Chapter 32 #2
“Yes, but this time is worse because it’s my fault.”
Her pout is adorable. I nip her earlobe, loving the way she shivers.
“I hear the making-up part can be good. Hot, even, if done right.”
She quirks a brow. “Is that so?”
“I’m almost certain it’ll lean toward hot if you put real effort into it.”
“Hmm . . .” Her gaze narrows but humor lights her eyes. “Well, it is my turn to make it up to you.”
“Oh, well, if you insist.”
Her soft lips curl into a real smile, and I feel it in my chest. The feeling grows when she cups my face with her smooth hands and rises to her toes. Her mouth is sweet and full, and she kisses me like I’m a treat she’s been waiting to have.
Total goner.
With a groan, I grasp a handful of her hair and grip it as I feast on her mouth. I’ve missed it. Missed her. And she tastes so fucking good. She kisses me back like I’m her air, pressing her perfect, plump breasts against my chest with a little whimper that has my dick perking right the fuck up.
Starving now, I wrap my free arm around her back, intent on hauling her even closer. But she instantly flinches as though in pain and gasps. I know enough about injuries to understand she has one. Immediately, I step back.
Guilt tightens her features. Guilt?
“Penny?” I search her face. “You’re hurt?”
“I . . .” She chokes up, her eyes glossing over with tears.
“Jesus. Baby, where are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing.” She shies away. “I’m fine.”
But things are clicking in my head now. The way she jumped. Her weird tension. The wash sink . . . I glance that way. “That was your leather jacket.” There’d been a massive stain on the back.
My head goes light.
“Penelope.” I clasp her arms as gentle as I can, given my panic. “Did you have an accident on the bike?”
Wrong thing to ask. Her eyes well up and spill over. Another breath and she starts to cry. Not the pretty, streaming tears thing but heaving sobs that rip my heart in two.
“Christ.” I hold her like she’s glass and bring her as close as possible. My heart beats too fast. I could have lost her. “Baby. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay.” She grasps my roaming hand because I can’t stop petting her, looking for the hurt. “August, it’s just a bruise.”
“Let me see.” I know it’s on her back. I felt her flinch. Beside myself, I turn her round and lift her shirt, while she protests that it’s nothing.
It’s not fucking nothing.
“Fucking hell.” She’s got a black-and-blue bruise the size of a football on her right shoulder blade, and a bit on her spine. “Fuck, baby. Penny love.”
I’ve had worse bruises. But it’s on her. Not me. Shaking, I lean down and kiss her skin.
Pen sighs, then steps out of my grasp. Her creamy cheeks are blotchy with tears. “August.” She rubs a fist over her eyes. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“What?”
“I didn’t crash my bike. I— Shit.” Her hands clench at her sides. “It’s so stupid. Fucking assholes . . .”
Assholes? Something ice-cold and dark starts to spread in my gut. Something like rage but more violent.
“Pen,” I get out through numb lips. “What happened?”
She shifts on her feet, her fingers playing with the hem of her shirt. “Someone ah . . . someone threw a sub at me.”
Icy-hot rage claws at my throat. There’s a buzzing in my ears, and I’m worried I misheard. “A sub?”
Pen’s cheeks go bright red. “As in a big sandwich. I think it was an Italian cold-cut.”
Someone pinged a fucking sub at my girl. A fucking sandwich. At Pen.
“There was a rock in it,” she confesses in a small voice. Like it’s her fucking fault. Like she thinks I don’t believe it.
Then I focus on the pertinent part: a rock. An anguished sound escapes me. I sway a little before blowing out a breath. “Who?”
Because I’m going to— I suck in a calming breath before I punch a wall.
Woodenly, Pen shakes her head. “I don’t know. It was on campus. I didn’t see. I was walking to my bike and it just . . .” She swallows with a clicking sound. It’s too much.
