“Never?”
I shake my head frantically.
“Christ.Christ.” He wraps a hand around my throat and squeezes, his expression a mixture of red-hot lust and awe. “Imagine that. A sweet little thing like you needed a big, hairy motherfucker to make her cream. So much cream, baby. All over Daddy’s jeans.”
Another wave of pleasure rocks me, and I look up at this man, while my flesh constricts on repeat, knowing he’s the only one who will ever make me let go like this. Knowing it with confusing intuition. He’s going to be permanent in my life. There’s no way I can live with any other outcome.
Somehow, I knew it the minute I saw him.
“Penn,” I moan, overcome. “More of you. I want more. I need all of you.”
I’m hit with a terrible case of denial when he shakes himself, almost violently, and retreats off the bed, his damp fly distended in an unnatural way, burly chest puffing up and down. “Jesus,” he heaves, raking both hands down his face. “What the hell am I doing?”
“Come back,” I whimper, sitting up, the flannel falling around me.
“You’re too young, Jenna,” he rasps. “All the shit you’ve been through made you believe you want…this. A Daddy to come in and be everything you’re missing. But if I took advantage of that, I’d be as bad as the rest of them.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I whisper.
“Yes, I would.”
His gaze is rife with hunger and yearning as he looks at me, but somehow he backs away, his shoulder ramming into my closet, his hip knocking into a lamp.
A bull in a china shop, for sure, because he’s already breaking my heart.
And then, with a final tortured look, he’s gone.
CHAPTER 4
Penn
I’m not surprised when Erin beats me twice in a row in tic-tac-toe while we’re waiting for our pepperoni pizza to arrive. My concentration is shot. Every time I blink, I see Jenna. I smell her vanilla sugar scent on my clothes. I feel her incredible body beneath mine.
I’ve never been a believer in love at first sight, so I don’t know how to explain what happened this afternoon. I can’t explain the feeling of being dumbstruck the first time I saw the actress, the painful ripple that went through my chest, like I’d been pierced by an arrow. I can’t explain why we ended up humping in her trailer ten minutes after meeting. That kind of thing simply doesn’t happen—andespeciallynot to me.
Erin’s mother and I were in the service together. We bonded over our dedication to our post and slowly became friends. It was natural to get married when we got home. We had all the same friends, the same history. Once we’d been home for a while, though, with no tours on the calendar, all our similaritiesseemed to fade and the fighting started. It makes me feel guilty to say this, but hell, the physical attraction I used to feel for my ex pales pitifully in comparison to whatever happened today. Today was…a lust cyclone that swept me up and shook me, right down to my boots.
Enjoy the memories, you bastard, because it isn’t happening again.
That girl needs someone to protect her from the vultures circling her. Maybe, briefly, she thought it could be me. But I’m sure by now she’s come to her senses. She’s probably laughing with her manager about the coarse, horny lumberjack who thought he had a shot with the sexiest starlet in Hollywood.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom, kid,” I say to Erin. “Don’t open the door if the pizza comes. Just holler for me and I’ll get it. Okay?”
She’s busy drawing the next tic-tac-toe grid. “Okay, Pop.”
My heart tugs at the way her fist is clenched so tightly around the pencil, her knees gathered up beneath her on the chair. I wasn’t sure I could be successful at this full-time father gig, but Erin’s mother decided to go back on active duty and she’s away for the foreseeable. It’s just me and Erin for the next couple of months, at which point we’ll go back to our joint custody arrangement. I’m doing all right, aren’t I?
On my way into the bathroom, the poster on Erin’s wall catches my eye.
Jenna beams back at me from the one-dimensional surface, but it’s a far cry from the Jenna I saw naked today. Nah, she sure as hell doesn’t look like the stylized girl on the poster anymore. They aren’t even the same person. But the fact remains that Jenna is only nineteen to my thirty-three. Living a whole different lifestyle. On another planet.
Can you tell that I’ve had to learn how to take care of myself, but…maybe I need someone to take over the job once in a while? So I can just be…a girl?
I enter the bathroom and close the door, turning to press my forehead to the cool wood. Her words continue to ring in my ears, churning up all kinds of instincts I didn’t know I had. Do I have fatherly instincts? Sure. Yes.
The instinct to be Jenna’s Daddy? That is an entirely different ball game.
One that I never considered playing. One I never even thought about until I recognized the need in her this afternoon and filled it, as natural as can be.
