First Time: Ian's Story (First Time (Ian) Book 1) (11 page)

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.