Chapter Thirty-One
I wake up in the middle of the night, back in my room in the Emerald. On the far corner I can see my desk made of textbooks and a chopping block. A poster for Smith College chess club on the wall.
For a moment I’m not sure why I woke up. Maybe because I know this will be my last night here. No more walking through manicured bushes and stately old buildings. No more small talk with trust fund babies. I came here for the mathematics, but more than that, I came here to escape. I still don’t know where I belong, but I no longer need to run.
A shift in the air makes me hold my breath. I’m not alone in here. It’s such a small room, the door locked. There’s no way someone made it inside, especially without me noticing.
“Ramsey problems,” comes a low and familiar voice.
My heart speeds up, a thud thud thud in my ears. “What are you doing here?”
“You really think you can solve poverty like a word problem?”
When I sit up, I can see the large shadow sitting in the corner. He holds something in his hands. Not a textbook, but pieces of paper. “‘As a first step in this direction, we develop a lower bound on elasticity,’” he says.
That’s when I realize he’s holding my research paper. “That’s private.”
“Is it, though? If it’s going to be published in a professional journal? Congratulations, by the way.”
The official name on the paper is Dr. Robert Stanhope, since no serious academic journal would consider publishing work by an undergraduate. I’m getting byline credit, which is still pretty cool.
“I don’t know if I can solve poverty, but I’m going to try.”
“You could try in Tanglewood. There’s still plenty of slums and addiction plaguing the city.”
I had planned to go to Tanglewood, but only in a loose and tenuous way. It will always be my home, the city of my heart, but I wasn’t sure I could handle running into Damon Scott. Wasn’t sure I could handle having him mock me just to prove he didn’t care about anything or anyone.
It’s been months since I last set foot there. Months since I walked out of the Den, my head held high, my heart in pieces. Now that I’ve graduated, I want to go back.
Bitterness seeps into my voice. “And sit in your lap? Have you kiss my feet?”
A rough sound. “I’m sorry about what I said.”
“Sorry,” I repeat dully.
“Sorry that I was a bastard. Sorry that I’m not worthy of you.”
“Don’t mock me,” I say sharply. “Not here. Not now when there’s only two of us.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m not worthy of you, Penny. Never have been.”
“Then why are you sitting on the floor of my room, the same way you were when I was six years old.”
“Because I’m the same person I was back then too—hungry and scared and so fucking lonely I would have done anything to be close to you.”
Something fits into place in my heart, a proof that has an answer. I can’t quite trust it, though. Logic only takes me so far. There’s still enough hurt to cloud the answer. “And that makes me—what? The girl who found you by the lake? Someone who offers you a pillow?”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“What about your parties? I’m sure someone there would bring you to their bed.”
“I don’t want them. You know that. I never did.” He sets the papers down beside him. Runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it in that way that makes him not only handsome but devastating. “I never slept with anyone there.”
“Never?” I ask, amused at the idea of Damon Scott as a monk.
“I lost my virginity when I was eight,” he says, and my amusement turns to dust. “I’ve slept with a lot of people in my life. Some by choice. Some not. But when you were sixteen, I kissed you.”
My breath catches, because I remember that kiss. I can’t forget that damned kiss.
“I haven’t touched anyone since.”
“God, Damon. Why are you telling me this?”
“You know. Do you want me to beg? I deserve that. And I’ll do it.”
I make a sound of fierce denial. “Stop.”
“I’m not mocking you.” He laughs, self-deprecating. “I wasn’t mocking you then, not really. Do you know how I dream about you? About serving you? I’m always at your feet, Penny. Always beneath you.”
“So you want to serve me? You want to obey me?”
“Yes,” he says, so fervently I almost believe him.
“Come here then.”
It’s hard to be this close to him and not curl into his chest. Hard to see him smile and wonder if it’s real. It would be so easy to believe every word that comes out of his handsome mouth, but I’ve learned to be careful. If nothing else, dealing with Jonathan Scott has taught me that. With a dark sense of wonder I realize he’s left that legacy.
Damon stands and crosses the room in two long strides. There’s a man in my room. Not just any man, but one who owns a whole city. One who’s done terrible things.
