Cora
My breath caught in my throat when his callused hand went to the hem of my shirt.
“You can tell me to stop, Cora. And you know I will. But I’m begging you not to.”
He was so close that I was hopeless to prevent my body from responding. The hum hit me with a deafening force, tingling my skin as though the air between us had become electrified.
I peered up into hooded, blue eyes. “I don’t think this is going to fix anything, Penn. We have too much stuff to worry about.”
Okay, not totally true. Jumping him right then and there would have done wonders to fix the ache between my legs, but it wouldn’t have changed who we were.
Or who we weren’t.
“That’s because there’s nothing to fix. And stop worrying. I’m right here.” He slid my tank top up a few inches, revealing my stomach. “So I’m going to repeat: You can tell me to stop, Cora. And you know I will. But I’m begging you not to.”
“I don’t want you to stop, Penn. I’ve never wanted you to stop. Even when you did.”
His eyes got soft.
And then I lost sight of them altogether.
His lips came down, sealing over mine, crumbling the resistance I’d never had.
He kissed me breathless, even more so than the first time I’d tasted him. His mouth opened, our tongues gliding together, stealing my thoughts—and fears.
Pressing up onto my toes, I circled my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss until I decided I couldn’t get close enough and started climbing up his body.
He palmed my ass, lifting me off my feet. My legs curled around his hips, a moan escaping as I found glorious friction against his stomach.
I waited for him to fall back, take me to our mattress on the floor, and erase the last few weeks of blistering pain with nothing but his body.
Instead, he murmured a curse and started walking with me held tight in his arms.
“Where are you going?” I murmured, moving my affections to his neck.
“I heard Drew snoring through that door last night. I’m not going to be quiet, Cora. And I sure as fuck don’t want you to be, either.”
I smiled when I realized we were in the bathroom. He kicked the door shut and set me onto my feet. He went straight to the giant jetted tub and flipped the faucet on. My stomach dipped at the idea of riding him with the water sloshing waves around us. However, like a tornado, he spun around the room, hitting the shower—both heads—and the sinks on the double vanity until I wasn’t certain if we were going to have sex or flood the building.
“What are you doing?” I laughed.
He put his hand to his ear and then tossed me a wink. “That should be good enough.” Curling a finger at me, he said, “Come here, baby. I want to show you something.”
My cheeks heated as I sauntered toward him.
He pecked me on the lips and once again caught the hem of my shirt. “May I?”
I lifted my arms above my head. “Such a gentleman.”
“For now.” He smiled, tugging the fabric over my head and tossing it absently across the room. Raking his teeth over his bottom lip, he stared down at his finger as he traced the swells of my breasts.
Goose bumps pebbled my skin as a chill ricocheted through me. I hissed, my lids fluttering shut, when his callused finger dipped inside the cup of my bra and brushed against my hard nipple, sending sparks straight to my clit.
“Oh, God,” I breathed.
He moved to my other breast, repeating the mind-numbing process as he proved he was a multitasker by unhooking my bra at the same time.
“Show-off,” I murmured, allowing it to fall down my arms to the floor.
I felt his smirk as he trailed kisses up my neck to my ear, where he rasped, “Give me your hand.” I offered it palm out, and he placed it on his chest before ordering, “Now, give me your other hand.”
I followed his direction and this one landed on my naked breast.
He covered my hands with his own, using our connection to kneed and rub. “How does that feel, baby?”
I arched my back and tried to slide out from under his grip. “Better when you do it.”
“No. How does it feel? Two chests, but they’re different, right?”
My eyes popped open and I swallowed hard. “Penn…I—”
“Shhhh.” He lifted the hands we’d had over his heart to his mouth and kissed each of my fingertips, rubbing the last back and forth over his bottom lip. “What’s this, baby?”
“Your mouth.”
He smiled, moved my hand off my breast, and plucked my nipple—rough and intoxicating. “And this?”
“My nipple,” I replied breathlessly.
“So we have my mouth and your nipple. Two very different things. Let’s see how this works out between the two of them.”
My lungs burned with anticipation as he slowly sank down, his blue eyes aimed up at me, and sucked my nipple between his lips.
“Oh, God.” I used his shoulders for balance as I swayed on boneless legs.
Lost in sensation, I closed my eyes, but he pulled his attention away all too quickly.
“No, Cora. I want you to look at me. I want you to see exactly how beautiful different can be.”
I cried out in the most incredible mixture of pain and pleasure as his teeth raked across my sensitive flesh, which he followed with bold caresses of his tongue swirling and soothing.
His eyes were locked on mine, beautiful, hypnotic, and powerful, and he greedily switched his focus to my other breast. That first nip ignited a fever across my skin, heating me from head to toe.
