My hand drifted lower down my belly as I stared at Pen and listened to the sounds of Kate and Leo getting to know each other in the back seat of an old car. The flesh around my fingers heated in anticipation and I told myself they were Pen’s fingers, burning and freezing me as they had on a muggy night with the press of brick into my back. My fingertips grazed the band of my panties and I hesitated before plunging forward. Pen stared at me through the phone and I lost myself in her emerald eyes. I slid two fingers beneath the cool fabric just as the doorbell rang.
I groaned and forced myself to stand, pausing the movie on the image of Kate’s hand pressed against a foggy car window. I cursed my visitor all the way to the door, only remembering at the last second to make sure my dress had fallen back into place. If I could get rid of whoever this was quickly, I might be able to hold onto this moment.
I opened the door and every molecule of air left my body.
It was Pen.
She’d been walking away. Her body was turned away from the door and she had one foot in the air, hovering above the top stair, but I would have known that body anywhere. Her shoulders slumped and she turned to face me.
“Hi,” she said, staring at her own feet.
It wasn’t just Pen. It was Pen wearing a heather-gray men’s three-piece suit that fit her like a glove. The vest hugged her body, emphasizing her breasts yet making her look utterly, deliciously androgynous. Beneath it was a crisp white shirt and a thin black tie held in place with a silver bar. Every coherent thought I had evaporated as the lustful side of my brain took over all control of my body.
When I didn’t answer, she looked up with worry redrawing those lines around her eyes.
“I got your text,” she said. “May I come in?”
My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, but if I didn’t leave it there it would be on the floor. I stepped aside and let her in. She kept her hands in her pockets and her eyes on the ground.
“Can we talk?”
I wasn’t at all convinced I’d be intelligible, but I nodded and led her to the living room. I sat on the couch, giving her plenty of room beside me, but she hovered behind the armchair, picking at its decorative buttons. She glanced over at the TV and froze. I’d forgotten all about Kate and Leo’s private moment and rushed to switch the screen off.
“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” Pen mumbled. “I should’ve called first.”
The formality of her tone should have frightened me, but it had the opposite effect. Pen was nothing if not a gentleman dyke, as she liked to refer to herself, but she wasn’t the type to dress up and go to a woman’s house to break her heart. As her dad had said, she bailed when things went further than she wanted them to.
“You know you’re always welcome, Pen.”
She looked up, meeting my eyes for the first time and they were something to behold. I had lost myself in a photograph of her eyes, the real thing was likely to be the death of me. I slid my hands under my thighs to keep from reaching out. I’d screwed up last time by moving too fast and pushing too hard. This time I’d be patient. Let her take the lead.
“You, um…” I managed, “Look good in a suit.”
She smiled with almost her old charm and smoothed a hand down her tie. “I wear suits all the time.”
“Not like this.” I couldn’t help but stare at the way the collar exposed enough of her neck to make me want to see more and the tie clip was perfectly centered on her chest. “You said you wore men’s suits, but I’ve never seen it.”
“I said I wear them on special occasions.”
“So…this is a special occasion?”
Sure, there was a hint of hopefulness in my voice. It sounded a little like desperation, but it was definitely hope. Pen shrugged and seemed to steel herself.
“I’m sorry for disappearing,” she started. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“I wasn’t that worried.”
“My dad said you called to check up on me. And Ashley’s been stalking me for a couple days now.”
“In my defense, I told her not to go to your house.” My reasons for that weren’t important.
A twinkle formed in the corner of Pen’s eye, telling me she knew the reason. “I spent two nights waiting in a neighbor’s driveway to avoid her. It was getting annoying.”
“She cares about you.” I hated myself for saying it, even if it was true, so I followed it up with a little more truth. “So do I.”
Pen swallowed hard and finally sat down in the chair, propping her elbows on her knees to lean toward me. “So you don’t hate me?”
“Of course not.”
Pen let out a long breath and ran her hand through her mop of hair. It bounced back messier than before. She looked like a little kid, amazed that they’d wormed out of trouble. Silence stretched between us long enough that my nerves flared again.
“Did you,” I started, hoping she would interrupt and start the conversation. She let the pause stretch, too, so I asked, “Want to talk?”
She nodded but continued staring silently at her entwined fingers.
The words burst from me before I could stop them, “Let’s start with something easy. Why’d you come by tonight?”
“I…um….”
She stopped to rub the crease on her trouser leg but didn’t start talking again.
I chuckled to break the tension. It didn’t work. “My goodness! Penelope Chase, speechless around a woman? What’s the world coming to?”
When she didn’t roll her eyes or laugh at my teasing, snakes of fear writhed in my gut. “Pen?”
“I have a speech.” She rubbed her palms on her thighs, then against each other. I never thought I’d see Pen with sweaty palms. “I practiced it on the drive over.”
“Okay,” I swallowed back my doubt and puffed out a breath. It didn’t make me feel better. “I’m ready.”
“Are you? I don’t think I am.”
“Not gonna lie, Pen. You’re starting to make me fret. You know how rare that is for me.”
