Page 25 of No Going Back
Griffin gave her a single nod. “Unfortunately.” Maybe confessing all his sins was the best option. Then Dianna would see all the reasons she had to keep pushing him away. Relying on her to keep him in line wasn’t the most honorable of endeavors, but she seemed to be the only one of them who had any sort of wherewithal when it came to that.
Because if she peeled that robe off her body and asked him to fuck her right now, there’s not a thing in this world that would stop him from making it happen.
Except her.
NINE
DIANNA
DIANNA HELD OUT the cup of coffee she’d poured simply to have something to occupy her hands. “I’m sorry I interrupted your morning.”
She was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Griffin was her new neighbor, but maybe that would make things easier. Now he could simply be Griffin, her neighbor, instead of Griffin, the gorgeous man with the sexy smile and the gravelly voice… who happened to have gone down on her and given her the most amazing orgasm of her life.
“You don’t need to apologize to me for anything, Di.” He took the cup, his rough fingers dragging across hers. “I should be the one apologizing to you.”
She turned away, forcing herself to stay calm as she poured out another cup of coffee. “You don’t need to apologize to me for anything.”
It was absolutely true. In fact, she would prefer he not apologize to her at all. It would make it seem like he thought what happened between them was a mistake. And while she might have claimed it was a mistake, it didn’t actually fall into that category for her.
Not the way it should have.
She’d spent the last three weeks trying to work up some amount of regret over what happened. It should have been easy, since Griffin clearly shared her opinion that it was a mistake, since he’d walked away without looking back. By all accounts she should have had some sort of remorse over the whole interaction.
But that was not how she felt at all.
Once she got past the initial knee-jerk reaction of it, ‘the bakery incident’ as she called it left her feeling empowered. Desirable.
Like the fucking goddess she decided she was.
But that didn’t mean it could happen again. Interactions like that could quickly muddy the clarity of the waters she was treading in, and she hadn’t quite yet learned how to swim in this new pool.
“I do need to apologize.” Griffin’s voice was soft behind her. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to—”
That sent her spinning to face him, the turn fast enough that her coffee sloshed, spilling down the front of her robe. “You didn’t push me.”
She’d been an active player in everything that happened. To the point that if it had gone farther, she would have been one hundred percent on board.
“I took advantage of you at a time when you were vulnerable and—” Griffin continued on, like he fully believed what he was saying.
“You didn’t take advantage of me.” Dianna snorted out a little laugh. The thought was preposterous. “I’m almost forty. I’m a big girl. I know how to say no. And there were plenty of rolling pins within arm’s reach. If I wanted to stop, we would’ve stopped.” She almost couldn’t believe how empowered she sounded. How confident and self-assured.
She’d been working so hard for so long to get over what other people put on her, and part of her was worried it might never happen. But while it wasn’t simple to retrain the thoughts trying to control her, it was possible. And this moment was proof.
“I was an absolutely willing participant in what happened, Griffin.” Her thighs pressed together at the memory. “So like I said, you have nothing to apologize for.” Dianna quickly clamped her lips shut, sealing off an apology of her own.
The old Dianna would have followed Griffin’s attempted apology with one of her own. She would’ve tried to carry the burden so he didn’t have to. But there was no burden. Sure, she got off and he didn’t, but she wasn’t going to apologize for that.
Men certainly didn’t apologize when they were on the receiving end of one-sided satisfaction, so why should she?
“Okay.” Griffin’s eyes met hers. “Then I’m not sorry for what happened.”
He was simply agreeing with her, but it felt like more. Like maybe Griffin was admitting he didn’t have regrets either.
“Good.” Dianna automatically took a sip from the cup in her hand, not realizing she hadn’t added cream until the hot liquid hit her tongue. It took everything she had not to cringe, but right now she was being Dianna the goddess, not Dianna the gagging apologizer.
Griffin’s eyes moved down, dipping to the splash of liquid sinking into the fabric over her left breast. “You spilled some coffee on your pretty robe.”
She tucked her chin to find she’d lost a little more from her cup than she’d initially realized. The rapidly cooling coffee covered a sizable section of her boob, including the nipple which was pulling tight as the fabric chilled against it.
