I leaned forward into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me, cocooning me in his warm embrace. I should have come straight to him. It felt as if this argument had been brewing for weeks. Longer even. Maybe it had been brewing all along.
He pressed a kiss into my hair. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know.”
His hands slipped under my jacket, sliding the material over my shoulders and then carelessly tossing it onto the chair. He tilted my head up until I was looking at him. “I won’t hurt you.”
I nodded with a hard swallow at the depth of affection I saw in his gaze.
“This isn’t like before. I’m not leaving you. I’m not lying about our relationship. This is just me. I’m not perfect. I’m still working on me. And I’ll probably fuck it up again, Nat, but I’m willing to try with you. For you.”
I stood on my toes and pressed a firm kiss to his lips. “I might continue to jump to conclusions,” I said against his mouth. “I’ve been hurt a lot, and it scares me. This scares me.”
“As long as we go through this together, then we’ll be fine.” Penn slipped his hands down my arms, and I winced as he ran across the upper arm that Lewis had grabbed earlier. Penn glanced down at my arm with a crinkle in his brow. Then he got a look at my arm, and his concern flipped on a switch. “Holy fuck! Did he do this to you?”
My eyes followed where he was holding my arm out. And there, in a perfect arc on my upper arm, was a growing, mottled bruise.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “I knew it’d hurt when he grabbed me. I didn’t realize that I’d bruised.”
Penn released my arm, and his hands balled into tight fists. His chest heaved as if he were fighting with himself from throwing that fist right into the wall since Lewis wasn’t here to be the punching bag.
“You have to file a restraining order,” he got out through gritted teeth.
“What? No way.”
“Natalie, you have a bruise on your arm from him. What if you see him again and I’m not there? This is serious.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, staring down at the bruise.
“Look, you can use my attorney. Even just to get a temporary one to show him that you’re serious. We can assess whether you need a permanent one after we see how he reacts to a temporary order.”
My eyes bulged. “Penn,” I said, fear creeping into my voice.
“Please,” he said. I could see he was trying to even out his breath. To try to be calm and rational in this moment. “Please, do this, Natalie. Because if he thinks he can get to you, he will.”
I paused as his words hit me. He was right. I’d been reckless, thinking that I could deal with Lewis’s stalking alone. He’d proven that he wasn’t capable of letting me go, of not getting his way. And I didn’t want to wait to see if something else would happen.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Okay. I’ll talk to a lawyer.”
“Thank you,” he said, pressing his lips hard against mine. “Thank you for letting me take care of you. We’ll go in the morning.”
I nodded, my throat tight. I couldn’t even believe this was happening to me. “In the meantime, I…think I’m going to need to figure out how to cover this for tomorrow night.”
“Ah, the gala. Are you sure you still want to go?”
“I have to go. I already have the dress.”
He cracked a smile. “What is this world doing to you?”
“Brought me you,” I said, kissing him again. “Can’t be all bad.”
“Definitely not.” He whirled me around so that my ass rested against his desk.
“My, Professor, are you having inappropriate thoughts?” I teased.
He grinned. “My sexy girlfriend is in my office after-hours. What do you think?”
“Girlfriend?” I raised my eyebrows.
His hand went to the waist of my cigarette pants and slowly undid them. “What would you call yourself?” He hooked his thumbs in them, tugging them over my hips. “Partner? Would you prefer I stick to something more gender neutral?” He bent down and removed my aching feet from each of my heels and then slid my pants and thong off of my body. “I can use pet names if you like. Babe, baby, sweetheart, boo…bae?”
I laughed. “Not bae. Definitely not.”
“But you don’t object to the rest? Just girlfriend?” His pants slipped down his hips.
“Maybe…maybe girlfriend would work,” I said tentatively. I’d been trying and failing to keep him at a distance. What other word really was there? I was very obviously his girlfriend.
Penn reached behind me and slid all his books and papers and pens off of the desk. Then he hoisted me up, laying me back on his now-empty desk. My eyes widened as he hovered over me.
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said, grabbing my legs and tugging me toward him. He leaned forward, pressing a fierce kiss onto my lips. “You’re my girlfriend. Mine,” he growled, palming his cock in his hand and spreading my legs further apart.
“Yes,” I groaned. “Yes.”
He entered me in one clean stroke, and my body rocked backward on the desk. I reached behind me and gripped the other side for leverage as Penn straightened to his full height. Then he seized my thighs and thrust deep into me again. And again.
My eyes rolled back as he took me right there on his desk. My…my boyfriend. Christ, he was my boyfriend.
It was almost beyond belief after all that we’d gone through. That either of us could get past what we’d endured to get to this moment.
That my heart was mended enough to fall so hard again.
So utterly and helplessly for this man. This wonderful, complicated, messed up genius of a man. I was his, and he was mine. And we’d set fire to the world. Burning up so completely that we were starting anew.
Chapter 18
Natalie
I met with Penn’s attorney the next morning. She was young and sympathetic to my concerns. I’d been expecting some stodgy, old man who thought that one bruise wasn’t enough to get a restraining order. Or order of protection, as the lawyer called it.
But I confessed everything that had happened. Showed her the proof of his stalking and the file that he’d kept on me. We’d taken pictures of the bruise on my arm, and she said I definitely had a case. I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse.
What it really made me feel was furious. Like I was some statistic. Poor girl in a domestic violence situation. Afraid of some man because he was bigger and had more power than me. It made me want to look deeper into his background to find some way to make him hurt like I was. To expose him for the entitled dick he was. Not to stop at a restraining order that a judge might not even give me permanently if Lewis put the weight of his name behind it.
“Are you finished in there? We should get going,” Penn called from the living room.
I stared down at my arm. No bruise. The makeup artist I’d hired for the event had done such a perfect job that I couldn’t even see a hint of it. It made me happy and irrationally angry.