First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (27 page)

He dropped his phone into the dock on the
counter and hit something on the screen, turning away as the music
started over the sound system.

“
Oh, wow. I haven’t heard
this in ages.” He whistled under his breath. “My iTunes library is
too big.”

“
Stop trying to impress me,”
I said dryly. The tune was poppy and upbeat, and I couldn’t place
the era it was from. It sounded like a cross between a sixties song
and something out of the eighties. And it was mad repetitive. “What
song is this? He sounds like Paul McCartney.”

“
Close, it is a Beatle.
George Harrison. ‘I’ve Got My Mind Set On You.’ It’s so fucking
catchy you’ll still be listening to it in your sleep this time next
year.” He took the dishtowel from his shoulder and slapped it onto
the counter. “Come on. Dance with me.”

I flicked water from my hands. “In the
kitchen?”

“
Humor me.” He snagged me
with an arm around my waist and pulled me into an awkward, fast
two-step.

“
I always do.” I hopped up
to kiss his cheek then pushed myself back with our joined hands. He
lifted one arm and spun me, and I stepped on his toes.

He caught me, laughing. “We’ll have to take
lessons sometime. We can’t be a truly chic and sexy couple if we
can’t dance like we’re making love on the floor.”

The mental image I had was probably not the
one he intended. “That would be some really terrible dancing.”

“
That’s not what I meant,
you pervert.” He smiled down at me. His smile was
perfect.

There was my intrusive imagination, again,
creating a scene in my mind so vivid I could almost feel his body
above mine, the bite of hard wood at my back.

My chest squeezed, a flutter
of nerves.
Stop searching forever.
Happiness is just next to you.
My head got
light. My throat went dry. I’m sure I looked like I was going to
faint, and I might.

He tightened his hold on me. “Did I make you
swoon? Because if I did, I need to call some people and brag.”

My mouth fell open in a surprised laugh. “No.
It’s just…you. Being you.”

He frowned, his expression changing to
something more cautious. I had memorized that transition without
realizing it; it was pained distrust, like he thought he could be
rejected at any moment.

The big dumb, amazing idiot.

“
You’re the one, you know,”
I continued. “You’re my forever. I want it to be you.”

“
I want it to be me, too.”
he said with a hesitant smile.

I licked my bottom lip, extremely
self-conscious of it a heartbeat later. “I mean it. I love you. And
I don’t really care about some artificial, socially constructed
timeline that’s supposed to guarantee forever. Even if we broke up
two months from now—”

He bowed his back to lean down and take my
face in his hands and kissed me, somehow soft and urgent at once.
When he raised his head, he still cupped my jaw, holding me like a
precious, fragile object. “Never going to happen. So, there’s no
sense in talking about us ever breaking up. As long as we’re
discussing artificial, socially constructed timelines, I’ve known
for a while that we belonged together. It just wasn’t the sort of
thing I felt like I could say without it sounding like… Jesus, I
just didn’t want to sound like I was trying to get into your
knickers.”

This was heavy stuff. This was terrifying,
exhilarating, joyful, heavy stuff. No wonder people described love
as being swept away.

I stepped up to kiss him again, and threaded
my arms around his neck. “I have to tell you something, just so we
can be totally clear.”

“
Mmhm,” he murmured against
my lips.

I pushed my fingers through the hair at the
back of his head and tightened my hold just a touch. My heart swam
mermaid flips in my stomach, and my thighs squeezed together. “I
want to. Tonight.”

“
Want to what?” Realization
washed over his features in an almost comical wave. He cleared his
throat and asked, “What, now?”

There was that darn squeeze
again, but this time, it was in an
entirely
different location. “Yeah. We
could wait until after we do the dishes, but—”

“
Fuck the dishes.” He
boosted me up on the counter and stood between my legs.

I remembered horsing around in the hotel
pool, the way his bare skin felt against my thighs. Even the water
had been too much of a barrier then, and we had way too many
clothes on now. I grabbed the undone collar of his shirt and gave
it an impatient tug.

“
Wait, wait.” He placed his
hands over mine and held them to his chest. His heartbeat was a
rapid, powerful throb against my palms. “You’re sure you don’t want
to wait for something more romantic?”

