16. ONLY YOU
16
ONLY YOU
PENNY
F or the remainder of that night, Penny did her best to forget about the fight with the bodyguard and the conversation with Jack about Brendan. Slowly, her mood improved, and Jack’s did too.
They enjoyed the performances at the festival, avoiding Carter Stillwell’s set, instead laughing at the comedians on a different stage and sampling the snacks on sale. That night, after dinner in town, they listened to two bands play in the bar of their hotel, clapping along and having the best time. Upstairs in the room, they took another look at the bed and shook their heads with laughter.
“This ain’t gonna work,” Penny said ruefully. “Let’s make a pallet. We always used to do that when the cousins went to my great-grandparent’s house for sleepovers.”
Quickly, they gathered all the pillows, sheets, and blankets they could find in the room and arranged them on the carpeted floor. It wasn’t going to be the comfiest thing ever, but it would do.
In the morning, they met up with Squeeze and his new bandmates for breakfast, then hit the road. Jack offered to drop her off at home, but she was suddenly reluctant.
“I want to meet Trixie,” Penny said, feeling almost shy to ask.
“Yeah, sure.”
Penny waited in the car while Jack went into the kennel to retrieve Trixie. She was right next to the car when he came out with the little cutie trotting pertly on her leash. Trixie spotted Penny and lunged, making a beeline for her, barking and dancing. Utterly charmed, Penny dropped down to her knee, sidewalk be damned, and commenced to fawn over the pretty little dog.
Trixie lapped up the attention like the little diva she was. A smile tugged at Jack’s lips while he watched them interact. Penny didn’t care if she embarrassed herself by baby-talking. Trixie hung on every word.
“Alright, alright, I hate to break up this love fest, but we need to get this one back home,” Jack finally said. This time he was the one who seemed hesitant. “Want to come with us while I get her settled?”
No shame. Penny wanted to go home with Jack and continue their own love fest. “Yes.”
When they reached Jack’s house, she was impressed. It was remarkable how they were literally around the corner from her rowhouse, but he was in a big beautiful, detached home. Inside was even prettier than the slate-blue exterior. The front door had a window that let in a ton of light. Jack took her on a tour after Trixie ran inside to reacquaint herself with the furniture she’d apparently missed chewing on. There were oak ceiling beams and softer blue-gray walls.
“I love your place,” she said, indicating the comfortable brown leather couches, the colorful, although torn, area rug, and the abstract paintings of old-school boxers on the living room walls. “You’ve got great taste. Surprising.”
“Thank my mother for finding this gaff and renovating it. Dierdre started doing it professionally after she and Bran got married.”
“I think that’s awesome.”
“Yeah. It makes her happy. But I thought this was a bit much for me alone. Aside from having the kitchen and the gym I wanted, I’d have been grand with a box to eat, sleep and piss in.”
“A box to eat, sleep and piss in. That’s something they should put on one of those wood panels at the home décor store,” Penny commented.
“It’s got four bedrooms, three baths. Plenty of space left over for a banjo and a guitar.” Jack stared at her while a flush crept up her cheeks. “And I almost never use the office. Might be a good place to write. If a writer were living here.”
“A writer might need to visit a few times first. You know, get the lay of the land.”
“A writer should spend the night and see how it feels,” Jack said. After a series of long, slow kisses that melted her into soft, buttery goo in his big hands, he whispered against her lips, “Stay tonight. We’ll make dinner and have a very boring night on the couch. No Druids, no strangely aggressive bodyguards. Sound good?”
“Sounds better than good.”
After Trixie was in her crate, the dinner eaten, and the movie watched, Penny was in Jack’s bedroom getting ready for bed. He was perusing his emails on his phone, wearing those reading glasses that made her want to tear his clothes off and forbid him ever to wear anything but those glasses and a grin again. While she pondered how she could go about asking, he happened to look up at her. His appraisal of her face must have given him a clue about what she was thinking.