One who’s saved my life.
It would be such a relief to say yes, to absolve him of everything. To hold him to my chest. To fall into his arms and let him take care of me, but I’m not that girl anymore.
“Beg,” I say instead.
Damon Scott does not hesitate. He falls to his knees in front of my small bed, his head lowered. He’s as much a supplicant now as he was a king before. “Let me touch you. Let me hold you. Let me love you the only way I know how.”
There’s a tremor in my chest, but it’s been too long. A semester since I left him. Weeks since he told me he loved me. Years since I first loved him. “What if it’s not enough?”
His voice when he speaks holds a note of fervent prayer, as if I’m more than a person. “When you were small, I loved you as a child—smart and generous. When you were a teenager, I loved you as a young woman, strong enough to face anything.”
I watch him, unable to look away, almost unable to breathe.
“When I saw you walk into the Den, I knew you were more than I could survive. You were the death of me. Every fake smile and stupid fucking laugh. Every time someone thought they were seeing the real Damon Scott. You broke everything.”
“Do you want me to apologize?”
“I want you come home,” he says, looking up. The impact of his black gaze meeting mine makes me shiver. “I’ve dreamed about you, every night that you’re not with me. I’ve wanted you for longer than is strictly legal. I need you beyond what I can endure. But that’s not why you should go.”
My voice is a whisper. “Why then?”
“Because you belong there. And if you do, I’ll spend every breath in my body protecting you, cherishing you, making sure you never need anything because you already have it.”
I have to close my eyes against the wave of desire that hits me. The promise in his voice reverberates deep in my core. “Cherishing me. That makes it sound like I’m fragile.”
“Not fragile,” he says, low and deep. “Strong.”
“Strong enough to handle what you gave me before.” In the bed and against the door. “Strong enough to want you to do it again.”
His large body jerks, as if the words are a physical blow. “Now?” he asks.
“Forever,” I tell him, and he meets me at the end of the word with his lips to mine. His body pushing me back against the bed. His erection hard against the inside of my thigh.
He kisses me as if we’ve been apart for twenty years, like we might not see each other for another twenty. He kisses me as if we have every day for eternity, slow and deep and thorough. “I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs between nips and licks as he kisses his way across my jaw and down my neck. “I swear I will.”
“There’s nothing to make up,” I say on a gasp, arching my body upward.
“Everything,” he says, tugging the shorts to my pajama set down. “Everything, everything.”
I grasp his hair, pulling him so he’s forced to look at me. His eyes are hazy with lust. I clench my fist, the pain in his scalp enough to make him gasp. He focuses on me.
“Nothing to make up,” I repeat. “This isn’t an apology. I don’t want that. This is every day. This is you and me. This is the way you love me and the way I love you back.”
“God, yes,” he mutters, and only when I release him does he lower his head.
He presses his face between my legs, breathing in as if surfacing after a long time underwater. His mouth makes open kisses on the inside of my thigh, moving closer and closer to the center before switching to the other side. When he reaches the center, he sighs—a sound so replete I feel it vibrate in my clit. He licks long and wide through my core, a languid move that makes me buck my hips.
“I love you,” he whispers, and this time I hear him.
This time I can whisper it back. “I love you too.”
He kisses me for agonizing minutes, endless hours. Until his lips are slick and his eyes dazed. When at last he enters me, I’m so swollen it feels like he barely fits. So tight that there’s strain on his face as he pushes inside. Even with the slickness of my arousal it’s hard to accept him. He rocks against me, slow and persistent.
Until finally my flesh spreads for him. I didn’t save my virginity for him. I saved it for myself. To experience this with a man who loved me, who had the courage to prove it.
The way he thrusts inside me is both worship and possession.
A private altar at which he can pray.
He pushes inside me until I’m the one begging, incoherent, made supple by his tender assault, close enough to orgasm that it hurts. He doesn’t speed up, no matter how much I urge him or rock my hips up. It’s a steady march that he uses, bringing us both to the peak. Holding my wrists down on the bed when I want to touch him. Forcing himself inside me when it’s too much. Going on forever even when I spasm and clench and cry out, breaking apart the way I broke him, becoming something new.