I realized I was staring at her legs, probably at the exact moment she realized I was staring at her legs. I jerked my gaze guiltily upward, and decided to play it off. “So, where is this adventure that requires swim trunks taking us?”
She lifted her glasses, batting her long lashes at me. “To trespass.”
Maybe Annie was right. Maybe I couldn’t keep up with this woman.
Chapter Seven
According to Penny, the swimming pool at the One UN hotel was the easiest to infiltrate in all of Manhattan. I had to hand it to her; when I’d been a young man in New York, sneaking into a pool would have never crossed my mind. I had always sprung for a thirty-five dollar pool pass, which had probably inflated to three hundred by now. For Penny, sneaking may have been a necessity.
As we approached the building, Penny laid out her plan, once again. She was the Pink Panther of stealing time in hotel pools. “Walk through the lobby like we’re supposed to be there. We’re going to go up to the fitness center. We’ll split up at the locker rooms, but from there, you can go right to the pool, no hassles.”
“You’ve robbed a bank before, haven’t you?” I asked. I hoped the hotel was just named for the UN, which was nearby, and not affiliated with it in a way that would end in terrorism charges if we were caught.
“It’s going to be fine,” she assured me. “I do this all the time. I like to break rules if they’re ones I know I can’t get into actual trouble for. My teenage rebellion was really boring.”
I’d seen a bit of a rebellious streak in the way she’d snapped at the women in the park. That had happened only the day before, and the realization stunned me. It felt as though a whole week had passed, in terms of how much I’d missed her.
Praising God for his holy miracle of air-conditioning, I walked in step with Penny while also trying to follow her. The lobby was probably the most confusing, ugly structure I’d ever seen. If a mid-1980’s shopping mall and a decrepit off-strip Las Vegas casino had a one-night stand resulting in an accidental pregnancy, the baby would look like the lobby at One UN.
“This place is what the Epcot designers probably imagined the future would look like back in the 1970’s,” I said, keeping my voice low. I assumed criticism of the venue might result in the attraction of undue attention, should I be overheard.
A faint smile passed across her face. “If you come here often enough, you’ll grow fond of it.”
I doubted that, but her enthusiasm was strangely endearing. As she led me to the elevators—and through a mirrored hall that threatened vertigo—I considered her answer. “How often do you come here, exactly?”
“Oh, maybe twice a month.” She pressed the button to call the elevator. “Nobody has ever said anything about it before. I don’t know if there are just so many people coming through that they don’t recognize me—”
Oh, sweet, beautiful, naive Penny. Of course she wouldn’t see anything odd about an attractive young woman making regular visits to a hotel she wasn’t staying at. “They, uh…” I cleared my throat. “They might recognize you. They might just think you’re visiting guests.”
Even with the hard lean I’d put into those words, it took her a second to get the implication. Then she laughed. “Oh my gosh, you’re probably right. Well, there are definitely worse misconceptions that have been made about me in my life than mixing up what job I have.”
A woman my age—hell, a woman ten years younger than me—would have very likely taken such an implication as an insult. To Penny, it just rolled off her back as a simple misunderstanding.
“That’s true,” I agreed. In the interest of getting to know her better, I asked, once we were on the elevator, “What sort of misunderstandings would you say you’ve run into about yourself?”
She kept her eyes on the digital ticking of the numbers as we ascended. “Well, a lot of people assume I’m a total prude when they find out that I’m a virgin. And a few guys have called me a bitch when they realized I wasn’t going to sleep with them.”
“They called you a bitch because you wouldn’t sleep with them?” There was that protective urge again. “That’s fucking terrible.”
“It might sound shocking to you, but trust me, every woman on this planet has been called a bitch enough that it doesn’t shock us anymore.”
The elevator dinged and opened, admitting us to the twenty-seventh floor. We followed the signs for the fitness center.
“What about you?” she tossed over her shoulder. “What are some misconceptions about you?”
Well, my sister believes I cheated on my wife, but that misunderstanding is strictly my fault. That wasn’t something I was likely to share with Penny. “There are some people in my life who think I’m a bit of a playboy. I think I may have earned it.”
“Now I’m imagining you in a smoking jacket, surrounded by young, hot blonds,” she said dryly, casting me a sideways glance.
I winked at her. “Half-true.”
Her cheeks flashed red. I hadn’t realized before how much I liked being the cause of her blushes.
“Here,” she said as we arrived at a deserted registration desk. She gestured to the locker room signs. “You go in there, I’ll go in there, and we’ll meet on the other side.”
I’d come this far. There wasn’t any sense in stopping now.
The lockers didn’t have any keys, but since the place was deserted, I didn’t suppose anyone was going to steal my shoes. I dropped my gym bag on a bench and grimly avoided looking at the mirror on the wall while I changed.
Penny was right—I didn’t have the worst body a middle-aged man could have. The fact she’d looked up my Facebook and approved of me based on photos that were over a year old, that was worrying. I hadn’t exactly been keeping up on my home fitness regimen since Gena left. Sun-tanned, smiling Ian who’d been doing a personal best on the treadmill and heavily utilizing his weight bench wasn’t the Ian standing there in his swim trunks.
