15. Penelope
His mouth is on mine and the world is reduced to two bodies and a bed and the annihilation that happens when Xander Anderson stops running and starts taking.
But my mind won’t stay in one place.
It fractures. Splits. The present and the past laying on top of each other like transparencies on an overhead projector—two images occupying the same frame, bleeding into each other until I can’t tell which sensation belongs to which boy.
Four hours ago. This same bed. Iz above me.
His hands on my face, gentle, cupping, the tenderness of a boy who holds a girl like she’s made of glass.
“Is this okay?” he whispered. “Tell me if you want me to stop.” And I said yes, and he kissed me, and his hands moved, slow, careful, asking with every inch of skin they covered—
Xander’s hand grips my hip. Pulls me against him. Hard. No asking. No whispering. His mouth on my throat, teeth grazing my pulse, the particular pressure of a boy who is marking territory he considers his.
Iz’s mouth on my neck. Soft. The trail of kisses descending, each one a question—here? and here? and here?—his breath warm, his pace dictated by my breathing, slowing when I tensed, continuing when I softened—
Xander’s mouth moves lower. Not slow. Deliberate. His hands pushing my thighs apart with the particular authority of a boy who does not ask because asking is a language he was never taught. He kneels. Looks up at me. Those ocean-gray eyes, dark now, the storm rolling in behind the iris.
“I need to taste you, Penny. I need to feel you come apart on my tongue.”
Iz between my legs. His mouth. Gentle. Testing.
The patience of a boy who reads a body like a book—slow, page by page, making sure he understood each chapter before moving to the next.
I could feel him paying attention, adjusting, the particular generosity of a lover who is more interested in your pleasure than his own—
And I stopped him.
I put my hand on his shoulder and I said “wait” and he stopped immediately—immediately, without question, without the flicker of frustration that I’ve learned to expect from boys whose bodies are ahead of their manners.
He pulled back and looked at me and said “are you okay?” and I was crying.
Crying because his mouth was kind and his hands were gentle and every cell in my body was screaming that it wasn’t right.
Not because Iz was wrong. Because he wasn’t Xander.
That’s how fucked up I am. A boy was being everything I said I wanted—slow, careful, asking—and I cried because he wasn’t the boy who doesn’t ask.
Because my body is wired to a frequency that only Xander broadcasts on, and Iz’s kindness—however genuine, however real—was playing on the wrong station.
Xander’s tongue finds me. The thought dissolves. Every thought dissolves. He doesn’t test or explore—he consumes. His tongue circling, his fingers entering me, the expertise of a boy who learned my body in a closet in October and has not forgotten a single note of the melody.
“So fucking sweet, baby.” His voice against me. The vibration of words spoken into the most sensitive part of my body.
I grip the sheets. My back arches. The sounds I make are not sounds I authorize—they are pulled from me, extracted, the involuntary confessions of a body being played by the one person who knows every string.
He brings me to the edge. Holds me there. The cruelty of a boy who wants to hear me beg.
“Does Iz know how to do this?” His mouth leaving me just long enough for the words. “Does he know how you like it when I—” His tongue does something specific and my vision whites out. “Does he know that sound? That’s my sound, Penny. Nobody else gets that sound.”
I press my face into the pillow. The climax crashes through me—total, devastating, the kind that starts in your spine and radiates outward until every nerve ending is firing and the world reduces to a single point of unbearable pleasure.
“Good girl.” His mouth moving up my body. Kissing. Biting. Leaving marks that I will see in the mirror tomorrow—purple blooms on my ribs, my hip, my collarbone. The deliberate cartography of a boy who is mapping his territory with his teeth. “Come all over my tongue like the good girl you are.”
He kisses me. His mouth tastes like me and him and the particular chemistry that exists only between us—the compound that no one else can manufacture because it requires both of our bodies to produce.
Iz held me while I cried. In this bed. Four hours ago.
He pulled the blanket over us and said “it’s okay, Penny.
We don’t have to do anything you don’t want.
” And he held me until the crying stopped and then he kissed my forehead and said “I’m not going anywhere.
” And I believed him because Iz doesn’t lie.
And I hated myself for wishing his arms were different arms. Rougher.
Bigger. The arms that leave bruises because they hold too tight because they’re afraid of losing what they’re holding.
