Chapter 24 Grayson
GRAYSON
Instead of heading back inside, we decide to walk farther down the hall, making our way around the arena. I keep us in the open, keep the exits visible, all while keeping her hand in mine.
When I spot the door with the small plaque—ANNOUNCER BOOTH—I slow and glance at her.
“Want to sit in here for a bit?”
She gives me a small smile. “Are we allowed to be in here?”
I grin at that. “Honestly, I have no idea.” I try the doorknob, and it’s unlocked. “But it seems to be open, so…”
She laughs, and I open the door, letting her go in first.
Inside, it’s dim, but not dark. A narrow window overlooks the rink below, empty right now, lights low, the ice washed in a pale glow that makes it look and feel peaceful.
I close the door behind us quietly, and then I stop, hands at my sides. Not because I don’t want to touch her, because, believe me, I want to. Badly. But I also don’t want to make this about what I want versus what she needs.
Harlow turns to face me. In the low light, her eyes look even bigger. Her expression is calm, but I can see the edge under it. The way she’s holding herself together on purpose, maybe for me, since I was the one struggling tonight, and she was there to calm me.
My gaze flicks to her mouth, just for a second, but it feels like a match striking.
Her lips part slightly, like she saw where my gaze landed and doesn’t know what to do about it. Like she’s deciding whether she’s allowed to want the same thing.
I don’t move, don’t push.
I let the moment sit between us, and the tension cracks.
Harlow doesn’t turn away or move her gaze, but her breathing shifts, becoming slightly heavier, like she can’t ignore the pull between us either. She doesn’t close the gap between us, though. She stands there fighting the same war that I’m fighting with myself.
Taking a step toward her, I lift my hand slowly, giving her every chance to stop me.
Every chance to take a step back and put distance between us again.
I brush my knuckles along her cheek, and her skin sparks under mine.
And when she leans into my touch before she can stop herself, my breath stutters like my body just admitted something my brain’s been trying to deny.
For one terrifying second, I feel just how badly I want her.
Not in a reckless way. This isn’t me acting on an impulse, but on something that’s been slowly building to the point where I can no longer deny its existence.
In a way that feels like tenderness and hunger braided together so tightly that I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
“Stop thinking so much,” she teases, like she can hear the gears grinding in my head.
My mouth twitches—almost a smile, almost the kind of pain I keep behind my teeth. “I’m trying.”
“I know,” she whispers, and her voice drops into something that feels like a hand on the back of my neck. “But…right now, you need to stop thinking and kiss me.”
Without wasting another second, I slide my hand to the side of her neck, thumb under her ear, and I lean in like I’m moving through water.
Like I’m afraid if I go too fast, she’ll vanish.
My mouth brushes hers, barely a touch, and my whole body comes to life.
My hand squeezes just a fraction from how much I am holding back.
She makes a small sound, barely audible, but it only makes me desperate for more.
I kiss her again, deeper this time. Still controlled, but I can feel any shreds of my restraint slipping.
Her hands fist my shirt, and she pulls me even closer, not leaving a single inch of space between us. Her breasts push into my chest, and I can feel her nipples harden through the material of her dress, which leads me to believe she’s not wearing a bra.
Fuck me.
I groan against her mouth, the sound ripped out of me, and she turns to putty in my hands. Heat floods my chest, blood immediately rushing to my cock, and I ignore the fact that I am so gone for this beautiful, amazing girl.
My mouth finds her jaw, her ear. “Harlow,” I breathe, and her name tastes like a promise I’m not allowed to make out loud quite yet.
She kisses me again like she can’t stand the space, and I understand that kind of desperation all too well.
The kind that looks like need but is really just you trying to stay afloat.
Her back hits the wall, and the coldness makes her arch into me as she lifts up her leg and wraps it around my hip while starting to grind against me.
My hand lands on the wall behind her, and I feel a light switch. I shift, pulling away from her just long enough to turn it on, but she raises a hand to stop mine.
Then she whispers, “No.”
The word isn’t just a request. It’s a tell. It’s a vulnerability wrapped in one syllable.
My hands still immediately.
“You want to keep the lights off?” I ask, softly.
She nods, eyes desperate. “Please.”
I come back to her like I never left.
“Tell me what you need, baby,” I murmur, my mouth against her jaw, because I’m not guessing with her. Not with this. I want to know what she wants, what she craves. What she’s been dreaming about if her dreams are anything like mine on the rare nights I have them.
“You,” she breathes.
I come back to her mouth, slower this time, deeper, one hand flat against the wall beside her head and the other finding its way up her leg to her waist—settling there, steady, anchoring us both.
She kisses me back with quiet desperation that mirrors my own.
Her hands untuck my shirt from my pants, and her hand glides up the bare skin of my chest, leaving a path of goosebumps in its wake.
My body is already making its position very clear.
I shift my weight forward, slipping one of my legs between hers, and her breath stutters against my lips.
I pull back slightly, quickly scanning her face. “Okay?”
“Yes,” she says immediately, no hesitation, just certainty, and her hips rock into me in a way I don’t think she fully chooses. Just her body continuing to move as if without permission.
I press into her once, slow and deliberate, keeping most of my weight on the hand braced against the wall. She makes a sound that sends a zing down my spine, and my cock somehow getting even harder, straining against the fabric of my pants.
I grip the wall harder.