Cursing softly, I gather her up and sit on the bed, gently settling her on my lap. I kiss her damp cheeks, her swollen mouth, and smooth back her mussed hair. “Baby. I’m so sorry.”
She nods as if by rote. I can’t stand it. She shouldn’t be hurt. Ever. And I wasn’t there to protect her. With a grunt, I rest my head against hers.
Pen sets her hand over mine and clutches it. “There’s more.”
“More?” Dread returns full force. The way she looks at me, as though trying to defuse a bomb. My free hand trembles as I brush her hair back and try my best to look calm and reassuring. “Tell me, honey. Just get it out.”
Pen lowers her gaze to our hands. And tells me about her bike. I listen quietly, while the blood drains from my head and my heart slams against my chest.
She was attacked. Because of me.
“August?” Cool hands touch my hot face. “Baby?”
I don’t . . . I can’t . . . A lump rises in my throat. With a strangled breath, I lean my forehead against hers.
“Pen . . .” It comes out thready.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” she whispers, stroking my temple. “I didn’t want to see that look on your face.”
“It’s my fault,” I rasp. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop.” She presses her palms to my cheeks, making me meet her eyes. They’re clear now, determined. “I knew you’d blame yourself, and I don’t want you to carry this burden.”
“It’s my burden to carry. If it wasn’t for being with me—”
“No. Not even a little. The blame lies on the grotty little shit, or shits, who did this. The cowardly fuckos who don’t have anything better to do than hurt other people. Not you. Never you.”
“Jesus, Pen. If they did this after one loss . . .” I feel sick just thinking about it. In that moment I hate the game, hate that my place in it put her in danger.
The tip of her finger skims along my jaw. “We don’t know if that’s why. It could be a fan of some other team or some bored loser.”
“The next one could be some sick fuck who hurts you to get to me.”
“I could walk outside and die a thousand different ways.”
“Christ. That’s not helping.”
“My point is that this—” she gestures between us “—is the only thing we can control. Right here and now. And I’d just really like it if you’d kiss me now, let me feel something good.”
“I can do that.” I find her rosy sweet mouth with mine. Pen kisses like a dream. Soft at first but then greedy like she just discovered chocolate and has to have more. It gets me every time. With an impatient noise, she lifts her sleep shirt overhead and tosses it aside.
In the low lamplight her skin glows like a pearl, the full teardrops of her breasts swaying as she moves.
I think we’ll be eighty and the sight of her will still make me slack-jawed with base lust. Instantly, I fill my hands with them, loving their firm weight, the round softness.
Those deep rose nipples stiffen, pointing up at me like a taunt.
Her skin is smooth silk under my lips. I glide along her neck, over her shoulders. Down to those perky little nipples begging for attention. I kiss each of them in turn, lovingly because they deserve it.
As much as I want to linger, I can’t get the sight of her injury out of my mind.
Gently, I turn her around. She hesitates for a second, clearly not wanting me to look there again.
A soft kiss at the base of her neck has her relenting.
She ducks her chin, arching the long line of her back against my mouth as I move my way down to the bruise.
It’s deep and splotchy, the colors of pain I’m familiar with. But not on her.
“Pen . . .” I kiss around the area as light as I can. “I hate this.”
She looks at me from over her shoulder. “I’m so pale, any bruise I get looks worse than it is.”
“It looks pretty fucking bad. It breaks my heart, Pen.”
She turns, blocking my view of it, her expression fierce. “Don’t let them do that to you, or me. Now that I told you, I feel better—safe. I always feel so good when I’m with you.”
I can’t hold on to my outrage in the face of that. She melts my resolve with such ease, I should be worried. But I’m not. I’m fucking grateful she feels the same.
Softly, I rub her arms. “I had this idea that it would be easy to be with you.” I swallow thickly. “And it is. But it’s also fucking hard. Because everything is at the surface. Your hurt makes me hurt. I’ve never had that before.”
“You think it’s different for me?” Her lips curve wryly. “I watch you take hits that would break normal people. I listen to them pick you apart in the media. It hurts because I care. I’m okay with that. Are you?”
