me the way you were going to touch that other woman.”
16
Penny
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.
He remains rigid beside me, not breathing.
I pull back to stare into the darkened shadows of his face. “Luca, I need to know that part of me isn’t broken. That I’m still a woman.”
“Trust me, you’re the most exquisite fucking woman there is.”
He doesn’t understand. I don’t expect him to. But this is something I want to know. I have to know. I need to determine if the tingles he awakens in me are merely surface deep.
“Please.” I place my hand on his chest. “Help me with this.”
“I don’t think I can be that man, Pen. I’m not a good guy.”
The rejection stings. Really stings.
“Okay.” I turn onto my back. I’m not going to force him into intimacy he doesn’t want. Manipulating my way into his bed is bad enough.
“You know I want you.” His voice is bleak through the darkness.
Yeah, I know. He wants me, just not the damage that comes with the package. He wants recovered Penny. Mentally stable Penny. “I said it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
I lay in silence, my despair growing teeth.
He doesn’t shift. I’m not sure if he’s fallen asleep or if he’s waiting for me to retreat to my own bed. I have no idea what he’s thinking at all. I guess it’s better that way.
“Why me?” he grates. “Why trust me with something this valuable?”
“What do you mean?”
“Intimacy. It’s…” He doesn’t continue, not in words, but his hand slides beneath the covers, his fingers raking over the top of my shirt to rest on my stomach.
“The only currency intimacy has with me is pain,” I admit. “I’ve never known anything different. That’s why I asked. I was hoping to wipe the slate clean of the bad memories.”
“What about before?” His fingertips circle delicate details over my covered abdomen. “There had to be good memories then.”
“There was nothing before. No steady boyfriend. No casual hookups. There’s only my experience with Luther.”
His hand pauses, his shock almost palpable through the seconds of thick silence. “You’re a virgin?”
“I’m far from a virgin, Luc. But before Greece, no, I hadn’t been with—”
“Greece doesn’t count,” he growls. “That wasn’t sex. That was nothing like sex.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe he’s not the right person despite my body screaming otherwise.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
He returns to his circle work on my stomach. The gentle sweep of his fingertips is contained to a small space, yet the vibrations filter much farther. I feel the tingles all the way through my chest. Down my legs.
It’s nice. Welcomed.
It’s exactly what I asked for, just in diluted detail.
He traces my belly button. Swirls intricate patterns along my covered waist. The path he travels grows over long minutes of bliss. No words. No bad memories. Just kindness and what I hope is adoration in the delicate sweep of his touch.
I crave more. So much more I squeeze my legs to soothe the unfamiliar pressure.
My pulse pounds in my ears. In my throat.
I shouldn’t want this. But I do.
I want to gorge on the kindness. To never, ever leave this moment.
The swirl of fingertips descends in minute increments, from my abdomen, to my hip, my thigh, then the hem of the T-shirt. When skin meets skin, I suck in a breath, the heated contact far more potent in its perfection.
“Too much?” he asks.
“No. Not at all.”
He skims his hand under the shirt, hiking the material gradually as he ascends. There’s nothing demeaning about it. Nothing threatening or brutal. It’s pure gentleness, the only abrasion coming from the brief scrapes of the calluses on his palm.
My heart hammers the farther he travels along my thigh. The sensations are entirely new. Slow and soft and sweet.
“You’re in control,” he murmurs. “Tell me to stop whenever you need.”
I nod into the darkness, incapable of words.
“Penny, you have to answer me. I won’t keep going unless I know you’re comfortable.”
“I’m comfortable,” I pant. “I know how to tell you to stop.”
“Good.” His touch skims to my inner thigh, the sensitive skin bursting into a valley of goose bumps.
It’s remarkable. All the tingles. The burn where his attention doesn’t even touch.
The approach to my core is painfully lethargic. He takes his time, learning every inch of me, creeping forward one minute, only to double back. Circling. Grazing. Branding.
By the time he reaches the juncture where leg meets groin I’m a mess of rampant breathing, my throat dry, my