Magnificent Bastard

by Lili Valente

  Bash: farting cat emoticon

  Penny: That’s cute. And mature.

  Bash: farting dragon emoticon

  Penny: Where do you get those? I need them for my phone. I have a couple of younger friends who are obsessed with emoticons.

  Bash: I’ll send you a link.

  Sleep tight, buttercup, and thanks for checking in.

  It means a lot.

  Penny: Of course. Anytime, boss. I’ve got your back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Checking in to the cottage couldn’t be easier—the keys are waiting in a basket on the porch when we arrive—and the setting is as stunning as it looked in the pictures. The cottage sits on a rise at the edge of a vineyard with a sweeping view of the vines stretching away toward the main house and the sea beyond. The rear of the cozy, white, almost painfully cute structure is shrouded by ancient oak trees with gnarled trunks and limbs covered with bright green spring leaves that seem to promise it’s never too late for a fresh start.

  Penny, however, is not in such an optimistic frame of mind.

  “We should go home,” she says, her voice thick though she stopped crying not long after I pulled away from the station in our rental car.

  “We are not going home.” I tug my laptop from my briefcase and glance around for some sign of the Internet access code, determined to start searching for dirt on Phillip as soon as humanly possible. “We’re going to stay and make that cock juggling thundercunt wish he’d never pulled the shit he pulled today.”

  “It’s pointless. He’s too good. I forgot how good he is. God, I’m so stupid.” She drops her suitcase to the hardwood floor just inside the front door with a thunk, takes five steps, and collapses face down onto the yellow couch in the center of the room.

  And there she lies. Unmoving. Like a very nicely dressed corpse.

  She doesn’t stop to take in the sunny yellow kitchen to our left or the back deck overlooking the woods or to peek into the bedroom, where a fluffy white bed is waiting to welcome travelers in need of rest.

  Or of a hot and heavy dose of afternoon delight.

  But I didn’t even mention stopping by a drugstore on the way to the cottage. Getting into my pants is obviously no longer on Penny’s radar. Phillip killed our afternoon of sex-capades. It’s enough reason to hate him if I didn’t have plenty of other reasons already.

  But I do. I hate his cheesy haircut, his smug smile, his attitude of absolute entitlement, and his mile-wide mean streak. But most of all, I hate what he’s done to my friend. Penny is no longer the vixen who rode my face in our private train cabin. She is decimated, wrecked, all her joy and fighting spirit sucked away by the first meeting with her evil ex.

  Yes, Phillip was terrible, but this isn’t the Penny I know. She doesn’t give up when the going gets tough; she digs in until she gets my schedule nailed down, the proper forms filled out, the clients talked down from the ledge, and the retainer fee deposited two weeks prior to the start of a new client orientation.

  I snap my laptop shut and drop it on the entryway table, deciding that getting the dirt on Phillip can wait.

  Arms folded at my chest, I cross to stand beside the couch, staring down at Penny’s inert form. “You are not stupid. And you’re not a quitter, either. So come on. Get up. Let’s talk strategy.”

  “Discretion is the better part of valor,” she moans, her face still pressed into the couch and her voice muffled by the cushions.

  “It’s too late for discretion. We’re already here and the enemy has been engaged. Now there’s no choice but to pick up our weapons and storm the shoreline.”

  “I can’t,” she says, still not moving a muscle. “I’m just going to die here on this couch. Use my savings to pay the cottage rental fee through the end of the summer. I should have decomposed enough by then for someone to come fetch the body.”

  My lips curve up on one side. “I imagine the cottage has other bookings that might interfere with that solution. And you’ll ruin the couch if you decompose on it.”

  “Then wait until I’m dead and you can drag my corpse into the forest for the animals. They get hungry around here. All the rich people lock up their trash.”

  I prop my hands low on my hips with a sigh. “I’m not dragging you anywhere, buttercup. You’re going to get up, shake this off, and get back in the ring. Come on.”

  “No,” she moans.

  “Yes,” I insist. “Get up. Right now.”