“
I’ve been waiting for
something ‘more romantic’ since I was thirteen years old,” I said,
the pain of my parents’ lie crushing my heart all over. “Can’t it
just be enough that I love you?”

“
It’s everything.” He
covered my mouth with his, and I held onto him, rumpling the fabric
of his shirt beneath my fingers. When he lifted his head, his gaze
lingered on my mouth, almost dreamily. “Should we go up to the
bedroom?”

My head swam. My heart pounded. His eyes
flicked up to mine, and I breathed, “Yes.”

Chapter Thirteen

Stopping in the
middle of the buildup was weird. It would have been easier to have
just jumped right into sex from making out, with no sharp
transition. Now that I knew the night wouldn’t stop shy of
defloration, my mind went totally blank, and I had no idea how to
get back into that sexy mindset.

I went up the stairs ahead of Ian, and he
held onto my hand as we went. I looked back to see him popping the
remaining buttons on his shirt with one hand, and I turned before
he saw me watching.

This was happening. Oh my god, it was
actually going to happen.

When we got to his bedroom, he let go of my
hand. “I’m going to go get a condom. Just so we have one within
reach.”

He was so matter of fact
about it. Like,
my penis is going to be in
your vagina later, better get the equipment.
He threw his shirt across the end of the bed as he walked to
the bathroom.

Get your head together. You
want this to be perfect?
Make
it be perfect.
I slipped
my dress down and kicked it aside. I went to the shirt, weighing my
idea in my mind. Guys thought it was sexy when women wore their
clothes, but it did seem a little weird to put it on right before I
was going to have to take it off, again. On the other hand, I
wanted to be sexy, and while he’d practically seen everything
before, he hadn’t seen it all at once. The thought made me suddenly
shy.

I shed my bra and reached down to straighten
my navy blue lace panties over my butt. Then I snatched up the
shirt and pulled it on. The bathroom light snapped off, and Ian
stepped out. I moved into the long slant of moonlight on the floor.
He froze.

“
I didn’t know how naked I
should be.” I pulled the shirt closed at my waist. “I thought I
would surprise you, but then I got nervous and—” God, didn’t he
know when to rescue me from myself? I shifted to my other foot.
“Say something.”

He started toward me, and with each step he
took, my pulse sped up. There was a raw possessiveness his
expression, almost too intense as he wrapped an arm around my waist
and pulled me against his body. Our skin touched everywhere the
shirt was open. The thrill of it raced through me. He tossed the
condom on the bed and boosted me up to put my legs around him—I’d
never considered that he might actually be strong—and carried me to
the bed. I dug my fingers into his shoulders, not to hold on
because he couldn’t support me, but because they were so damn
broad, it was totally hot to hang onto them.

He set me on my feet, letting me slide down
him until I hit the floor. He knelt before me, his warm palms
closing over my backs of my thighs to support me. I definitely
needed support when he nuzzled the shirt open and scraped over my
belly with his slightly prickly chin. I sucked in a breath on a
sound like a tiny, panicked dog yipping in alarm.

“
You know, that makes me
nervous. If this takes your breath away, what will happen when I do
this?” He kissed my stomach, just under my belly button, and my
hips jerked. Before I noticed I was sinking my fingers into it, I
had two handfuls of his hair. His hands smoothed up my thighs, his
fingertips brushing my ass.

“
Take the shirt off,” he
said softly, kissing lower, his mouth half on my skin, half on the
scalloped lace edge of my panties. “Let me see you.”

My breasts tingled, goose bumps jumping out
all over. I practically tore off the shirt to stand in front of him
in nothing but my underwear. He looked up at me as if in worship;
I’d never seen so much open adoration aimed at me before. He
reached up, bracketing my ribs to pull me down to sit on the bed in
front of him.

“
You know we can stop if
you’re not ready, or you don’t like it. Just tell me,” he reassured
me.

“
Okay. I’ll remember that.”
I took a deep breath. “But right now, can you please fuck
me?”

