First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (38 page)

Criticizing buildings was a hazard of the
profession.

“
Champagne?” a white
jacketed waiter asked, offering from his tray.

I nodded and thanked him, but the glass in
my hand was nothing more than a piece of my cover. Outwardly, I was
there to support my friend, but I’d come for one specific task.

I spotted Penny across the floor. All the
color returned to my world, color I hadn’t realized was missing.
Just seeing her, without any guarantee, without any clue about the
outcome, almost brought me to my knees in thanks.

Her eyes locked on mine, and her rose petal
lips parted. She’d styled her hair in stiffly sculptured waves that
swept back from her forehead. A thick silver coil curved around the
base of her throat, which constricted visibly, as though she
struggled for breath. An expanse of bare skin and cleavage showed
above the top of her strapless black gown, which fit like a glove
from the floor up. It illustrated her body like a brushstroke of
ink, and she painted the room as she walked toward me.

Before I had an answer from her, I knew I
was leaving with her. I refused to imagine any other outcome.

I drained my glass and handed it to another
waiter.

When Penny finally reached me, her
expression was tight. “Ian, what are you doing here?”

A lump formed in my throat. Ah, fuck it. If
ever there was a time to cry in public and not give a shite, this
was it. I fought through the emotional hoarseness in my voice and
manage to hold myself together. “I came to get you.”

She frowned.

“
That turned out creepier
than I intended.” I ran a hand through my hair before I remembered
that we were at a black tie event and I needed to look marginally
acceptable. “But I want you back. I want you to come with me to
Nassau. We can get a nice apartment with a pool and ocean views. We
can go on the fucking
House Hunters
show if you want. Be their token older man,
younger woman couple who can’t agree on anything—”

“
Ian…” she began, and the
doubt in her eyes killed me.

“
You said once that you
believed whatever happens between us, we would be together in the
end. I believe that, too. I was stupid. I was so fucking stupid to
say what I did to you. And to not fight harder for you. But I want
you.”

Her chest rose, her breasts swelling against
the tight top of her dress in what had to be the most
unintentionally seductive expression of emotion in history. But she
didn’t say anything, and I felt like my apology wasn’t enough.

“
I know you don’t believe
me, but I never cheated on Gena. I wish I could make you understand
why I would lie about it to Annie—”

“
Don’t.” Despite the
conviction in her eyes, her voice wavered.

The band picked up a slow song. Some old
standard that was recognizable and not at the same time. Penny
wiped at one eye with her thumb, but the tear she’d so carefully
cleared away formed again immediately. She managed a tremulous
smile and interrupted me uncertainly, “Dance with me?”

“
Of course.” It was better
than nothing. We went to the floor and found a spot near other
couples, to blend in. The moment my arm slipped around her waist
and I pulled her body against mine, I felt right, for the first
time in weeks. I prayed that, somehow, she would feel that
rightness, too.

Her hand briefly tightened on my shoulder as
we started to move to the gentle tempo of the music. She gazed up
at me, her lower lip quivering. “I don’t want to do this anymore,
Ian.”

My heart collapsed like a poorly supported
first story beneath the weight of a skyscraper of
disappointment.

“
I don’t want to be without
you,” she whispered.

Ah, if it were only that
simple, Doll.
“And I don’t want you to rush
into coming back to me.” No, that wasn’t true. I’d wanted her to
leap into my arms. If this were a movie, the romantic music would
swell, the camera would pan out as we kissed passionately on this
glamorous dance floor, and the audience would go home happy in the
knowledge that we would be together forever. I believed we would
be, but as a player in the moment, I saw the lights and the
cameras. I knew that more was going to go on behind the scenes. A
resolution to the fight that had split us up might not have seemed
important to Penny now, but it would be, and likely very soon. “I
do want you to come back to me. I would love it if you rushed. But
I want to earn your trust.”

She leaned her head on my chest. Her back
jerked beneath the palm I splayed at the small of it, and she kept
her face hidden to disguise her tears. “We have so much time to
worry about that. But the way I feel about you? It isn’t going to
go away because of a lie you told someone in your past,” she
promised. “This isn’t going to be perfect. It might take a long
time to get back to where we were. But it will be worth it. And for
right now? I just want you.”

The hurt reversed, the structure of my heart
rebuilding stronger than before. Holding back the physical reaction
to my relief, which I couldn’t trust to not be some explosive
whooping sound followed by gasping like a fish out of water, was
monumentally painful. “You have me, Doll. You’ve always had
me.”

She pulled back and gazed up at me
earnestly. “What if I said no to leaving New York? What if I told
you I wanted to stay here? That I wanted you to stay here?”

My stomach roiled with nerves. I couldn’t
walk away from the project. Not with a figure that size on the
table. But I couldn’t buy another Penny, so the money meant
nothing. “I would turn down the job.”

“
Ian…” She slowly shook her
head. “That would destroy your career.”

“
I know.” I shrugged, my
throat going dry. “I want you more.”

“
More than—”

“
More than a few million
dollars, yeah.” If I mourned for the money, it was because I
couldn’t find a way to have it and Penny both.

“
You’re such an idiot,” she
said, and it took me a breath to realize she was laughing at me.
“I’m not really going to ask you to turn down the job. Of course
I’m going with you. Do you have any idea how much snorkeling I can
do down there?”

“
Oh, you…” I had more to
say, but it got lost when our mouths met. I tightened my hold at
her waist as we reacquainted with lips and tongues. We were on a
nice, civilized dance floor. This probably counted as making a
spectacle of ourselves. I couldn’t bring myself to care.

She pulled back, her big brown eyes
glittering. “Come with me.”

