Work Text:
Aubrey Hall is beautiful every season, but spring is when she stretches and sprawls, flowers unfurling like fists and nesting birds divebombing guests with relish. It’s where Violet Bridgerton gathers her ever-growing family under the same roof once a year for their reunion.
...Plus Penelope Featherington.
Freshly mowed grass unfurls like a scroll in front of the manor, charming bird baths abound, and entirely too many shoes crowd the entrance to the foyer. There’s a talent show and play produced by the grandchildren, much to the chagrin of every teenager forced to organize it. Mostly, though, it’s croquet and whimsical candlelit dinners and competitive game nights that always end in at least one person crying.
For someone who generally spends her family holiday playing hide and seek with the bloody Eye of Sauron (Colin’s heartfelt moniker for her mum), it’s perfect.
“No no no. You two can’t be on the same team. We’re reshuffling,” Gregory says, stealing the strips of paper Colin and Penelope had drawn with each other’s names and turning to address the room at large. “We’re reshuffling!”
Colin snatches them back with a smirk. “No, we’re not,” he says, then looks over his shoulder with a lowered voice. “He’s right, though. Poor saps.”
She purses her lips, shaking her head to keep from grinning while Eloise narrows her eyes at the two of them from across the room.
“Alright, teams!” Anthony booms, taking charge. “We’ve got Greg and Simon, Eloise and Ben, me and Daph, Colin and—oh, for Christ’s sake. Colin and Penelope. Then there’s Kate and Soph, Hy and Franny. Got it?”
There’s mumbling as people shuffle around, getting comfortable on the sofas and chairs they maneuvered into a semicircle around the hearth. Benedict grips Penelope and Colin’s shoulders from behind and gives them a friendly squeeze. “Kate’s going to strangle my wife by the end of this, isn’t she?”
Sophie’s gentle nature is proof that the Bridgerton bloodthirst doesn’t transfer through marriage, whereas Kate could put Anthony’s calculated ruthlessness to shame. Penelope pats his hand. “You two had a good run.”
Colin snickers, pinching her side good-naturedly from where he’s thrown his arm around her chair.
As always, his touch turns Penelope’s spine into a candle that’s been lit a hundred times, layers of wax dripping from years of going to goo at the slightest contact. Such excitement had been nearly intolerable as a teenager; now it’s white noise. She goes about her life with the constant buzz of unrequited love in the background and doesn’t think about it much…
Until he touches her. Video calls her on WhatsApp. Emails her an itinerary for every city she has to travel to for work, always making sure to find a bookstore and cuisine she's never tried without her ever asking.
“Soph and I go first,” Kate says, stirring the blue and white bowl teeming with folded papers. She grabs a prompt and waits for the hourglass to be flipped.
“And, go!” Greg says.
Kate scans the word, sputtering for a moment before locking in. “Camilla is who I want! That is where my loyalties lie,” she says. It’s a decent impression of Josh O’Connor, all things considered.
“Oh! The Crown,” Sophie blurts. Kate shakes her head, hands frantic. “Prince Charles!”
“She wears that black fuck-you dress, beloved by all!”
“Princess Diana!”
The paper is tossed to the side as Kate reaches for another, mercenary in her efficiency.
“Haley Joel Osment! He’s a little boy, has paranormal abilities,” she says.
Benedict leans over to Penelope with a hand over his mouth. “If Soph’s ever heard of The Sixth Sense, I’ll eat my hat. Her step-mum never let her watch the telly.”
Poor Sophie’s knuckles are white as she clutches her knees. Kate sees her confusion and forges ahead.
“Mischa Barton. Bruce Willis doesn’t know he’s dead!”
“Hey now, don’t spoil it for us,” Eloise heckles.
Sophie shakes her head, holding her hands out helplessly. “I don’t know who these people are!”
“How do you not—fuck it. Moving on,” Kate says, visibly reining in her frustration. She snatches another paper and scowls at it. “He’s a clown who lives in the sewers!”
“Bozo?” Sophie says, her loose blonde bun shifting from the top to the side as she tilts her head.
Hyacinth leans over to Benedict and stage-whispers, “Hey, when you two kiss, do your clown noses honk together?”
“Fucking—whose idea was it to write down horror movies?” Kate snaps.
Eloise guffaws while Benedict frowns at Hy in a valiant effort not to laugh at his wife’s expense. Penelope pinches Colin’s thigh, a silent acknowledgment: I’m dying over here.
He covers her hand with his, squeezing and leaving them to rest atop his knee.
“Ah, I’m sorry Kathani, but horror is one of your forbidden words,” Greg says.
“And clown isn’t? Raise your hand if you wrote this down,” Kate says, veritable laser beams shooting from her eyes. “I just want to talk.”
Everyone looks at Anthony, the only one who grew up watching horror films like they were Saturday morning cartoons. And, since Kate's not an idiot, she follows their stares and scowls at him.
“Time’s up,” Greg says, pointing to the emptied hourglass.
Kate plops beside Sophie and rests her head on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry. You know I black out like a serial killer when I get up there.” Sophie pats her cheek in understanding.
Colin squeezes Penelope’s hand over his knee when Greg points to them. “You two are up.”
She stands, sifting through the papers in the bowl like it’s the Quarter Quell. As soon as she picks one, the hourglass is flipped and her hands steady.
“Okay, it’s, er, the guy you’ve always said my ex-boyfriend reminded you of.”
“Slenderman,” he says with zero hesitation.
Eloise snorts. “Are we talking about Alfie Debling?”
“Ignore her,” Colin says, gesturing for her to pick a new prompt and pointing to his face. “Right here, Pen.”
“Alright,” she says, screwing up her face as she thinks. “Inbred! You feel very strongly that this actor’s casting is almost too on-the-nose to be a guy who marries his niece.”
“Targaryan. Daemon!”
She beckons him to keep guessing. “Right, but the actor’s name is…”
Colin bites his knuckle.
“Fuck!” He searches her face with despair, eyes widening as understanding dawns. “It’s Matt…it’s Matt Smith!”
Benedict groans while Penelope tosses the paper aside and grabs another.
