NICE GIRL TO LOVE (THE COMPLETE THREE-BOOK COLLECTION)(45)

“No. We were looking forward to going dancing tonight. I don’t want that über bitch from today to ruin this for us.” She unbuckled her seatbelt, looking determined to stomp into that club and dance away their last night together. Keep pretending that everything was okay.

Meanwhile, Connor just wanted to hold her, keep her for himself for just a little while longer. Not just to ease her hurt, but to ease his as well. To preserve the part of him that she brought out, celebrated. Loved.

Even if it was for just a few more hours.

Knowing there was no convincing her otherwise, however, and knowing she was doing this as much for him as she was herself, he got out of the car and went around to open her door.

She beat him to it though, and was waiting for him with a sweet, sexy kiss. He took it greedily, drew strength from it and sank into it at the same time. Deepened it into something not so sweet. And a whole lot more sexy.

Mid-kiss, he felt Abby slip something into the pocket of his pants.

What the—

He pinned her back up against the passenger door. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Abby looked stunned. Her fun, flirty smile faded completely and Connor mourned the loss. But he was too on edge now to shift it into reverse. “What are you trying to prove with this stunt?” He yanked her panties out of his pocket and waved it at her furiously. “That you can be just like the other women I’ve slept with? Just another one-monther?” He slid his free hand up between her thighs, punishing them both. “Is this what you want? For me to treat you how I treated them?”

His fingers met her wet heat. God, how was he supposed to walk away from this tomorrow? From her?

The question was one he’d asked himself a hundred times over the past few weeks, but it wasn’t until tonight that he finally had an answer. It had killed him to see how broken down she’d looked after her encounter with Gabriella. Abby deserved better. She deserved to be happy. To be herself.

And if that meant letting her go, he would do it...because he’d gone and done the once unimaginable.

He’d fallen head over heels in love.

With a woman he couldn’t keep.

Emotions now in overdrive, he went from teasing her slick flesh to plunging his fingers into her core, torturing himself with the memory of how hard she’d come against his mouth last night, knowing that he’d never get the chance to taste her again.

Not after this.

When he felt the telltale pulsing of her inner walls, he pulled her hair back and clamped his mouth over the soft skin of her throat, marking her intentionally, wanting to have some small claim on her for however brief a time period. Something to stamp her as his.

Before he had to let her go.




ABBY WAS HORRIFIED at how her body was letting, begging Connor to keep going.

Keep telling her goodbye.

Keep punishing himself for having to do it.

Untamed and ruthless, his hands seemed to be everywhere all at once, using the secrets he’d learned about all her pleasures against her. For her. To drive her higher and higher…

His lips found hers just in time.

Saved the world from knowing that she was screaming her release in the middle of a crowded club parking lot.

Afterward, after she felt him cradling her to him gently, she drifted for a while. In and out on that lusty, floating bubble between repletion and awareness…until the boisterous laughter of a bunch of college kids walking past their car brought her crashing down to reality.

“I want to go home,” she whispered, unable to meet his eyes as she scrambled back inside the car. She shut herself off from him before he could say another word.

When he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned her way, she stared out the window, silently begging him all over again. For a different kind of release. Please, please. Just drive. Give me that much, Connor.

Finally, he did.

She closed her eyes to keep him from talking to her, to keep the tears from flowing. Because she knew what that was back there. That was Connor preparing to close the door on one of his one-month flings.

Preparing to close the door on her.

Turning away from him completely, she pretended to lean against her hand so she could wipe the tears away without him seeing.

“Abby, don’t cry. Please, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. What I did just now was unforgiveable. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just... You were being so different, doing exactly the kind of thing Gabriella used to do. And I hated seeing you do that, be that. For me.” He gripped the steering wheel, pain streaking all through his voice. “But that’s no excuse. I should’ve stopped. You confided in me about your need for control and I all but stripped that from you back there.” He sounded so appalled, so disgusted with himself, that her heart went out to him.

What was left of it at least.

All at once, it became too much.

As they rolled to a stop outside of his house, she shoved open the door and just started running, fumbling for her keys as she raced for her car, the sound of his thudding footsteps following not far behind her.

His hand came slamming down on the door, preventing her quick getaway.

“Let me go, Connor. Please. I can’t do this. Don’t make me go through this.”

He tipped her chin up, forcing her to look up at him, to see his tortured expression, to see his blue eyes as gray as they’ve ever been. “I never wanted to hurt you, Abby.”