Nipples to clit.
“Penn,” I begged, his intentions being clear when he thankfully started on the button of my jeans. I worked with him, shimmying them down my thighs as best I could without breaking the connection of his mouth at my breast.
I’d just stepped out of cumbersome denim when he swept my panties aside and trailed his agile finger over my slit, dipping into the wet without pressing inside.
“Yes,” I hissed, spreading my legs, silently asking for more.
It was an offer he accepted with enthusiasm, slipping two fingers inside me.
“Oh, God, baby, yeah, please, yes,” tumbled from my lips in a string of incoherent ramblings.
“My fingers and your heat, Cora,” he murmured against my breast. “You feel that?”
“Yes.”
He curled his fingers, stroking and coaxing my release to the surface. “Does different feel good, baby?”
“Yes,” I replied wantonly, only capable of single syllables.
“Different feels good, huh?”
I moved my hand to the back of his head, urging him to take more of my breast. His mouth opened wider, and he sucked me deep. His approving groan vibrated my nipple, sending a sinful charge roaring through my already blazing body.
“Very,” I answered.
I silently lamented answering him when he suddenly rose to his feet and stepped away.
His smoldering gaze raked over me, an arrogant smirk pulling at his lips. “She fucking looks like this and is freaking out like I’m the prize.”
My cheeks heated under his praise.
“And she’s cute.” He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and shoved them down, his long and thick erection popping free. “Mmmm,” he hummed, drawing my attention back to his smiling face. “And she looks at me like that. Jesus, woman. You’re going to kill me.”
“Well, technically—”
“You make any kind of joke right now about me already being dead and I’m putting my shorts back on.”
I flashed him my own arrogant smirk and shrugged. “Well, Penn is already dead, sooo…”
He shook his head and mumbled, “And she calls my bluff.”
I laughed as, all at once, he scooped me off my feet and carried me into the shower. It was so big that there wasn’t a door or a curtain. There was a head on each end, raining water down from the ceiling. But I was eyeballing the long bench that ran the length of the wall.
He set me onto my feet under the spray and grabbed a bottle of body wash off the stone shelf in the corner. “I need a shower. And to fuck you something fierce, but first, we need to finish out the discussion about us being different.”
My stomach dipped, and my nipples peaked. “I think I like your differences game more than Truth or Lie.”
“Me fucking too,” he replied, doing a quick scrub-a-dub-dub routine before turning his soapy hands on me.
I smiled, giving him my back, but his hands went right back to my breasts.
“I’ve missed showering with you. I’m always so much cleaner when you do it,” I said.
His chest hit my back and the whiskers on his chin tickled as he peppered kisses up my neck. “I don’t know about how clean I’ll get the rest of you, but these”—he rolled my nipple between his thumb and his forefinger—“will be spotless.”
“Mmm,” I moaned, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. The water poured down over us, rinsing the soap away as the pressure between my thighs swelled like a wave ready to crash.
“Give me your hand, Cor.”
I obeyed immediately, eager for where this one was going to land. He shifted to my opposite side and guided my fingers between my legs. The air tore from my lungs as I found my clit, the gripping sensation building in my stomach.
“What do you feel?” he whispered, nipping at my ear.
“Me,” I replied, lulling my head to the side to rest on his shoulder.
His fingers joined mine, teasing and playing before entering me slowly, stretching with deliberate intent.
My hand stilled as I folded forward, gasping for air—and release.
“Don’t stop,” he demanded.
I was panting, close but so far away from any kind of release, when he guided my free hand to his length, wrapping my palm around his shaft and folding his on top.
The sexiest hiss sailed from his lips as I slid him through my fist. The muscles in his chest strained against my arm as we worked his length together.
“What do you feel?” he asked in a husky voice.
“You,” I replied, tilting my head back, asking for a kiss.
His lips came to mine, but not for a kiss. He thrust his finger deep inside me, inciting an explosion of pleasure that shook the Earth. Releasing his length, he snaked his arm around me to keep me on my feet and whispered into my open mouth, “Different can be beautiful. We came from different worlds—I will give you that. But I lived in yours, and now, you’re going to live in mine. Because we belong together.”
“Penn!” I cried, my orgasm rearing up.
His finger pumped inside me, twisting and turning as he drove me to the edge. He nipped at my bottom lip. “We earned this. You and me. We earned this feeling, right here, right now. And we earned it in the hardest fucking way possible. It wasn’t easy and I don’t suspect it ever will be, but dammit, we’re gonna be together.”
I swallowed every one of his words.
They tasted like hope—my greatest enemy of all.
“Please, Penn,” I begged, the curling ache of need pulsing to the point of insanity. I needed him. I needed him in so many ways. The void only he could fill within me wasn’t just sexual.