“Alright, this is something Ant and Kate received for harassing the referee at Charlotte’s footy match,” she says, forgetting to be bashful as she bounces from foot to foot.
Colin searches her face. He’s not one for sports, either. “I—I don’t—”
“It’s also a band I don’t know very well,” she whines, then snaps her fingers when a lightbulb blinks to life. “The only color my mum let me wear growing up!”
“Yellow,” he sputters. “Yellowcard!”
“No, I’m almost certain it was red,” Simon adds, pleased and smug when Anthony gives him the finger.
Paper flutters to the ground and Penelope reads the next, clearing her throat to effect a scouse accent.
“I’ve got a text!”
Colin doesn’t miss a beat. “Love Island.”
“You tried calling me on this when you were drunk.”
He grins. “Microwave.”
“Idiot sandwich.”
“Gordon Ramsay.”
She grabs another paper and bites her inner cheek, darting a glance at the dwindling sand.
“My hall pass stars in this movie,” she says.
Colin narrows his eyes. “Ryan Gosling? The Notebook. Lalaland.”
She shakes her head, all too aware she’s turning pink. “The more embarrassing one.”
“I know it,” Eloise announces smugly.
“No, you don’t,” Colin says, waving her off. He leans forward, templing his fingers. “Viggo Mortensen? But you’re not ashamed of that.”
Penelope refuses to meet anybody else’s eyes, willing him to put her out of her misery. “Think less human.”
His confusion clears and a lopsided smile bursts forth like a break in the clouds. “Oh, shit! The goat guy—the faun? The guy in Pan’s Labyrinth!”
She drops the paper right as Greg calls it and Benedict bellows, “Of course you want to fuck the faun guy. It’s Guillermo Del Toro! That’s his whole thing.”
“It was the movie,” Penelope says to the room at large. “But that counts, right? He said Pan’s Labyrinth.”
Her uncertainty is blood in the water. The group erupts, talking over each other to explain why it doesn’t count and, while they’re at it, didn’t they make a rule last year that those two couldn’t be on the same team? Anthony has the signed document somewhere. Might’ve even gotten it notarized.
Colin dodges an airborne pencil to pull Penelope into her favorite kind of bear hug. His hand cradles the back of her skull, rocking them back and forth while he shit-talks over her shoulder.
“You think taking away our last point would’ve made a difference? You can’t replicate this kind of magic, lads. What Pen and I have, it transcends—hey, hands to yourself.”
He slaps away Hy’s attempt at a wet willy and smiles down at Penelope, gorgeous green eyes twinkling with something that squeezes her heart up to her throat. His gaze shifts lower, to her lips, and said heart sinks between her legs. They stay in that embrace long enough for a beleaguered Eloise to yell at them to quit with the foreplay.
Penelope expects his arms to drop like she’s on fire, but he doesn’t. He just squeezes her tighter.
An evening of card games and splitting a swingset spliff with El and Benedict rounds out one of the loveliest days of Penelope’s life.
Until her bed breaks.
Violet’s kept this room ready for her since Eloise started snoring five years ago, an act of solidarity Penelope won’t soon forget. Unfortunately, the heavy wood frame with gorgeous silver inlays lifts the mattress from tall to towering, and she’s too embarrassed to ask for a step ladder as she’s not a fucking pomeranian.
There’s nothing for it: she has to run and jump.
It should be fine. Theoretically. Her legs may be small but her vertical is downright sprightly and she’s done this many times before.
It isn’t fine.
With an almighty crack, the foot of the bed plummets. Penelope shrieks—an embarrassing sound she refuses to believe came from her and grips the sheets to keep herself partially upright. Everything stills. She clumsily scrambles off with a muffled curse.
She’s too stoned for this. Even so, she’d rather die than wake somebody up.
Fumbling for the light switch, she steps back to survey the damage and can’t help but laugh. Penelope’s had literal nightmares about breaking Bridgerton furniture. Some of it is Jacobean, all of it irreplaceable. Paying them back would probably set her back at least half a year’s salary at her shitty job as a pop culture columnist for one of many failing magazines.
A quiet knock on the door cinches her spine up tight with dread. Penelope pads over, opening it the tiniest crack.
“Pen.”
Wavy brown hair. The faintest stubble on a roguish jawline. The door widens further, her hand pushing it open like she’s in a trance. She watches as a line appears between Colin’s brows—the one she’s fantasized about smoothing away with her thumbs, reshaping his skin like clay. She’d give him an untroubled brow but keep the laughter lines around his eyes because she may not be an artist but she’s not an idiot.
On second thought, she’d keep the line between his brows too.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Her hand flies to her mouth. She’d forgotten about the bed, but also he’s wearing sweatpants. Those facts seem equally important.
“Yes,” she says, standing on her tiptoes as if she can block his view. “I’m well. How are you?”
Colin looks down at her, his boyish grin fading as his eyes travel the length of her. She follows his gaze, taking in her state of dishabille with dispassionate feeling until, oh god, that’s her body. Those are her tits! Her thin spaghetti strap tank top from her first year of uni hugs them like a second skin, too small to even cover the curve of her belly. Now that she’s thinking about it, she’s not wearing bottoms either, just plain, seamless knickers that don’t dig into her stomach.
And he’s looking.
Her nipples harden until they hurt, flower buds that only bloom under the benevolent gaze of Colin Bridgerton.
“I’m…” he says, swallowing. His eyes snap back to her face and his mouth hangs open until he finds the words, his smile sheepish. “I heard a noise. Thought I’d check on my better half.”
It’s a joke, of course it’s a joke, but Penelope’s thoughts careen like they’ve stepped on a cartoon banana peel.
“Pen?”
She blinks, processing everything five seconds too slowly. Colin nudges the door wider, brushes past her, and finds the mutilated bed before she can gather the wits to protest.
“Penelope Anne Featherington,” he says, turning to her with hands on his hips, expression gleeful. “Did you break the bed?”
She does her best impression of a dog who’s ripped all the down from a pillow. He can’t prove anything.
“I did,” she says.
Damn. There’s always been a disconnect between her mouth and her brain.
