7. SPIRIT 2.0
7
SPIRIT 2.0
JACK
J ack had one singular mission: to make Penny come as hard and as often as he possibly could.
He’d started the afternoon with every intention of taking it slow with her. After all, even though he’d spent years imagining everything he’d do to her, in reality, they’d only met yesterday.
But when she’d opened her door to him, all his resolve to keep his hands off her flew out the fucking window. It was because of that dress displaying every luscious curve of her voluptuous body. As if the dress wasn’t enough, there was the pull of her soft, dark eyes, reflecting the same desire that was consuming him, burning away resistance in a bright flame.
They sped to her house as fast as legally allowed. They were silent in the car, but this time, the silence was thick with anticipation. Every bit of him was tensed and ready as he pulled up in front of her house. As if in a dream, he followed her to the front door, where the keys shook in her hand. Laughing breathlessly, Penny managed to unlock it. They were barely inside before he shut the door behind them and reached for her. Kissing madly, squeezing, touching, hauling her up against him with his hands while she gasped.
Jack was unable to get enough of that delicious taste of wine still on her tongue. The scent of her skin bombarded his senses, and he inhaled deeply, like a man starving for air, and she was giving off pure oxygen. He wasn’t sure what it was, something fruity and delicious, but whatever it was went straight to his cock.
“Bedroom,” he rasped in between hot, frantic kisses with one hand palming her tit.
He let go of her to use the other hand to push off her jacket, then his own. They were barely in her living room before he hauled up her thigh and pressed his cock between her legs. She was a decent height, but he still towered over her. Their hips weren’t quite aligned, so he reached under her thighs and lifted her up, pinning her against the wall.
Penny laughed and moaned at the same time, clinging to his shoulders and wrapping her legs around his waist. The dress was still between him and his waiting prize, but the friction on his cock as he ground it against her clothed pussy was making him harder.
Groaning, sliding up and down her crease, he ground out, “Fuck, you feel so good. Bedroom. Now. I can’t wait anymore.” He didn’t want their first time to be up against a wall, but if he had to wait much longer, that’s exactly what would happen.
Their first time. This was still unbelievable. He laughed softly. Penny didn’t ask why. Maybe she was feeling it, too, and didn’t have to ask. She looked as dazed as he felt.
“Hang on a minute, hang on.” Her words were breathless. She was grinning. “Put me down, Jack.”
Reluctantly, he let her slide down his body until her feet touched the floor. She raced to the foyer and returned, holding her phone and punching something in on the screen. She held it up to him, and Jack had to squint.
“Shit. Hold on.”
It was Jack’s turn to go to the same spot where he’d discarded his coat. Sheepishly, he returned, wearing his wire-rimmed glasses. Penny looked at them, and her mouth fell open, then she laughed.
“Oh, yeah, it’s hilarious. I know I look like an owl,” he mumbled.
“I’m laughing because you look like the hottest nerd on the planet right now, and I’m kinda having trouble believing you’re in my house and this is happening.”
Jack grasped her by the delicious dip in her waist and murmured into her ear, “I’m having the same trouble, angel.” He kissed her temple, then dragged his nose from her cheekbone to her throat, then her exposed collarbones. Inhaled that sweetness while placing a hot kiss on the soft skin he discovered, making her moan again.
“Fuck, you smell good enough to eat.” He slid his hand up to her breast and cupped it, rubbing his thumb across the fabric until he found her nipple. She made a small sound of pleasure as it pebbled under his touch. “What is it you wanted me to see?”
The screen had darkened. Penny had to unlock the phone to show him. It was an STI results panel dated within four months. She was in the clear.
“It’s been a minute, but I do it routinely, just because.”
“Oh. Right.”
Jack fished his phone out of his trouser pocket and pulled up his info. Penny perused it quickly, then handed it back with a grin.
It was a wild and beautiful moment when she pulled him by the hand up the short stairs to her bedroom. All he saw, all he felt, was her, with only a vague awareness of a hallway, then lavender curtains and a deep purple bedspread under their bodies when they fell together on the bed.
“Penny,” he groaned against the silken skin of her throat. He tugged on her dress and began pulling it up when she suddenly halted his wrist with her hand.
“I, um, need a bathroom break first,” she said, panting. The rapid rise and fall of her breasts crushed under his chest drew his attention.
“Can it wait?” he asked, then licked the valley between her breasts, too eager to have a taste after hours of trying not to stare at them.
