First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (39 page)

Bad breakup, new Penny.

That’s when I saw Ian. Standing across the
room, a glass of champagne in his hand, decked out in a tuxedo that
made him look like James motherfucking Bond.

I felt like I’d been shot.
This was so unfair. Why now? Why when I’d just gotten my confidence
up? Why on the very day I’d listened to the progression of his
messages from “Hey, Doll, I
love
you,” to “Hi Penny, I
loved
you?”

But, for as handsome as he
looked, he also looked really miserable.
Good.

A part of me hoped that he would pretend he
hadn’t seen me, and we wouldn’t speak. Another part of me
desperately wanted him to approach.

The former part was disappointed, as my feet
moved without permission from my brain or heart. My first instinct
was to run from the hurt I knew I was about to feel, but even in my
wounded and heartbroken state, I knew that was ridiculous. So,
rather than turn in the other direction, I met him on the other
side of the dance floor.

He looked even better close
up, where I could gaze into his gorgeous green eyes and remember
the width of his shoulders.
Take me back.
Please, take me back
, I wanted to say, but
what came out was, “Ian, what are you doing here?”

What do you think he’s doing
here? He’s Neil’s friend.
I don’t know why
I hadn’t anticipated this.

Were Ian’s eyes actually watering? “I came to
get you.”

Okay. There were definitely less alarming
things to say to your ex-girlfriend.

“
That turned out creepier
than I intended.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it from
it’s perfectly combed state. “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…” I interrupted him,
but I didn’t have anything to say. I just didn’t want him to keep
dangling that hope when I couldn’t even believe if this was really
happening.

“
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.”

I took a breath so deep and sudden I worried
that Rosa’s double-sided-tape trick would fail me.

“
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.” I didn’t want to
hear about this. Not when my brain and my heart were going
head-to-head. Whatever was in his past was in his past. It was over
and done with, and it couldn’t hurt me. And though I had nothing
but my trust in him to guarantee that he would be faithful, that
trust was so strong, I wondered how it had ever faltered. I wiped a
tear away from my eye with my thumb and cut him off. “Dance with
me?”

He accepted my invitation with a quiet, “Of
course.”

The band was playing that old standard, “I
Wanna Be Around”, which was the most horribly inappropriate song to
heal a breakup to, but I didn’t care. The moment his arm encircled
my waist and he pulled me against him, everything I’d felt for him
roared back to life like a fire out of control, burning me up with
fear and sadness and exhilarating joy. It was all too much, and I
gripped his shoulder as we started to move, as though by physically
holding him, I could keep him forever. “I don’t want to do this,
anymore, Ian. I don’t want to be without you.”

“
And I don’t want you to
rush into coming back to me.” He paused. “I do want you to come
back to me. I would love it if you rushed. But I want to earn your
trust.”

I leaned my head on his chest to hide my
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,” I 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.”

“
You have me, Doll. You’ve
always had me.”

Relief overwhelmed me. I lifted my head and
asked, “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?”

There was no question in my mind that I was
going. But I wanted to know if this was conditional. If it was, I
didn’t know how I would feel.

“
I would turn down the job,”
he answered without hesitation.

“
Ian…” I shook my head. What
a stupid, impetuous man I’d fallen for. “That would destroy your
career.”

“
I know.” He shrugged. “I
want you more.”

“
More than—”

“
More than a few million
dollars, yeah.”

Holy shit. I hadn’t realized
he was going to make
that
big a commission. And he was willing to turn it
down to be with me?

All I’d ever heard, my
entire life, was how much I cost. My private schooling, my braces,
the amount of cereal I went through in a week. How little my job
made. How important it was to find a rich man, a nice house. I’d
never heard anyone say I was
worth
something.

“
You’re such an idiot,” I
blurted then laughed. “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…” he started, but
he leaned down to kiss me, and that was all that mattered in the
world. His arm around me tightened, and my mouth opened under his.
We weren’t dancing anymore, just standing there, lost in each
other.

I was still technically at work, and I really
couldn’t be doing this. At least, not in front of all of these
people.

But it wasn’t like the first floor wasn’t
full of brand new, totally unoccupied conference rooms.

I pulled back and looked up at him, naughty
bravery swelling inside me. “Come with me.”

I dragged him off the floor, hoping we
wouldn’t look too conspicuous cutting through the crowd that was
gathering at the base of the stairs. It was almost time for Mr.
Elwood to thank everyone. I’d overheard him practicing his speech
with Sophie shortly after we’d first arrived. We had some time.

Ian and I hurried past the coat chec,k and I
pushed open one of the doors that closed off a hallway. It was dark
inside, lit only by the red exit signs above us and at the far
end.

“
What is this?” Ian
whispered as the door shut behind us.

I hoped they didn’t lock. But that was a
problem for future Penny.

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

“
So, what are we doing
here?” he teased as we waded farther into the darkness. “Corporate
espionage?”

“
No.” Wasn’t it obvious? The
nearest door was unlocked, and I pushed it open. “Looking for a
place to fuck.”

I grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him
inside with me. I jerked my dress up to my waist and hopped up on
the table. “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.”

Sure, there were other things that needed our
attention. Like working out my trust issues and his need to lie to
keep everyone happy. I didn’t want to think about that until later,
when my body wasn’t so hungry for him.

I thought he would push my panties to the
side and slip into me. Instead, he dropped to his knees, hooked my
legs over his shoulders, grabbed the sides of my panties, and
ripped them off.

Oh my god.
“I can’t believe you did that!”

I didn’t even care that they were a favorite
pair. I gushed at the desperate need in the gesture. “Please,” I
begged him, and his tongue swept over me, between my folds. I
braced myself on one hand, so I could stay upright, but the other
sank into Ian’s hair, holding him tight to me. He sucked my clit
into his mouth and started the flicking motion with his tongue that
always pushed me over the edge.

It was a good thing there was a party going
on outside, because I couldn’t keep quiet. A mixture of desire and
happiness and relief wrenched from my throat in moans and shouts. I
pounded the table with my palm and jerked Ian’s hair so hard I was
sure I hurt him. I came with a long, loud wail, flashes of light
behind my eyelids.

Ian lifted his head, gasping for air, and I
almost came, again, just from the sound. It was less sexy when he
said, “I don’t have a condom. So does this work for now?”

No. Not even a little. And that wasn’t the
only thing that influenced my decision. I wanted my life to be with
him. Everything had moved so fast already, did it really matter if
we threw caution to the wind and let fate decide when our next big
step came?

“
I don’t care.” I slid off
the table and stepped up close to him, reaching down to unzip his
trousers. “Just fuck me. Whatever happens, happens,
okay?”

He hesitated for a frozen second. He said,
“Yeah, I’m okay with that.”

My heart clenched. I actually kind of hoped I
would get pregnant tonight. Not because I thought it would keep us
together, but because I was so damn impatient to get the future
we’d planned, then abandoned. Sure, it was unrealistic,
hormone-fueled, and probably a terrible idea. But it would be some
conception story.

He helped me onto the table,
my already rumpled dress irrevocably creased where it was caught
between us. He spread my thighs, then he was inside of me, all of
him in one deep thrust. He pulled one of my legs to lock around his
back, sinking deeper. But before we could even get going, it was
all over for him. His fingers dug into my hips and he pounded into
me, so hard it hurt, and I welcomed it. Every sensation grounded me
in the reality that this was actually happening. We were
us,
again. I felt him jerk
inside me, and the wet burst that came on the heels of his deep
groan.

“
I’m sorry,” he said,
slightly breathless. “I thought that would be…better.”

I almost laughed at him and his sense of duty
when it came to sex. He was still throbbing in me, spiking pleasure
through me with every twitch of his cock, and he was apologizing?
“No, it was…” I sighed to release some of the happy pressure in my
chest. “This is perfect. You’re with me, and we’re perfect.”

He pulled out with a pained noise, and a
trickle of wetness followed. I thought of walking back out to the
party bare beneath my dress, my thighs sticky with evidence of what
we’d been doing in here, and I felt like the sexiest woman who’d
ever lived.

The party!
I was supposed to be out there, available if
Sophie needed help remembering names or something. Ian helped me
find my panties, and he kept them. Because he was nothing if not a
total perv.

And I loved him. I loved him so much, I
wanted to run around in circles, shouting about it. But, at the
moment, I had my job to do. “I should get back out there. I’m
technically on the clock, and this…”

Ian laughed at me as I struggled to free
Sophie’s phone from my sweaty cleavage. I would definitely use a
sanitizing wipe on it before I returned it to her. I shrugged.
“It’s Sophie’s. Ah, shit. I missed a call.”

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

“
Yeah.” I looked down, a
smile bending my lips. “We do.”

“
You go first. I’ll follow
behind,” he suggested, but he didn’t release me. He pulled me in
for another kiss, which I happily accepted. A few seconds more
couldn’t hurt.

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

I lifted my skirt up to better run in my
heels. I could only imagine what I would look like when I emerged
in the atrium. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Ian and
me, and all the changes we had ahead of us.

I couldn’t wait to see what they were.

There are two sides to
every story…

Read
First Time (Ian’s Story)

By Abigail
Barnette

The
Boss

The
Girlfriend

The
Bride

The
Ex

Bad
Boy, Good Man

Coming soon

A new chapter of the
internationally bestselling Sophie Scaife series

The Baby

November 2015

Abigail Barnette
is the pseudonym of
Jenny
Trout,
an author, blogger, and funny
person. Jenny made the
USA
Today
 bestseller list with her debut
novel,
Blood Ties Book One: The
Turning. 
Her
American Vampire 
was named one of
the top ten horror novels of 2011 by 
Booklist 
Magazine Online. As
Abigail Barnette, Jenny writes award-winning erotic romance,
including the internationally bestselling
The Boss
series
.