That earned a laugh. Well, not a laugh exactly. A slight lift of the corner of her mouth, but it was something. She traced the lines of her palm with her fingertip and said, “I had three speeches, actually. One was for if you slapped me when you opened the door. Another was for if you tried to kiss me when I opened the door…”
She trailed off then, her eyes flicking up to settle on my lips. My stomach fluttered in a decidedly pleasant way as she stared at them and I wished I had thought to kiss her while she stood on my stoop. Or let her press me against the front door. It would’ve been much more pleasant than when Chloe had done it. Or maybe it would’ve ended the same way.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to clear my mind. “And the third?”
“The third was for when you acted like Kieran.”
The syllables of my name on her lips made my heart race. “Is that the one I’m getting now? Because not even I know how Kieran would react to all this.”
“Neither do I.”
I took a chance and asked, “How does Pen react to what happened?”
“I don’t really know that either.”
Not the best answer, but at least she wasn’t saying she never wanted to see me again. I straightened my spine and said, “Since you don’t seem to have a speech ready after all, mind if I start?”
Her eyes flickered to my lips, then my eyes, then away again so fast it made me dizzy. She gave a sharp nod and rubbed her palms together again.
“I owe you an apology.” Guilt pushed the scant remnants of my dinner into my throat. “Will you come sit over here? I need to tell you something.”
She hesitated for a long time, staring at the couch cushion like there was a trap hidden underneath it. Finally, just when I thought I had asked too much, she slipped across the room and settled beside me. I could smell her perfume again and my mind reeled. I reached out and put my hand over hers with the lightest touch I could muster.
“I was…pushy at Rivet
er’s. You weren’t ready for what we did and I shouldn’t have forced myself on you like that.”
“I was definitely consenting.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it okay that I chased you down an alley. You needed time and space and I should have respected that. I’m sorry.”
She laughed and turned her hand over, lacing our fingers together. “This is supposed to be my apology, you know?”
“There is nothing about that night you need to apologize for.” Sitting with her like this, talking about the way we’d touched each other, sent a shiver through me.
“Yes, I absolutely do need to apologize.” Her face hardened and she looked away from me again, the guilt painted in the smooth curves of her cheek. “You’re not…”
She shook her head, and she was quiet so long that I whispered, “I’m not what?”
“You’re not the kind of woman I wanna screw in an alley.”
The words had come out in a rush, leaving a blaze of red across Pen’s cheeks. I smiled, cupping her cheek in my free hand and turning her face up to look at me. “Where do you wanna screw me then? ‘Cause I’ll go anywhere.”
“I’m being serious, Kieran.”
“So am I.” I let go of her hand and held her face with both hands, keeping her close. “I’ll do anything for you. I love you, Pen. Don’t you see that?”
She didn’t speak. She reached out and hooked her fingers behind my neck, pulling our lips together inch by agonizing inch. When they met, my body lit on fire. Her lips were softer than any I’d ever known and the press of them was like a drug shooting through my veins. Her tongue brushed against my lips and my mouth flew open to invite her in. She kissed me now the way she had that night, not just with desire, but with tenderness. With devotion.
I couldn’t sit still any longer. I pressed forward into the kiss, pushing myself into her lap. She accepted me there without hesitation and I straddled her hips, fitting our bodies together. It was as though they had been meant for nothing else. Pen slid her hands up my back, holding me close. The strength of her arms and the gentleness of her touch made me groan and arch my back. She released my mouth and buried her face between my breasts, covering my skin and the thin fabric of my dress with warm, wet kisses.
Running my fingers through her hair and feeling her lips on my flesh reminded me of our first night and I forced myself to pull back from her touch. It was incredibly difficult, but I was going to do everything right this time.
When she looked up at me her pupils were wide with lust and she clearly was having trouble focusing. I touched her cheek with the very edge of my fingertips. “Pen, I want you and I love you, but, if you need time…”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe we should talk first?”
She slid a hand up my thigh and under my dress, her grin widening the closer she came to the soft cotton of my panties. “We can talk later. Right now, I want you too much to form words.”
Her hand arrived at its destination and I was the one who couldn’t form words. My eyes rolled back in my head as sensation burst across my skin, leaving gooseflesh as it traveled through my body. As quickly as it had arrived, her hand moved away, but the ghost of her touch haunted me far longer. Her lips found my neck and brought me out of my daze. I slid my hands underneath her jacket, massaging the bunched muscles of her shoulders as I slipped the fabric off. She had to lean forward to shrug out of it, so I slipped off her lap and grabbed her hand.
We left the jacket crumpled on the floor of my living room. The vest and her shoes stayed in the hall and her pants landed in the doorway to my bedroom. I loosened her tie but didn’t take it off. I used it to pull her across the rug to the foot of my bed. She reached for my dress, but I pushed her hands away. The alley had been about me—tonight would be about her.