Colin’s white tee stretches pleasantly across his chest, creating a pretty divot between his ribs and sternum that she thinks might’ve been made for holding a sip of champagne.
“And you were planning to sleep…where?” he asks.
She hadn’t thought about it, but if she used a few pillows and pulled off the duvet, the floor would be perfectly serviceable. The two chairs by the hearth are too stiff and besides, the floor’s got a rug that reminds her of how a red Starburst tastes.
“Right there,” she says, pointing to it.
Colin purses his lips and nods like this is the least surprising thing she could have said.
“Okay,” he says, wiping the corners of his mouth. “Alright.”
She’s spun around and made to march like a soldier. His hands are warm on her shoulders, thumbs brushing the sides of her neck as he leads her down the hallway, stopping in front of a doorway she’s never crossed.
His bedroom.
Careful to twist the knob quietly, Colin nudges her inside ahead of him. Moonlight has taken its silvery brush and painted every surface in the deepest shades of blue. She’s miffed that it’s impossible to discern the wall color or if he has a chair where he dumps all his clothes that aren’t dirty enough to launder yet.
“Colin,” she whispers, shivering in delight as his fingertips travel lightly from shoulder to wrist, skimming the goosebumps like he’s signing his signature. These are my creations.
He grips her elbow and gently guides her forward.
“Mmm?”
“I can’t see,” she says.
He doesn’t respond, doesn’t turn on the light. She hears the sound of him breathing, of blankets or some kind of fabric rustling, before he clears his throat.
“C’mon, love. Up you go.”
Her hand finds the duvet above her waist, acquainting herself with the shape of yet another freakishly tall bed before her hips are cradled between palms and he lifts her—no, launches her onto the mattress. She lands in a graceless heap.
But oh, the sheets are soft. They smell like Colin, which is a whole thing in Penelope’s brain. She’s got theories, is basically a bloodshot, chainsmoking Charlie Kelly trying to solve the mystery of Pepe Silvia.
Most of the Bridgertons use the same detergent, which accounts for at least some of the scent. There’s also a note of something tart and crisp and green. Maybe apple? The rest is indefinable. Elusive. Like he’s managed to bottle a dewy spring morning.
It haunts her at night.
An earthquake shakes the bed, mattress groaning beneath them as Colin rolls beside her. The air is taut like a violin string drawn too tight between them. Or maybe it’s not. He’s probably thinking this is out of the ordinary, but certainly not fraught with tension.
Not like it is for Pen.
Currents of something fizzy ripple from her scalp to her toes when his weighty gaze settles on her and her heart pounds like he’s just flicked the lights on, exposing all the ways she wants, all the ways she’s found wanting.
Worse, she has a feeling one of her nipples is experiencing freedom above her neckline.
She breathes out, transforming the excruciating nakedness she feels into a maple leaf and sends it floating down a stream, far away from her. And, honestly? It kind of works.
Penelope turns to face him, folding her hands beneath her ear.
God, he’s beautiful. Even when she can’t see him.
“I know you’ve got posters of busty blondes and the like on your walls,” she whispers. “The question is: how many?”
His huff of laughter ghosts across Penelope’s lips. Her nose. Her forehead.
“None,” he says, stretching across the expanse between them to link his finger with her pinky. “They’re all on the ceiling."
She snorts, belatedly turning her face into her pillow to muffle the sound. An unsuccessful endeavor, because Colin whisper-shouts, “Yes! Oh my God, Penelope.” She’s done an excellent job gaslighting him into believing he’d imagined it when she snorted…until now.
She groans into the pillow.
“Vindication,” he says. His fingers clumsily find their way into her hair, firmly but gently turning her head back until she’s facing him. “I require a confession. No hiding.”
Depth perception is a funny thing in the dark. She thought he was a full arm’s-length away, but his fingers flex at the base of her skull and, like a marionette unencumbered by shame, she throws her leg over his. Forced by strings or, more likely, by something hungrier.
Movement ceases.
Her body’s panicking before her brain has a chance to catch up: her throat closes, her face radiates heat. Or maybe it’s his? At the thoughtless hitch of a leg, she’s stone-cold sober.
They breathe in the quiet. Penelope can’t see the details of his face, can’t even begin to guess how uncomfortable he must feel. She’s his best friend, so desperate she can’t help but take advantage of a platonic situation. He would kiss her out of pity, wouldn’t he?
Shit, he would.
It douses the delusional embers she’s been feeding since he checked her out through her doorway.
Penelope retreats.
Or, well. She tries.
As her leg slides away, Colin’s fingertips dig in just below her ass, slowly dragging her thigh back into place. Sharp inhales punctuate the silence when he brings her closer than before, offering the barest hint of firm, pulsing heat between her legs.
“So,” he says lowly, “what do you have to confess, Pen?”
This isn’t one of her fantasies. Well, it is, but this time he’s real and solid and she can’t pause to figure out a clever response, can’t rewind and reset if she messes it up.
It’s paralyzing.
“I—I think my tit’s hanging out.”
Jesus fuck.
Colin’s laughter shakes the whole bed and Penelope’s mortification is too big for her face, the curling heat of it tightening her skin and dampening her hairline with sweat.
“You’re not sure?” he asks.
She squints in the dark, scrunching her nose. There’s no taking it back now.
“No, I am. It’s cold.”
She could shift around and set her shirt to rights. She could. But it’s like she’s thirteen again and watching the telly late at night with her dad, careful not to move a muscle lest she remind him of her presence and be ordered to bed. If she holds still, Colin might grip her thigh for the rest of her life. Sustenance can sod off.
“Are you suffering, Pen?” he whispers.
She has to silence a whimper as a peak of frustration pulses between her legs.
His hands move. He kneads her ass, the bottom of her spine, her hips like he’s mapping for weaknesses.
She can save him the trouble: her mother never dipped her in the River Styx by her heels. If anything she’s Patroclus, her entire body vulnerable to his touch, made for it.
Penelope sighs in one breath and gasps the next when his mouth closes hot around her nipple, tongue rasping so sweetly against the stiff little bud. She arches into him. Oh. His hand on her ass scorches over her curves to snake beneath her shirt.
