First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (14 page)

“
It may change how you feel
about me,” he warned.

I laughed. Seriously, whatever he had to say
couldn’t be that bad. “Ian. I’m pretty much sold on you at this
point. Unless you were a Neo-Nazi skinhead, I won’t care.”

He nodded, looked down at his plate, then
looked up and met my gaze directly. “It was a kink club.”

“
A…oh.” Well. That was not
the nerdy admission I’d been expecting. Not by half a
mile.

“
Yeah. It was an
experimental time in my youth,” he said, looking away.

Ian had belonged to a kink club? I’d heard of
them before. I wasn’t sure NYU had one, but Columbia did. Rosa’s
ex, Amanda, had belonged to one. There hadn’t been any sex involved
in the group, but she’d met people there and fooled around outside
of it. Her experience, she’d been quick to inform people, wasn’t
the norm. Most of them just showed up to talk about their sexuality
and learn.

I didn’t like the idea of pain or humiliation
during sex—it just wasn’t a turn on for me—but I didn’t want him to
think I was judging his choices. “You don’t have to apologize.
People are into all sorts of things. I might not be—”

“
It isn’t a relationship
requirement,” he hurried to assure me. “Besides, we’re not sleeping
together.”

“
But that doesn’t mean we
won’t,” I reminded him, and I loved the way he visibly swallowed at
that. “And it doesn’t mean I’d never try something a little risqué.
What’s your kink?”

He took a breath that sounded like he was
resigning himself to something unpleasant. My reaction, probably.
“Well, I’m not into whips and chains, if that’s what you’re
thinking. But in the past I’ve quite enjoyed swinging and group
sex.”

“
So, you like having sex
with other people while you’re in a relationship?” That didn’t seem
like something I would ever be comfortable with.

He nodded. “My ex-wife and I did, but
together. Never in separate rooms. No individual dates with other
people. It wasn’t an open relationship. More of a shared sexual
experience.”

“
If we were…together…” I
didn’t want to phrase it in a way that seemed
presumptuous.

“
I wouldn’t be willing to
share you with another boyfriend, no,” he said quickly as if that
were going to be my concern. That
I
would want to see someone else.

“
Ditto. I wouldn’t be
comfortable in a long-term relationship with you while you were in
a relationship with someone else. And I wouldn’t be comfortable
having sex with someone else with you, or watching you have sex
with someone.” Oh god, I’d just talked about watching him have sex
with someone. I quickly added, “In the interest of full disclosure,
is all I’m saying.”

His jaw went tight, and a muscle ticked in
his neck. “In the interest of full disclosure, then, I should tell
you something.”

A cold chill, incongruous with the warm
August night, skated across my shoulders. “This sounds grim.”

“
It may well be.” He looked
me in the eye, again, though it was clear it was difficult for him
to. “I’ve slept with Sophie.”

My voice froze in my throat. When I could
respond, I had to have some serious clarification. “Sophie…my boss,
Sophie.”

“
Yes. Earlier this spring,
before Gena and I split up.” He cleared his throat. “It was
a—”

“
A swinger thing,” I
finished for him. Holy shit. Sophie had set me up with someone
she’d slept with? Without telling me? That was extremely uncool.
But at least he hadn’t cheated on his wife with her,
right?

“
Penny?” he prompted
gently.

I realized I’d been staring at him, wide-eyed
and silent. “Look, I'm not going to say that this doesn't matter to
me. It does. I kind of wish I'd known about this sooner.”

He nodded. “I wasn't sure what the
appropriate time would be to address it.”

“
I think Sophie should have
told me when she set us up.”

“
Would it have affected your
decision to walk into that restaurant last week?” he asked, with a
forced smile. “In spite of the fortune cookie?”

Had it only been
one
week? I felt like we’d
been doing this for a while. In a good way. And that’s what made
this harder.

