Monty’s tentacle was like the world’s strongest bathmat. Each round protrusion flexed on their own, pulling at my skin. They could taste with their suckers. I wondered if he liked the taste of my body lotion, then I worried that the chemicals in it would hurt him.
“You want to touch him?” Vivian asked Ian.
I turned to find that he’d taken several steps back. He held up his hands and said, “No, I’m fine over here.”
“This isn’t really his thing,” I explained, though I’d had no idea Ian would have been frightened by Monty.
“And he brought you here, anyway?” She looked impressed. “That’s devotion. You’ve got yourself a keeper.”
I smiled at Ian, and he smiled back. All the happiness I felt overwhelmed me, and I turned away, tears in my eyes. He was definitely a keeper.
“Are you all right?” Ian laughed softly, genuine concern behind his words.
I nodded and wiped my eyes with my non-octopus hand. “I’m just…a lot happier than I’ve been in a really long time.”
I spent a beautiful twelve minutes with Monty, until he decided to use me as a means of escape, and Vivian had to distract him with some treats. Due to his position against the glass, I got to watch him pull the dismembered fish parts beneath his web. Then he glided away, siphons flaring, his big mantle swaying from side to side.
Vivian took me to a sink where I could wash up—twice, at Ian’s insistence, lest I get some “sucker infestation”. Then Vivian led us back to the door, and I expressed my thanks again.
“This is one of the top five moments in my life,” I told her.
“Well, I’m glad I could be a part of it.” She paused. “You know, we take volunteers here. You could be a tour guide.”
“Yeah. Maybe some day.” Someday when I had the time, and when it wouldn’t conflict with my reliable employment. Someday when I didn’t have to be practical and carefully guard my limited free time.
Someday when I’d made choices that enabled me to do the things I loved, instead of the things that would make money.
On the walk back to Ian’s car, I took his hand, again, then stepped in front of him to stop him. “This was the sweetest thing any guy has ever done for me. I don’t know what I did to deserve it—”
“You’re you,” he said, before I could disparage myself. “And you gave me a chance.”
I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, and he pulled me close. When he released me, he said, “Come on. Let’s go get some dinner.”
I was octopus obnoxious the whole time. I’m sure he wanted to jump through the plate glass window of the bistro we’d picked, rather than listen to me. I tried to make other conversation, but I talked about Monty the way some people talk about their children.
It didn’t stop once we were in the car.
“They’re really devoted mothers,” I prattled on. Once the trivia started flowing, there was no stemming the tide. “A female giant Pacific octopus will make a den in a nook or a hole, somewhere she can protect, and lay like ten thousand eggs. And she hangs them up on the walls and spends six months just sitting there, cleaning the eggs, moving them around; she doesn’t even feed herself. She doesn’t sleep. If she’s not dead by the time the babies hatch, she’s not alive for long.”
“Why? Do they eat her?” he asked, his gaze still fixed on the red light.
“No! How dare you!” I exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was an offensive question,” he said with a laugh. I got the feeling that teasing me into knee-jerk octopus outrage was fun for him.
“No, they don’t eat her. You should YouTube octopods sometime. They’re fascinating.” I leaned back in the seat with a sigh. Ian’s car was more comfortable than my couch at home.
“Well, I find you fascinating, Penny Parker.” He looked over at me and winked.
And that was it. I was in love with him.
Chapter Nine
We pulled up to Ian’s building at eleven-thirty. I was still riding the high from meeting the octopus, so I hadn’t questioned until that moment why he hadn’t headed for my place.
“Well, isn’t this presumptuous,” I said with a slow smile.
He half-lifted his hand from the steering wheel. “It’s Saturday night. There must be something good on television, right?”
“I don’t think we’re going to watch TV up there.” Not that I wasn’t okay with that. I’d never felt so alive in my life, and I didn’t want the feeling to stop.
“You caught me.” He gestured to my arm, still bearing faint marks from Monty. “I was hoping I’d get to put some hickeys on you, as well, since you’re being so generous about it tonight.”
