Chapter 41
Bear
Saint: Leon Karlsen, we need a status report.
Dom: You're LUCKY we were too busy for an intervention during minicamp.
Damián: We should call a meeting at my house.
Logan: He's ignoring us again.
Bear: Yep. I'm ignoring you. Still no need for an intervention.
Saint: This is too big to let you fly solo, big guy. You've been friends with Pen for decades. What is happening?!
Logan: Come to Damián's asap and tell us. Call the meeting.
Bear: I'm not calling a meeting. Can't make it. Pen and I are driving her parents back home first thing in the morning, then I'm whisking my wife away for a few days off.
Dom: See how he uses the words "my wife" so liberally these days?"
Bear: Pen is my wife. I'm just being accurate.
Logan: What you're being is a pain in the ass.
Bear: I might have to leave this chat for a few days, if you're going to keep this up.
Saint: Please. You know we'll just keep adding you back!
Dom: It's fine. Guys, let him avoid us. It gives us time to plan.
Logan: I like this. He won't see it coming.
Bear: Don't.
Saint: Like a proper intervention. I'm sold.
Bear: I hate you guys.
Saint: love you too.
Pen and I made it all the way back home and helped the Duartes bring their things inside. As planned, we drink a quick tea with them before heading back on the road. They know I'm taking Pen away on a surprise little vacation.
We say goodbye at their front door. Tío Sergio tears up as he hugs Pen goodbye.
"I'll be back before you know it," she tells him.
I rub her back. In three weeks, when it's time to pack and prep for surgery, she'll come back to spend time with them and help.
"You'll have your video calls as usual," I say. "And I'll be part of them as often as I can."
"You need to keep us up to date with your job application." Tía Antonia hugs her husband's waist, while talking to her daughter. "Is it really a whole package you're preparing?"
"Yep. I'm going to go all out." Pen smiles my way. "I may be married to one of the players who helped the Strike get their first championship, but I still need to find ways to impress a set of very smart, very business-minded women."
"You will dazzle them, hija," Tío says.
"And Evie and I will help you." I kiss her temple, before we hug her parents and say goodbye.
Five minutes later, we're driving back in the same direction we came from. I take several turns into different side roads, before Pen figures out where we're going.
She gasps. "The geodesic cabin?!"
I tap her thigh, and leave my hand there as I drive.
"It was later in the day when we came the first time," she says. "The change in light threw me off. And I thought you might want to take me somewhere new…"
"No need for excuses, Penélope." I chuckle when she makes an offended sound. "Let's enjoy what I have planned, all right?"
"But— we didn't bring food or many clothes or—"
"Pen. We'll enjoy. Okay?"
She keeps her eyes on me. The way she studies me is familiar, yet I wish I could stare right back. Something clicks in her mind, but all I can guess at is the way she bites her lip. It makes me want to bite her lip, too. A gentle nibble. Just a small taste.
Mhhh. If this were about my fantasies, I might have gotten her to suck me off as I drive. We're making our way through smaller roads now, and I could have slowed down enough. Or driven faster, if she wanted to feel the thrill of risk in this too.
But what we've been doing is about her. Her desires and fantasies.
Hypnotized as I've been by finally getting familiar with her pussy, with her sounds, with her smell…
God, I've been lost in hunger for her. My heart is beating underwater, hidden in its flooded cell.
It creates waves in my system. The kind you see when skipping a rock on a lake, growing bigger as they ripple across the surface.
Unlike any archetypical heroes, I don't go toward it. I let it be for a little longer. I'm content being distracted, and making the most out of our agreement. For now.
Pen offers to read some fanfic out loud to me while I drive.
She's done that before, when we spent enough time in the car together.
Not that she cares for it— she usually just starts reading wherever I left off.
It's something nice she does for me sometimes.
But she doesn't know I'm on a break, and I can't explain that I'm avoiding things that make me feel too romantic.
In the end, I guide her to pick a drabble collection I have bookmarked.
She skims the first story. "This is spicy."
I grin and wink at her.
"I've never read this kind of fanfic to you."
"We weren't doing these kinds of things before."
I glance at her. She bites her lip.
"Are you game?" I ask.
In the end, it's her idea to suck me off. She calls it a surprise bucket list item, and I'm only too happy to oblige.