“
Honestly? Yes.” I knew it
would hurt him to say it, but it was the truth. I didn’t want to
make him feel bad, but I wasn’t a liar. “I probably wouldn’t have
gone out with you.”

He twisted his fork on his plate but didn’t
lift it for a bite. “And now? Does it make a difference?”

Did it? Was I going to think about him and
Sophie together every time I spoke to her? That would make my job
excruciating. Did I like the idea that someone I knew had, in
effect, had something I wanted before I’d gotten there?

The thought stopped me. I wanted Ian, in a
way I hadn’t wanted any of the handful of boyfriends I’d been with
before. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been attracted to those guys or
tempted to sleep with them, but I’d been on two official dates with
Ian, and if he’d offered tonight, I might have said yes. And
now?

“
No,” I said after a deep
breath. “It doesn’t change anything.”

It would slow me down, hormone wise, but that
wasn’t a bad thing.

“
Well, that’s a relief.” His
tone shocked me; I’d never heard him sound so serious. “Because I
really do like you, Penny. And I would hate to do anything to hurt
you.”

“
I would hate that, too.” My
ribs ached, pressed from the inside out by the intense jumble of
conflicted feelings in my heart. This was so much heavier than
third date talk. “Look, I’ll talk to Sophie. I want to be on the
right page with her. But I don’t have any problem with what’s
happening here.”

“
Good.” He paused. “And I’m
certainly not going to be sleeping with Sophie again. That was a
particular set of circumstances that occurred one time. And please
don’t think I’m out sleeping with a new woman every night. This may
be too forward, but I’m not interested in seeing anyone else, at
the moment.”

“
You don’t have to apologize
for your past,” I said firmly. There wasn’t a reason to feel
guilty. It wasn’t like he’d known I would be coming along. “The
delivery of the news could have been… Well, strike that. Everything
happens for a reason.”

“
That it does.” One corner
of his mouth lifted in a half-attempt at a smile.

I took a drink from my beer and looked out
over the water. Whether it changed anything between us or not, I’d
still just gotten some unsettling news. I wanted reassurance
somehow, stupid, silly reassurance that he liked me and not Sophie.
Which made no sense; Sophie was obnoxiously in love with her
husband and lived like a real-life Cinderella. She wasn’t in the
market for boyfriend.

But I still wanted to hear it. And there was
no way to ask and not sound like the most insecure woman in
uncertainty-ville. It sucked.

“
Hey, Doll,” Ian said
softly, and I turned to face him. His expression was caught
somewhere between resignation and optimism. He held out his arms a
little. “Come here?”

I put my beer on to the table and got up,
sliding my hands into my back pockets as I walked to him. I stopped
at the end of chaise. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone else
right now, either. I’m kind of concentrating on, like, one
guy.”

Ian looked up at me with tired, glazed eyes
but an adorable smirk, and melted me completely. “Well, he’s a
lucky bastard, isn’t he?”

“
Yeah,” I agreed, leaning
down to smile against his mouth. “He is.”

Chapter Eight

Though I’d
been super cool about it at the time, Ian’s revelation about Sophie
had thrown me for a loop. It genuinely hadn’t bothered me when he’d
told me, but when I saw Sophie on Monday morning, the knowledge
that she’d slept with the guy I liked burrowed under my skin like a
horrible parasite you’d see removed from somebody’s foot on a gross
YouTube video.

I had to do something to stop myself from
irrationally hating my boss.

“
Hey, Soph?” I asked,
leaning around her open door.

She flicked her gaze up from the computer
screen she was leaning far too close to. She needed glasses, but
Deja and I had decided we weren’t going to tell her that.
“Yeah?”

“
I noticed that you have
lunch free today, on your schedule, at least. I was wondering if we
could go grab something together. Not as a boss/employee thing, but
a people who know each other and have people in common…thing,” I
rambled. It was hard to stay coherent when all I could think about
was the fact that her hands had been all over my soon-to-be
boyfriend. I tried very hard not to imagine her smooth,
spray-tanned thighs wrapping around his waist.

