First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (17 page)

“
Can I tell you something?”
I asked, even though I’d always thought that was a really stupid
phrase, because you were going to tell the person whatever it was
you wanted to say, anyway. “Something that might sound…too
soon-ish.”

His body tensed; I realized he might be
interpreting my question as me asking permission to tell him I
loved him. I wasn’t that foolish. It was way too early to love him,
but I did. Telling him that I did? Wouldn’t improve the
situation.

“
Yes?” he said cautiously,
as though he weren’t sure of that answer.

I turned my head to look him in the eye. “You
are a really great guy.”

He dropped his head, and he blushed. I loved
that.

“
You are,” I insisted.
“You’re funny, and you’re very good-looking, you’ve got a sexy
accent—”

He made an incredulous noise and slid his
wine glass onto the table. “If you like Scrooge McDuck.”

“
And,” I said forcefully,
steamrolling over his interruption. “You did something really
thoughtful for me, and I know you did it without any expectation of
getting something in return.”

“
How do you know I wasn’t
trying to get something in return?” he asked, then hastily added,
“I wasn’t, but how did you know that?”

“
Because you’re not as good
at putting up a front as you think you are.” I covered his hand
with my own where it rested on my shoulder. “You’re a good man, and
that shows through. Even if you think you’re hiding it under all
that self-deprecation.”

He looked up, smiling in surrender. “All
right. You caught me. I just wanted to make you happy.”

“
And that’s why I’m not
scared of how fast things are going.” That had been the part I’d
feared was too soon, but I was glad I said it.

“
Oh?” He looked relieved.
“Well, that wasn’t as serious as I was expecting.”

“
I know what you were
expecting. And I liked watching you squirm.” I wasn’t going to lie
and tell him that I didn’t feel it yet, and I wasn’t going to probe
around to see if I could get a hint that he felt it, either. If we
were meant to be, we’d eventually say the I-love-you words. We
didn’t have to rush.

“
Penny, I have to ask you
something.” He brushed his thumb over the back of my hand, and my
lungs stopped pumping oxygen and started flooding my veins with
sparkles, instead.

“
Are you
ticklish?”

The question was out of left field, and in
the moment it took me to process what he’d asked, he attacked with
his free hand, burrowing his wriggling fingers into my side. With a
glass of wine in one hand and the other firmly in his grip, there
was nothing I could do but cackle helplessly and try not to
spill.

“
The wine! The wine!” I
gasped.

“
Oh, fuck, I forgot.” He
relented and reached for his own glass. He took a deep swallow, as
I recovered, and he set the drink back on the table. He took my
glass and placed it beside his own, and I thought,
this is it. Make out time.
Instead of romancing me, he dove back in to torment me,
tickling my sides as I gasped in hysterical laughter. Over the
shrieks and squeals involuntarily wrenching from my vocal chords, I
managed to hear him tease, “You wanted to watch me squirm, I get to
watch you squirm. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

My struggling and his pursuit somehow ended
with me on my back, my elbows tucked tight to my sides, and him
looming over me with a knee between my legs. Through my helpless
laughter, I shouted, “There are better ways of making me
squirm!”

I froze as I realized what I’d just said. He
froze, too. We probably didn’t stare at each other any longer than
a heartbeat, but it felt like a long time, with the way the
pressure between us built. Then it burst. I lunged up, and he dove
down, and our mouths were together, my hands in his hair, his body
braced above mine with a forearm on the back of the couch.

Maybe it was the tension we’d been fighting
against since our first kiss. It certainly wasn’t the few sips of
wine. It might have been the octopus, at least, on my part. I
didn’t really care what was causing this to happen, only that it
was happening. He slid an arm under my back and pulled me up, and
we clumsily arranged ourselves so that I sat straddling his
lap.