  “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair.”

  “On your feet, Pickett,” I demand, delivering a swat to her ass that finally gets her face out of the cushions.

  “Ow!” She rolls over to shoot an outraged glare in my direction. “That hurt!”

  “Had to get through to you somehow,” I say, knowing I didn’t hit her hard enough to do even momentary damage. When it comes to spanking, I’m no amateur. “You need another to get you out of your pity puddle?”

  Her eyes narrow as she sits up, tossing her hair out of her face. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Why not?” I step closer, forcing her to tilt her head even farther back to maintain eye contact. “Might take your mind off your troubles. Haven’t you ever wanted to be turned over a man’s knee? Have your pretty ass spanked until you realize how pleasurable a little pain can be?”

  “Maybe at some point in time, yes. But not right now, Sebastian,” she snaps, surging to her feet, her face flushing with anger. “Now, when I feel small and stupid because the man who helped destroy my life cares so little about me that he still wears the shirt I gave him to pick up friends at the train station. Do you have any idea how that feels?”

  I hold up my hands, palms up. “Relax, okay? I wasn’t trying to—”

  “I will not relax,” she snaps, fingers curling into fists at her sides. “And I’ll tell you how it feels. It feels like being slapped and then having the person who’s supposed to have your back offer to slap you again to make you feel better.”

  My lips part, but she’s already barreling on.

  “It feels like running away from the playground to punish your mother for ignoring you only to come back three hours later and realize that she didn’t even know you were gone because she’s passed out drunk in the car with some guy who isn’t Daddy Steve.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say gently. “I really am.”

  “Well maybe I don’t care,” she says, pitch rising as tears fill her eyes. “Maybe I’m sick of people saying they’re sorry and people not saying they’re sorry and being jerked around by everyone because I don’t know how to play the stupid games.”

  “I’m not playing any games, Penny, I’m just—”

  “Oh, shut up, Bash,” she shouts. “You’re all about games. Like that shit by the train this morning, acting all aloof and then staring at that stupid woman’s stupid boobs just to get a stupid reaction out of me.”

  “I get that you’re angry,” I say, my own volume building. “And you have every right to be, but it’s not me you want to lose your shit on.”

  “I’m not losing my shit!” She lifts her hands, shoving both palms into my chest with surprising strength.

  Unprepared, I stagger back a step, but she doesn’t stop coming.

  “You’re a jerk!” she sobs, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You think you know everything, but you don’t.” She shoves me again, but this time, I’m ready for her and hold my ground.

  “You don’t know anything!” she snaps, putting so much force into her next shove that her feet completely leave the ground. “You have no idea what it’s like on this side of your stupid business!”

  She goes for me again, but this time, I catch her wrists and haul her to my chest. “Then tell me, Penny. Tell me what it’s like.”

  “Let go.” Her expression twists with anger as she tries to squirm her hands free, but I’ve got too firm a grip. “Let me go!”

  “Not until you tell me what it’s like,” I insist, tightening my grip. “Tell me w
hat I’m missing. I’d truly like to know. I’d also like for you to stop lashing out at me when I know for a fucking fact I’m not the one you’re angry with.”

  “Screw you, Bash,” she says, aiming a kick at my shins that I dodge. A moment later, I’ve swept her feet from beneath her and taken us both to the floor.

  “Screw you,” she growls again as we land and I roll on top of her, pushing her arms over her head, pinning her wrists to the carpet.

  “If you insist,” I say, crushing my mouth to hers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  For a split second, Penny goes stiff beneath me, but when my tongue traces the seam of her lips, demanding entrance, she opens with a sob I feel echo through all the tight, aching places in my chest. And then suddenly she’s kissing me with the same passion with which she was attempting to kick my ass.

  Her tongue wages wild, hungry war with mine, flooding my mouth with the taste of champagne and sadness and this woman who is so much more than anyone gives her credit for. Our teeth grind together through our lips and it hurts, but this pain is so much better than all of the emotional shit.