He palms the heavy weight of her breast and groans, the sound vibrating against her chest and rippling out to her extremities. Then he’s gone.
“I apologize,” he says hoarsely.
Her eyes strain to make out his face in the dark. She can see his wavy hair’s tousled outline, the strong slope of his shoulder. Her hand hangs limply from his shirt and even though her leg is still thrown over his hip, he’s added enough distance that it’s no longer explicit. Her mind races but her thoughts refuse to line up in proper order. It’s just cymbals crashing and fuck fuck fuck.
Penelope’s nipple smarts. It chafes. She’s slow to realize it’s her shirt, that while he was conducting the world’s shortest and most frustrating seduction, he was also straightening her out.
She doesn’t want him to fix her shirt, damn it. She wants to be ravaged.
Through all the self-doubt and worry that she’s done something wrong, his apology finally registers. What if he thinks he’s been taking liberties? Her last line of defense has been to hold still, to stay quiet, to ride this wave of good fortune until she inevitably wipes out and comes up gasping to the surface, sputtering and cold.
What if he’s afraid, too?
“Col,” she says, flattening her fingertips against the surprisingly soft surface of his lower stomach. She revels in how his muscles tighten at her touch, following courage like it’s a third person whispering to pull up his shirt. She’s rewarded with hot skin and the kind of sigh she’s only ever heard when he’s having a religious experience with food. “You made it worse.”
Coming up on his right elbow, Colin hauls her closer than before with a decisive palm against her lower back. They fit together like a plug and socket, electricity crackling along the press of their bodies. His hard length is notched below her clit and her hips move mindlessly in tiny circles that heighten the torture but she can’t help it, couldn’t stop even if she wanted to.
He brushes his thumb across her cheekbone, leans in close enough she can smell his minty toothpaste.
“Well, that wasn’t very well done of me, was it?” he says, dragging each word soft and rounded against her mouth. His lips catch the slightest bit against her chapstick.
Penelope’s not an idiot. She’s mentioned that before, right? She’s not. Occasionally, she’s even capable of brilliance.
Like right now.
She knows an opportunity when she sees it. Her affection, her very heart, if she’s honest, has been like a business closed to every customer but him. He walks by and she’s got to sprint to unboard the windows, flip the welcome sign to OPEN, and she’s got to do it right fucking now.
Before he’s gone.
She surges to close the gap, all enthusiasm and clumsy execution. His lips are slightly chapped as they press against hers and all she can think is how grateful she is for every reminder that he’s human, too. He soothes her impatience by peppering kisses from across the bow of her lip to the corners of her mouth, and she’d be embarrassed if her smile were the only one making the experience toothy, but it’s not.
Their grins melt away as Colin coaxes her into a lazy, meandering pace. She’s no longer a collection of limbs so much as she is the goosebumps on his skin, the vibrations of his pleased hum when she opens to the wet heat of his tongue.
Her hand explores beneath his shirt. She combs her nails through wiry hair, giddiness approaching critical mass. She’s touching Colin. Her Colin, if not forever then at least for right now. He rumbles his approval when her fingertip traverses the raised edge of his nipple, delighting her with how it stiffens to the touch.
She’s been kissed before. Many times, as a matter of fact. She’s familiar with (if not typically weary of) the concept of snogging, but this experience has about as much in common with those previous encounters as a mastiff does with a pug.
Colin’s kisses are exceptional.
She knows because he acts like hers are, too. He’s so responsive, so attentive to her body language, and she’s the same to him. They’re two changelings with bones shifting beneath their skin, friends one moment and something more the next.
Pressing against his sternum, she pushes him back. Colin obeys eagerly, head falling against his pillow as she uses their momentum to straddle him. A hiss escapes between his teeth as Penelope sinks down, cradling him with the heat of her pussy, and she moves.
She sighs, he gasps.
Finally, she thinks at the tortured look on his face. She’s not suffering alone.
An ugly corner of her heart pulses with satisfaction at the thought, but it’s difficult to scribble horns on the portrait of someone who’s loved her so well, even if it isn’t romantic.
Here is a comfort and a curse: Colin Bridgerton is endlessly kind.
She’d have been able to brush him off by now if he were simply nice, well-mannered, charming. A man can be all those things and still make her feel invisible, but Colin doesn’t. He never has, despite his cluelessness regarding her affections.
He cares for her so specifically. He collects vintage hair combs for her during his travels, watches every episode of Vanderpump Rules—first at her behest, then at his. They trade manuscripts and he sends her lengthy voice notes laughing at her clever turns of phrases, encouraging a risky narrative choice, talking through his thought process about a character’s motivations and almost always, somehow, unearthing another layer she hadn’t even known was there.
As Colin’s hands glide up to her hips, Penelope relaxes into his lap, allowing him to feel the full weight of her for the first time. He kneads her ass in encouragement and she follows the movement, dragging herself back and forth down his length with a kind of abandon she’s never experienced during intimacy.
For once, she wants him to see her.
Penelope anchors her hand against his chest and rolls her hips, luxuriating in his moans when she slows the pace and then picks it back up. Teasing. She takes herself to the brink and backs off several times until he snaps, pulling her along to settle in his lap as he sits up to rip off his shirt.
“Need to feel you,” he says roughly, finding her hand and kissing her palm, her wrist, her shoulder. His arms snake around her waist and he hugs her close, licking her collarbone, sucking the tender skin below her jaw. Now she’s the desperate one, her movement limited by how tight he’s holding her. She’s so close to coming but she forces herself to stop, to acknowledge that she has a request of her own.
If this is to sustain her appetite for the rest of her life, she wants the memory to be more than tactile.
“Can we—is there a lamp? A light we can turn on?” she asks.
He laughs. “Didn’t want you to see my erection earlier.”
Colin’s body shifts them to the right, his arm reaching for something she can’t see until two bedside sconces spill soft, buttery light over them. Her throat tightens when she sees how utterly wrecked he looks just from her kisses, how hungry she’s made him.
She did that.