She frowned a little. “I assume this is about
Ian?”

I nodded. “Things are going really well, and
I just needed some outside input. If you wouldn’t mind?”

I’d been prepared in case of refusal. I
wasn’t going to be put off about this; if she declined, I would
just say I needed to talk to her about the fact that she’d had sex
with the guy I wanted to be my boyfriend and potential future
husband and father of our three beautiful children.

Slow down there, Penelope.

“
Um…yeah,” she cautiously
agreed. “I wouldn’t mind hitting that bistro on Fifth and
Prospect.”

We took Sophie’s car—and driver, because
billionaires could pay people to just hang around all day waiting
for them—and talked about normal, non-Ian stuff on the way over.
The whole time, I kept wondering horrible things, like if she was
better at sex than I would be, if Ian would compare us, if he would
like her better than me…

It wasn’t that I’d already decided I was
going to sleep with Ian. Brad and I had dated for two years, and
I’d never made up my mind. But the numbers didn’t lie, and fortune
cookies had never steered me wrong. It felt like destiny had flung
us together, when we would have probably never met before.

The restaurant Sophie had picked was a bit
pricier than I would have normally eaten at, but ultimately, it
wouldn’t matter because she always picked up the check and called
it a business expense. It was small, dark and pretty much empty,
which was a blessing. I didn’t necessarily need strangers
overhearing our conversation.

“
So…” Sophie said, leaning
forward slightly after the waiter took our drink orders. Her eyes
lit up in clear anticipation of some girl talk. “How are things
with Ian?”

I knew she’d been cautiously trying to not
pry all morning. “Good. Really fast but good. We’ve gone out three
times, I’ve had dinner over at his place—”

“
Oh my god, isn’t it
amazing? He had Neil and I over for dinner not too long ago and I
got such apartment envy,” she gushed, and every jealous hackle I
had raised. It wasn’t enough that she’d already slept with him, but
she’d seen his apartment first, too?

Oh god, what if it had
happened
in
his
apartment?

It was really difficult to keep talking,
because I disliked unpleasant confrontations, and I really disliked
the topic. “Yeah. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves, so I’m
trying to be cautious about all of this. There are a lot of factors
in play here, and it’s like we’re getting instantly serious. I’m
examining a lot of my concerns.”

“
Which is a totally smart
thing to do,” she agreed. “When I started falling for Neil, I was a
mess. I think we’d only been seeing each other for like a month
before I was completely in love with him. It was
ridiculous.”

“
One of my concerns is that
Ian has slept with you.” There.

She blinked. “Wow. Okay, I have to admit, I’m
glad he told you—”

“
Why didn’t
you
tell me?” I demanded.
“You set me up with a guy you’d slept with, and you didn’t even
bother to mention it in passing?”

“
When you put it that way,
it does sound really bad.” She pressed her fingertips to her
forehead and looked down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if it was my
place to tell you, because I assume he told you the whole
story?”

“
He did,” I admitted. “And
I’m not going to tell anyone about it, so please don’t worry about
that. I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell me, ‘by the
way, here’s an extremely personal detail about a stranger’s sex
life.’ I just need to get this off my chest, because I’m a really
jealous person, and if I started hating you, life would get
complicated quick.”

“
I hope it doesn’t
complicate our working relationship. Or our personal one.” She
shook her head. “Is there anything I can do to make it easier? I
mean, I have no intention of ever sleeping with him
again.”

“
Would you tell me how it
happened? Because, right now, all I can do is imagine you and him
together, and it gets more and more… It’s bugging the hell out of
me.” I didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it came out. The amount
of hurt that had surged up surprised me.

“
When I met Ian,” she began,
in a tone that suggested she was about to tell me a full story,
rather than a simple answer, “it was at Neil’s birthday party.
Ian’s ex-wife was this beautiful redhead—”

Something in my expression must have changed
to make her stop short and clear her throat.