“Shut up and let’s get inside.” I laughed.
Once we got into the apartment, Ian headed to the kitchen to open some wine, and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. The half-bath on the main floor was on the other side of the elevator, so I walked through the living room to get there. On my way, the lights dimmed just a touch.
The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was beautiful. It had a big white porcelain vessel sink and a lovely modern-looking toilet. I’d never thought I would find a toilet an attractive furnishing before.
As I washed my hands and checked that my eyeliner hadn’t run, music started. I jumped. Ian had a built-in sound system in his apartment? That was so cool. I didn’t recognize the song playing, but it was old, and pretty sexy. My nipples tightened against my bra. This could happen. Tonight, if you wanted to, this could happen.
Pumping the brakes on my hormones wasn’t easy. Yes, I was a grown woman, free to make my own choices. But so far, that choice had been to not have sex with anyone, and I needed to examine why this thing between Ian and me was my combo breaker. Yes, I was head-over-heels in shiny-new-love with him, but I didn’t know how he felt about me, and I only had to wait until Monday to find out if we were destined to be together.
I could wait another week.
But not having sex didn’t mean not having dirty fun. I emerged from the bathroom to find Ian setting a bottle and two glasses on the big round coffee table. He handed me a glass. “I hope you like Chardonnay, because it was all I had.”
“It’s better than a glass of peanut butter.” I took a sip. I wasn’t as much of a wine girl as I was a beer girl, but there was something sort of magical about wine as a romantic touch that a lager couldn’t compete with.
He sat on the couch and patted the spot beside him. “Best living room view in all of New York?”
I sat beside him. He put his arm around me as comfortably as if he’d done it a hundred times, and my heart made a little flutter. I laid my head on his shoulder. “Best seat in all of New York. Best date.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” he said then sighed. “Of course, now I’ll never top it.”
“You’ve set a really high bar for me,” I pointed out. “How am I supposed to compete with you providing the culmination of my lifelong dream?”
“I had no idea it would mean that much to you,” he said softly. “But I’m honored that it did.”
“Can I tell you something?” I asked, even though I’d always thought that was a really stupid phrase, because you were going to tell the person whatever it was you wanted to say, anyway. “Something that might sound…too soon-ish.”
His body tensed; I realized he might be interpreting my question as me asking permission to tell him I loved him. I wasn’t that foolish. It was way too early to love him, but I did. Telling him that I did? Wouldn’t improve the situation.
“Yes?” he said cautiously, as though he weren’t sure of that answer.
I turned my head to look him in the eye. “You are a really great guy.”
He dropped his head, and he blushed. I loved that.
“You are,” I insisted. “You’re funny, and you’re very good-looking, you’ve got a sexy accent—”
He made an incredulous noise and slid his wine glass onto the table. “If you like Scrooge McDuck
.”
“And,” I said forcefully, steamrolling over his interruption. “You did something really thoughtful for me, and I know you did it without any expectation of getting something in return.”
“How do you know I wasn’t trying to get something in return?” he asked, then hastily added, “I wasn’t, but how did you know that?”
“Because you’re not as good at putting up a front as you think you are.” I covered his hand with my own where it rested on my shoulder. “You’re a good man, and that shows through. Even if you think you’re hiding it under all that self-deprecation.”
He looked up, smiling in surrender. “All right. You caught me. I just wanted to make you happy.”
“And that’s why I’m not scared of how fast things are going.” That had been the part I’d feared was too soon, but I was glad I said it.
“Oh?” He looked relieved. “Well, that wasn’t as serious as I was expecting.”
“I know what you were expecting. And I liked watching you squirm.” I wasn’t going to lie and tell him that I didn’t feel it yet, and I wasn’t going to probe around to see if I could get a hint that he felt it, either. If we were meant to be, we’d eventually say the I-love-you words. We didn’t have to rush.