The pool was, as Penny promised, completely vacant. Which seemed absurd, considering how hot it was in the city, and how many young people were probably trying to sneak into pools at the moment. The texture of the floor was a bit strange underfoot, and some kind of canopy that would have been appropriate as a drop cloth while painting or used as an extermination tent draped the ceiling. But the water was a nice temperature, so I got in to use it as midsection camouflage before Penny came out.
“You got in already?”
I turned at the sound of Penny’s voice, and whatever I could have managed to say strangled in my throat.
I have dated my fair share of beautiful women over the years. Some of them might have been beautiful because of how much I enjoyed their company. Some of them had been beautiful despite how I felt about them. But Penny…
Her legs were unbelievably long considering her short stature. Her bikini bottom wasn’t any skimpier than one a person would see in the wild, but it seemed shockingly small on her, likely because I was seeing so much skin all at once, for the first time. The suit tied at her hips; her penchant for wearing clothing that begged to be untied had to have been a conscious choice. Even if it wasn’t intentional, it was driving me wild. And her top… Jesus, her breasts were too perfect to exist in real life. The red-checked material—what little there was of it—brought the southern United States and women like Daisy Duke to mind.
And there it was. Just inside her right hip, half-covered by the low rise of her suit, was the octopus tattoo.
I had to say something. I couldn’t just stare at her—probably open-mouthed, I couldn’t feel my face to verify—like a pervert in the bushes. What came out was, “Stop showing off.”
She smiled and dipped her face as if to hide it. She’d taken her hair down, I noticed, and she tucked it behind her ear shyly. “Sorry. Somebody has to be the prettiest girl in the room, though.”
I looked around at the deserted pool area. “Let’s go for prettiest in this hotel. Or the city. That would also do.”
“Beyoncé lives in this city,” she reminded me wryly. “But I appreciate the endorsement.”
She stepped down the ladder cautiously, Phoebe Cates in a slow-motion reverse of that scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I held my breath, feeling somehow it wouldn’t be safe to breathe again until her feet touched the pool floor.
When they did, the water came up just high enough to half-cover her breasts, framing her perfect cleavage and challenging me to not stare.
“Isn’t this nice, though?” she asked, sinking down until the water was over her shoulders. “It’s not crowded like those pools you have to pay for.”
“And much less Axe body spray, I’m sure.” For all the faded grandeur of the place, I could see why Penny liked it. The views from the twenty-seventh floor were spectacular, and served up from multiple directions. It lent fantastic lighting to the place. We might as well have been outdoors. At least this way, we wouldn’t get sunburned.
She ducked her head under, pushing her hair back as she came up. “Can you swim?”
“That’s something you should have asked before you got me into this pool, isn’t it?” I gestured to the wall. “It’s only five feet deep. I think we’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said, holding her hand up to eye level. “I’ll be in trouble.”
“I promise I won’t let you drown.” I hated the idea of getting my hair wet in front of her. Women with wet hair always seemed sexy and carefree. I didn’t feel men could pull it off. But I also didn’t feel that standing in a swimming pool without getting wet was a realistic goal.
I dunked under, same as she had, catching a glimpse of her water-paled legs stirring up flashes of silver bubbles beneath the surface. I forgot for a moment we were trespassing; I’d forgotten anyone besides Penny existed at all.
“You won’t let me drown,” she repeated, lying back in the water to float. “That’s in my top five must-haves for boyfriends.” The skin that broke the waterline showed gooseflesh, and her nipples were hard against her top. She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes, which was fortuitous for me because disguising an erection in swim trunks is improbable, at best.
I kicked backward, toward the deeper water. “One of my top five requirements for girlfriends is buoyancy. How long can you float like that?”
She laughed and rolled over, standing again. “For a while. I wouldn’t try to do it across the English Channel or anything.”
“So, you’re vetting me as a potential boyfriend?”
“Of course I am. That’s what dating is about, right?” she asked. “You go on a date with someone to see if you like them enough to have a second date. Then you go out on the second and subsequent dates to find out if you want to see them exclusively. And then you start seeing them exclusively—”
“And they move in, you spend a few years in that type of domestic bliss, then you get married, grow apart, and finally divorce.” She didn’t want to hear that. Nobody wanted to hear it, but there I’d gone and vomited my sadness everywhere. “I’m sorry, like I said, it’s—”
“Been a rough day,” she finished for me, with surprising understanding. “Believe me, after what I went through with Brad, I was ready to give up on dating and other people in general before Sophie set me up with you. But I don’t share your unhappy view of the relationship evolution chain.”
“You’ve been cured of that pessimism?”
“I was never really pessimistic to begin with.” She smiled as if to prove it, or force it, I couldn’t tell which. “I believe that, someday, I’m going to find the person I’m meant to be with. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have gone out with you.”
“Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I’m very glad you did.”
“I am, too,” she said, and it was so easy to believe her, because I desperately wanted to.
Penny was like something out of a dream that I had forced myself to wake from. I’d thought Gena would be the last woman in my life, but having spent just a few hours with Penny, I’d started to see possibility where there had been none before.