I let her lead me off the floor and through
the crowd. I caught sight of Neil and Sophie on the circular bottom
step of the stairs, near the podium. He was going to make a
thank-you speech to the big name donors, most likely. That gave
Penny and me a chance to sneak off, past the coatroom and down a
secondary hall.

“
What is this?” I whispered
as we closed a set of fire doors behind us. The corridor we’d
entered was entirely dark except for the red exit
lights.

“
It’s like a conference
center thing,” Penny whispered back. “Sophie gave us a tour the
other day.”

“
What are we doing here?
Corporate espionage?” I asked as she pulled me farther into the
darkness.

“
No.” She came to stop in
front of the dark shape of a door. There was a click, and it pushed
open. “Looking for a place to fuck.”

The rush of blood away from my head should
have rendered me brain dead. She gripped the front of my shirt and
jerked me through the door after her. Whatever room we were in, it
had a conference table. Penny paused beside it and wriggled her
hips then hopped up on the table, her legs parted. She’d hiked her
dress to her waist. “I love you. And I’m so glad we’re back
together. And we’ve got plenty of stuff we still need to talk out,
but I’m asking you, please, please fuck me.”

Oh, I was going to. We needed to spend more
time talking about our problems—and I definitely needed to set the
record straight about the circumstances of my divorce—but if we got
this part out of the way, we’d both be able to concentrate
better.

Not to mention the fact that when we were
touching, when I was inside of her with her arms and legs wrapped
around me, it was as close to Heaven as I could ever get. Being
without her had been my time in Purgatory, and I was ready to
return to her grace.

I dropped to my knees and slipped her legs
over my shoulders, jerking her forward. She was still wearing
panties, a flimsy satin thong. I gripped them at her hips and
pulled hard, rewarded by a rip and a loud gasp as they were ruined
beneath my hands.

“
I can’t believe you did
that!” she gasped, but she certainly didn’t sound angry or put out
by my actions. Instead, she buried one hand in my hair to urge me
closer.

Her pussy was open and exposed for me. The
smell of her… I hadn’t been able to forget it. I’d spent miserable
nights in my bed with my cock in my hand, trying not to think of
how she tasted, how slick and hot she’d felt under my mouth. I’d
always given in and fantasized; it had been the only thing that
would get me off.

Now, she was in my hands. She was all
mine.

“
Please,” she whispered
urgently.

I bent my head and kissed her, parting her
folds with my tongue. She held the back of my head with one hand
and rested her weight on the other, her hips rocking as much as
they could in her half-upright position. I sought out her clit and
caught it between my lips, flicking my tongue over and over. As
much as I loved taking my time and savoring her, right now I just
wanted to make her come. I wanted that connection between us that I
hadn’t felt in so long. She gasped and moaned, slamming her palm
against the table and pulling my hair almost too hard. When she
broke, it was with a wail of relief that would have gotten us
caught, for sure, if there hadn’t been a loud party going on in
another part of the building.

“
I don’t have a condom,” I
said apologetically when I came up for air. “So does this work for
now?”

“
I don’t care.” She slid off
the edge of the table to stand close to me. She reached between us
to unzip my fly. “Just fuck me. Whatever happens, happens.
Okay?”

My heart pounded, and not
just because I’d been denying myself oxygen just to get her off.
Her meaning was pretty goddamn clear. There wasn’t any reason to
delay the life we wanted, now that we had each other again.
Whatever happens, happens.

“
Yeah. I’m okay with
that.”

I boosted her back onto the table, crumpling
her dress around her hips again and pressing her thighs wide apart
to stand between them. I sank into her—God, but every ripple had
been seared into my memory—and guided one of her legs around
me.

I wanted to make her come again and again,
to fuck her for hours and never stop, but we were in the middle of
a huge party. The dripping wet heat of her, after a month without
touching her skin or hearing her quick, whimpered breaths, didn’t
help. She overloaded my senses, and there was no holding back. I
shoved into her hard, my fingers digging into her hips to pull her
up tighter, and came harder than I could ever remember coming in my
entire life. At least, it felt that way as the head rush kicked in
and my cock jerked inside her, emptying me of, besides the obvious,
all of the sadness I’d felt when we’d been apart.

I leaned down and kissed her, still dizzy.
“I’m sorry. I thought that would be…better.”

She shivered, her cunt clenching around me.
“No, it was…” She sighed contentedly. “This is perfect. You’re with
me, and we’re perfect.”

I withdrew with a groan at the
pins-and-needles feeling and helped her to her feet She
straightened her dress, and we hunted for her panties in the dark.
We didn’t want to be caught by turning on a light, but it would be
rude to leave them behind. Since I had pockets, I gallantly offered
to keep them safe for her.

A loud round of applause sounded from the
atrium.

“
I should get back out
there,” Penny said ruefully. “I’m technically on the clock, and
this…”

I laughed as she reached into the top of her
dress and fished out a phone hidden in the depths of her cleavage.
She shrugged and explained, “It’s Sophie’s. Ah, shit. I missed a
call.”

I took Penny’s hand and lifted it to my
lips. “Go. We’ve got all the time in the world after tonight.”

“
Yeah.” She dipped her head,
and in the dim red light of the exit sign, I caught her smile. “We
do.”

“
You go first. I’ll follow
behind.” But I took her hand and pulled her to me for a kiss,
unwilling to let her go just yet.

The phone rang again, and I reluctantly
stepped back. “Go.”

I watched her walk away, my
heart full, my brain swimming with endorphins. Penny and I had more
to talk about. Hours of talk, and some of it probably painful. But
we were in this together. We
were
. That was all that
mattered.

I reached into the pocket inside of my
jacket. There wasn’t enough light to read the text on the little
slip of paper, which had definitely seen more wear than it had been
designed for. But I didn’t need to read it to know what it
said.

The love of your live will step into your
path this summer.

Now, I supposed I would have to start
believing in signs.