“Beautiful, beautiful Pen,” he breathes, reverence in his hands as he peels off her tank top. She lifts her arms and her breasts bounce when they drop, eliciting a groan from Colin. His hand slips behind her knickers to caress the sensitive skin they cover, toying with the fabric until he snaps the band against her hip. The sting is delicious.
“Wanted to see you,” she whispers shyly.
Colin’s heart is in his throat.
To be fair, it’s been there all week.
Her thigh pressed against his on the otherwise empty sofa. Loitering in the kitchen and stealing biscuits after everybody else went to bed. Her gaze snagging on his lips just long enough to torture his imagination.
He’s still dizzy with relief that none of it had been wishful thinking, that Penelope’s in his bed and she’s his and he can put that particular agony to rest. His memories rip along the seams of what he thought they were, rearranging themselves into a humbling indictment: this is not the first time he’s seen that worshipful look on her face.
Guilt makes it difficult to breathe.
Colin’s never taken her affections seriously because he’s never taken himself seriously, not because he didn’t respect Penelope and her tender heart. His love for her extends far beyond friendship and, to some degree, probably always has. This realization feels as much a benchmark in his life as learning to write must have been for the earliest civilizations; a clear demarcation between life before he knew how to express something he was already fluent in and the flood of creation that followed.
He loves her. He’s loved her before. He’ll love her into the next life and the one after that, trailing after her with all the devotion of a zealous acolyte.
She rakes her eyes down his body, hands taking their time exploring whatever captures her interest: the dark trail of hair that disappears beneath his trunks, a trio of moles across his ribs. His skin hums with awareness, each sensation echoing with its predecessor from the past: a flash of heat at the base of his spine when Pen stopped straightening her hair and let it fall in chaos down her back, a glimpse of longing when it was time for him to go home after a movie night.
He bucks his hips when she presses her entire body against him, kissing him hard and wild.
Colin can feel her nipples chafing against his rough chest hair as she resumes the torture of grinding herself against his length. Between her ravaging kisses, the fingers wound tightly in his hair, and her tits—her perfect tits, God, fuck, and damn—he’s primed to explode.
It’s a good thing he’s had years to perfect the art of ignoring a raging hard-on around Penelope.
Colin cups one breast with its generous teardrop shape, gratified by the hitch in her breath. It fills his hand, spilling out between the gaps of his fingers, softer than he could’ve imagined. He pinches her nipple and she cries out against his mouth, so sensitive. Spreading his hand across her throat, he revels in the hot, delicate pulse beneath his fingertips. Burnished auburn curls fall away from her face when he coaxes her to lean back, her weight braced against the arm wrapped around her waist.
Afterimages burn behind his eyelids, superimposing the creamy triangle of skin beneath her jaw with a flash of Pen throwing back a shot. Pen looking at stars. Pen laughing so hard she snorts.
In all of them, he loves her.
Surging forward, he lavishes her nipple with the focused attention of his tongue, moving his hand from her throat to gather her hair and wrap it around his fist the way he does in dreams. Pen arches so prettily, watching from beneath her lashes with the barest flash of vulnerability in her eyes. He wants it gone. Banished.
“You’re gorgeous, Pen,” he says, kissing her breastbone. “Can’t believe you’re letting me touch you.”
She huffs a laugh like he’s said something funny.
“I’m so close,” she says, brushing past it and snaking a hand around his neck to tug his hair. Hard. “Like that.”
Colin’s entire face gets hot. She’s made him blush like he’s fifteen because he’s never done something like this and because this is Penelope and because, fuck, he really wants to. Tightening his hold on the hair wrapped around his fist, he pulls hard.
The keening sound from her throat almost makes him lose it.
Redoubling his focus on the gorgeous swell of her tits, he kisses and bites and sucks. Pen grinds down, hot and wet, making a mess of their underthings. He’s not much better, leaking precum and trying not to go off like a bottle rocket.
Her moans turn to gasps. Her hips roll against his cock, milking him through scant layers of fabric. He pulls her hair harder, worries a nipple between his teeth, and the tremors start in her thighs. She’s quiet when she comes, just an open, pouty mouth and eyes squeezed shut. He watches in rapture, his breath caught in his chest, one hand on her ass as he rocks her through it.
Penelope only opens her eyes when the aftershocks abate. They’re soft as they focus on his chest, his shoulders, his lips. She leans forward and kisses him.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Her gratitude strikes him at an odd angle. One that chafes. Thank you, like you’ve done me a favor. Thank you, like this was nice but it’s not happening again. Thank you, like—fuck, like she thinks this was about an orgasm.
Colin releases her hair, unwinds it from around his fist.
“I don’t mean to sound like a dick,” he says, hands bracketing her face, forcing her to look into his eyes, “but shut up.”
He kisses her nose. Her brows. The singular dimple on her left cheek. She lets him, the rigid line of her shoulders melting like a pat of butter on warm bread. Once she’s liquid silver in his arms, he turns her jaw with a thumb at her chin, kissing the soft curve up to her ear.
“I’m yours,” he says hoarsely, a purposeful knick to his carotid. “Do with me what you will.”
Penelope’s eyes widen as she stares at him, their light brown irises richer, fathomless in the dark.
“I don’t know what that means,” she whispers, searching his face. He can tell she’s biting her inner cheek, a nervous habit she’s had for ages, though not usually around him. Tenderness wells up like water in a cave at high tide, overwhelming him.
“That’s okay,” he says, gently flipping them so her back’s on the bed. Or, well—the execution is clumsy. Colin ends up with his face smooshed between her breasts (not a bad place to be) and his arm pinned under her ass (he doesn’t know why he’s complaining). “I’ll—shit, sorry. I was gonna say I’ll show you.”
Penelope cradles his head to her naked chest, cackling with the specific joy of seeing him making an ass of himself.
Laughing with Colin is easy. Mourning with him is, too. She’s the only person who knows he stole one of his dad’s engraved pens after the funeral and, despite her fierce assurances that he deserves to keep this one thing for himself, she knows he’d split it into eight pieces if he could.
What she's less well-versed in is letting go with Colin. He’s praised her and poured his heart out through his hands and here she is, choking on years of emotional repression and vault-keeping.