Which was likely the reason I’d reacted so strongly to my sister’s criticism. She disapproved of me dating a much younger woman; that was fair. I’d turned it into a blanket disapproval of me dating anyone.
But at the moment, the only woman I was interested in was Penny.
She sighed and lazily pushed her way through the water toward me. “Isn’t this so much better than sitting home alone on our respective couches?”
I had to concede it was certainly more exciting. “The view is definitely better.”
“I know you want me to think you’re talking about the windows, but I’m on to you,” she warned playfully. She had to stand on her tiptoes to keep her head above the water.
“You caught me.” I sank down a bit and took her hand to pull her in closer. She came along without any resistance, sliding her fingers up my arm to my shoulder.
“When I first starting coming here, I was afraid it was actually a part of the UN,” she confessed with an embarrassed giggle.
I settled my hands at her waist, my palms tingling against all that bare skin, and turned us in a slow circle. “I have to admit I had a moment where I thought that, myself.”
“Well, we’re safe. I promise. The worst they can do is kick us out.” She looped her arms around my neck. “But my plan is that we pretend you’re a delegate staying here.”
“Do I get to pick which country?” Not that I could think of one with her legs brushing against my side as she leaned back.
She feigned thinking it over. “Hmm. The obvious choice, and the one you’d be more likely to pull off, would be Scotland. Sorry.”
“Scotland doesn’t have a delegate in the UN. We’re just lumped into the United Kingdom.” Christ, was I really trying to educate her on a geopolitical organization while her body was bumping into mine below the surface like some kind of…sexy shark?
It was official. There wasn’t an ounce of blood left in my brain.
“Well, I’m giving you a seat. You’re the delegate from Scotland, now.” She took my hand and pulled me farther into the deep end. “And how does the delegate from Scotland feel about the delegate from the United States, at the moment?”
Like his cock is going to burst. “The delegate from Scotland likes the delegate from the United States very much.”
She stopped in front of me, both her arms around my neck. “The delegate from the United States calls for a resolution to address the fact that Scotland hasn’t kissed her yet, even though the United States is sending out all sorts of signals.”
“Are you?” I was so good at flirting. I did it all the time without even meaning to. And I hadn’t noticed her coming onto me? God, she was distracting.
“Yeah, with all my sexy United Nations talk.” She rolled her eyes and cupped one hand over the back of my neck to draw me down.
I’d tried at least a thousand times since yesterday to remember how it had felt to kiss her while her hand had gripped my shirt. What might have happened if her roommate hadn’t interrupted us and brought us back to our senses? Though I hadn’t been able to vividly imagine the way Penny’s mouth fit against mine, I remembered it like an old friend. She still clung to my neck, and she pulled herself up tighter against me. I’d told my sister that I didn’t feel younger when I was with Penny, and that was true, but the feeling of Penny’s breasts pushing against my chest made me want to be younger. She made me want to be twenty again.
Well, not twenty. Twenty is a shit age. She made me want to be mid-thirties again. At the very least, my erection was strong mid-forties.
She pulled back, gasping for breath, a droplet of water hanging from the end of her nose, but she kept just as tight a hold on me as before. There was palpable chemistry between us, so heavy and full of promise it terrified me to examine it. Maybe her superstitious belief in fortunes wasn’t so laughable, after all.
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from hers. If there w
as something appropriate to say, I certainly couldn’t think of it. She leaned in, again, but this time, when her tongue slid against mine, her legs wound around my hips. It was obvious it was an unintentional, instinctual move, but there was no way she would miss the fact my cock was a fucking iron bar up against her.
Her eyes flew open, and she immediately pulled back, gasping, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, that was really forward of me.”
“No, it’s fine.” I scratched the back of my neck and looked away. “A bit embarrassing, is all. A good, solid school book would be very helpful right now.”
She covered her face with her hands, laughing. “Okay, I think the water is acting as an aphrodisiac. We may need to get out.”
“Agreed. Although, I hate to cut our adventure short.” If the water was dangerous, the suggestion that came immediately to mind wasn’t much better. But I was going to say it anyway. “Why don’t you come to my place and have dinner?”
That sounded rather lecherous, didn’t it?
“Let me guess, you’re going to cook dinner to lull me into a false sense of security, then bam, five years from now, we’re married and you’ve never cooked since.” She raised one eyebrow in challenge.
“No. I’ll be upfront about that right now. Marriage or not, I don’t cook. But I’ll have something delivered,” I promised.
Wasn’t I required, as a single man, to recoil in horror from a dirty word like “marriage”? Maybe having been married once, I didn’t have a reason to be afraid of it. It wasn’t some horrible trap set with fun and breasts and the promise of regular sex that closed a man in a cage the moment he was shackled with a ring. Despite the way things had ended with Gena, I’d liked being married. It shamed me to think I’d once been so immature I’d actually feared the institution.
Penny quirked her lips to the side as she thought. “Okay. I’m really curious to see what the inside of that clock tower looks like.”
At least she hadn’t assumed I was planning to seduce her. I held back a sigh of relief at that. “Oh, it’s all gears and pulleys. You’ll have to be very careful about where you put your shoes, or they’ll rotate off and you’ll never see them, again.”
First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) Page 8