  This pain is going to lead to pleasure. The other will just suck her down to the bottom of a dark hole she might never crawl out of.

  She doesn’t realize it, but I know exactly what she’s feeling. I never let myself cry, but after it had ended with Rachael, I spent my share of hours lying on my couch wondering if there was any point in getting up.

  What was the fucking point? I didn’t want Rachael back anymore, but I didn’t want anyone else either. I didn’t ever want to expose myself to that kind of hurt again. The first time I’d been a naïve fool walking a tight wire, ignorant of how far there was to fall. No woman had ever broken me, so I’d assumed I couldn’t be broken. I’d thought I was invincible and then Rachael had proven I wasn’t.

  Not even close.

  Now, two years later, I still haven’t had the guts to get anything but my dick involved in an intimate relationship, and Rachael was just a woman with a weakness for assholes. She wasn’t cruel or manipulative and she sure as hell never would have alluded to our sexual history in front of a woman I was presently dating.

  Penny has every right to be having a come apart. And though I might not be the person she’s angriest with, she wasn’t talking pure nonsense, either.

  “I’m sorry.” I work the words in between kisses as I release her wrists, moving my hands to cup her breasts through her dress, squeezing each phenomenal handful. “You’re right, I was a jackass. You made me take a hard look at myself last night and I didn’t like it, so I took it out on you this morning.”

  “I don’t want to talk.” Her breath comes fast as she fumbles with the buttons of my shirt. “I want you naked and inside me. Right now.”

  “We still don’t have condoms,” I remind her even as I help her finish the buttons and shrug my shirt off my shoulders.

  “I’m on the pill. I didn’t want to risk it before, but as long as you swear you’re clean.” She works frantically at my belt, fingers brushing against where I’m marble hard, diamond hard, titanium hard. The sexual tension we stoked into a roaring fire in the train car combines with the wild, unsettled feeling swirling through my chest to make it absolutely imperative that I get inside of Penny.

  But something about this doesn’t feel right.

  “I was tested last month,” I assure her. “And I haven’t had sex without a condom in years, but—”

  “No buts.” She grabs the hem of her dress, squirming on the floor until she’s able to pull it over her head and toss it aside. “Just fuck me, Bash. Fuck me right now.”

  And then she’s lying beneath me in nothing but that black lace bra and her barely there silk panties, reaching for me, and I forget everything but how much I want her. Need her. Need to remind her that the world is as full of pleasure as it is pain.

  My lips slam back onto hers. I kiss her with all the hunger roaring inside of me as I slip my hand down the front of her panties, groaning when I feel how ready she is. She’s hot and lifting into the fingers I stroke inside her with an abandon that makes my cock throb with its own painful heartbeat.

  “Now,” she pants against my mouth as she hooks her toes in the top of my boxer briefs and pushes them down over my ass, freeing my swollen length. “Now, Bash. Now!”

  “Wait.” I pull my hand from between her legs, not wanting our first time together to be on the floor with her bra and panties still on and my jeans around my knees.

  But then her hand is between our bodies, wrapping around my dick, and rational thought becomes a slippery thing to hold onto. She yanks the crotch of her panties to one side and fits the head of my cock to where she’s so wet. Suddenly I’m skin to skin with a woman for the first time in years and it’s Penny, this woman who drives me absolutely out of my mind with lust, and control is a thing of the past.

  With a groan of surrender, I thrust forward, sinking into her inch by inch and God she feels so good. So perfect. She’s insanely tight, her body pressing in on my cock from all sides, gripping me so fiercely I know I’m going to have to pull it together and slow the hell down or I’m going to go in ten seconds like a fucking teenager.

  “Yes,” she hisses, her nails digging into my shoulders. “More. I want more. Give me all of you.” Her heels dig into my ass, pulling me closer, deeper until I’m buried to the hilt in her pussy and it feels like she’s about to squeeze me in half.

