“Good?”
Penny smiled, her eyes still closed when she felt his hands dance lower to her calves. “Better.”
“How many miles have you clocked?”
On her feet?
In the past week, too many. More than she ever would again. It was just faster to walk to get where she wanted to go—the subway did the major distance, but even still, she didn’t regret investing in boots for work that didn’t do a number on her feet.
“A lot,” she settled on saying.
Luca hummed a dark and delicious sound that had Penny opening her eyes. He was quite a sight kneeled down in front of her, naked, back wet with water droplets and skin pebbled from the cold air. He wasn’t under the spray like she was, not that he seemed to mind. The man was content doing not being.
She would rather do something for him.
“Come here,” Penny said, reaching for him through the water and foggy space. He didn’t hesitate to stand, never questioning her. Like everything else going on, too. He was just there—letting her be. As he stood, leaning in and unbothered by the spray of hot water, she mouthed the words, “Kiss me.”
And he did.
Again.
Like in the elevator.
Or how he devoured her the second they were hidden within the privacy of the hotel room. There wasn’t much to look at in there but each other, anyway. If for the moment, she couldn’t do anything to further what was happening outside these walls, then she wanted to do nothing at all with Luca.
If nothing meant doing him.
Of course.
But this time when he kissed her, she let him take his taste of her mouth while her hands dipped lower between them. One tightened around the base of his semi-hard shaft, stroking him from base to tip before swiping the tip of her thumb over the head of his cock. He shuddered, his teeth catching her bottom lip when she dared to cup and stroke his balls with her other hand at the same time.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
His pupils blew wide when their kiss slowed because her hands picked up the pace. Tugging faster, tightening with a twist of her wrist, and then stroking his balls while her tongue teased the seam of his lips, too.
She had to ask, “Does anyone ever take care of you?”
Luca blinked.
He didn’t answer.
She really didn’t need him to.
Her name came out of his mouth like someone had slammed a fist against his chest when he came. Spilling sticky cum on her fingers that the water washed away.
Mostly.
She kneeled down to lick the rest off while he watched.
“I HAVE TO LEAVE IN the morning,” Penny said, although it was the last thing she wanted to do. She didn’t want to interrupt the quiet stillness she and Luca had found tangled naked in bed. They could have closed the blinds but instead, they watched the dark sky stretch on for hours.
What was sleep?
Luca’s arms tightened around Penny’s middle. She even felt the twitch of his jaw when his stubble scraped tantalizingly against her scarred stomach. He never shied away from the history she had cut into her skin. In fact, the canvas of her skin, from the soft spots behind her knees to the one that made her shiver at the back of her neck became his personal map to do with what he wanted. She’d never enjoyed being studied more.
“I’ll go with—”
“Better not,” she said, meeting his gaze when he lifted his head from her stomach. “I have to grab some things from a shitty motel. Less foot travel from both of us is best right now. I’ll be back. Maybe before you wake up.”
Luca arched a brow.
He didn’t believe her.
“Are you going to run again?” he asked.
She should have expected that. Hell, he was owed it.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
As good as a promise.
And she wouldn’t argue.
If people hadn’t figured it out yet, Penny was going to do whatever she wanted and needed to do whether someone else wanted her to do it or not. It would happen. They could get in line, or move out of the way.
She adored Luca.
But he wasn’t an exception.
“Come back,” he murmured.
“I said I would.”
“And still—”
“I will.”
The sharpness of her words sent him rising up to hover above her. He was quite a sight—every hard line of his muscles from the ropes that made up his arms to the bands of his shoulders, and even the hard expanse of his chest. If living artwork was a thing, then Luca was surely it.
A drug.
Made just for her.
She wanted another hit.
As quickly as the two had melted into silence to watch the darkness creep through the skies, they as easily moved back into something carnal. All it took was the widening of her thighs when he pressed in between her, and the way she dragged her fingernails from his chest down to his stomach and over his sides.
He got himself hard by kissing her while she rubbed against him. She found paradise when he filled her full, the sting of being stretched open again that night too delicious not to share. Her nails bit into his skin to give it back just as much.
He said nothing.
No dark words.
No dirty promises.
Not while he watched and fucked her. He just took in everything she gave. Each little sound. How her air started to catch when his pace came in with fast, long relentless strokes. His hands tightened to her small waist, holding tight enough to hurt while her fingers locked around his wrists.
She came hard like that.
She bet he still didn’t believe her, though. He wouldn’t say it—but he was hurt. Because she left him. She didn’t give him a reason not to be.
Either way ...
Penny would come back.
“ACTUALLY, SHE JUST walked through the door, Naz,” Luca said as the hotel’s door clicked shut under Penny’s hand.
She hadn’t expected to sleep beyond nine—she blamed Luca for that—so the trip to the motel took longer than she expected. With the sun crawling high in the sky, it was already well past noon. At least, Luca didn’t seem surprised that she was back.
Maybe he had believed her.
She didn’t expect to get back and find him on the phone with Nazio, though. She didn’t know whether to deal with that first, or the fact that the small nineteen-inch flatscreen television was turned on showcasing a news reporter discussing her mother.
Allegra’s face—in a photograph from her wedding to Penny’s father—stayed plastered in the top, left-hand corner of the screen as the woman behind the glass desk spoke.
“Thousands of images of Allegra Dunsworth’s estranged—and currently missing—daughter, Penny Dunsworth, have surfaced all over the internet. What appeared as a file dump of child pornography on the dark web quickly made its way to the public interwebs on chat forums. It was a quick leap from there to being widely shared across social media platforms as people connected—”
“Shut it off,” Penny said, air stinging in her chest.
She knew it was going to hurt. She knew it would be bad. Yet. Penny hadn’t been ready.
Luca didn’t say anything, simply reached for the small remote to point at the television. It took a press of one button for the screen to blank out entirely. Immediately, she felt better. The anxiety ebbed away, but it was a false sense of security. Everything was still out there. She couldn’t take that back.