The long length of her white hair fell like a curtain over her bouncing tits with every lift and lower of her body. He found her hands with his own, weaving their fingers together when she straightened up and watched him down below.
She was still clenching tight from her first orgasm; his cock worked into those tight muscles. He kept her arms high over her head with one hand while his other palmed her throat. She didn’t shy away from that, either, and then he could really pound into her.
Those rising moans ...
Every broken cry ...
It was because of him.
Luca knew it shouldn’t be—this wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing with Penny. He couldn’t even begin to fathom how he would tell his friend what he had done here.
He also didn’t care.
Not in that moment.
How could he when he had this?
“SUCCESS,” LUCA SAID as he slipped back into the room with a bottle of unopened vodka in hand. “I had to bribe the guy who handles the liquor but—”
“I always wanted to come back.”
The door closed under Luca’s hand, but he didn’t move away from it. Instead, he watched Penny from where she sat in the middle of the bed. The thin blanket pooled at her waist, doing nothing to hide the nakedness of her upper body. She didn’t seem to mind as she fingered the edge of the blanket, her brow drawn down in her thoughts.
“Back here, you mean?”
Because that’s what he hoped she meant.
“I wanted to,” she said, making him hear what she was trying to say. “But it wasn’t supposed to happen. Or at least, that’s what I was always told. I gave up something to give something back ... I know it doesn’t make sense to you. Maybe you want to understand—”
“All you have to do is tell me.”
Penny shook her head. “Not when that means doing more damage, Luca. Not when it might mean ruining everything that’s got me to this point. I’m so close.”
Anger at not knowing what she was trying to tell him rushed out of him when he snapped, “To what?”
She didn’t reply.
He should have expected that.
“It won’t matter, will it?” she asked.
Crossing the room, he tossed the small pint of vodka he’d managed to snatch from the downstairs to the bed. “Depends.”
“If I ask you to stop again—if I tell you everything depends on you going away and staying there. It won’t matter. You can’t.”
“I promised my friend to find you.”
“And you have.”
“But you’re not where you should be, Penny,” he said. “And you know that, too.”
“I don’t belong anywhere now. I can’t.”
“Tell me you don’t miss them. Say you don’t give a shit about the godson you left behind. Open that fucking mouth of yours and at least lie. If you can’t even do that, then why would I stop? I’ve gotten this far—”
“But you won’t get more.”
He didn’t understand.
He also knew she wouldn’t explain.
Penny looked up from the blanket, observing while he lingered at the end of the bed. There was something soft in her stare, but he found something else there, too. A longing, maybe. But for what, he didn’t know.
“Come back to bed,” she said. “At least there’s this. We can have this.”
Right.
For now.
16.
Penny
BEFORE, any physical intimacy Penny willingly had with a man would end the second it was over, and she got what she wanted from it. She didn’t linger; there was nothing to stay for, really. She expected her partners to do the same and not demand anything more.
Everything was easier that way.
It worked.
Except with Luca ...
While he seemed determined to remain with her until she forced his hand—and she couldn’t leave when she was ordered to wait for The League’s signal—she also didn’t mind his company. She was, however, too prideful to admit that the days following her falling into bed with him passed quicker because he was there.
Because she couldn’t leave him alone.
It was just ... too good.
And wasn’t Penny allowed to indulge herself just once?
Naked and unbothered next to her in the bed, she could feel Luca’s gaze watching her, but she refused to turn her head his way. Instead, she focused on the cracked plaster of the ceiling over top the bed while his fingers tapped a soothing beat to the inside of her elbow. Before long, she recognized the familiar tapping. It was like the notes he was pretending to play had started to take shape in her mind, ringing out with actual sound in her brain though no one else could hear it but her.
The pianist in her was still alive and well. Her need for music had never dimmed as much as it just became secondary to everything else in her life over the years.
“Rosalynn’s third stanza of what she called The Nineth Composition,” Penny said. “She played it in Australia at every show, right?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luca’s grin. “She did. I’m not very good at piano, but I can at least play a little ... if I go slow.”
That had her snorting.
“What good is playing slow?”
She felt him shrug as he shifted on the bed to rest his head in his hand, propped up higher so now she couldn’t pretend like she was unable to see him. While her body was made up of scars that told a tale she would rather not, his was not the same. A beautiful canvas of golden, tanned skin and a muscular form that deserved to be appreciated. There was something decadent about running her hands over his chest and arms; feeling his dark dusting of hair and the way his bands of muscles jumped at her touch like he needed it.
She held back from reaching over to do just that—it would only lead them into another sweaty mess of tangled limbs, and she was trying to show some self-control.
A joke, honestly.
She wanted to fuck again and again. As soon as they were done. Day after day. Night in and night out. Self-control?
What was that?
“You still play?” he asked.
Penny smiled. “Rarely.”
“But you do.”
The lump that formed in her throat was almost impossible to swallow. It was only there because of how easily she wanted to tell him the truth about the piano and why she played so infrequently now. He made her want to talk; that was dangerous.
Still, Penny said, “I have a Baby Grand I can use whenever I want, but I don’t compose anymore. Not my own pieces, I mean. I haven’t played a show since ... before I tried to kill myself when I was sixteen. I don’t think—”
She stopped talking when his fingers drifted lower on her arm, tracing the lines upon lines that made up her skin. Faded scars that had long turned white and the few, deeper ones that were still a pinkish-red tone. Most were raised and the ridges couldn’t be missed from how she had cut into the same lines again and again.
“That still a thing?” Luca asked in a murmur.
“What?”
“Suicide. Attempts or otherwise. Curious.”
He sounded like he was telling the truth. His expression gave nothing away to say he was lying or overthinking.