“Luca, please ... I’m begging you to just leave it—
“I’m safe for you. Whatever kind of safe you need, Penny. Then, and now.”
“I like this. I hate that I like this.”
The words escaped from her in a hiss those clenched, perfect teeth that her pretty lips had parted to show him just how much the truth hurt. Clear tears had tracked lines over her near-translucent skin, finally escaping despite the fight she’d put up to keep them hidden. The wetness stopped at his hands that were still holding tighter to her face than they should. She didn’t shy away, though.
Not from his touch.
Or him.
That static anger snapping between them, and the fact they both gave a shit enough to be standing there doing it at all. And that’s what she meant, he knew. He couldn’t stop himself.
Not from saying what he already did, or even knowing that he’d finally pushed her to the edge, asking next, “You hate that you like me ... or whatever’s this is—this crazy shit. How many people make you this angry? Irrationally so. How many people have touched you because you wanted them to the way I do? That’s what you mean.”
Her next words were not what he expected, ready for more denials or fight. Anything but the truth that kicked him straight in the goddamn heart and explained everything he needed to know in two sentences.
“I can’t afford to let myself wonder what happens when I like this—us,” Penny said, shrugging weakly. “Life taught me not to.”
This wasn’t the kind of thing he could push. There were just parts of Penny’s very psyche that even when she had every ounce of proof that she was fine and okay, her brain and heart didn’t believe it was true. A learned instinct. One she would have to relearn—it was a process. It started with him, though. It began with the people who gave a shit repeating things she already knew just for the sake of saying it until it became the new reality.
The truth.
“I’m safe, Penny.”
Whatever kind of safe she needed—person, place, or otherwise. He would keep saying it until she finally heard it. Even if right now wasn’t the time when she did. It still needed to be said.
“I know,” she whispered.
He was still angry.
Nothing was right. She hadn’t answered anything or cleared up what was happening with her people or otherwise. He didn’t know the plans—if there even were any. There were a million more questions he wanted to ask because he knew eventually, she would break and yet ...
Luca kissed her, instead.
Why?
She looked like she needed it.
God knew so did he.
20.
Penny
A single kiss from Luca could change everything. The hard crush of his mouth against hers had the capability to sweep the world away. It was shocking to Penny how willing she was to let him do exactly that, too.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
She did want him.
His hands tight on her body, grabbing and teasing and making her nerves sing. His taste hot in her mouth, bliss whispered in every grunt and moan. The weight of his body pressing against hers with nothing but skin between them. She wanted him.
Willingly.
Completely.
That terrified her.
But it was also easy.
Scarily so.
It was far too easy to slip into the need that coursed through her body with every slash of his tongue against hers. The chaotic rush of his hands to strip her of the over-sized T-shirt matched the demand of her own to get him naked, too.
Before she even understood what happened, her back pressed against the window. Cold glass kissed her bare ass. She shoved his pants down to let his cock spring free. He was already hard and hissing when she wrapped her fingers around the heavy girth of his length to stroke him until she could feel his pulsing in her palm.
Maybe they had talked enough. Or maybe he didn’t know what else to say to try to tempt truths from Penny that she wasn’t willing to give him. Either way, they were all out of words.
Their fight was different, now.
Still harsh.
Every touch ached.
She tasted his blood when her teeth caught his lip, but it only made him kiss her harder. The copper flavor washing over her tongue as his cussed fuck pounded against her mouth. And then he was lifting her to the window without warning.
Her fingernails found purchase in his strong shoulders, digging in for stability when the flex of his hips drove him home. Straight into heaven.
Bliss could be heaven, she knew.
With him.
She felt every glorious inch of him. How he filled her without a sense of hesitation. The sting was beautifully real while she tensed, and her sensitive tissues accommodated his size. The sharp lines of his face were all the more intense from the shadows casting over his features. Yet, it hid nothing.
Not the hunger.
The want ...
Or the drive she found there.
She melted into him; from the kiss he stole to the way her thighs widened under his demanding hands. Her body gave into his torturous control, and the pleasure she knew would soon follow them both straight over the cliff into something wicked and good.
Luca had been right.
He was safe for her. Safe to trust that his hands wouldn’t hurt even when they pinned her to the glass, so she couldn’t move while he pounded into her. Her heart jumpstarted and stuttered when his mouth traveled from hers to the line of her jaw where he could lick and bite—but it didn’t start in any kind of fear. And when he did finally start murmuring dirty promises and other sinful words that made her shake, there was no disgust pounding at her insides.
Every grunted take that cock and his breathy you’re loving this made her hotter until she was ready to scream. He liked those sounds, too. Each whine and whisper. He licked every single one from her mouth the second it left her lips.
Nothing about him was wrong.
Or bad.
It was all good for her. Especially like this. Safe in a way not many people have ever afforded her. Not as easily as Luca did.
“You drive me crazy,” he panted against her parted lips, the flex of his hips slapping against hers at a pace that already had her spiraling. His hands held tighter like if he didn’t, she might burst all apart. “There it is, yeah?”
All she could do was nod. The orgasm clutched at her throat as it ripped through her womb. There was something to be said about pleasure when it was raw; how it raked over every nerve almost violently, but it still felt perfect.
Like nothing else.
He’d not slowed under her orgasm began to wane and even then, he teased her body with long, languid strokes. She was wet enough to hear every drive of his cock into her sex, but it was the drag of his length along every tensing inner muscle that kept her live like a wire.
“You drive me crazy,” he told her.
The only thing Penny could think to say when Luca pulled her away from the window and bent her over the back of the couch was, “We’re both crazy.”
He fucked her harder like that—with fingers tangled into her hair while his palm left behind red prints on her ass until the heat spread everywhere all over again.
For a time, she forgot everything. All of it. She didn’t want reality to catch up, but it would ...
Soon.
It always did.
PENNY SHOULD BE SLEEPING, lost in dreamland while wrapped in the arms of a man she wasn’t supposed to have. She should have appreciated the fact she could do that at all but instead, she was spiraling.