isabel greeted me with a smile, wanting to know how the weekend went.

When Paige stopped over a couple of hours later because Emmett wanted to show us something, there were no curious, lingering looks at my face, and no one asked if something had happened.

And as protective as I felt over those two nights and what happened in that big bed, I was relieved.

For the first time since I could remember, something happened in my life that I didn't want to share with my family. My sisters were my best friends, and Paige as close as a mother to me, but I didn’t want to confide or discuss or pick apart anything about my time in South Dakota.

Normally, we would.

But the rest of my Sunday back in Seattle was just ... normal.

I arrived at work, feeling rejuvenated after a good night of sleep, something I didn't have at all in South Dakota due to one Noah Griffin. And the lack of sleep from that weekend was nothing that couldn't be hidden by a good concealer, which I applied liberally when getting ready that morning.

My office was quiet and tidy when I let myself in, and I'd barely gotten through the items waiting in my inbox before a message popped up from Beatrice on my phone.

Beatrice: Would love to hear how the weekend went. I'm free after lunch.





It wasn't so much a suggestion as a summons. And I got a pit in my stomach as I thought about facing her across the expanse of her desk. Beatrice had been so very, very far from my mind in that cabin in the mountains. Her request for no fraternization had as well, something I'd broken. A few times. But there was really no point in counting how many times, honestly.