“Are ya thinkin’ dirty thoughts about me, love?” he asked in an exaggeratedly thicker accent.
Fanning herself with her hand, she drawled, “If I wasn’t before, I am now. Whew!”
He chuckled. “All in good time, love, all in good time. Dierdre and Bran sent me more pictures. Looks like they’re having a grand time in Mallorca. I’m starting to get worried they’re never coming back.”
“And leave you with Trixie forever? Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Penny said with a shrug.
“No, but it is a lot of responsibility. It’s like a baby that never leaves home for university,” he quipped.
Penny was in the middle of gathering her scarf. Pausing, she stared at the soft, black material. Jack had already seen her in it. Would it ruin the sexy to start off with it, or should she wait until he was asleep to put it on? Decisions she hadn’t had to think about in all her years of being single.
“Huh. I guess you never wanted kids, then.”
He paused as if pondering the question. “Honestly?”
“No, lie to me. Women love that.”
The sarcastic comment earned her an equally sarcastic smirk.
“The pendulum keeps swinging on that.”
“Geez, Edgar Allen Poe. What does that mean, the pendulum keeps swinging?” she asked with a short laugh.
“It means at times the answer was ‘yeah, sure,’ and other times it’s been ‘no.’ I wanted kids, but when I saw a clip of a woman giving birth when I was eleven, it was ‘ hell no.’” Penny snorted. Then she quieted when his voice grew softer. “When I quit the league, and people I thought cared about me disappeared, including my girlfriend at the time, it was definitely ‘hell no.’ Not because I wanted one with her in particular. I was sort of at a low point and I didn’t think I had anything to offer a child or a wife, for that matter.”
Penny’s heart ached for him, even as he looked uncomfortable at having admitted that. “Is that why you opened the gym?”
Nodding, he glanced at her. “I would’ve opened one anyway. Meeting Charlie changed my life. I could give to somebody else’s kids if I couldn’t do it for my own.” He slowed again and took a deep breath. “But then this beautiful, talented, funny woman dropped in out of nowhere, and suddenly, it started looking like ‘yes’ again. Hell yes. If that’s what you want. If it’s a possibility.”
While he talked, she’d run the gamut of emotions from amused to sympathetic to downright hot. Hearing him say he wanted that with her, as nuts as it sounded at this stage, made her pretty much want to jump him right then and there.
“When you said you didn’t give… him a baby, was it because you couldn’t, or you didn’t want to?”
“I wanted kids. The timing for it was never right. We were always busting our asses rehearsing, gigging. Partying. We were so young…I thought there’d always be time. But then, suddenly, he was gone, and there was no more time.”
It was a story so rehearsed she could run the lines in her sleep.
It was Jack’s turn to regard her with sympathy. But at the same time a spark had lit behind those glasses, something hot and determined.
“It’s not too late for us. And there’s no time like the present to get that started.” Having decided, Jack nodded and stood up. His tall frame, those broad shoulders seemed to dwarf everything else in the room. “I’m good with getting help if we need it. Good with adoption, too. Whatever it takes.”
“Yeah, well, you know…we’ve had a few big decisions made today. Can we put that one off for, I don’t know, maybe week two?” she suggested as he came near. He smelled so good. That same scent had been in her nose when she’d been on the ground beneath him. Splendor in the grass, indeed.
“Okay,” he shrugged.
Penny was taken aback by how easily she’d won this one. “Okay? You’re okay if we wait?”
“Of course. I’ve waited forty-three years for you, angel. What’s another six months to get started on our babe? In the meantime, I don’t mind being fucking selfish. I get you all to meself,” he said with a deliciously lazy smile.
“Yeah, so. I’m not on anything right now,” she said. “Pills, shots. Nada. We’ve been running on luck and my reduced statistical chances, but I’m not the luckiest person in the world, so…have you got anything?”
