Chapter Three
C haz.
Oh, my god, even his name is too young for me! Except that he wasn’t as young as she’d thought… if he was telling the truth.
He was sweet.
And oh my God! So sexy!
At first, she’d thought it had been an accident. His touching her when she leaned over him in the car. She’d been worrying that her pit check hadn’t been enough and then she’d felt his hand on her back… and then... lower.
Neither time had been an accident.
And then in the store, it had taken all the self-control she could muster not to back up against him – the tiniest bit.
He could not have been any more different from Kent.
And Kent was the only man she’d been with in over fifteen years!
Penny hadn’t had boyfriends in high school, and the relationships in college before Kent had been more about experimentation than anything else.
She’d never even had the chance to consider what it would be like to be with somebody like this Chaz kid.
Except… he didn’t seem so much like a kid anymore. There was something in his eyes – not sadness but wisdom.
Which made no sense at all.
She needed to stop thinking about him. Of course, he was only playing with her. He was a pilot, or had been anyway.
Pilots were the cockiest species of man that existed.
And he was a flirt.
Oh, yeah, he’d wanted to have a little fun. He’d mentioned he was bored, hadn’t he? Nothing like stirring up the old girl next door.
Penny stripped her clothes off and climbed into the shower.
She rubbed soap over her neck and arms and let the hot water cascade down her body.
Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help recalling the moment they entered the store. It had felt so very, very good when he’d put his hand on her back. When his fingers caressed her stomach… He’d done it so tenderly…
She hadn’t imagined the heat coming from him, his strength and what had felt like protection. He’d stirred more than sexual arousal in her. He’d awakened her need for human contact, damn him.
Inexplicably, she choked on a sob.
Being touched, barely touched like that, ought not to affect her like this.
Crumpling under the weight of unwanted emotion, she slid down the tile and then huddled on the floor.
Water pelted her from above.
Another sob, another.
And suddenly she let out a wail.
She’d put all of that behind her. Feeling like a woman, feeling just a little bit beautiful, worthwhile… like she mattered.
It shouldn’t hurt like this.
Feeling again.
But she was. Both hurting and feeling. She let the water roll over her. She’d not cried in a lifetime. She’d been pretending everything was okay, living the only way she could.
Weeping pitiably, she didn’t stand back up until the water turned cold.
“Fuck!” She fell forward and crawled out from under the spray. “Fuckity frick flipping frack!”
Nothing like a cold shower to bring her to the end of her bout of self-pity.
She shampooed, rinsed, scrubbed, and climbed out as quickly as possible. By the time she wrapped herself in her big towel, goosebumps covered her skin.
She was okay though.
Now that that was over.
As she padded, barefoot, across the old wooden floor toward her bedroom, she bit her lip and then changed her route to head for the office. Shadows filled the room, light from outside barely filtering in through the curtains and the blinds. She didn’t flip the light switch on.
Was he in there now? She adjusted her towel.
Probably sleeping. He’d probably come home, taken a pain pill and then passed out on the bed.
She peeled back the curtain just a few inches and peered through the bent slats of her blinds.
Not sleeping.
He was sitting on the bed, kind of sideways, but away from her, wearing…
Nothing!
The only thing covering the lean sinews of his muscles and all that beautiful skin was that damn bandage.
He stood up and lifted one foot to the bed. Long and powerful, the muscles in his legs just as defined as his chest, and arms, and abs…
Penny slid the curtain open wider and pushed the blinds aside. His head bent, his face was turned away from her.
He could not see her from where he stood. She was safe.
And then he reached down. What on earth? Oh, God, he’d taken hold of himself.
A cloud moved and the sunlight hit him perfectly. His manhood jutted out and upwards. Penny swallowed hard and shifted uncomfortably.
Was he doing what she thought he was doing?
Just then his head tilted back and his arm began moving in a suggestive manner. Penny froze. She should step away from the window. She should let the window coverings fall back into place and leave the office.
Right now – this very instant!
But she couldn’t.
Her feet refused to step back. Her hand refused to release the blind.
She just stood there, watching the muscles of his arms and throat as he tensed and stroked.
