by K. A. Linde
“I’m not mad at you. I was worried about you. There’s a difference.”
I was mad at myself. Not at him.
I hopped out of the pool and hastily toweled off before hustling back inside to put on warmer clothes. Penn followed me as I put sweats back on, tugging a hoodie over my T-shirt and knotting my hair on the top of my head.
“Natalie,” Penn said, reaching out and stopping me in my tracks.
“It’s really fine.” I stepped out of his touch. “You’re safe. Lewis said he got you drunk. Your work meeting must not have gone that great if you had to get drunk after.”
“Work meeting?” he asked.
“Yeah…you said you had work stuff.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” I said and then thought back on our conversation. It slowly dawned on me. “No, you didn’t.”
“I had a meeting with an old friend. I would have rather been working for how well the meeting went. Lewis and I went out after. I honestly thought I’d have one beer, but he kept me out.”
“Oh. Who was the friend?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“No one important. Someone I knew from college. She said she wanted to meet with me about my book project but spent more time catching up.” He rolled his eyes. “So, will you accept my apology?”
She. Hmm…I wondered who this mysterious old friend was. Not that it was anything I should wonder or care about. He was back and trying to apologize. I should just accept the apology and move on. I was really upset with myself for doing exactly what I’d told Amy that I’d do.
“Okay,” I finally said.
“Will you let me make it up to you?” he asked, tilting my chin up.
“I’m really not in the mood right now,” I whispered. “Plus, the decorator should be here soon.”
“Tonight then,” he insisted. “I’ll be here. I’m not leaving. I’ll make up for last night.”
I should say no. I should say that he had nothing to make up for. I should tell him that we should stop doing this. But I said none of those things.
I just nodded. “Okay. Tonight then.”
I felt like a sucker to my own heart. And the way he made it beat.
* * *
Anxiety raced through my brain as the sun went down, and the time was approaching to meet Penn. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get in too deep, and here I was. I’d known I couldn’t make it happen. I should have listened to my instincts.
What was going to happen when I left after the mayor’s election party? There was no future here for us. And I didn’t know if I wanted one even if there was. I was falling for him, but could this ever be serious? I didn’t know. And I hated thinking about it.
“Natalie?” Penn called.
I was standing in the bathroom, staring at my reflection. I’d gotten all dolled up last night for him. I’d been so excited for our celebration. But these worries made me wonder if I should end it where I stood. Make it easier on both of us. Even if it was the last thing I wanted.
“Nat?” He strode into the master and saw me standing in the bathroom. He looked gorgeous. Blindingly beautiful. Those eyes. Those magnificent blue eyes that seemed to see right through me. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and slid his hands into his pockets.
“Hey,” I said.
“Everything okay?”
That one question, and I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. I wanted to be present. I wanted every moment I could get from him while I still could. Even if I went home later without him, I didn’t want to regret a second now.
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Just deciding on lipstick. Red?”
He shook his head. “Wear the pink.”
I furrowed my brows at him. I knew that he liked the red lipstick. Red was sexy and let his filthy mind work. Pink was soft and pretty. Not our casual relationship at all.
“I’ll let you finish,” he said. “Meet me out back.”
I nodded and watched him disappear through the doorway. He confused me. Pink lipstick? Was it not that kind of celebration?
Hmm.
I applied a layer of the pink matte that was normally my go-to color. Then I grabbed a long cardigan with fringe at the bottom to ward off the cold and slipped into my moccasins before heading out of the bedroom.
I found Penn on the back deck and sucked in a shocked breath at the sight before me.
“Is that a telescope?” I gasped. “I love telescopes!”
He grinned devilishly. “I used to be mildly obsessed with the stars when I was a kid.”
“Did you want to be an astronaut?”
“Didn’t everyone?”
I laughed, letting all that anxiety fall off of my shoulders. This was Penn. If I’d realized anything in the last couple of weeks, it was that he had a knack for making me forget my worries.
“I also have pizza,” he said.
He moved to the table, which I hadn’t even noticed with the excitement of the telescope. He opened the box to reveal pepperoni and sausage from my new favorite place in East Hampton.
“Bribes now, huh?”
“Hey. It’s not a bribe. It’s an apology.” He reached out for a bottle of wine and pulled the cork on it. “This too.”
He poured each of us a glass of red. I gratefully took mine and sipped on it. God, it was smooth and just a little sweet. Perfect. Probably cost a fortune.
“Can I reiterate that I’m sorry about yesterday?” Penn said.
“You can, but you don’t have to.”
“With anyone else, I’d agree. It’s never been me to care about this sort of thing, but I have been trying to be better. Trying to reach a happier life. And breaking plans with you or making you worry does not make me happy.”
“I see that this is an ethical dilemma for you,” I teased.
“Of sorts. I care about your opinion of me. And I don’t want to damage it.”
“No damage done.”
Penn searched my face as if he wanted to believe what I was saying. I thought for a minute that he was going to say more. As if he had something on the tip of his tongue that he needed to confess, but it disappeared completely.
