Chapter 9 — The Ferris Wheel Problem #3
She kept my hand in hers whenever she could. She leaned into selfies until her cheek brushed mine and my arm looked like it belonged around her. She stood close in lines, her perfume sliding under the stink of fried food and hot machinery. She murmured things no one else could hear.
"You look like you're being tortured."
"I am."
"Good torture?"
"Dangerous torture."
She smiled for a photo Saylor took from twenty feet away, then let her hand drift briefly to the back pocket of my shorts. "Then smile."
I smiled.
Saylor's eyes narrowed behind her phone.
Pierce noticed too. He didn't say anything.
He just watched Penny fit herself under my arm while Celeste talked to Laura about a charity auction and Declan asked Danny about boat storage.
The family filter was doing heroic work.
Trusted family friend. Old closeness. Luke and the girls. Nothing to see.
Penny's friends had no such filter.
Avery caught us near the ring toss and looked at Penny's fingers woven through mine. "So Friday?"
"Friday," Penny said.
Sienna grinned. "Good. Wear something cute. Both of you."
"Luke's cute by accident," Penny said.
"Rude," I said.
"True," Miles said, and handed me a lemonade.
Kiki texted while Tatum argued with Brody over whether the bottle toss was rigged.
Kiki: Second shelf claimed. Also your zucchini wasn't a zucchini anymore.
Then Shay: your bed looks too neat without us. criminal.
A photo followed. Not quite explicit. Worse, somehow. Shay on my bed in a towel, wet hair down, grinning at the camera while Kiki's hand was visible on the edge of the frame, setting folded clothes on my dresser.
My house.
Their things.
Penny glanced at my phone before I could lock it. Her smile shifted. "They look comfortable."
"They are."
"Good."
There was no jealousy in it. Only hunger sharpened by seeing a future she had not reached yet.
Tatum shouted my name from the balloon darts booth. "Luke, come hold my hips. For aim."
Brody groaned. "That's not how darts work."
"It's how my darts work."
I went.
By the time Penny's hand found the small of my back near the ride tents, I was strung so tight I could feel my pulse in my teeth.
"I need you for a minute," she said.
Her voice was calm.
Her eyes weren't.
***
Penny didn't ask.
She waited until Tatum had dragged Brody into a rigged ring toss rematch, until Avery and Sienna had peeled off toward the flower booth with Celeste, until Miles and Pierce were talking beside the lemonade stand.
Then she took my hand and led me between a prize tent and the back fence where the shade was narrow and hot and hidden.
The fair was right there. Twenty feet away. Close enough to hear the bell at the strength-test booth and Danny laughing at something Marley yelled. Close enough that if anyone stepped around the corner, we would have maybe one second to become innocent.
Penny stopped with her back to the tent canvas.
"Thirty seconds," she said.
"Penny."
"No." Her hand tightened around mine. The polish was cracking.
I could see it in her mouth, in the flush under her skin, in the way her chest rose and fell too fast. "You've been careful all day.
I've been careful all day. I've smiled and held your hand and let everyone think what they wanted, and if I don't kiss you right now, I'm going to lose my mind. "
I stepped closer.
"Thirty seconds," she whispered.
"You're not going to count."
"No."
Then she kissed me.
Full tongue, no warning, no warmup. Her mouth opened under mine and took me in like she had been starving politely for hours and had finally found a locked room.
I pinned her to the tent canvas with my body, one hand at her waist, the other braced beside her head, and she made a low sound into my mouth that went straight through me.
Her hands were already moving.
Under my shirt. Down my stomach. Fingers working at my waistband with efficient, shaking purpose.
The tent canvas shifted against her back.
Somewhere beyond it, a kid screamed on a ride, pure joy or terror, and Penny's fingers slipped under my waistband like the sound had been permission.
Her nails scraped the skin below my stomach.
My hips jerked before I could stop them.
She felt it and smiled against my mouth, not polished now, not composed, just pleased and filthy and hungry.
"Been thinking about this," she breathed against my mouth. "All day. Your hand in mine, everyone watching, nobody seeing it right. Nobody knowing how badly I wanted to pull you somewhere dark and put my hand on you."
She slid into my shorts.
Bare skin. Warm fingers. A firm grip around my cock that made the world narrow to the tent canvas at her back and the crowd noise beyond it.
"Jesus."
"You're so hard." Her voice broke on the last word, and that almost undid me more than her hand. "For me. Here. With everyone right there."