Slowly this time, deliberately, Jack put the phone and his glasses on a nearby table and reached for her. “Nope. And it’s late. There won’t be anything open. I’ll pull out. If you want me to.”
Desire teased and twisted through her body at his words. “If I want you to?” she breathed with a soft laugh.
“Fuck it, angel. I hope you don’t want me to.”
“I thought you gave in too easy,” she whispered.
Jack closed in for a kiss, a hard, sweet kiss that she answered. His lips moved over hers with an urgency that snatched the breath from her lungs. Their clothes were gone in a hurry. Once Jack got her down on the bed and his hands on her breasts, he licked and sucked on her nipples until she moaned, pushing them deeper inside his mouth. That went on for some time, long enough to drive her crazy while she tried to rub her pussy on his thigh. The friction was good but not nearly enough, and he laughed at her frustration.
“Your little pussy is hungry for something? What do you want more, my tongue up inside you or my cock?”
“Both,” she gasped.
“Wish I could give you both at the same time, but I’m not that talented.”
She laughed, shivering with anticipation, when he moved down between her legs. He sucked her clit between his lips, then fluttered his tongue on it again, looking up at her with eyes that pierced her deeper than his thick finger. That look undid her. He wouldn’t break eye contact, and she couldn’t look away, couldn’t hold back the sharp cries he was drawing out of her, couldn’t stop pumping her pussy into his mouth. When she came, it was deep and hard. She broke apart and shattered into atoms.
Jack was panting almost as heavily as she was from between her legs, kissing her inner thighs with his hot breath scalding her flesh.
“Good girl. That’s my good girl.”
And it had been oh-so-good for her. It got even better when he rose, pulled her knees up, and gripped his dick, pushing inside her. He sank in slowly, pausing, grinning, torturing her. Pulled out and rubbed her own juices around her clit with the head of his dick before sinking back in.
His eyes were heavy-lidded and pink-tinged as they stared into hers. He looked high, intoxicated with lust. Jack’s skin gleamed a buttery smooth, light bronze in the waning sunlight casting its softness through the window, and she ran her hands across it. He rolled his hips into hers suddenly, then picked up the pace to a repetitive slap slap of flesh into flesh.
“Oh…fuck…. fuck , Penny,” Jack groaned, and she smiled, loving being the one who made him make that sound, who made his dick this hard. “Take it… take it…oh, good girl. My dirty fucking good girl…Penny…”
“Yeah?” Her voice hitched, staring up at him.
“Give me a baby, Penny.” He rolled his hips into her harder, groaning. All the while, he didn’t break the eye contact. He’d meant what he said.
Penny nodded, moving with him. “Okay,” she panted. “Okay. Just please don’t stop. Fuck, don’t stop…” She meant it. She wanted what he wanted. Wanted it only with him.
He didn’t stop. Jack fucked her deep with powerful thrusts, that blissful rhythm staying so steady… so steady…so…
“I need to come angel.” His voice had thickened, darkened. “I need you to come again, too, all over me.”
He flipped her over so she was on top, straddling him with his dick still inside her. Then he pounded her from below. He pincered her hips with strong fingers and powered into her with thrusts that jolted her each time she bounced on him. Fuck, each one of those jolts were amazing, his dick rubbing against that awesome little spot inside her walls while his fingers found her clit and began to strum.
And this time, as he breathed out, “Come on me. Come on, baby, do it. Wet me up,” she grew so weak with need she could hardly stay upright.
She was teetering on the edge, right there, and then those fingers and that fat cock sent her sailing off into crazy sweet oblivion. Penny went wordless as she obeyed him, drenching him with a sudden splash that made him laugh with surprise and then groan. Inside her, he twitched and pulsed. So much for him pulling out or her pulling off. She slid up and down with slow squeezes that made him shout out, her own spasms beating and throbbing in time with his.
Collapsing into his waiting arms, Penny knew Jack had finally done it.
This motherfucker had completely ruined her for any other man.