“
Happy to oblige. But can I
do one thing first?” He beckoned me with a finger, and I leaned
down so we were eye to eye.

“
Um. Okay.” I had no idea
what that thing would be, but I probably wanted to do
it.

He brushed my hair back from my ear, his
breath teasing my cheek as he sucked my earlobe into his mouth.
Then he released it and whispered, “I want to get my head between
your thighs and taste you. What do you say, Doll? Are you up for
it?”

“
Oh god. Y-yes.” The answer
broke from me as a whimper. I lay back, orienting myself correctly
on the bed rather than laying across it, so Ian had room to lie
between my legs. He leaned down to kiss me, and I lifted my pelvis
up to bump against his.

“
You have no patience,” he
teased, grinding against me and kissing the pulse point in my
throat. He kissed a trail over my breasts and down my stomach, but
he wasn’t leisurely about it. He wasn’t out for a Sunday drive, he
was on his way to work, and he wasn’t going to be late.

Thank god, because by the time he got down
there, I wasn’t in the mood to be kept waiting. He grasped both
sides of my panties with two fingers and ran his tongue along the
seam between the fabric and my skin. He didn’t pull them down.
Instead, he leaned in and ran his nose up and down the wet
crotch.

My breath caught. What if I smelled gross?
What if I was too wet and it was, like, abnormal?

“
You smell good enough to
eat,” he groaned, kissing my bare inner thigh and smashing the last
of my reservations. Ian wouldn’t make me feel bad or act disgusted
by me. All he wanted was to make me feel good.

I wasn’t going to stop him.

He pulled my panties down my legs, and I
helped by bending my knee and bringing one foot out. He didn’t
bother pulling the other side off. Instead, he leaned in close to
my pussy and parted me with his thumbs. My eyes squeezed closed,
but I forced myself to keep them open, so I could see his face
between my thighs. He kissed me, a soft, sucking kiss right at the
tip of my clit, and I let out a shuddering moan.

With an arm hooked beneath each of my knees,
he grasped my hips and pulled me down to meet a slow lick that
started at my already wet opening and ended with a swirl around my
clit. Then his mouth closed over me and I curled up from the bed,
grabbing his hair and pushing him harder against me. His tongue was
like the ultimate sex toy, moving from firm and pointed to soft and
flat, circling or flicking at any given moment. When he found the
motion that made me shout, “Oh god!”—a rapid side-to-side slide
that felt like he was touching every nerve in my lower body—he
stuck with it until I was thrashing and almost crying, the
sensation so overwhelmed me. My hands fisted in the duvet, and he
grabbed them, lacing our fingers together. With my legs over his
shoulders and my hands captured, I was locked against his mouth in
a sweet trap I didn’t want to escape.

“
I’m coming,” I gasped,
because it was all I could say. In fact, I repeated it several
times, my throat becoming more hoarse with each one; all the
wetness in my body was concentrated below his lips. I was probably
making a spot on his bedspread. I lifted my hips against his face,
imitating the speed and rhythm of the sucking pulse of his mouth,
and I finally broke, my body bucking.

He lifted his head, breathing heavy, like
he’d been submerged under water. He disentangled our hands to wipe
his mouth. “Do you want me to keep going?”

It was tempting. Very tempting. But I needed
him. I’d never felt so physically empty as I did at the moment.
“No. I need you to fuck me right now. I need you inside me.”

“
Fuck,” he breathed,
scrubbing his hand down his face. “I’m going to remember that, the
way you said it… I’ll hear it in my head every time I jerk off for
the rest of my life.”

It shouldn’t have been possible to be more
turned on, but the rush of desire his words inspired made me think
I might come again if I just thought about them.

He stood and unbuckled his
belt, and unzipped his pants. I held my breath as he pushed them
and his boxers down. Holy shit, he was naked. I mean, I was naked,
but
he
was naked,
and outside of porn, I’d never seen a guy so…naked. It was
literally the only word I could think of. And whatever Ian had
meant about looking like a gory wreck was completely untrue. Sure,
he wasn’t super cut and muscular, and yeah, he had slight love
handles, but he was far from unfuckable. And the whole dad bod
thing was kind of cute.