“Yes.” I touch her cheek. “I’m really okay with that.”
“Good.” She kisses me lightly. “You promised me a few hours of forgetting the world. I’m holding you to it.”
“You can have all the time you want.”
“I just want you.”
Suddenly, she’s the one taking the lead, pulling off my shirt, exploring my chest with her mouth and hands.
It feels so good, I lean back and let her have at it, my heartbeat kicking up as my gut tightens.
Her fingers tug at the button of my jeans.
I help her out, unzipping and lifting my hips to slide them free.
My dick slaps back against my belly, hard and wanting.
And she wraps her fingers around it with a sound of delight.
I shudder at the touch and cup her cheek, bringing her mouth back to mine.
Our kiss deepens, gets messy, but then she’s moving away, licking the column of my neck, peppering hard, greedy kisses over my chest.
I hold her head in my hand, wanting to bring her back up to me, but she slides farther down, her tongue tracing the line between my abs.
The tiny hairs on my skin rise as pleasure ripples over me. But when she brushes a kiss over the tip of my cock, I stop her with a hand to her shoulder.
“Pen, baby, no. Not like this. It should be me who serves you tonight.” My dick is yelling at me to shut it, but my brain and heart overrule the fucker.
“But I want to. Especially tonight.” She rests a hand on my thigh.
“Don’t you see? When I’m with you like this, everything else falls away.
I’d really like to forget about today. And I love touching you here.
I love the way you shiver and bite your lower lip like you’re trying your hardest to be patient, but like you also want to draw it out because you love it too. ”
“I do. Oh, fuck, I do.”
“You’re gorgeous, August. I want you constantly. Your pleasure is mine, isn’t that what you say? Give me this pleasure. I’ve been wanting to suck you.”
“Christ.” I’m shivering now. Hard pulses of lust punching into my gut.
“I want to know if you’ll taste as delicious as you look.”
“Baby . . .”
“Let me have you like this, August.”
“You have me. Any way you like. Anytime.” I stroke her hair. “Pen, you have me.”
Her answering smile is impish but when she gazes down it turns covetous.
And then those luscious lips part. She runs them over the swollen tip of my cock, humming in satisfaction.
I feel it in my balls, in the sweat-slicked base of my back.
A groan tears out of me as she sucks me deep and pulls back out slowly.
Weak now, I brace myself on my elbows to watch. She doesn’t appear to have a plan but simply explores with her mouth and hands, stroking my length, kissing it, then sucking me. Her hands cradle my balls gently, fondling there in an almost lewd way.
I fucking love it.
My abs tighten to the point of pain, my breath coming in pants. “Like that,” I rasp when she starts to bob up and down on my cock. “Suck me like that . . . Jesus!”
With a moan, I tip my head to the side, my eyes struggling to stay open. I want to see her do this—the delicate curve of her jaw stretched open to accommodate my girth, the sway of her tits as she moves, how her eyes flutter closed like she’s taking just as much pleasure as she’s giving.
She’s a novice at this, and yet nothing has ever undone me more. My hand falls to the crown of her head, holding her there gently as my hips begin to pump—just a little, just enough to take the edge off. Heat ripples over my skin, and I grit my teeth to keep from coming. I don’t want it to end.
Pen glances up at me, dark chocolate eyes, candy pink lips wet and full. She gives the sensitive tip of my crown a saucy little lick, and I just about float out of my skin.
“Penelope . . .”
I want to tell her that I adore her, that she is my everything.
I want to tell her how utterly precious she is to me, and the knowledge that she’d been assaulted, that something she loved was destroyed out of petty violence, is abhorrent to me.
That I have this need to cuddle her up and protect her from the world.
I want to tell her so many things that it gets jumbled and caught in my throat.
And all I manage to say is her name. Over and over.
Like it’s a prayer. Benediction. Salvation. Mine.