I kissed her harder because I couldn't answer without making a sound that would carry.
My hand went under her shirt. Her skin was hot from the fair, slick at the small of her back, trembling under my palm.
I found the edge of her bra and pushed beneath it, and her breast filled my hand with heavy, soft heat I couldn't fully hold.
Penny arched into me and bit my lower lip hard enough to sting.
"Your hand," she whispered. "God, Luke."
Her nipple was already tight against my palm. I rolled it under my thumb, rougher than I meant to, and her grip on my cock tightened in answer. She stroked me once, slow and bare, and I had to press my forehead to hers to keep from groaning too loud.
She knew exactly what that did to me. I felt her realize it in the way her breathing changed, in the way her thumb circled the head of my cock again, slower this time, gathering the wetness there and dragging it down my shaft with a patience that didn't belong behind a county-fair tent with our families close enough to hear us breathe.
"I want to make you come," she whispered.
My whole body locked.
Penny's eyes were open now, green and bright and completely unguarded. "Not here. I know. I know that. But I want it so badly I can taste it."
She kissed me before I could answer, and the kiss tasted like lemonade and sugar and the restraint we were both ruining by degrees.
"Penny."
"Don't stop."
My other hand slid down the back of her shorts.
Inside.
Bare.
She had nothing between my palm and the hot curve of her ass except intent. I grabbed her and pulled her against me. Her hips hit mine. Her hand trapped my cock between us, and she gasped, sharp and hungry, her mouth open against my jaw.
I could feel how much she wanted through every point of contact.
The tense roll of her hips into my hand.
The way her thighs shifted, opening as much as denim and standing room allowed.
The way her polished voice had vanished and left this rough, breathless version of her in its place, the one who didn't care that Avery might walk around the tent or Saylor might lift her phone at the wrong angle or Celeste might decide to look for her daughter.
That should have cooled me down.
It did the opposite.
I dragged my mouth down her throat and felt her pulse hammer under my tongue. Penny's hand tightened around my cock, stroking faster now, careful enough to keep me quiet and cruel enough to make quiet feel impossible.
"If you don't fuck me soon," she whispered, "I'm going to become impossible."
"Soon."
"Promise."
"Promise."
She kissed me again, dirtier this time, the kind of kiss that made every civilized thing about her feel like a costume she had finally gotten tired of wearing.
Her hand moved faster. My palm worked her breast. My fingers dug into her ass hard enough that she was going to feel it later and know exactly where my hand had been.
The fair went on around us. Music. Laughter. A child yelling for more cotton candy. Danny somewhere in the distance calling Tatum "Trouble" like the word didn't mean what it meant to me now.
Penny's thumb dragged over the head of my cock, wet and deliberate.
My control frayed.
"Penny," I said again, but this time it wasn't warning. It was surrender with the last inch of sense clinging to it.
"I know." Her forehead pressed to mine. Her hand didn't stop. "I know, I know, I know."
The words came apart with her breath. My hand stayed on her breast, her nipple tight under my thumb, my other hand full of her ass, pulling her into the hard line of me. The tent wall hid us badly. The fair hid us loudly. Neither one was enough.
I was close enough to doing something unforgivable in public that the knowledge flashed through me white-hot and useless.
Then both our phones went off at the same time.
Not one buzz. A rapid, frantic burst.
Penny froze with her hand wrapped around me.
My hand was under her shirt.
For one reckless second, neither of us moved.
Then her phone buzzed again.
"Tatum," Penny said, breathless.
I pulled my hand from her bra and took my phone out with fingers that didn't feel steady.
Tatum: LUKE
Tatum: IM STUCK
Tatum: FERRIS WHEEL TOP
Tatum: PLEASE COME
Penny looked at her screen. "Same."
Her hand slid out of my shorts, slow enough to make me hate reality. I tucked myself back in, still hard enough that the zipper felt personal. Penny adjusted her bra under her shirt, smoothed the fabric down, then shoved both hands into her hair and made it worse before making it better.
Her mouth was swollen. Her cheeks were flushed.
Her eyes looked like someone had set a match behind them.
One strap of her bra had twisted under her shirt, and when she reached in to fix it, her fingers shook badly enough that I had to look away or touch her again.
There were pink marks at the base of her throat from my mouth.
My palm still remembered the weight of her breast. My fingers still knew the heat of her bare ass.
My cock throbbed hard enough that walking back into public felt like a punishment invented specifically for me.