Colin deserves her trust. He does. The time she overheard him declaring he’d never date Penelope Featherington to his insufferable flatmates from Eton was, what? Thirteen years ago? She’d frozen him out and the man was brought to his knees.
He obviously cared for her, his little sister’s quiet friend, because he apologized without trying to justify it and spent the next decade proving his affection and loyalty to her, sending handwritten letters and postcards from wherever he went. Making sure he was always home for her birthday. Keeping the few secrets she had entrusted to him.
It took time and more than his efforts alone for her to stop seeing it in his face every time he looked at her. “Not in your wildest dreams.” She had to stop pressing on the bruise just to keep her hopes in check.
It’s just that if he can see her face as he fucks her into the mattress, there will be no hiding anymore. She worries her fingers have atrophied from clutching her love for him so close to her chest and they’ll break clean off when he pries them open.
So, baby steps.
“Do you think you could show me from behind?” she asks breathlessly.
Colin drops his forehead between her ribs, seeming to collect himself.
“Fuck. Yeah. Yes, actually,” he says, kissing a line down her belly as he slides off the bed.
Penelope removes her knickers and gets on her hands and knees while he dispenses of his trunks. Sixteen-year-old Pen (the repressed teen who discovered how quickly that ache between her thighs could be relieved by picturing Colin's face) would never believe she could bare herself to him with such relish. That Pen didn't know she didn't have to cram her body into jeans that sucked in the fat and left angry red indents around her belly. She didn't know that someday she'd arch her back to put herself on display with any degree of smugness, and her brain might've exploded if she could hear the groan it elicited from him.
Colin climbs onto the bed behind her.
She’s imagined this, too. How her body would fit along the hard edges of his. How his hands would be so full of her.
What she hadn’t anticipated was his shamelessness. He spreads her open, his thumbs caressing everywhere that she’s wet. She squeezes her eyes closed, biting her inner cheek to keep from apologizing for not being perfectly bare, perfectly smooth. Because she’s done feeling bad about her body…in theory, if not always in practice. She’s not an insecure twenty-two-year-old with a penchant for self-destruction. He’s not a shitty guy in uni with nothing more to offer than a mattress on the floor and an aversion to acknowledging her in public.
“God, Pen. This all for me?” Colin asks, running two fingers through her folds without a hint of resistance.
She’s sucked back into the moment.
“Mmm,” she hums. Words are elusive when he’s taking his time like this, praising every little detail in barely coherent ramblings, making her squirm. It’s sweet torture.
“If this is the way you ride my hand…fuck.”
and
“You’re dripping down my palm, Pen.”
and
“This is what it’s supposed to feel like.”
and
“Penelope.”
His two middle fingers sink in and out of her with such ease, the sounds they make almost obscene. He’s worked her up again, wound her so tight, but she needs more.
Colin reaches around her belly to find her clit, she assumes, but she pulls his forearm away and he stops, pulling his fingers from her when she sits up.
“I—that doesn’t work for me,” she says firmly.
She doesn’t know why she’s irritated. This is Colin. He wouldn’t tease or laugh behind her back, he isn’t doing this out of pity—she truly believes that now—but the past several minutes have proven it doesn’t matter whether he sees her face or not: intimacy with him is nonstop exposure. She’s gutted. Flayed. Scraped raw.
Colin notices.
His hands go to her hips, nudging in silent invitation for her to lean back. She follows and Colin pulls her into his chest, his chin atop her shoulder and his arms beneath her breasts.
“Telling me what you don’t like is a good thing,” he tells her, spotting her guilt the way her mum spots dresses of the most ungodly yellow.
She sighs.
“It’s not—I don’t…” she huffs.
This is a secret she’s kept locked behind a vault she didn’t even know existed. Something about Colin forces everything to the surface, unearths every bone laid to rest in the dirt. He’ll allow her to sweep past the moment, he won’t push if she doesn’t want him to, but perhaps…perhaps she’s tired. It’s hard work being the only crypt keeper with so very many skeletons to look after.
Penelope inhales through her nose, out through her mouth.
“Every time I’ve had sex, the guy has tried to reach around my stomach to find my clit because that’s what they do with skinny women,” she says. Colin tenses like he’s about to say something, to stand up for her, probably, but she doesn’t need it. Being fat isn’t the issue; she pats his cheek to let him know. “Then I have to deal with their surprise. They’re never expecting their arms to be too short or the way my belly hangs to block the way or, or whatever. But they don't make any adjustments, they keep trying to do something that won't work with me and it just…they’re on autopilot, and I feel invisible.”
Her confession and Colin’s reassuring heat feel like torrential rain, like unsupported soil giving way to a landslide. It’s scary and mortifying and cleansing and now that she’s started, it’s impossible to stop.
“I don’t want you to have sex with me and not see me,” she says fiercely. “Don’t substitute my body for someone thinner just because that’s the default. I would…I would hate to be invisible to you of all people.”
Colin’s arms tighten around her. He kisses the birthmark behind her ear and rests his forehead against her temple.
“Pen,” he says, his voice soft with something sorrier than adoration. “If you had a window into my thoughts, at any given moment, you’d wonder how I function for how…for how full I am of you. I can show you—there have to be a dozen journal entries of me trying to nail down what we have; what makes it special. It’s mostly embarrassing metaphors mixed with a few decent ones, fragments of poetry; years of them.” He tilts her head and kisses the center of her chin, his sea green eyes glittering affectionately down her nose. “But in the end it’s simple: so long as there is a Penelope in the universe, there will be a Colin trailing after her.”
She laughs, hitched breath seconds away from melting into a sob.
She is loved. So loved. It’s like a Roman candle to the chest, a swallow of champagne exploding through her nose from an unexpected joke.
Penelope turns in his arms and links hers around his neck. Or at least, she tries.
“I’m a little short for your window, Bridgerton.”
Colin’s thumb runs along her inner wrist and he hums, dropping his head to kiss her palm.
“You’re short for most things, love.”
And oh, she’s lethally happy. Cataclysmically content. She can’t even pretend offense when he calls her that, pushes her down and instructs her to lie on her back.