I wouldn’t have guessed based on her silhouette that Pen would have been able to get by without a bra. When I finished unbuttoning her shirt and peeled it away from her body, I was happy to be proven wrong. There was nothing beneath her starched shirt but pale skin, liberally spattered with freckles. She had incredible breasts, round and perfect and pale as starlight in my dimly lit bedroom. I pushed aside her shirt and tie and took her nipple into my mouth. I couldn’t see her throw her head back, but I felt how her body shuddered when I closed my lips around her. The way she responded, flesh and sound, to every flick of my tongue and teeth was like the sweetest wine I’d ever sipped. I let myself get drunk on her and then moved to her other breast. By the time I let her go my head was spinning.
I was barely conscious of pushing her back onto the bed and ripping off her boy shorts. The sight of her lying on my bed, shirt and tie open and the rest of her nothing but skin and muscle made me stumble. It was the first time I’d seen her naked and I took a moment to memorize what I could, but the roar of blood in my veins quickly drowned out my curiosity.
Pen raised herself onto her elbows and looked at me, a little smirk playing across one side of her full mouth. My body hummed to touch hers again. I don’t remember telling my limbs to move, but I found myself straddling her, taking her head in my hands and kissing her too desperately to be graceful. I needed her. I needed my hands on her and inside her. I doubted that even a night full of her touch would be enough to quench the fire raging inside me.
She made quick work of my clothing. I must have moved or helped in some way, but I wasn’t conscious of any of it. I was conscious only of her scorching touch and her cooling lips. Of the way her body moved beneath me and the way mine moved in response. My vision was already blurring when Pen put a hand on my hip, trying to roll me underneath her. I pushed her hand away and her shoulders back onto the mattress.
I held onto her tie, wrapping one end around my fist, as I trailed kisses down her cheek to her neck and then to her chest. She tried again to push me off her and I grabbed her hand, pressing it down into the feather down duvet.
“Don’t make me use this,” I said with a smile, brandishing the end of the tie where it dangled from my grip.
Her eyebrow shot up and her smile widened enough to show me she was considering one more transgression just to earn a punishment. “You’re a top?”
I placed a kiss in the valley between her breasts. “Maybe.” I placed another on the bottom of her ribcage. “How else will I make sure…” I swirled my tongue in her bellybutton, earning a sharp intake of breath. “That you won’t run away after?”
My next kiss landed on her hipbone and I made sure my breast grazed between her legs as I moved. Her whole body bucked in response. I slid across to the other hipbone, pressing myself against her as I did. Her head fell back to the mattress and she gripped the duvet beneath her with both hands.
The first taste of her was like honey. The second was a cool glass of sweet lemonade on a hot day. Every one thereafter was like liquid summer. I drank her in, greedy to keep every drop. She moaned and quaked as I took her with my mouth. When her body tensed and she screamed, I couldn’t suppress a shudder of my own. I could listen to this amazing woman make those sounds for the rest of my life and never be satisfied. I barely let her still before I threw myself back on top of her and replaced my tongue with my hands.
I pressed her down with the length of my body, our mingled sweat making our skin slip off each other in delightful ways. I couldn’t stop kissing her. I couldn’t get enough of her tongue against mine. Even when her body shook again and she shouted into our kiss, I couldn’t stop. My body was possessed by her. By the need to please her.
It wasn’t until she laced our fingers together that I realized I had been holding her arm down. She gripped me hard, pressing our palms together until there was as little space between them as there was the rest of our bodies. I slowed the movements of my other hand, caressing her gently. Her breath caught. It was such a soft sound from such a hard woman that my eyes immediately prickled with unshed tears. My next touch earned a sigh. Her eyes had been shut tight, but they peeled apart like a rose opening its petal
s to the sun.
She looked into me. Not at me or through me as she so often did, but into me. The green of her eyes shone wet and bright in the moonlight through the windows. She looked into me and smiled and my whole world shattered. Everything I thought I’d known about her had been wrong. I wanted to spend the rest of my life finding out the real woman behind the armor she put on for the world. A tear fell from my eye and I prayed that she would show me that woman. Pen reached up and cupped my cheek, then her eyes rolled back and she whimpered her final release.
Our bodies stilled and we lay there for a long time, our fingers and bodies intertwined. I was half-asleep or half-drunk on Pen’s pleasure when she rolled me onto my back. Her breath was hot on my thigh and the touch of her mouth was gentle as a bird’s wing. I had no idea that she could be so gentle. I could think of nothing else as she explored me with her tongue. Her mouth led me through wave after wave of pleasure. She was reverent, kneeling there at the foot of my bed with her head buried between my thighs. A lifetime passed in pure bliss and I was hardly aware of her pulling me beneath the blankets and wrapping me in her arms.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I awoke to the smell of brewing coffee. For a long, luxurious moment I spread all my limbs out and rolled my naked body against the sheets. True to my routine, I’d changed the sheets yesterday morning. I’d never been so happy for that habit. When I pressed my face into the mass of pillows and tangled bedding all I could smell was Pen. Lavender, sandalwood, sex, and sleep sweat. My head spun. I wanted to wallow in those sheets and breathe in that scent all day long.
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