It was in my heart.
It was in my soul.
It was in my being as a whole.
It was just him.
That’s all it had ever been since the day we’d met.
Shane. Penn. I didn’t care. It was just him.
He continued, emotion overtaking him, filling not only his words but his movements with a desperate urgency. “We were the only truth that mattered in any of this. We earned this. I won’t lose that. I won’t lose you.”
“No!” I cried when he suddenly withdrew his fingers as I was teetering on the edge of orgasm. But I had no time to complain because, in one fluid movement, he spun, sank onto the bench, pulled me down into his lap, his front to my back, and impaled me in the most erotic experience of my life.
“Penn,” I choked out as the orgasm tore from my body like it had been ripped from my soul.
He roughly closed my legs, holding them shut with his thighs. Then, circling his arms around my waist, he used his upper-body strength to fuck me from the bottom with the hard and fast rhythm of determination. My clit rolled between my clenched thighs, sending me higher and higher through the volatile peaks and valleys of ecstasy.
“I love you,” he growled, his fingertips biting into my hips as he drove into me. “I love you so goddamn much. I will not give up on us again. Promise me you won’t, either. Promise me, Cora.”
I was coming down from one orgasm and could feel him swelling impossibly harder as he started his own climb to the top. The last thing I wanted was for his desperation to linger when he got there.
I felt beautiful with him.
I felt safe with him.
I felt loved with him.
I always had.
And the blood hummed in my veins in a way that I knew it would never disappear.
Not with him.
“Stop,” I breathed and it was like I’d flipped a switch.
His legs opened, his arms fell away, and he leaned back so not even his chest was touching me.
God. This man.
This sweet, sweet broken and beautiful man.
The one who loved me and had only been trying to take care of me—albeit a little misguided sometimes. And yeah, so what—he was loaded and liked skiing. I liked money, and while I’d probably break my face on a slope, I’d be more than happy to drink hot chocolate and watch him.
There was no denying that we came from different worlds. But he’d never judged me or made me feel bad or dirty about where I’d come from. And I had a sneaking suspicion that it didn’t matter whose world we settled in as long as we were together.
“I’m sorry,” he said as I climbed out of his lap, the steam from the shower causing my skin to pebble.
I turned around, finding his strong and handsome face filled with apology.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine.” I smiled, putting a knee on either side of him and then climbing back into his lap.
He brushed my wet hair off my neck and then traced it up to cup my cheek. “Jesus Christ, you scared me.”
I leaned down to peck his lips, where I murmured, “Come back inside me, baby. I just wanted to have this conversation face-to-face.”
His eyes darkened, and he didn’t delay in guiding his length into my opening. Holding his gaze, I sank down, slow and steady.
He bit out a curse as I took him completely—base to tip.
“Fuck, Cor,” he murmured, leaning forward for a kiss I denied him.
“Promise you’ll never lie to me again.”
He stared back at me, hope filling his eyes. “I swear.”
That one was easy. I feared that the next one might be where we ran into issues. “And promise me you won’t kill Thomas.”
His whole body jerked. “Cora, I—”
“I can’t chance losing you again. I just can’t.” Tears welled in my eyes. “You promised you wouldn’t lie to me. So if this is what you’re planning—”
“Hey, hey, hey. Shhh… Relax. I’m not going after Thomas again. It’s not worth it. He’s not worth it. But we are, okay? We’ll figure it out. As long as he can’t touch you, I’ll learn to accept whatever happens to him.”
It was my turn to jerk. “That easy?”
He scoffed. “No. There was nothing easy about this decision. But living without you for the last few weeks, then getting you back… Well, it’s put some serious shit in perspective for me.”
“Was I the serious shit or the perspective?”
His lips twitched. “Both, smartass.”
I smiled and it forced a tear from each of my eyes.
He groaned and brought his hand up to clear my face. “Any chance you can stop crying and talking about Thomas while my cock is inside you? There is a solid chance I’m about to go limp.”
Laughing, I leaned forward and kissed him, deep and reverent.
“And one more thing,” I murmured.
He rolled his hips, proving that there was nothing limp about him. “Make it fast, baby.”
“When this is all over and you buy us a completely ostentatious house, I want a shower like this one. And—okay, so two more things—you have to promise that River can paint stars on the ceiling in her room.”
Penn was rugged and handsome—the picture of pure masculinity. But, right then, a huge boyish grin lit his face. “You moving in with me?”
I shrugged. “You kinda burned my apartment down.”
“I did,” he said proudly. “I so fucking did.”
I lost his length as he stood up, but I gained so much more as Shane Pennington—my Penn—laid me down on the tile floor of his shower, the warm water flowing over us and washing the lies down the drain, and made love to me for the very first time.