With a groan, he pressed those sexy legs open with his thigh and sank between them, grinding his achingly hard cock against her core. Penny arched her back to take more of him, rubbing her pussy against his length. Even between layers of cloth, he could feel her heat waiting for him to sink in. She kissed him back hungrily, pulling at the buttons of his shirt and then sliding her hand up his stomach to his chest when it was open. Amazing, this was fucking amazing, and he wasn’t anywhere close to fucking her yet.
Jack pulled down the V of her dress, pressing kisses on the newly exposed skin. She was so warm, her breast a soft round gift that he unwrapped quickly when he tugged her bra cup down. Her tit bounced, and he groaned when he bent to lick the dark brown nipple, then sucked it into his mouth. He did the same to the other, with Penny threading her fingers in his hair. All the while, she rocked against him, snapping her hips against him to glide her pussy up and down the rock-hard ridge of his cock.
Suddenly she moaned, “Jack…Jack…. I’m coming.”
Shocked at how fast and how easily that happened, he laughed with disbelief.
“Damn, Penny, you couldn’t wait for me?”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. She still moved against him, then slowed to a stop with an embarrassed grin. “It’s been a minute.”
Chuckling, Jack shook his head at her. “Don’t be sorry. I’m happy to help. But that was just Round One. Next time, you need to come in my mouth or on my cock. Round Two starts now.”
He grasped her dress and was pulling it up when she held his wrist again.
“I, um, need to make a quick stop —”
“Not another interruption, Penny.” Jack slid his hand up her dress to her thigh, and she squeaked when his hand touched thick silky fabric. “What’s this, shorts?”
Looking flustered, Penny put her hands over her face. “Yes. Please let me go take them off, and I’ll be right back.”
“What? Hell, no. This is my job tonight.”
“But…they’re tough to get off.”
Jack sighed. “You think a former professional athlete can’t get off a pair of tight shorts? You keep underestimating me.”
“No, I’ve gotta go.”
With all his might, Jack reined in his raging desire, rolling onto his side so she could sit up and then scoot off the bed.
“Be right back,” she said with a shy grin that could have melted stone.
“Please hurry,” Jack urged, and she left with a wicked laugh.
With the temptation of Penny’s sweet ass out of reach, sanity and sense gradually returned to Jack’s dazed head. It gave him time to look around. See if there were any hints he could glean about who Penny was when she was by herself.
Her bedroom was small, with a neatly made bed and a few clothes draped on a corner chair. The armoire in the corner was also small. There was a guitar, a fiddle, a violin, and a banjo on stands near a wall waiting to be played and a dresser with an array of bottles and framed portraits. And next to the bed, on a nightstand, there was a lamp and a single 8x10.
It was Penny and Brendan in a black-and-white wedding photo. She was laughing with her eyes closed while he held her possessively and gazed at the camera. Brendan’s light eyes seemed to be staring at him as if asking, “What are you doing in my wife’s bed?”
All at once, the cock that had been raging to fuck this man’s wife was suddenly not quite so hard anymore. Not because he felt any guilt about this. Penny was a free woman. It was because she had her wedding photo on her nightstand where she could see it every night, where Brendan could spring from paper and glass and follow her into her dreams. It was because there were more photos of Brendan on the dresser, which Jack examined when he got up to have a closer look.
Suddenly, in the grip of a dangerous curiosity, he followed the pictures as if hiking a trail back into their past. Downstairs in the living room, pictures of her and Brendan were on a mantle over the fireplace, from adults to teenagers to cute kids with teeth missing. Along with a tiny army of crocheted animals he assumed she’d made were the notes for Brendan’s book open on her desk.
He’d known they’d been childhood friends from her bio. He’d already done the math and knew Penny had spent seven years being Brendan’s wife and ten years being his widow. But to count up the numbers, to really understand that she’d spent nearly forty-two years loving this man, was a punch to the gut.
Brendan’s pictures, Brendan’s book. The man might as well still be living in this house. Maybe it held only enough space for the two of them. How the fuck was a new man supposed to make room for himself in this? The idea of it seemed next to impossible.
Then he took a pause and a deep breath. He needed to get a fucking grip. Here he was, jealous of a dead man who’d probably been a good husband to her, a man who’d probably loved her unconditionally. He should have been happy she’d had that kind of love in her life instead of wishing Brendan had never existed and it had been him she’d built that life with.
It was going to take some time for Penny to accept what he knew, that Brendan’s time as the man in her life was over. It was his time now, his and Penny’s alone. For the first time in his forty-three years on earth, a future with a woman seemed more than possible. It was inevitable. He had to give her the time she needed to understand that.