She watches and obeys, hopelessly charmed as he stumbles off the bed and bends at the knees to lift a tall antique mirror.
“Damn, this is heavy,” he grunts, taking care not to trip over any of its four sturdy legs. He sets it to the side of the bed, fucking up one of the layers of Persian rugs beneath it before he smooths it out and finds the angle he’s looking for.
Penelope sits up on her elbows and stares at her reflection with fascination. Her hair is doing that thing where the cowlick at the side of her head ruins her curl pattern but it’s her mouth, pinkened and curled into a small smile, that captures her notice.
With the mirror sorted, Colin comes around to the other side of the bed to grab her pillow, climbing on top so he can arrange it carefully behind her back, propping her up.
“Need you to see,” he says darkly, arranging them until he’s on his knees between her spread legs. He palms her center and grinds the heel of his palm over her clit, eyes burning into her as she squirms; a butterfly pinned against cork. “From every possible angle.”
Penelope moans, letting him see exactly what he does to her. The need throbbing between her legs redoubles as he rubs his length along the slick line of her pussy.
He leans over, kissing her neck, torturing her with the slide of his cock through her folds.
“You gonna pay attention?” he asks quietly.
She opens her eyes to find him watching her, desire stark and needy between them, and can only nod.
Colin trails open-mouth kisses down her throat, planting a hand by her side to support his looming weight. Propped up like this, she can see the way she glistens, the way he fists himself and strokes a few times, wetting his cock with her desire.
He looks up when he’s notched at her entrance to ensure she’s watching. Assured of her obedience, he sinks in to the hilt, every inch eaten up by her pussy.
They both gasp.
Colin grinds his hips in small circles without leaving her, each rotation nudging him deeper, like this close isn’t close enough. Penelope had known it would be this way for her. She’s loved him for so long, had so much time to imagine what it might be like if he reciprocated even a fraction of her feelings.
She never would have guessed it could be this good for him, too.
Coherency is a pipe dream. She’s in that floaty space between reality and something sweeter as she watches their reflection, watches them take care of each other. If movements could speak, theirs would be repetitious and succinct: you, you, you.
For once, she’s not keeping her chin lifted to avoid looking unattractive, nor is she thinking about what he might find desirable at all. Her senses are too overwhelmed for that. Every nerve ending, every microscopic mile of skin hums with discovery. She’s mesmerized by the veins shifting over muscles in the arm that holds him up. A fallen lock of chestnut hair curls over his forehead. His mouth hangs open, his jaw is flexed.
And it’s all for her.
He withdraws slowly; he sinks back in. She hisses his name and digs her fingers into his bicep, tethering him to this bed.
Colin fucks her languidly. He’s never had sex purely for the sensation of it; for the revelation of fingertips brushing across his upper thigh, for desire’s weight pressing down on his lungs.
No, sex has always been more statement than conversation in Colin’s experience. Orgasms were the period at the end of the sentence. He’d coax as many of them from his partner as possible, pushing off the block and racing to the next one before there was a chance for anyone to catch their breath or discard him; whichever came first.
But to have sex with the person he loves? Who makes him feel easy to love?
It’s fucking in Technicolor.
Penelope’s hair is wild in a way she’s only let him see while camping (glamping, if you ask Colin, though it’s a hotly contested classification between the two of them), her pleasure-glazed eyes lift to his and there’s an impish tilt to the corners of her mouth. Mischievous.
“Sometimes I think about your cum dripping down my thighs,” she says, “making them sticky.”
Heat engulfs him to the tips of his ears at her frankness, but the thrill that runs down his spine is palpable. She’s pushed a button Colin didn’t know he had because he’s never had sex without a condom, never even wanted to, but with Pen? His Pen? He could take care of her. He could make it so good.
Her eyes widen, like she can’t believe she said it out loud.
Colin leans down and kisses her hard. Brave Pen. Her breath is hot and her lips are soft and he’s going to come soon if he’s not careful. Smoothing his hand from her hip to her knee, he lifts her leg to settle in the crook of his arm.
“How often, would you say?” he asks, unable to keep the gravel from his voice as he pushes inside.
Now they’re both blushing. Moaning. Writhing.
“Well, there’s—there’s your mother’s tea on Tuesdays,” Penelope says, almost succeeding at keeping her voice even. “Movie night, obviously, so most Thursdays. Whenever you find occasion to—roll! up your sleeves. Weekends, holidays, bar mitzvahs…”
Colin’s laugh deepens into a groan. He has to stop moving, has to pull back.
She’s so damn witty. So damn beautiful. So damn clever. He can’t imagine knowing all these things about her and still not seeing the full picture, but he hadn’t. He suspects it’ll always haunt him; this prickling panic will raise the hairs on the back of his neck, his heart will beat too fast like it does when he barely makes it to the gate before the door closes.
“How long, Pen?” he asks, his anguish so abrupt her brows draw together. He clears his throat to clarify. “How long has it been like this for you?”
Her gaze goes to the mirror, traces of vulnerability tightening the corners of her mouth. It’s going to drive Colin mad. He drops her leg and sits up, pulling her with him.
“That’s not what the mirror’s for,” he growls, hauling her into his lap to face their reflection. He lifts her until the heat from her pussy licks along his cock. “It’s here so you can watch what you do to me. No hiding.”
She’s slack-jawed but determined as she reaches down to line them up. Penelope huffs, arms a bit too short to reach over her belly and legs already shaking, so he supports her with one arm and uses the other to notch himself at her entrance. After a few false starts (each one torture), her cheeks and chest flush with embarrassment.
This is one of those moments that probably makes her feel invisible.
“Hey,” he says, gaining her attention. “This isn’t a porn set. Stay with me.”
He guides them both to lie down with her facing the mirror. This position is selfish, really, because it bares the entire length of her to his gaze. Colin reaches around and grazes her nipple, the tight little bud tickling his palm.
Penelope arches into his touch.
“Pen,” he says. He kisses a trail from her shoulder to the crook of her neck, allowing himself the luxury of palming her entire tit. She moans. “How long?”
Her ass grinds against his length and she whimpers, but their eyes meet.