“All right then.”
We finished off half of the pizza before I all but dragged Penn to the telescope. I put my eye to the eyepiece and looked at the great field of stars before me.
“Orion?” I guessed.
“Well, I thought I’d start easy.” He used a red flashlight to show me Orion’s belt on a star map.
Boy had come prepared. It was hot in such a nerdy way.
“Please, let’s try something better.”
I consulted the star map before moving the telescope to a different point of reference. “In Greek mythology, there’s a story that, when Mount Olympus was being attacked, Aphrodite and Eros fled by tying themselves together, changing into fish, and throwing themselves into a river. The act was commemorated by putting a pair of fish into the sky.” I glanced back up at him and offered him my place.
Penn raised his eyebrows in surprise and then looked down into the telescope. “The fish. Pisces, of course.”
“The very end of the zodiac. And not the best story if you ask me, but I claim it anyway.”
“You’re a Pisces?” he asked, glancing up at me.
“Oh, yeah. My birthday is February twenty-eighth. I fit it a hundred percent. Water sign—swimmer, romantic, dreamer. What’s your birthday?”
“June twenty-first.”
“Summer solstice,” I said in surprise. “On the cusp of Cancer or Gemini?”
He shrugged. “I always claimed Gemini.”
“Yeah, you aren’t much of a Cancer. But Gemini. Huh.” I took his place at the telescope and began to maneuver it.
“What?”
“I just would have pegged you as a Sagittarius with your love of philosophy.” I offered him the telescope again. “Here, take a look. Gemini has a much better story. The twins, Castor and Pollux, were the sons of th
e queen of Sparta. They weren’t real twins really. Castor, the queen had with her husband, the king of Sparta, but Pollux was an immortal born of Zeus. When Castor died in the Trojan War, Pollux asked his father to make him an immortal, so they could live out their days as brothers for all of eternity. Instead, he put them both in the sky as twins truly.”
“How do you know all of this?” Penn asked. His eyes were wide and speculating. “Here I thought, I’d be the one showing off my knowledge. Who knew that you would completely trump me?”
“Well, most kids get bedtime stories with fairy tales and nursery rhymes. I grew up on horoscopes and the stories behind the constellations.”
“That’s kind of amazing.”
“Eh,” I said with a shrug. “My mom is really into New Age stuff. Hence the ritual burning you unceremoniously walked in on. No matter what you do…some of it manages to stick with you. Plus, I aced my mythology class in college.”
He laughed. “I bet you did. That actually sounds like such an interesting background. I can’t imagine the things that you learned from her. Can you read my palm or tarot cards or a crystal ball?”
“Whoa there. Crystal-ball reading is serious work.” I giggled as I watched Penn adjust the telescope for himself. “But yeah…I could probably read your palm, and it’s been a while for tarot cards for me. People usually get mad when I read for them anyway. I predict a lot of death.”
He snorted. “You’re something else.”
“Fact.”
“Here, look at this one. I thought of you when I picked it out.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A half-circle of stars like this,” he said, pointing it out for me. “It’s Corona Borealis and supposed to be a crown.”
“Do you know the story?” I asked.
“I do. Do you?”
I grinned up at him. “Tell it to me anyway. I want to know why you picked it for me.”
“Well, as much as I remember, when Theseus defeated the Minotaur, he ran off with the guy’s daughter.”
“Ariadne,” I filled in.
“Yes. But Theseus leaves her, and she’s left crying in despair. But a god finds her and falls in love. He presents her with a crown, and she threw it up into the sky when they were married.”
“I do love happy endings,” I said. “Not your typical tragedy. Is that why you thought of me?”
“I thought of you because of this.” He removed a thin blue box from his coat pocket and tried to pass it to me.
“Um…what is that?”
Tiffany blue box. Holy shit. What the hell?
“Open it and see.”
“Uh…”
“Here.”
He pried the box open, holding it out for me. Inside was a linked silver chain with a circle on one end that read Tiffany & Co. New York with a toggle on the other end that connected to the circle. And dangling from the chain was a delicate silver crown.
A crown to match the constellation I had just found in the night sky.
Natalie
26
“I can’t accept that,” I said at once.
“Yes, you can.”
“If this is part of your apology, it’s way too much.”
“I’m not apologizing, Natalie.”
Penn took it out of the box, scooped up my wrist, and attached it there. The crown dangled from my wrist, and it felt perfect. I’d never in a million years thought I’d own something from Tiffany. And I had no idea why I did right now.
“Then…why?” I managed to get out.
I’d been unsuccessfully trying to convince myself to dump him because my heart was in too deep. I couldn’t fathom a reason for this.
“This isn’t casual for me,” he responded.
“It isn’t?” I dragged my eyes up from the beautiful bracelet to his baby blues.
“No. It was never casual for me.”
“But…I thought you wanted it to be casual.”
“You suggested it after weeks of trying to avoid me. I wasn’t going to say no. I went along with what you asked because I didn’t want to scare you. But I don’t want to pretend anymore.”
