One Night with her Bachelor(36)

He hadn’t thought he could get any harder, but the thought of her on her knees, taking him into her sweet mouth… He pressed a palm against his erection in a futile attempt to ease the agony. “I’m good,” he said before his brain could catch up with his mouth.

I’m good? He so wasn’t good. He wasn’t anywhere near good. He was at DEFCON 1 and about to explode. Molly’s shuttering expression told him she knew it, too.

But instead of addressing it directly, something she was probably too embarrassed to do, she said, “So our fortress only works one way?”

He pushed himself to his feet. “Lie back on the pillows.”

She hesitated a second before complying. He sat next to her, the foot of his bad leg still on the floor while the rest of him stretched out on the bed. He took her arm and tugged until she snuggled against his side, her arm slung over him. “You’re right. The fortress is for both of us. And the thing I want most right now is to hold you.”

It wasn’t a total lie. How long had it been since he’d had the pleasure of a naked woman pressed to his side? Longer than he could remember. And a naked Molly? Never.

But it wasn’t the complete truth, either. He wanted a hell of a lot more than a snuggle, but he wasn’t ready for the talk they needed to have first. And if he lost control with her now, he’d end up blurting out far more than she needed to hear.

He’d parachuted into battlefields before, treated gravely injured men while bullets zipped past his ears. He’d literally been on fire once.

None of that was as tough as cuddling naked, eager Molly and keeping a grip on his self-control.

He deserved a Medal of Fucking Honor.





Chapter Ten





?


The sound of a ringing phone made Molly jerk awake. The room was dark, and her half-naked body pressed to Gabriel’s fully clothed one. He was asleep, his head tipped to the side and his breath softly ruffling her hair.

The phone rang again, and Molly realized it was her cell. She carefully extracted herself from Gabriel’s embrace and crawled off the bed. She’d dumped her purse on the bedroom floor when Gabriel had carried her in. She crouched on the floor so her neighbors couldn’t look in the window and see her wearing nothing but her skirt. By the time she finally found her phone, it had stopped ringing. She pressed the screen.

Lily.

She called her back. “Hey, Lil. Sorry I missed your call.”

“I hope you were too busy having fun.”

“Sleeping, actually.” Naked sleeping. With Gabriel.

“Bummer. Josh looks like he’s about to crash out, too, so I thought I’d bring him home. That okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” Crud. Lily lived five minutes away. Gabriel looked comatose. The only thing she feared worse than her son seeing Gabriel in her bed and getting the wrong idea was Lily seeing him and getting the right idea. “Are you okay getting him in your car?”

“Yes, Mom,” Lily deadpanned.

“Cool. See you soon.” She hung up, dropped her phone and scrambled for the bed. “Gabriel. Gabriel, wake up!”

“Huh?”

She found her bra and slipped her arms through. “Lily’s bringing Josh back. You have to go.”

His sleepy sexy expression melted away. He rolled onto his butt and watched her throw her clothes on in a panic. “They already know we went out tonight.”

“I know, but I stupidly told Lily I was sleeping, and if she sees you here she’ll know what happened. Or what almost happened. What had the potential to happen.”

He looked as confused as she felt. “You don’t want Lily to know.”

“Of course not! It’s private.” Sex was always private. She hated it when her friends overshared details of their own sex lives. Then again, that might’ve been because she’d had nothing but lukewarm, unsatisfying memories to contribute. “Dang it, where are my panties?”

He stood and fished them out of his pocket, dangling them in front of her nose. Kneeling in front of him, she felt her cheeks flame. “You…you want to keep them?”

His face hardened. “I’m not perverted. It’s not like I’m going to wear them.”

“I know.” She was oddly touched that he’d put her panties in his pocket. Touched and a little aroused. “It’s okay if you want them.”

He glanced away, bunching the panties in his hand as he held them out to her. She took them and tossed them into the open hamper in the corner. He was closing himself off more and more with every passing second, and she couldn’t bear it. Lily’s call had shattered their force field—or maybe her need for secrecy had. Either way, Gabriel was morphing into the distant man he’d been that horrible day in September when she’d first arrived at his cabin. She hated watching him tuck away the warmth and kindness, replacing it with coolness. Desperate to bring that man back, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against his knee, but he jerked and hastily stepped back. Something was wrong, something beyond the fact he was acting as though he couldn’t bear her touch. Something felt strange and weird and really not right, but her brain wasn’t firing properly and she couldn’t figure out what.

He left two minutes before Lily dropped Josh off, but the wounded look on his face stayed with her long into the night. Even as she helped Josh go to the bathroom and take his evening bath, thoughts of Gabriel scratched away at the back of her brain. Her feverish dreams of his delicious kisses and wicked touch kept her awake most of the night. By the time her alarm went off, she’d given up on sleep and lay staring at her ceiling in a sweaty mess of hormones, too scared to touch herself lest she wake up her son in the next room.