Xander positions himself above me. Between my thighs. His forehead against mine. His breathing ragged. I can feel him against me—hard, ready, the urgency of a body that has been denied and is done waiting.
He pushes inside me. Not slow. Not gentle.
One movement that fills me completely and makes me cry out into his hand that covers my mouth—the same hand that was on my throat, the same hand that held my face, the same hand that has been the source of every pleasure and every pain in my life for as long as I can remember.
“This is mine.” His voice at my ear. Dark. Possessive. The register that lives in the part of his chest where the animal sleeps. He pulls back. Slams forward. The bed frame hits the wall. “You. Are. Mine.” Each word punctuated with a thrust.
Iz’s hands in my hair. Gentle. “You’re so beautiful, Penny.” Said like a fact, not a demand. Said like something he’d say regardless of whether I was naked or fully clothed—
Xander grabs my hip. Grips. I can feel the bruise forming in real time—the pressure of fingers that are communicating ownership through force. His other hand finds my throat. Squeezes. Not to choke—to claim. The compression that says “your breath is mine too.”
“Say it.”
“Xander—”
“Say. It. Who do you belong to, Penelope?”
“You.” The word comes from a place underneath my brain. From the body-place. The place where Xander’s frequency lives and my mouth is just the speaker.
He flips me. Face down. My hands gripping the headboard.
His chest against my back. His mouth at the nape of my neck.
His teeth sink into my shoulder—hard enough to mark, hard enough to make me gasp, hard enough that I will feel it tomorrow and the day after and every day until it fades, and even then the memory of it will pulse like a phantom bruise.
“I love watching this.” His voice wrecked. Destroyed. The rawness of a boy who has lost every mask and is operating on pure instinct. “I love watching my cock slide in and out of you. You were made for me, Penny. Every inch of you was built for exactly this.”
His hand comes down. The slap on my skin echoes in the room. The sting blooms into warmth. The warmth becomes want. The want becomes the sound I make—the whimper, his whimper, the one that belongs to him the way my pulse belongs to him, involuntary, indelible.
“More.” The word is out of my mouth before my brain catches up.
He groans. The sound vibrates through both of us. His teeth on my shoulder again. His hand gripping my hip hard enough to leave fingerprints. His pace increasing until the bed is a percussion instrument and my voice is the melody and we are making music that nobody else will ever hear.
He turns me back over. Wants to see my face. Wants to watch the expressions I make when he pushes me over the edge. His hand on my throat. His thumb brushing my lip. His hips driving into me with a rhythm that has abandoned finesse and arrived at desperation.
“Come for me, Penny.” Not a request. An order. The particular authority of a boy who has decided that my orgasm is his to command. “Right now. Let me feel it.”
The climax detonates. Full body. The kind that makes your back arch off the mattress and your toes curl and your hands grip whatever they can find—his arms, the sheets, the headboard—and hold on because the wave is enormous and the undertow is real and the only thing keeping you from drowning is the body above you.
Xander follows. Pulling out. His release on my skin—stomach, chest. Hot.
The marking of a boy who wants visual evidence of what happened here.
Who wants me to see it. Who wants the image burned into both of our memories so that tomorrow, in the daylight, when the masks go back on and the distance returns, we will both remember: this happened.
This was real. Whatever else we are to each other, this is the truth of our bodies.
Silence.
The room settles. The echoes fade. The bed stops moving. Two bodies on a mattress, breathing hard, the stillness that follows a storm when the wind drops and the trees stop bending and the damage assessment begins.
Xander gets up. Goes to my bathroom. I hear the faucet.
He comes back with a warm, wet cloth. Sits on the edge of the bed.
Cleans me—gently, carefully, the particular tenderness that is the opposite of everything that just happened.
His touch is different now. Soft. The hands that gripped and marked and claimed are now dabbing and wiping with the delicacy of a person handling something fragile.
I let him. I’m too emptied to resist. Too emptied to do anything but lie there and feel the warm cloth on my skin and the particular intimacy of being cleaned by the person who made the mess.
He pulls his t-shirt over my head. Gets back into bed. Pulls me against him. My head on his chest. His arm around me. The heartbeat under my ear—fast, slowing, finding its way back to normal.