“So…what do you want?”
“I want to be with you, Nat.”
“You want…to be…with me,” I said incomprehensibly.
“Yes. I messed up the first time around. I should have never let you go in Paris.”
“Then why did you?” I gasped out.
I could barely understand what he was saying. It felt too surreal to me. There was a ringing in my ears. Something that told me this was impossible. Guys like Penn Kensington didn’t want girls like me. No matter that we worked so well together. No matter that the sex was beyond incredible. No matter that we had matching interests.
I hated to admit it, but it made more sense when he’d abandoned me that day in Paris than that he wanted me now.
“I was a twenty-three-year-old idiot.”
“Obviously,” I said. “I mean…you had sex with me and then abandoned me. I was eighteen, and you took my virginity and then disappeared. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”
Penn’s eyes rounded in shock. “Wait…what did you just say?”
“I was eighteen,” I said, realizing that I had told him the thing I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t.
“You were a virgin?”
“I mean…”
“Natalie?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“Why would you go back with me?”
“Hey, don’t blame me!”
“I’m not blaming you. I just can’t believe it. No wonder you were so mad at me all these years. What a way to end that night for you.”
“Ha,” I said humorlessly. “That was only half of it. You told your maid to let me out, and she called me trash and kicked me out on the street.”
“I never told her to make you leave,” he said in shock. “I didn’t even see her before I left.”
“Really? She made it seem like you’d told her to act that way.”
“I have very little memory of that morning,” he said solemnly. “Mostly just getting on a plane and rushing home.”
“Why?” I waited anxiously for the answer I’d wanted all these years. It wasn’t enough for Penn to tell me he wanted me. I had to get all of this out in the open. Without the truth, I didn’t know if I could trust myself or him enough to do this. “Why did you leave that day?”
Penn glanced at the floor and rubbed the back of his head. He leaned against the deck wall, sighed, and then looked at me. “It was the day my father died.”
My jaw dropped. “Oh my god.”
“I should have woken you up and told you. But everything was a blur. I just jumped on a plane and left.”
“You do not have to apologize for that.”
My heart was racing as I restructured everything that had happened that night and processed it over again with this new information. It changed everything. Yes, he’d still been a dick for not waking me up and telling me he was leaving. It was a shitty thing to do. But…if my dad had died, I couldn’t say that I would have thought to wake him up. I’d been so mad for so long. And now, it had all come down to this moment.
I released the anger. Released the mistrust. Released it all.
Then, I moved forward and kissed him.
He leaned into me, his lips soft and inviting. None of the casual playfulness we’d had for the last couple of weeks. This was deeper, better. A hundred times more intense.
His arms wrapped around me, dragging our bodies tight against each other. My fingers tangled in his hair. His dug into my back. My body responded instantly to his touch. To the soft caress of his tongue against mine. The way he moved it to tease my bottom lip and then drag it between his teeth.
I whimpered softly at the touch.
He pulled back and pressed his forehead to mine. “Does this mean you’ll accept the bracelet?”
I laughed. “Yes, I guess I will.”
“Good. Do
es it mean that we’re no longer casual?”
“Were we ever?”
He nipped at my bottom lip and grinned. “Good.”
Then, he lifted me up into his arms and carried me back through the house and into the bedroom.
“We couldn’t have just had sex out there?” I suggested as he kicked the door closed behind him.
“Too cold for you to be naked.” He dropped me onto my feet in front of the bed. “And I want you completely naked.”
“You owe me at least twice,” I reminded him.
“Oh, I remember.” He tossed his jacket to the floor. “Slow and steady first. And then hard and fast. Just how you like it.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it hard and fast,” he said, nuzzling into my neck and making my legs go weak.
“I do,” I agreed easily.
“But not right now.”
He spent careful time removing my moccasins and then my hippie cardigan before tugging my dress over my head. His hands grazed my body as he slipped my panties down my legs. But, before he could push me backward, I started in on the buttons of his shirt. Pushing each one through its hole and then finally slipping it off of his shoulders. I moved to his pants, dragging the zipper to the base and letting them fall off of his narrow hips. I was as anxious to get him naked as he was for me. And I wasn’t satisfied until I stripped him out of his boxers, leaving us both completely in the nude.
“You’re so beautiful.” He traced his thumbs over my nipples before dragging one into his mouth.
I tilted my head back and moaned softly at the feel of him. Everything was suddenly heightened.
My hand swept down to his cock. I wrapped my fingers around the base of him and then moved it up to the head. He sucked in a breath as he sucked in the other nipple, savoring the taste of me. I wanted to do the same.
I ran my thumb across the head and felt a bead of pre-cum wet the tip of my finger. He lengthened further in my hand, and, god, I just wanted to taste him.
Penn bit down on my nipple, and I arched back, achingly tender and wanting more. His hand moved from my breast to between my legs where I was already wet for him.
Before, he might have just scooped me up and buried himself deep inside me. Forgotten the world for a while as we lavished in each other’s bodies. But not tonight.