“Penny, I have to ask you something.” He brushed his thumb over the back of my hand, and my lungs stopped pumping oxygen and started flooding my veins with sparkles, instead.
“Are you ticklish?”
The question was out of left field, and in the moment it took me to process what he’d asked, he attacked with his free hand, burrowing his wriggling fingers into my side. With a glass of wine in one hand and the other firmly in his grip, there was nothing I could do but cackle helplessly and try not to spill.
“The wine! The wine!” I gasped.
“Oh, fuck, I forgot.” He relented and reached for his own glass. He took a deep swallow, as I recovered, and he set the drink back on the table. He took my glass and placed it beside his own, and I thought, this is it. Make out time. Instead of romancing me, he dove back in to torment me, tickling my sides as I gasped in hysterical laughter. Over the shrieks and squeals involuntarily wrenching from my vocal chords, I managed to hear him tease, “You wanted to watch me squirm, I get to watch you squirm. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
My struggling and his pursuit somehow ended with me on my back, my elbows tucked tight to my sides, and him looming over me with a knee between my legs. Through my helpless laughter, I shouted, “There are better ways of making me squirm!”
I froze as I realized what I’d just said. He froze, too. We probably didn’t stare at each other any longer than a heartbeat, but it felt like a long time, with the way the pressure between us built. Then it burst. I lunged up, and he dove down, and our mouths were together, my hands in his hair, his body braced above mine with a forearm on the back of the couch.
Maybe it was the tension we’d been fighting against since our first kiss. It certainly wasn’t the few sips of wine. It might have been the octopus, at least, on my part. I didn’t really care what was causing this to happen, only that it was happening. He slid an arm under my back and pulled me up, and we clumsily arranged ourselves so that I sat straddling his lap.
This close, I could hear his breathing, and it was an indescribable turn on. I’d imagined what it would be like to have sex with him at least six times a day for the past week, but being this close to him, even just making out, was a little intimidating. He was way more confident than anybody else I’d been with. I didn’t feel like he was rushing through perfunctory steps to try to get to the finish line. When he skimmed his fingers down my throat, it was as though he savored just touching me.
He made me feel like a woman. Not a conquest. And no man had ever treated me that way before.
In the intimate position we were in, it wasn’t hard to imagine being naked, writhing on top of him. That was a dangerous picture in my mind. You only have to wait until Monday for your answer. Do you really want to blow it this close to the finish line?
And at this point, my chastity did seem like a marathon that I was desperately trying to finish. I’d never bought into the whole “your virginity is a gift” mindset that my mother had tried to push on me. If I had sex with Ian, I wasn’t giving anything away. It would be celebrating something with him, something I had deemed him worthy of sharing, in a way no other man had been worthy. And I wanted that celebration to be because of love, not horniness. Well, horniness, too. Love and horniness—the two weren’t mutually exclusive. But I wanted to know those feelings were returned, or that they would someday be returned.
The surefire way to not have sex tonight would be to tell him I didn’t want to have sex tonight. With as cautious and respectful as he was, I couldn’t see him letting me change my mind in the heat of the moment if he knew I hadn’t planned to go all the way before we’d started. I pressed my hand to his chest. “Just to be clear…tonight is not the night. Do you get my drift?”
He didn’t crack a joke or display even the slightest hint of annoyance or disappointment. “I do. We are absolutely clear.”
“Good. But…that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make you feel good.” I petted the front of his shirt then thought, what the hell, and popped the top button.
“You’re making me feel pretty fucking good right now, Doll.” He kissed my neck at the intersection of my shoulder and collarbone. I whimpered.
“You know what I mean.” Oh god, his lips were so soft and warm, and they felt amazing on my skin. “Can I?”
He shuddered out a long breath. “Jesus, Penny…do you think I could turn you down?”
The hand at my back bunched up my shirt, then slid beneath. He hooked a finger under my bra-strap. “Is this too forward of me?”
