Chapter 34 Penny #2
I didn’t have words to express how much it all meant, so I leaned into him instead, catching him with a kiss.
My lurch forward nearly toppled his chair backward, and he grabbed onto me to keep from falling. His smile against my lips was the best thing I’d ever felt.
I’d planned to pull back so as not to risk knocking us both from our seats onto the kitchen floor, but I couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him again. His joy made him all the more striking.
We stayed close, nose to nose as I murmured, “For someone so new to all of this, you're quite good at it.”
Kit’s eyes crinkled at the corners with a look of such genuine happiness it made my heart leap.
“I'm glad you think so,” he said.
Taking me by both hands, Kit rose from his chair. He led me out of the kitchen to the living room couch where he hit the seat of the sofa and fell onto his back. I eagerly crawled on top of him.
He’d been dozing before but seemed wide awake now and responsive to every touch I visited on him.
I set my knees on either side of his thighs, then bent to shove his shirt over his head.
Stripped to his waist, Kit arched up into me, thumbing through the buttons on my shirt and pushing it off my shoulders.
We collided, skin on skin and sharing heat. Each kiss and swipe of my tongue was fueled by desperation.
Kit’s hands roamed over me, grabbing, dragging, and exploring my body in a way that sparked my senses. I rolled my hips against him in a needful way. I was already hard, and he couldn’t have missed the feeling of my erection pressed against his.
“Kit,” I stammered while his fingers dug in between my ribs.
He looked at me with his eyes afire. I didn’t want to stop or slow any part of this. It felt right, like we’d been building toward it for weeks or months. Maybe forever.
“Kit, I want you.” My voice wavered, and I swallowed before attempting again, “Can I have you?”
He searched my face with one brow drawn down in question, but he didn’t speak. I remembered our conversation some weeks ago, and how he felt about people being proprietary, so I added, “Will you belong with me?”
His pensive look persisted. “Don’t I already?”
I wondered if I’d said it wrong, or if I’d overstepped again, gotten too caught up and rushed things. But I’d never felt so deeply enamored of anyone, so I had to try again.
“I’d like to court you, Kit.” I couldn’t make it any clearer. “May I?”
All signs of his confusion left, exchanged for something I didn’t recognize. The hesitation was maddening, and I shivered with anxious energy. I was beginning to fear he’d reject me when he leaned back on both arms and sighed.
“I don’t have any cows, you know.” The slightest smile crossed his face. “For a dowry.”
My nerves bubbled out in an abrupt laugh, and I threw myself at him in a smothering embrace. We collapsed onto the couch cushions, a tangle of arms and legs and laughter.
“I don’t need cows,” I said between snickers. “Just you.”
He rolled me over so I laid against the back of the sofa, tucked into his side.
“Ah, but what will your mother say?” His smile took on a teasing slant. “Though perhaps she’d be relieved you aren’t costing her a good many head of cattle.”
My nose wrinkled, and I gave him a shove. “You make it sound as if you’d have to be bought to have me.”
His impish look softened into sincerity. “Pen, I would give everything to have you.” He tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “I need nothing else.”
The thought of how Mother would react when I brought Kit home, not as my master or traveling companion, but as my beau, made me giddy.
“So, you will have me?” I asked.
Kit nodded. “Of course, I will. I love you.”
I was still grinning and bobbing my head in enthusiastic agreement when his statement struck me. It circled back through my brain three more times before I was certain I'd heard it aloud and hadn’t imagined it.
But Kit didn't look surprised at all. His expression was so even, so perfectly measured that it drove me to near madness.
“Kit, did you…” I swallowed. “Did you mean to say that?”
“I did.” A smile cracked his facade, and my heart fluttered.
“You're sure?”
Kit shifted so he was flat on his back and I was laying on top of him.
He draped an arm around my waist, and I wondered how he was so calm.
Was this the same man who had told me barely two months prior that he wasn’t sure he could love anyone?
He said he’d like to, but… and I’d never known how he intended to finish it. I did now.
But me. He loved me.
“Don't act so surprised.” Kit’s dark eyes danced with mirth. “I think you knew it before I did.”
“I hoped,” I corrected.
“And inferred.”
I caressed his cheek while fighting back the prick of sudden tears—joyful ones. “But I felt it, Kit,” I murmured, touching him gently. “I felt it, and I knew, and now…”
Kit arched up to press a kiss to my lips. “I know it too,” he said.
He kissed me again and, as much as I wanted to get back to what we'd been doing when I started talking, I was distracted. Delighted, actually, by what indeed my mother would say about the handsome man on my arm, or how jealous Sayla would be that Kit’s strong shoulders were all mine.
Kit was mine. Like no one else had been or would be.
I could barely believe it. He wanted me like I wanted him, and we would be blissful together.
After everything with the Bone Men was behind us, we would go home to the farm, and we would share a life.
It was a future hope I’d barely held onto.
But I'd managed it, at least the start of it, and I had a very good feeling about the end.