She imagined his cock, purple and angry, straining upward beneath his hand. He might be moving his thumb in tiny movements around the tip. Feeling a little short of breath, Penny shifted again and her towel loosened.
She ignored it.
Heat spread to her center and an urgent pulsing between her legs grew in intensity.
Almost without thinking, she allowed her hand to drift downwards – past her belly – into the soft tuffs of her hair – lower.
The sensitive flesh there was already wet and swollen.
Next door, in the room across the way, his movements quickened.
She licked her lips and began rubbing herself, slowly at first – and then faster. It didn’t take long for her strokes to match the rhythm he’d set.
Gazing into the window from beneath heavy lids, Penny could barely focus now. And then his hips jerked forward. Her towel dropped to the floor but she didn’t care. He couldn’t see her. It didn’t matter that she was standing, naked, leaning into the glass.
The light was off in the office. This wasn’t real. It was as though she didn’t exist.
She didn’t want to stop.
She didn’t want him to stop.
The speed of his motions increased in vigor and intensity. Penny could barely stand up. Her legs had turned to jelly and her knees nearly buckled, but she was so close. She continued watching him, touching herself, moving in concert with his pace.
Penny imagined it was him touching her, and her touching him. Tension grew. All of her energy, all of her concentration, focused on the touch of her own hand and the vision that was Chaz.
She reached up with her other hand and rubbed, squeezed, and then pinched her breast.
At the same time, he jerked fast, fast, and then hard forward, the muscles in his neck straining.
She fantasized him coming inside of her, his cock reaching for her womb, spreading her, filling her.
She pressed hard against herself and rubbed at her breast frantically.
As the tension exploded, she panted and strained. She didn’t want to close her eyes, but couldn’t keep them open a second longer. Too much sensation!
Wave after wave swept through her.
Holy heck! This was… crazy.
And then, breathing hard, she realized she was leaning heavily against the edge of the window.
What if the glass had broken? Shattered, causing her to tumble to the ground below?
Guilt seeped in slowly. Was she really this deprived? This depraved? She’d acted like some sort of a nymphomaniac!
A boneless, exhausted nymphomaniac.
She dropped to her knees on the towel and peered across to the other window again.
Chaz was bent over, resting his good arm along his raised knee.
Penny watched him, just a second more, and then allowed the curtain to fall back into place.
***
Chaz smiled to himself as he watched the blinds drop and the drapes close, covering her window once again.
The angle of the mirror provided him with a perfect view of her.
Absolutely perfect.
He’d just been about to lie down when he’d caught her peeking through the blind again. She’d looked all dewy, obviously fresh from a shower. Her hair was wet, falling in glistening spirals over bare shoulders, and her feminine curves barely covered by a miniscule towel.
He couldn’t help himself.
And holy hell but apparently, neither could she.
He’d been right. Miss Penny the Divorcee most definitely needed to get laid.
Even with the painkillers he’d taken lately, he’d had no problem jacking off. Not with her standing there – watching him, moving with him, touching herself. The more she’d gotten into it, the more of the blinds she’d inadvertently pushed aside. After a few minutes, he could see from the tops of her knees to the top of her head.
When that towel had dropped, it had revealed skin that was creamy and pink, and oh, so wonderfully woman.
Such a fucking turn-on!
Chaz hadn’t known where to look. He loved watching the expressions cross her face but he couldn’t help but focus on her hand reaching between her legs. He could imagine her thumb swirling around her clit and her fingers reaching higher inside of that wet velvety comfort he wanted to plunge into.
And when she’d reached up and touched her breast, he’d lost it. Gone right over the edge.
His climax had shaken him in its intensity.
He cleaned himself and climbed into bed. With his sexual energy spent, the pain throbbing in his shoulder demanded his attention again.
This time, though, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see flashes of flames and dust and smoke and body parts flying through the air with metal artillery.
He didn’t dwell on the fact that he’d possibly never climb into the cockpit of a fighter jet again.
And he didn’t find himself fighting the desire to take another painkiller to make it all just go away.
No, he pictured a woman with curly blond hair and eyes that flickered green one second and brown the next.
Feeling relaxed and sated, a few of his demons fled.
No problem falling asleep this time. No problem at all.