  I know I must be hurting her, at least a little, but she clearly doesn’t want this slow and easy. She’s already grinding against me, silently urging me with each shift of her hips to take her, fuck her, ride her until I make her forget all the things she wants to forget.

  And suddenly—just like that—I realize what’s wrong.

  “Wait.” Pinning her hips to the floor with one hand I pull away to look down at her, but her eyes are closed. “Look at me, Penny.”

  “Please, don’t stop,” she begs, her eyes squeezing tighter together. “Please don’t. Please.”

  “I’m not going to stop, but I need you to look at me,” I say, sweat breaking out between my shoulder blades and the heavy, aching feeling in my balls edging closer to pain than pleasure. It’s taking all my will power not to move, not to thrust into her again and again until we both explode, but I’m not going to fuck her like this. “Please, buttercup, look at me. Open those pretty eyes.”

  Her lips press into a thin line and the furrow between her brows deepens, but finally, after another long, silent, aching moment her lashes sweep open. Her gaze meets mine, pulling me into the center of her storm, into the middle of the hurt and the regret and the fear that nothing is ever going to make it all go away. It’s a sad, scary place, but I know we don’t have to stay there, not if she’ll let me take her somewhere better.

  “From now on, I don’t want you to think of anything but me.” My free hand skims from her waist to mold to her ribs, silently letting her know that I’ve got her. “This isn’t about forgetting something or someone else. This is about learning how it’s going to be with us.”

  Her breath rushes out. “I-I don’t know if I can,” she whispers, swallowing hard.

  “Yes, you can, just keep your eyes on me.” I slide her bra strap down her shoulder, baring one of her breasts, holding her gaze as I find her tight nipple and roll it gently between my fingers. “Do you know how much I love your breasts?”

  Tongue slipping out to dampen her lips, she shakes her head slightly from side to side.

  “I am obsessed with them. They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” I bring my thumb to my mouth and sweep my tongue across it, loving the hunger that flickers in her eyes as I return my newly slick fingers to her nipple, upping my pressure. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, I wanted to touch you like this. I took one look at you and knew you were the kind of woman who was going to bring me to my knees.”

  “Liar,” she says, but the furrow between her brows has vanished and I can
tell her attention is shifting.

  “I’m not a liar.” Slowly, deliberately, I bare her other breast and begin to give her other nipple the same attention. “I would beg, borrow, or steal to get these in my mouth again and as soon as I make you come the first time, it’s going to be your turn on top. I want to feel you grinding on my cock while I lick and suck and bite you, right here.” I pinch her nipple, making her breath catch, before resuming my slow, firm circles. “I want you to ride me while I worship your breasts until you come so hard you can’t hold yourself up and then I’ll have my turn on top again. Because I want you so much, I know I won’t ever want to stop.”

  “You’re still good at that,” she breathes, hips rolling against mine.

  “You like dirty talk?” I force myself to remain motionless, even though my spine is buzzing with an overload of sensation and my cock is pulsing angrily inside her, desperate to move.

  “When you do it.” Her hands smooth around my waist to cup my ass as her movements grow increasingly urgent. “You give really good dirty talk.”

  “It’s just the truth.” I match the circles of her hips, keeping my cock buried deep as I nudge my pubic bone against her clit, knowing I could become addicted to the way her eyes melt as she begins to unravel. “I’m crazy for your body and your mind and I can’t wait to watch you come. Are you going to come for me again, Penny? Are you going to come on my cock?”

  “Yes,” she gasps, lashes fluttering. “Yes!”

  “Don’t close your eyes,” I beg, desperate to see her, every part of her, when she goes. “Keep looking at me. God yes, baby, like that. Just like that.”

  Her lips part and a sexy as hell gasp-cry-whimper escapes from her pretty mouth as she comes, but her eyes stay wide open. And this time, as I hold her gaze, fighting not to lose control as her pussy grips me with an exquisite tightness that is by far the best thing that has ever happened to my cock, there is no sadness in her eyes. There is only wonder and something I don’t have a name for, but that knocks me off my feet, making me helpless to look away.