“If we’re talking about a crush, I was sixteen,” she says. Something bright and flammable shines in her eyes, tenderness so hot it scours his bones, leaves him cleansed. “If we’re talking about loving you, it was my nineteenth birthday…and every day since.”
His heart stumbles and trips.
“Penelope.” He moves her hair behind her back, giving her spine a reverent kiss. She shivers.
It’s a wobbly sort of comfort that he was, rightfully, not interested in pursuing a teenager in his twenties. Perhaps by the time he would’ve seen her, she was already typecast as the family friend, the quiet but witty girl he loved having around.
Colin grabs the side of her knee and lifts, opening her up. Her tits jolt so prettily when he buries himself to the hilt.
“God,” he groans, pushing in and out of her with the self-control only indefatigable curiosity can allow. “How did you keep from—as soon as I recognized what this was, I didn’t even last the week.”
It was embarrassing. A kiss on the cheek in thanks for carrying her luggage upon her arrival and he’d gone all moon-eyed.
“Are you—” Penelope’s breath hisses out of her as he picks up the pace. “Are you pouting?”
Colin wraps his arm beneath her breasts, tugging her closer. Never close enough. She’s hot bliss around his cock; it’s a miracle he’s thinking clearly enough to speak at all.
“No,” he lies.
Pen reaches behind and threads her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, tugging hard. The sound he makes is as close to a whine as he’s ever gotten.
“Good,” she says, grinning, “because that would be—”
“I just don’t see how—I was coming to your room tonight, anyway. To kiss you,” he growls, nipping the soft patch of skin behind her ear. “I had to kiss you.”
Penelope sighs, tilting her neck to give him more access.
“Poor baby,” she says dreamily, brown eyes going hazy as she watches them move together in the mirror. Colin kisses a line across her jaw and shifts to hitch her leg higher, tucking it in the crook of his elbow again.
His new leverage makes her cry out and he feels a bit smug, but it only lasts for a moment as he considers what she’s said.
“Your nineteenth,” he pants, watching himself fuck into her. Hearing it. It could put him in a trance if he let it. “Was that your mum’s awful—”
“Yes,” she gasps, her mouth falling open. “Yes yes yes.”
Oh, fuck.
Speech is abandoned. Sense is lost. Colin’s not sure he’s capable of either, of any of it, as he fucks into her. Pleasure breaks him down to his most essential parts.
“Pen,” he moans. Pen, Pen, Pen. “Love you.”
She pushes herself against him, rocking and jolting with every thrust, her brows drawn together like she’s in pain. He is, too.
“Yeah,” she whines, pinching her pretty nipple with a gasp. “I know.”
Colin’s been spoiled. He’s known Penelope for so long, watched her bloom right under his fucking nose, but there’s still so much of her he hasn’t seen. What is she like in the drowsy moments before she wakes up? In the aftermath of a lousy haircut? No, wait—he does know that version of her (2011; a bob and bangs that looked more like a bowl cut than anything), but the point is, he wants it all.
“We gonna get married?” he rasps in her ear. It’s an objectively insane thing to say, even more so because he means it. Penelope moans so loud he wonders if there’s a chance in hell nobody heard it, almost immediately deciding he doesn’t care. “You gonna let me fill you up? Give you babies?”
He doesn’t know if this is role play. Colin has completely lost the fucking plot. Before this moment, the thought of impregnating anyone gave him the sweats. But with Pen shaking beneath him, all her breaths turning to gasps, he’s never ached for anything more.
Colin picks up the pace and her hand flies back to his neck, digging in her fingernails.
“Fuck!” All it takes is one glance at Penelope’s bliss-stricken face, her cunt milking his cock as she comes, and he’s lost. Colin breaks like a wave; just ass over heels, salt-stung cuts, gasping for air kind of wreckage.
He works her through the aftershocks as long as the sensitive head of his cock can stand it before he pulls out, mesmerized by the sight of his cum dripping out of her. The pink, swollen lips that surround it. She’s glistening with what they’ve done to each other.
Colin drags his middle finger through it, grinning against her shoulder when she inhales sharply. He paints a circle around her clit with the sticky, almost pearlescent desire, runs a knuckle through the seam of her.
“Col,” she sighs. She’s flushed from her chest to her cheeks, but her eyes are bright; alert, trained on his hand.
Her mouth drops open when he gathers his cum with his fingertips. “This belongs here,” he tells her, entranced. He pushes them inside.
“Oh my God.”
Her hips chase his pumping fingers as Colin stuffs her with his cum, taking care to bump her clit every other pass. Her hair at the crook of her neck is damp with sweat and that special combination of pheromones he’d know anywhere as Penelope.
“Tell me we can do this again,” he groans as her thighs start to spasm and her legs close around his hand. “Tell me we can do it often.”
Her only answer is a sob.
Crooking his fingers to hit that sweet spot inside her, he grinds his palm down on her clit in a rhythm to match the frantic movement of her hips. Penelope fucks herself so well on his hand. He tells her so, heat and awe and gratitude engulfing him as he watches her come apart in his arms.
“Beautiful, beautiful Pen,” he breathes against her skin.
She releases his hair when it’s over, a bittersweet sting buzzing where she’d dug in her fingers. Her breath slowly returns to baseline and she rotates to look at his face, their skin sticky from exertion. Her dumbfounded expression must mirror his because she bursts out laughing.
“That was good,” she says, a gross understatement in his estimation.
“It’s always good with us,” he bristles. “Undefeated in Taboo, incomparable in sex,”
Her eyes sparkle with his favorite brand of mischief. “Go team,” she whispers seriously, pulling him down for a kiss. He ruins it with his irrepressible grin but they keep at it, anyway.
Before he has the chance to sink into it and, most likely, never get up again, he kisses her nose.
“I’ll be back,” he says, heading to the loo to wash up. He wets a rag with hot water, squeezes it out, and returns to clean Penelope. She indulges him, allowing more than one stray kiss on her stomach and thighs before it’s her turn in the loo.
Colin watches her go with not a little bit of longing, but he can’t help it. He has to know.
“Be honest with me, Pen,” he says. “Were you picturing the faun from Pan’s Labyrinth the whole time?"