Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 135539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“Well, that’s good to hear. Fucking great to hear, honestly. I want you so badly, sweet Pen. More than you know.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay. Just let me say this. I can say this . . .”
Really worried now, I take her hand in mine and find it clammy. “Baby. Just say it.”
“I’m a virgin.”
Oh. Oh.
“Okay.” I frown. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“But you’re—”
“Twenty-two, yes, I’m aware.”
She looks so cutely disgruntled; I bite back a smile.
“I was going to say, ‘so hot.’”
“Oh.” Her cheeks pink as though the idea of me calling her hot is a shock. Honestly, this girl.
“How have you gone this long without anyone trying?”
Pen’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t say no one tried. I just never accepted.”
“Right.” I swallow, stare down at our clenched hands, then meet her defensive gaze. “Is it . . . didn’t you want to?”
She wrenches her hand away. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is why I was afraid to tell you.”
“Penelope.” I take her hand back and squeeze it gently. “I’m only trying to understand why you’re embarrassed.”
“I’m not. Okay, I am, but I don’t want to be. It’s more I feel like maybe people will think I’m a freak or I don’t know . . .” She sighs and straightens like she’s facing a tribunal. “It’s like this. I don’t make new relationships easily. It’s hard to let someone in. And it’s not that I think virginity is some sort of precious commodity that I must save for marriage.
“But sex is, for me at least, an act of trust. I’m letting someone touch my body, into my body, for fuck’s sake. That’s big for me. So it was never going to be a drunken fumble on someone’s couch—”
Inwardly, I wince a bit because that’s exactly what my first time was.
“—I wanted to wait for someone I really liked. Then the whole awful pandemic happened, and I’m not risking a kiss for nothing, never mind going all the way—”
“Hold on.” I lean forward, peering at her glassy eyes. “A kiss?”
She flushes rose red. “Ah, yes. I mean, kissing hasn’t been . . . That is to say, if I’d liked someone enough to kiss them, I probably would have liked them enough to have sex with them, I guess.”
A certain sort of horror blooms in my gut as I figure things out. “You never kissed anyone?”
“Why would I?” She shrugs. “I didn’t date, didn’t have a boyfriend . . .”
The horror grows. “Your first kiss was—”
“With you in the stadium,” she finishes with a nod.
I can see it now. How nervous she was, how she’d been stiff at first and let me lead, not only because it was a manufactured show but because she’d never done it before.
“Oh, no.” I run a shaking hand through my hair. “No, no, no . . .”
Pen’s brows snap together, her nostrils flaring. “Are you upset that I’m so inexperienced?”
“I’m upset because your first kiss was done under false pretenses,” I exclaim, wanting to kick my own ass. “That’s on me. Shit.”
Pen glares hotly. “I thought it was good. I mean, yes, it was supposed to be fake, but I liked it. I liked all of our kisses.”
“Baby.” I cup her face with hands that aren’t too steady. “Fake kisses or not, you nearly brought me to my knees with them. But your first kiss should have been real both in action and thought.”
“Funny thing is, it felt real.”
“Maybe because I’ve been wanting to kiss you forever. It was real to me.”
“So why are you upset?”
“Because, in the back of our minds, we were thinking it was for show. That’s not right.” I brush a kiss over the tip of her nose. “Not when I should have told you what I wanted all along.”
Pen takes hold of my wrists and strokes my pulse as she searches my face. “So you don’t think it’s weird? The virgin thing?”
I kiss the corner of her mouth. Then the other corner. “I mean, I do wonder how you didn’t burst with horniness at some point.”
With a huff she wrinkles her nose. “I can get myself off perfectly well, thank you.”
“Killing me here.”
“August.”
I smile at the note of warning in her voice. “Sweets. No, it’s not weird. And you shouldn’t be embarrassed. You stayed true to yourself. If you never found anyone you wanted to do this with, then you didn’t.” My thumb brushes the elegant curve of her jaw. “That you want to with me is humbling, and a huge turn-on, if I’m honest.”
The glossy tumble of her hair sways over her shoulder as she dips her head shyly. “I do. Want you, that is.”
“Sweets,” I whisper and pepper soft kisses along her cheeks, the corners of her eyes. “I do too. So fucking much.”
“Good.” She trembles and scoots closer. “But I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re going to have to take the lead.”