It takes us another hour to make it to the campground, somewhere between back home and Seattle.
The place looks much the same as it did that day many weeks ago, when I proposed to Pen.
The memory of getting down on one knee in front of my best friend gets my heart beating faster, but it's all as muffled as expected.
I simply smile as we go into the cabin, and she finds a few extra clothes and a fully stocked kitchen.
She grins as she comes to me. "How long are we staying?"
She gets her hands around my thick waist, and I do the same around her arms and back.
"For a few days." I kiss her. "For as long as we want to."
She sighs. "You're perfect, you know that?"
This time, the sound my heart makes is not as muffled as earlier. I ignore it anyway.
"Let's see what you think about this." I give her another kiss, before I take her by the hand and we go out of the cabin.
It's nearing sunset on a sweet summer day.
The skies are turning shades of orange and purple, casting long shadows on the forest at the other side of the lake.
I guide Pen right to the edge of the water.
I asked the groundskeepers to set up for a picnic, and they did an amazing job.
A blanket lays on the floor, with several pillows and cushions strewn around.
Food and drinks wait for us in baskets, and an extra flannel cover lays folded to the side.
I stop at the feet of the set up and bring Pen to stand in front of me. She gazes at me with excitement gleaming in her eyes, and lips that are slightly parted.
"Pen." I put a hand on her face. "I said I would make a plan—"
I don't get to finish the sentence. Her hands fist my shirt and pull me to her. Her mouth crushes to mine. The speech I prepared disappears from my mind, when her tongue makes it into my mouth.
I moan. It's been only a few days since we decided to do this, and her kiss still feels new.
The need for her mouth darts through me, using my veins for highways, and I bring her as close to me as possible, so she can never stop giving me her lips.
She's secure in my arms but I want more. I lift her off her feet.
"Leon, if you make me wait any longer, I'm going to lose my mind."
I gaze up at her. The sky is a golden halo around her, and the tall tree branches above us her crown. A gust of wind plays with her hair, but her eyes are locked on me. Asking for me.
"Got it." I nod. "Now hold on."
She surrounds me with arms and legs, and I drop to my knees on a mix of blanket and cushions. She kisses my temple, my neck, my face as I hinge forward and place her on soft textures.
A mild, complaining sound comes out of her when I land on her. I try to give her room, but she holds me close.
"No. No. Kiss me," she says.
I do. I settle between her thighs, resting my weight on my elbows this time.
For all the playing and teasing we've done, I have taken care to not end between her legs.
Whatever force drove me to take my time with her, it knew I wouldn't resist once I found a home in her, surrounded by her.
With the way my insides burn, and with the way my heart manages to make itself known despite all my failsafes, I was right.
I kiss her jaw, her neck. This is where I've needed to be. I've wanted to lay claim to moments like this with Pen, even when I didn't know it. Fuck. I wasn't supposed to want this. Now that I have it, I don't know how I ever thought I'd resist.
Her hands make paths on my skin, sneaking under my shirt, poking under my waistband.
We're kissing again but she wants more of me and, hell, I want more of her, too.
I take off her shirt. She lays back in her bra and a flowy skirt, which I scrunch up her thighs.
She's wearing biking shorts underneath, and I slide those down her legs as well.
Her skin is too glorious to be hidden under something as mundane as clothing.
I need it under my hands. Never stopping our kiss, I skim palms and fingers everywhere I can reach.
Her hands are all over me, too. My shirt is in the way, and she pulls until I take it off my back myself. She runs hungry fingers over my thick chest, and down my padded torso. Fading sunlight falls around us, casting her body in hues of orange and blue.
She bites her lip, eyes raking down my tattoos, following her own hands on me. My chest constricts. Emotions I've never known hammer against my ribcage. In another life, she would have been my wife in love.
"Are we good?" I ask.
These thoughts— they're as dangerous as ever.
After twenty years, she only expects friendship from me.
Even now. When I agreed to help her with her bucket list, I did it as a friend.
And I meant it, dammit. Allowing myself romantic feelings makes me a liar, and that's the worst I can be.
But I can't imagine anything more honest than one day loving Pen like this, too.
I don't know how to make all of this fit together.
"Yes." She digs her nails on the round of my hips. "More."