Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 115763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
I don’t know who he is.
He grunts and growls like Griffin. He basically pushed my hand out of the way so he could swipe at my center with a warm rag himself and pulled my sweatshirt over my head like I was incapable of dressing myself.
And he looks like Griffin, with blond hair that’s currently sex tousled, scruff on his jaw that I can feel the delicious burn of on my thighs, and dark-brown eyes that are uncharacteristically soft. He’s shirtless, so I can see his broad shoulders and the tattoos on his biceps that I’ve long wondered the story of but never dared to ask. His jeans are unbuttoned, showing the tease of a happy trail that disappears behind the zipper, and his bare feet are propped on the edge of the coffee table. He looks like a model shooting an editorial ad for some designer cologne or maybe a Stars of Hockey calendar. He’d be January, like a frozen lake, solid ice on the surface, but the coldness covers a deep, hot spring of raging waters I never knew existed.
So yeah, very much like Griffin—stoic and detached but also . . . nice? That’s so weird, and if there’s one thing I’m an expert in, it’s weirdness. It’s gotta be the orgasm. That’s the only explanation. My pussy’s so good that it turned a monster into a man in—checking my invisible watch—twenty-seven minutes.
Was that really all it was? Less than a half hour of desperate, wild, spontaneous sex that has forever changed my expectations of what sex can be? Apparently so. Because I’m not the same Penny from a half hour ago either.
His voice breaks the silence of the room, low and almost amused. “I can hear you freaking out.”
“Pshaw, me? I’m not freaking out. You’re freaking out. No big deal. Just a bit of wienering, some totally normal sexing between two people who apparently don’t hate each other as much as we thought. Unless that was hate sex? Was it? I’ve never done that before. Might have to think a bit before I rate it, since I don’t have anything to compare it to.” I nibble my bottom lip, thinking. “In the moment, nine-point-four. Being passionately swept away, eaten out, and roughly fucked on a kitchen counter are definite wins. I can see what all the gossip is about where you’re concerned.” I give him a thumbs-up, nodding knowingly. “After? I’ve gotta say, maybe a seven-point-eight because this is hella awkward. Should I go? I should go.”
I make a move to get up from the couch, and Griffin stops me, basically clotheslining me back into the cozy embrace of the leather. “Penelope.”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out. Ha ha.” I don’t laugh, I literally say the words.
He stares at me flatly like he doesn’t even have the words to express how exasperated he is with me. With this whole thing. Finally, he mumbles, “I’m sorry. I knew better, knew that was a bad idea. I’m usually better at restraining myself, but spending all this time together is messing with my head.” He taps on his temple. No, it’s too hard to be a tap. He hits at his temple like he’s punishing himself.
“Gotta say, the rating is gonna fall to a six-point-seven if you keep saying fucking me was a bad idea. That’s not exactly what girls like to hear when your cum is still inside me.”
He moves so fast that I don’t have time to react. One second, I’m sitting on the couch, and the next, he’s jerked me into his lap in one smooth move, settling me over him like I weigh nothing with my legs folded beneath me on either side of his hips. I have a split-second thought of saying, Yeehaw, cowboy, but like he knows it’s my newly discovered kryptonite, his hand wraps around my throat again. Every thought banging around in my head—and there are a lot of them right now—simply ceases to exist when he touches me like this. Eyes fixed on mine, he silently demands my full attention.
“A bad idea for you. It was my every fantasy come to life. But I’m a bad idea for you.”
Wait.
Gruff, snappish tone aside, that sounded sweet. Like he’s not wishing to turn back time and undo what we did because it was a mistake, but that he’s worried about me. Yet he’s scowling at me like I broke his favorite hockey stick.
If mixed signals were a person, there would be flashing neon signs over Griffin.
One thing I do know for sure is that no one tells Penelope Lee what to do. I’ve fought that battle enough in my lifetime, with people thinking I can’t handle my own business, my own dating life, my own life period. But I can, I have, and I do.