“What are you doing?”
Jack hadn’t noticed Penny’s arrival. She was staring at him from the bottom of the stairs, suddenly looking uncertain.
Touching a photo of her with what looked like her mother, Jack turned back to the desk. “I was just looking at your pictures. Your family. And your late husband. He’s in every room. You must have loved him a lot,” Jack said reflectively.
Immediately, Penny stiffened. “Does it make you uncomfortable? Because I’m not putting any of his pictures away.”
Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Well, I’m kinda getting the feeling you are.”
She was on the defensive now. And he was sorry he’d said anything.
“Penny —”
“The puppy,” she interjected suddenly. Turning away, she wouldn’t look at him.
“Trixie? Oh, shit.” Jack realized he hadn’t thought about much beyond getting Penny’s dress off since they’d left the restaurant. He rubbed his face, feeling the beginnings of the scruff that would need shaving the next morning. “Fuck, I forgot.”
“Yeah, you’re a bad dog dad,” she said with a high-pitched, nervous giggle. Penny wiped her hands on her dress as if her palms were sweating. She headed for the door, and he followed.
“I’m right around the corner. I can go get her and bring her by so you can meet her,” Jack suggested. He didn’t like the tenor of his own voice. It sounded fucking needy.
“I want to meet her, but it’s getting late. Maybe another time.”
Her dark eyes were almost pleading. And he was a bit disoriented; less than ten minutes ago, he’d been in her bed, seconds away from reaching his paradise, and now he was being pushed out the door.
Jack had no choice but to back off despite his body still thrumming with desire. Penny walked him to the door and opened it. They’d been in such haste to make it to her bed they hadn’t bothered locking it.
“Thank you,” she said when he was standing on the other side in the cold night air. “For the dress and the dinner. And the roses. And the company. I had a really good time.”
In a reversal of the afternoon, Jack didn’t lean in to kiss her cheek. He had some serious doubts he’d be able to control himself if he smelled her scent again while he still felt like this.
“You’re welcome. Good night, angel.”
“You know, you’ve called me that a few times tonight. We’re on nickname terms already?” she asked, but the teasing was only in her smile. Those eyes were now guarded.
Jack stared at her, a muscle jumping in his jaw. This time he stepped in closer and leaned down to speak into her ear. “Less than a half hour ago, you rubbed your pussy all over my cock until you came. You were ready to let me inside you. Let’s not play games about nicknames now. Good night, angel .”
Penny shivered, visibly swallowing hard. Her eyes had gone heavy-lidded with desire that she was trying to hide by not meeting his stare. Before he could give in to the temptation to grab her and demand his place back inside that bedroom and in her life, he summoned every ounce of willpower he had and strode off.
On the way home, Jack’s blood still stirred, not only in his cock but in the rest of his body. He gave Trixie some dinner, and while he waited for her to digest, he checked his emails. Foundation stuff, gym stuff. A formal offer from the league for a three-fight contract, like he hadn’t fucking said ‘no’ already.
But he read the proposed terms, his mind racing. On a whim, he forwarded it to his cousin James who was technically still a solicitor, even if he was the English mob’s equivalent of a consiglieri who got his hands dirty. It would make it real if he sent it to his actual attorney; this was just to get an opinion. Not that he was signing anything. “ Just opinions ,” went in the subject line.
Enough time had elapsed, and he took Trixie for her walk. He wasn’t planning on going down and around the block toward Penny’s like he had the night before to look up at her window and make sure she was okay. Especially not after she’d shut him down so abruptly over those pictures. He’d told her the truth; he’d never ask her to put her husband’s pictures away. A woman who was ready for a new relationship wouldn’t have to be asked.
That day would come. It had to.
Lost in his thoughts, he suddenly realized he was in front of her small rowhouse after all. Trixie was quiet, probably tired, and ready to get back home and to bed. Jack picked her up, staring at Penny’s upstairs window until the lone light in the room clicked off.
“Good night, angel.”
Jack went home, but he was still too amped to sleep with the thoughts racing in his head and the lust in his body. He read the email James had sent him while he’d been out.
“ Good offer, mate. But…you going back in the cage?? ”
“ Just curious ,” Jack wrote back.
But he still went to the workout room to the heavy bag. He wrapped his hands and began a slow, methodical punch-punch-kick, punch-punch-kick until thoughts of Brendan or La Roque or anything else ceased to matter.