This close, I could hear his breathing, and
it was an indescribable turn on. I’d imagined what it would be like
to have sex with him at least six times a day for the past week,
but being this close to him, even just making out, was a little
intimidating. He was way more confident than anybody else I’d been
with. I didn’t feel like he was rushing through perfunctory steps
to try to get to the finish line. When he skimmed his fingers down
my throat, it was as though he savored just touching me.

He made me feel like a woman. Not a conquest.
And no man had ever treated me that way before.

In the intimate position we
were in, it wasn’t hard to imagine being naked, writhing on top of
him. That was a dangerous picture in my mind.
You only have to wait until Monday for your answer. Do you
really want to blow it this close to the finish
line
?

And at this point, my chastity did seem like
a marathon that I was desperately trying to finish. I’d never
bought into the whole “your virginity is a gift” mindset that my
mother had tried to push on me. If I had sex with Ian, I wasn’t
giving anything away. It would be celebrating something with him,
something I had deemed him worthy of sharing, in a way no other man
had been worthy. And I wanted that celebration to be because of
love, not horniness. Well, horniness, too. Love and horniness—the
two weren’t mutually exclusive. But I wanted to know those feelings
were returned, or that they would someday be returned.

The surefire way to not have sex tonight
would be to tell him I didn’t want to have sex tonight. With as
cautious and respectful as he was, I couldn’t see him letting me
change my mind in the heat of the moment if he knew I hadn’t
planned to go all the way before we’d started. I pressed my hand to
his chest. “Just to be clear…tonight is not the night. Do you get
my drift?”

He didn’t crack a joke or display even the
slightest hint of annoyance or disappointment. “I do. We are
absolutely clear.”

“
Good. But…that doesn’t mean
I don’t want to make you feel good.” I petted the front of his
shirt then thought,
what the
hell
, and popped the top button.

“
You’re making me feel
pretty fucking good right now, Doll.” He kissed my neck at the
intersection of my shoulder and collarbone. I whimpered.

“
You know what I mean.” Oh
god, his lips were so soft and warm, and they felt amazing on my
skin. “Can I?”

He shuddered out a long breath. “Jesus,
Penny…do you think I could turn you down?”

The hand at my back bunched up my shirt, then
slid beneath. He hooked a finger under my bra-strap. “Is this too
forward of me?”

“
Not at all. I can take it
off.” My breasts ached in anticipation. I didn’t even have to move
to get rid of the bra. He popped the closure as easily as snapping
his fingers and splayed his palm against my back.

He buried his face in my hair then murmured
against my ear, “You smell like flowers.”

I leaned into him, tilting my head to the
side as he nibbled the shell of my ear. I was so sensitive I swore
I got drunk on the feeling. He sucked the lobe into his mouth and
grazed it with his teeth, and I moaned.

“
I’ve been wanting to do
this,” he rasped against my neck as his kisses moved downward,
“since we kissed in the park.”

“
And since the pool?” I
added with a breathless laugh.

He chuckled. “Then, too. Giving you that kiss
on the cheek after lunch on Wednesday? Was the biggest test of my
willpower to date.”

“
Well, please don’t exercise
any restraint, now.” The hand on my bare back moved beneath my
shirt, then under my unfastened bra to cup my breast, and my
ribcage rose on a shuddering inhale.

His lips hovered over my
collarbone above the V-neck of my shirt, and his voice rumbled a
long, low, “Mmm,” against my chest. He lifted his head and met my
eyes, his full of naked adoration that seared like a brand across
my heart. I bent forward and took his face in my hands. He played
his fingers across my skin and gave me the sweetest, deepest kiss
of my life, and all the while my head spun with thoughts
like,
Is this really happening?
and
Holy shit, this is
really happening.

When I’d walked into the restaurant on our
first date, I would have never guessed, never in a million years,
that we would ever end up in the situation we were in. I remembered
standing on the sidewalk, wondering if I would even be able to
force myself to find him physically attractive. Now, all I wanted
to do was to rip his shirt off and get my hands on every square
inch of him.

