Chapter 27
Penny
“So take me?”
Did I really just say that?
Matt brings out a side of me I never even knew existed. Before him, I was playing it safe. Staying at the same job I’ve been at for a decade. Avoiding conflict with my family. Not giving guys a chance beyond the occasional meaningless fling.
Now, I’m letting myself dream bigger. I’m confronting my family challenges head-on. And apparently, I’m about to have sex on a hardwood floor.
With a guy I truly care about.
“This can’t be comfortable for you,” Matt says from above me while he cradles the back of my head with his hand. “Want to move to my bed?”
“Nuh-uh.” I shake my head and pull him closer. “I want to be here with you.” I kiss him. “Right here.” Another kiss. “Right next to the tree.” I take this kiss deeper and reach down to unbutton his pants.
“God, you’re amazing,” he groans. “Just gimme a second.”
He rolls off me and sprints across the room, then yanks his fluffy comforter off the bed and grabs two pillows.
“I can’t have my passenger princess on a cold floor with no cushion, can I?” he says, quickly creating a cozy impromptu floor bed for us. “There.” He stands, looking at his handiwork. “Now I can focus.”
“On what?” I tease and settle myself back on the pillows.
“You, you, and more you,” he rumbles.
There’s a moment of charged silence as we stare at each other.
Then, like a shot out of a cannon, we’re tearing our own clothes off, staring and giggling at each other the whole time, like giddy teenagers.
We’ve waited so long for this moment that neither of us wants to take things slow.
“Look at you.” He sounds awestruck as he scans my body, ready and waiting for him on his floor. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”
“Back atcha, baby,” I breathe.
My mouth waters seeing him for the first time in all his naked glory.
“God bless Bossfit Brooklyn and all their gross-sounding exercises, because your body is glorious, sir.”
“Must be all those burpees,” he says.
“Gross,” I joke. Then I turn serious and crook my finger at him. “Come here, you.”
Matt lowers himself on top of me and kisses me slow and deep.
The feel of his skin on mine is almost enough to make me orgasm on the spot.
He cups one of my breasts.
I reach for his cock.
“I see you’re ready for me,” I say between kisses.
“Penny, I was ready for you the moment I met you. I’ve just been trying to be a gentleman all this time.”
“How’s that been working out for ya?” I continue to stroke him up and down.
“Awesome and awful.” He smiles. “But things are definitely looking up.”
I need this man inside me.
And I need him now.
“I need my purse,” I say suddenly, looking left and right for it.
“Why? You have another present for me in there?” He grabs my purse from where it was resting under the tree and plunks it next to me, all while raining kisses up and down the column of my throat.
I pull out a condom and hand it to him. “I suppose you could see it that way.”
Matt’s eyes twinkle. “My girl came prepared.”
His girl.
What would it feel like to truly be his girl?
He tears the wrapper open with his teeth and rolls it over his length with one hand.
“Holy shit, that was hot,” I say.
“Why, thank you.”
He teases my entrance with the head of his dick.
But I want more than teasing right now.
I grab his rock-hard ass to draw him closer.
“Excuse me, sir, but your ass is insane.”
“In a good way?” He alternates squeezing one ass cheek at a time. Left then right. Left then right.
I laugh and give his ass a smack. “How are you so hot and hilarious at the same time?”
“It’s a gift, milady.”
He chooses that moment to enter me completely.
My breath catches as I adjust to him.
“You’re a gift,” I say on a gasp. I don’t care one bit about how corny that sounds because I mean every word.
This man is a gift, and slowly but surely, he’s been unwrapping me.
Every defense I put up between us over the past month and a half has fallen away.
I’m completely vulnerable to him now, and I know it.
That should be scary, but at this moment, all I can feel is relief.
And a tingling sensation is building in my core.
“Damn, you feel amazing,” he says as we quickly find our rhythm.
“You do too,” I pant. “You’re really good at this.”
“Someone’s full of compliments tonight,” he smiles. “Remember when I used to irritate the hell out of you?”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “No, I do not.”
“Cool. Me neither.”
He shifts position slightly, hitting me just right, and that tingling in my core burns brighter.
“Matt, I’m going to—”
“Not yet, sweetheart,” he says. He wraps an arm around me and flips us over so I’m straddling him as he lies flat on his back.
“What a move!” I joke.
“What can I say?” He smirks. “I’m fancy.”
“You sure are.”
I sit up fully and lengthen my spine.
“My god, look at you,” he says.
One second, we’re laughing, and the next, he’s staring up at me with so much reverence, it takes my breath away.
“I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“You are, aren’t you?” I reach down and cup his handsome face.
What I don’t say is that I feel exactly the same way.
Being here like this.
With him.
It’s a dream I didn’t even know I had coming true.
He places his hands on my hips and says, “Show me what you’ve got, Pennywise.”
As we rock our way into pure pleasure, I remember way back in October when I told Dottie that nothing good ever happens to me at Christmastime.
I’ve never been happier to be proven wrong.
Hours later, we lie beside the Christmas tree, wrapped up in each other’s arms, delightfully spent after who-knows-how-many rounds of the best sex I’ve ever had.
I had no idea sex could be this fun.
I had no clue that I could feel so connected to the person I’m with.
So happy.
So free.
My head rests on the space between his shoulder and his neck. My hand rests on his chiseled chest. I’m counting the steady beat of his heart, feeling completely content for the first time in… maybe forever.
“Matt?” I whisper. “Are you awake?”
When he doesn’t answer, I prop myself up on an elbow and watch him sleep.
A flood of emotions fills my chest as I watch his rise and fall.
One look at his peaceful, beautiful face, and I know I’m a goner.
How on earth did this happen?
At what point did the silly guy dressed in spandex rapping about exercise become the guy I can’t stop thinking about? The guy I trust more than anyone else? The man I can’t live without?
Correction: I can live without him.
I’m just realizing now that I don’t want to.
If my early life as a dancer taught me anything, it’s the power of rehearsal. Day in and day out, dancers practice their steps so that when the curtain finally rises for the big show, what once felt awkward in their bodies feels completely natural.
I don’t have a lot of experience expressing my emotions.
For most of my life, I’ve kept them coiled tight in my body, with no safe place for them to land.
But something tells me I can be different with Matt.
With Matt, maybe I can finally land.
So I practice opening my heart to him while he sleeps.
“Matt?” I whisper. “I think I’m in love with you.”