“Not at all. I can take it off.” My breasts ached in anticipation. I didn’t even have to move to get rid of the bra. He popped the closure as easily as snapping his fingers and splayed his palm against my back.
He buried his face in my hair then murmured against my ear, “You smell like flowers.”
I leaned into him, tilting my head to the side as he nibbled the shell of my ear. I was so sensitive I swore I got drunk on the feeling. He sucked the lobe into his mouth and grazed it with his teeth, and I moaned.
“I’ve been wanting to do this,” he rasped against my neck as his kisses moved downward, “since we kissed in the park.”
“And since the pool?” I added with a breathless laugh.
He chuckled. “Then, too. Giving you that kiss on the cheek after lunch on Wednesday? Was the biggest test of my willpower to date.”
“Well, please don’t exercise any restraint, now.” The hand on my bare back moved beneath my shirt, then under my unfastened bra to cup my breast, and my ribcage rose on a shuddering inhale.
His lips hovered over my collarbone above the V-neck of my shirt, and his voice rumbled a long, low, “Mmm,” against my chest. He lifted his head and met my eyes, his full of naked adoration that seared like a brand across my heart. I bent forward and took his face in my hands. He played his fingers across my skin and gave me the sweetest, deepest kiss of my life, and all the while my head spun with thoughts like, Is this really happening? and Holy shit, this is really happening.
When I’d walked into the restaurant on our first date, I would have never guessed, never in a million years, that we would ever end up in the situation we were in. I remembered standing on the sidewalk, wondering if I would even be able to force myself to find him physically attractive. Now, all I wanted to do was to rip his shirt off and get my hands on every square inch of him.
“Can I unbutton this?” I gasped against his mouth, tugging on his shirt.
“Be my guest.”
My hands fumbled between us, and I opened his shirt enough to slip my hands inside. That was all I needed, to feel the hot skin and crisp hair on his chest, to be able to lean down and kiss his throat, up to his jaw.
If I was going to grade Ian’s
groping technique, he definitely would have gotten an A-plus. He didn’t attack my chest like he was trying to adjust a car’s air conditioning, but he stroked me like a painter’s brush, the backs of his fingers along the curve of my breast. He drew circles around my nipple, always with a feather light touch. He could have given lessons to all my exes who had manhandled me in the past. He was so slow and careful I lost all sense of time. I lost all sense of everything but him, his mouth, his hands, the way his breath sounded in my ear and the way his stubble scratched my jaw. His skin tasted salty under my tongue, his mouth like the wine.
We were both sweating and gasping when I climbed off his lap. I pressed my hand against his obvious erection, and his penis flexed upward as if it could meet my palm through the denim. “You unzip. I don’t want to be held responsible for any accidental maiming.”
“Christ, I hope you’re not speaking from experience.” He laughed nervously.
“No. Caution.” I held my breath as his hands moved to his fly. It’s odd to see a guy’s penis for the first time, because once it’s out there, there’s really no going back. You see it, and you can’t unsee it.
I really hoped he had a nice one.
“This is always a nerve-wracking moment,” he said under his breath.
“I promise I won’t laugh,” I swore.
He rolled his eyes as he pulled down his zipper. “Thank you. Your confidence is very reassuring.”
“No, I meant—” My giggle cut me off. I reached down and brushed his hands away, and reached into his open fly.
He’s a boxers man. I reached for the top of them, and the head of his erection was already poking out, obscured by the tails of his shirt. He took a breath as I curled my fingers around the shaft. He was nice and thick—from my understanding that was very important—and longer than my average experience.
“See, nothing to worry about,” I said, pumping my fist back and forth a little. I pushed his shirt up and his boxers down. “Oh my gosh, and you’re uncut!”
“And that’s a plus, is it?” he asked with a weak laugh.
“Yeah, I’ve never been with a guy who wasn’t circumcised.” I slid my hand up experimentally and watched his foreskin roll over the head. “Is there anything I have to do differently?”
First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) Page 12
