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I wait for guilt and denial to clench its fist around my dick and my heart, but it doesn’t. Penny is crashing through my walls, resuscitating me in every way. All I want is to let myself fall into a life with her.
But I can’t. No matter how much I want to, we aren’t meant to have more than stolen, forbidden moments like this.
“Alex,” she moans softly, writhing against me.
“I’m right here,” I breathe against her ear.
She pulls my head down to her, kissing me hungrily as her hips thrust up into her hand. I’m powerless to pull away. My tongue is in her mouth, sweet with chocolate and marshmallow, and my fingers are edging under the top of her dress, seeking her peaked nipple. She moans against my lips as I gently pinch the bud, her hand moving faster between her thighs.
My legs tighten around her hips, the length of my cock pressing between her ass cheeks.
“Oh my God, Fox…” she gasps as her body begins to shudder.
My nickname on her lips as she comes almost makes me explode.
I kiss her long and deep, gazing into her eyes as her body trembles uncontrollably. Her legs shake, thighs spreading, then clamping tight around her hand. Watching her come is like seeing a rainbow after a storm. Her pouty lips, freckle-stained cheeks, and hazy eyes are breathtaking. I want to devour every part of her.
When her breathing calms, I reach down and pull her dress back down to her thighs, then wrap my arms around her. Her body is warm and quivering.
“Holy shit,” she whispers breathlessly.
“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
She laces her fingers through mine. I can still feel the dampness of her on them. “I’ve never done anything like that before,” she confesses.
Just thinking about another man seeing her or touching her makes my blood boil.
“I don’t know what comes over me when I’m around you, Alex. It’s… indescribable,” she says dreamily.
My arms tighten around her. “I feel the same way.”
We stay that way, hugging as the moon shifts across the sky. I lose track of time, listening to crickets sing, kissing her softly. Falling deeper into a hole I know I’ll never crawl out of.
“I love being out here with you.” Her voice is whispery-soft, coming to me almost like a faint echo. “Everything about this place, about you, feels so comforting. Like a dream I never want to wake up from.” Her hand caresses mine. “Maybe we lived here in a former life.”
I rock her back and forth, kissing the scar on her forehead. “Maybe…”
I wish we could stay like this forever.
She becomes so still and quiet, breathing softly in my arms, that I think she may have fallen asleep. I could easily do the same, but I force myself to stay awake, savoring every moment because I don’t know if we’ll ever have this again.
“You should go back to your tent,” I eventually say. “It’s late.”
She hugs my arm against her chest like she never wants to let me go. “I wish I could stay with you like this all night.”
“I do, too. You have no idea how much I’d love that.”
“Someday we will,” she says.
I help her to her feet and hold her face in my hands. Her huge green eyes stare up at me, full of wishes I want to make come true. But as perfect as we feel together, so much can go wrong. So much is wrong.
It’s hard to shake the memories of her coming to see me as a little girl, drinking juice boxes in my studio. Listening to me intently when we talked about paints and shadows and perspective. Swinging her tiny feet from my workbench.
Lily would be disgusted with me if she found out. It could ruin our relationship forever.
It could also destroy her friendship with Penny.
The little happy family we’ve built here could go up in flames.
Lily has lost so much already. I can’t let her be hurt again.
And nothing can change the fact that Penny is half my age. I’ve lived, loved, and lost, but she hasn’t. She has so much life to experience. What she wants today might not be what she wants five or ten years from now.
It’s a huge risk.
If I give her my love, she cannot leave. She cannot die. She cannot take my heart and drift away with it in her hands.
My soul would never recover.
I can’t be a “happy for now” while she grows up.
I want—I need—a forever.
Chapter 30
PENNY
“Why aren’t you dressed?”
I’m standing in Lily’s doorway wearing black boots, my favorite dark skinny jeans with frayed rips, a black V-neck blouse, and a black denim beret. I’m trying to figure out why my best friend is sitting on her bed wearing an oversized T-shirt and pink pajama pants when we’re supposed to be leaving in fifteen minutes.