“
Can I unbutton this?” I
gasped against his mouth, tugging on his shirt.

“
Be my guest.”

My hands fumbled between us, and I opened his
shirt enough to slip my hands inside. That was all I needed, to
feel the hot skin and crisp hair on his chest, to be able to lean
down and kiss his throat, up to his jaw.

If I was going to grade Ian’s groping
technique, he definitely would have gotten an A-plus. He didn’t
attack my chest like he was trying to adjust a car’s air
conditioning, but he stroked me like a painter’s brush, the backs
of his fingers along the curve of my breast. He drew circles around
my nipple, always with a feather light touch. He could have given
lessons to all my exes who had manhandled me in the past. He was so
slow and careful I lost all sense of time. I lost all sense of
everything but him, his mouth, his hands, the way his breath
sounded in my ear and the way his stubble scratched my jaw. His
skin tasted salty under my tongue, his mouth like the wine.

We were both sweating and gasping when I
climbed off his lap. I pressed my hand against his obvious
erection, and his penis flexed upward as if it could meet my palm
through the denim. “You unzip. I don’t want to be held responsible
for any accidental maiming.”

“
Christ, I hope you’re not
speaking from experience.” He laughed nervously.

“
No. Caution.” I held my
breath as his hands moved to his fly. It’s odd to see a guy’s penis
for the first time, because once it’s out there, there’s really no
going back. You see it, and you can’t unsee it.

I really hoped he had a nice one.

“
This is always a
nerve-wracking moment,” he said under his breath.

“
I promise I won’t laugh,” I
swore.

He rolled his eyes as he pulled down his
zipper. “Thank you. Your confidence is very reassuring.”

“
No, I meant—” My giggle cut
me off. I reached down and brushed his hands away, and reached into
his open fly.

He’s a boxers man.
I reached for the top of them, and the head of his
erection was already poking out, obscured by the tails of his
shirt. He took a breath as I curled my fingers around the shaft. He
was nice and thick—from my understanding that was very
important—and longer than my average experience.

“
See, nothing to worry
about,” I said, pumping my fist back and forth a little. I pushed
his shirt up and his boxers down. “Oh my gosh, and you’re
uncut!”

“
And that’s a plus, is it?”
he asked with a weak laugh.

“
Yeah, I’ve never been with
a guy who wasn’t circumcised.” I slid my hand up experimentally and
watched his foreskin roll over the head. “Is there anything I have
to do differently?”

I was going to check out some online
tutorials as soon as I got home.

“
No, no, that’s… What you’re
doing… Keep doing that.” His arm tightened around my
back.

It was much easier than with a guy who was
cut; I didn’t feel like I was churning butter. I could just lay
there, in the crook of Ian’s arm, my head on his chest, listening
to his heartbeat speed up and the changes in his breathing as I
touched him. When he started kneading my hip in rhythm with my
strokes, I knew I was on the right track.

I sat up, so I could use my other hand, too.
I dragged them both up and gave a lazy twist, rubbing his foreskin
over the tip and drumming my fingers along the underside.

“
How’s that?” I asked, but I
knew how it was. I’d never had a complaint before, and even with
the whole uncut curveball I’d just been pitched, I knew my way
around a dick pretty well.

“
Jesus.” He blew out a long
exhale. “You weren’t joking at the park, were you?”

“
I would never make a
promise I couldn’t deliver on.” I squeezed my thighs together
against the ache between them. I was so wet I wondered if I would
soak my jeans. What could I say? Getting a guy off made me feel
horny and powerful. I was going to change the batteries in my
vibrator when I got home and probably come in thirty seconds
flat.

“
Ah, Penny. That is…” He
groaned. “I’m a bit embarrassed, Doll. I don’t think I’m going to
impress you with my staying power tonight.”

Oh god, maybe ten seconds flat. Nothing made
me feel sexier than having a guy this helpless in my hands.

“
I wouldn’t expect you to.”
I licked my lower lip. “I’m very good.”