Page 29 of Loved

"Hmm." I tried my best to give her an encouraging smile. But I still heard that voice in the back of my head.You ruined her.

"Come on, we haven't finished the tour." She showed me the living room, the office, and a bathroom. "And that's the basement," she said, pointing to a door. "Andthe laundry room." She pointed to a different door. "And that's it."

That definitely wasn’t it. I wanted to see her bedroom. I looked over at the stairs. "Well, what's up there?"

"My parents’ room, two guest rooms, and two more bathrooms. Oh, and my room."

"I think I'd like to see that."

"You want to see my room? I'm not allowed to bring boys upstairs." She gave me a very innocent smile.

"Is that so? Maybe I can convince you to bend the rules just this once?" I raised my left eyebrow.

"How much time do we have before they come home?"

I glanced at my watch. "Half an hour."

"Okay. But really quick. I do not want our discussion to start out that way. Absolutely no funny business."

I lifted my hands to either side, acknowledging that I’d behave.Maybe.

She bit her lip and turned toward the stairs. She made her hips sway more than usual as she walked up the stairs.

It was like she was hoping I'd abandon my resolve. Penny had never had a boyfriend. Which meant she’d never had a boy in her room before. How many times had she imagined it? Had she wanted someone sneak in her window and climb into her bed? Had she ever spread her legs beneath her covers at night, touching herself where she’d dreamed her boyfriend would?

I could feel myself growing hard.

But that ended as soon as I almost tripped over clothes strewn all over her bedroom floor. “You're kind of a slob." I laughed and stepped over more clothes. It was a good thing I had Ellen, because I wasn’t sure I could handle a mess like this in my bedroom. I smiledto myself. I really loved the idea of sharing a bedroom with Penny permanently.

"I'm a lot better when I have a roommate,” she said. “A lot of it was from when I was packing. It's hard to know what to bring to school when you only have so much space." She picked up some of the clothes and put them into a hamper in the corner.

I walked over to her bookshelf and looked at the titles. "Jane Eyre? Are you a fan of all the classic romances?"

She laughed. "No, actually. I read it for my senior thesis. Jane and Mr. Rochester drove me crazy. Clearly they should have been together the whole time. It made me so mad." She tossed some more clothes into her hamper.

I smiled at her. She did see the irony in her words, right? She had told me she wanted to wait to be with me until she graduated. But she’d caved a lot quicker than the characters from Jane Eyre. I took another deep breath. I was so happy to be right here right now with her. “I couldn't agree more."

"Honestly, I think I'm done reading classics as soon as I'm done with school. I prefer reading books like Harry Potter."

"I prefer books like Harry Potter too." I shoved my hands in my pockets. I’d read those books so many times. I’d wanted nothing more in the world than for someone to appear and whisk me away far far away from my parents.

"Really? You've read Harry Potter?"

"Why is that so surprising? I'm pretty sure that Harry Potter was actually my generation's thing, not yours. And who doesn't love the concept of magic? Besides, there was this cute little red headed girl in it that I loved reading about." I smiled at her.

"I was Ginny Weasley for Halloween last year."

Damn, I wish I could have seen that. The pictures were probably as cute as the one of her hugging a tree. "Quite the leap from Ginny to sexy Poison Ivy."

"Yeah, well I started dating this sophisticated, older gentleman. I was trying to impress him."

"You don't need to change for me. I love you just the way you are." I looked over at her bed that was completely covered in stuffed animals. "Stuffed animals and all. Geez, that's a lot of stuffed animals."

She laughed. "Yeah, well, I didn't have my boyfriend's sweater to snuggle up to at night. Or the man himself."

So she’d snuggled with stuffed animals? I smiled and walked over to her bed. I sat down on the edge so that I wouldn’t disturb the assortment and stared around her room some more. "The Beatles?" I asked, and nodded my head toward a poster on her wall.

"I'm an old soul."

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