My mouth finds her neck, and she tips her head to give me better access. I can feel her heartbeat under my lips, racing to match mine. My free hand slides from her waist to her hip, gathering the fabric of her dress in my grip so I can feel the shape of her better, the warmth radiating through it.
She rocks against me again, this time by her own choosing and even more forcefully.
I groan quietly into her neck, and she does it again—a slow roll of her hips, finding the pressure, finding the angle—and her breath goes short.
“There. Oh god, right there,” she breathes, barely audible, almost to herself.
I press back against her, and she exhales hard, her fingers curling into my shoulders, and her head drops back against the wall.
God, she’s fucking perfect.
She’s taking what she needs, and I am more than happy to help her chase the release she’s looking for.
Meanwhile, I am reciting our entire playbook in my head to avoid coming in my pants.
Line combinations. Power play units. The ice resurfacing schedule. Anything.
She has found her angle, and she is using it, her hips rocking in a slow, searching rhythm. One of her thighs presses forward against mine like she's trying to get closer, get more, get exactly what she needs, and every movement drags her against me, and the friction is—
I press my forearm flat against the wall above her head and drop my face into the curve of her neck and breathe through my nose.
“You’re killing me,” I say, low and rough against her skin. “I need you to know that.”
She laughs and tips her face up to kiss my jaw.
Then she shifts, bringing one leg slightly forward so my thigh slots between hers even higher, and the next roll of her hips drags her clit directly where she needs it. The sound she makes is different this time. Shorter. Sharper. Like everything has lined up in the perfect order.
Every muscle in my body goes rigid.
Mentally, I’m teetering right on the line of losing it. The sounds she’s making have me nearly coming undone, and that is the last thing I want to do right now.
I keep my thigh firm and still, giving her something solid to move against, and I press forward just enough to increase the pressure without changing the angle, because she is taking exactly what she needs, and I am not going to interrupt that.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to see anything more than I want to see her come apart.
“Don’t stop,” she begs, her breathing turning more erratic.
“I won’t,” I say against her temple. “Take whatever you need, baby. Use me.”
She moves faster against me, and I press my mouth to her hair, keeping my body exactly where it is.
I am doing everything in my power not to make this about me because she is so close, I can feel it in the way her whole body is pulling taut, the way her breath is becoming even more ragged and uneven.
But she is not making this easy on me in any way.
Every movement she makes drags against me, and I’m surprised there’s any blood left for the rest of my body when it feels like it's all rushing to my dick.
Every sound she makes lands somewhere in my chest and reverberates outward.
I can feel the heat of her through my slacks, and my jaw is clenched, and I am white-knuckling every shred of composure I have left.
Her hips stutter.
“Grayson—” My name breaks off. She says it like a warning, like a plea.
“I’ve got you,” I say, low and steady. “I’ve got you. Come for me.”
Her whole body tightens, and then she breaks, quietly, shuddering against me, face pressed into my shoulder, the sound she makes swallowed in the fabric of my shirt.
Her hips press forward and hold, trembling, and I keep my thigh firm, with my hand at her hip and my mouth at her temple, and I do not move.
I just hold her through it.
All of it.
Until her grip on my shirt loosens. Until her breathing starts, slowly, to come back down.
When the shaking finally settles, she goes soft against me, her forehead dropping to my chest.
I stand there and breathe and try not to combust.
Her hand is still fisted loosely in my shirt. She hasn’t moved it.
Then, without looking up, she shifts. Her palm flattens against my chest.
Slides down.
“Harlow—” My voice comes out cracked, like it lost structural integrity somewhere in the last five minutes.
She looks up at me. Her eyes are dark and soft, and she knows exactly what she’s doing.
She presses her palm against my dick deliberately.
I make a sound that I will be thinking about with great shame in approximately four to six business hours, involuntary and completely wrecked.
My hips jerk forward without my permission, chasing the pressure once, twice, and then she keeps her hand exactly where it is and squeezes.
I bury my face in her hair and grip the wall as I come in my pants in a long, shuddering wave that takes most of my remaining dignity with it.
I stay there with my face hidden against her hair, breathing like I’ve just killed a penalty with ten seconds left on the clock.
She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I as I try to regain my composure.
The rink glows blue-white through the window beside us. The ice is empty and peaceful and completely unaware of what just happened in the announcers booth above it.
Gradually, the tension drains out of my shoulders. Her hand moves back up to my chest, resting flat there, and I can feel my own heartbeat under her palm, still working too hard.
I straighten and look at the ceiling and take a deep breath before I move my gaze back down to Harlow.
Her lips are swollen. Her hair has fully given up. Her eyes are bright with something that is equal parts satisfaction and amusement, and she is very clearly trying to decide whether she can keep a straight face.
She can’t, and her shoulders start shaking.
“What?” I say.
She presses her lips together, then loses the battle entirely. Tucks her face into my chest and laughs—quiet, helpless, real—and I feel it against my sternum, and my mouth pulls into a grin before I can stop it. Because it’s her.
“Nothing,” she manages. “I just—”
She pulls back and looks up at me, still smiling, eyes bright.
“I take it we aren’t going back to the dinner.”
I look at her, taking in the messy hair, her pretty face, the bright eyes, and the smile she isn’t trying to hide even a little.
“No,” I say, losing my own battle of holding in my grin. “I don’t think so.”
Her smile widens.
And standing in the announcers booth above an empty rink, I think I would miss every donor dinner for the rest of my career for ten more seconds of that laugh.