Penny’s hand stuttered to a stop. When I peeled my eyes open and met his, they were wide and hopeful.
“I want to make it good for you,” he said with a slight tremor to his voice. “I’ll make you feel good. All of you. If you'll let me.”
I nodded and eased closer. “I will. I want that. I’m ready.”
A hungry look came over him, and his throat bobbed with a hard swallow. When he released me, I missed his touch immediately, aching for the feeling of him crowded in close, against me, hands on me. He threw the blankets back as he rolled over to rise.
“Don’t move,” he said as he hurried to the door and disappeared out into the hall.
I propped myself up on an elbow and waited until he returned, now with a small ceramic crock cradled in his palm. He caught my questioning look when he set it on the bedside table, and blush splotched his cheeks.
“Oil,” he said, as if that answered everything.
He stripped out of his shirt, and I sat up to tug mine off over my head. I felt his gaze like fire over my skin. My hands shook as I tugged loose the knot cinching my pants to my waist, then wriggled out of them.
Penny’s freckled cheeks pinked as he pushed his pants off his waist. He stood before me, and his chest fluttered with hitching breaths for only a moment before he closed in once more.
He crawled onto the bed and straddled my thighs, sliding his hands up to my waist. The touch was scorching, and I remembered how cool his skin had been when he was in the grips of the poison. I spent too many hours watching him struggle to breathe, thinking that I didn’t know how I’d face a world without him in it. How I didn’t want to.
I’d held him then, trying desperately to comfort us both. I held him again now, but everything was different. I didn’t need reassurance, just his bare flesh against mine to feed the fire raging in my gut.
He leaned in when my arms curled around his waist, and I pulled him flush so I could bury my face where neck met shoulder. His fingers trailed through my hair while I clung to him, soothing my sudden nerves as his chest rose and fell against me. I needed this moment, this closeness, more than I realized.
“You okay?” Penny leaned his head against mine.
Okay was an overstatement. I’d felt raw and exposed since we stepped into this room but, for once, I reveled in it.
“I’m perfect,” I whispered against his skin.
I had no more secrets keeping him at a distance. He knew every part of me, my past, and all the things that brought me to this moment. The only thing left for him to learn was my body, and I was eager for him to know that too.
36
Penny
My trip to the other bedroom for oil had bought me time, but not enough to dispel my mounting anxiety. I’d promised Kit I could take care of him, and I meant it. I believed it. But good intentions and a vivid imagination only went so far when not paired with actual experience.
I tried not to dwell on the knowledge that most of what I’d done with Dawson Hilliard had been harmless kissing and touching. We’d only been intimate a few times, and one of those ended so immediately it hardly counted. Also, Dawson had insisted on a certain way of doing things, which involved me being in the position Kit was in now. I’d expected the same from Kit until our conversation the night before the third Oath, and was still trying to work up my nerve to do things opposite.
I was, at least, more experienced with my fingers. With Kit in such close proximity all the time, I had no shortage of fodder for my imagination. We’d barely been here a week before I’d stolen the oil from the kitchen, and I made ample use of it since. I’d planned to be able to tell Kit what I liked.So, if nothing else, I was fairly confident in my ability to translate what I’d learned on my own body to Kit’s.
“Pen?” Kit cupped his hand to the side of my face and tilted it till I met him at eye level. “Do you want this?”
A breathy laugh escaped me. “I askedyou, didn’t I?”
And I’d felt so bold when expecting his refusal. The sudden acceptance caught me off-guard but, yes, I wanted it. I wanted him. Every piece.
He brushed his thumb across my cheekbone in slow, soothing strokes. “Technically, this timeIaskedyou.”
I chuckled again, more of a nervous titter. “Not a fit of madness, is it?”
Kit’s dark eyes seemed luminous somehow, wide and deep in the firelight. “You’re the only thing driving me mad, Pen,” he said, his voice husky. “You have been for a while now.”
It was difficult to think of anything with all of him touching all of me, but I managed to channel my thoughts into a question. “A while, you say? How long is that exactly?”
His mischievous smile made me blush, and I knew he must have remembered the same moment I did, when he’d asked how long I loved him and why.
He glanced aside. “Well, I didn’t mark the day?—”
