Chapter 11 — My Boyfriend #2
Penny's lips were damp. Her eyes were darker.
"We should go," she whispered.
"That sounded responsible."
"It was a disguise." Her fingers slid down my chest. "What I mean is if we don't go now, I'm taking this dress off in your kitchen, and then Avery will never forgive me for missing her party."
"Avery sounds demanding."
"Avery has a schedule."
"I hate schedules."
Penny smiled and stepped back. The dress shifted over her body, and the slit gave me another glimpse of thigh, high and smooth and completely unfair.
"Come on, boyfriend," she said.
Behind us, Shay called from the hallway, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
Kiki answered, "That's not a boundary."
Tatum added, "That's barely a suggestion."
Penny took my hand, laughing, and led me out into the summer night.
***
Avery Vale's party announced itself from half a block away.
Bass through open windows. Bodies on the porch.
String lights glowing in the humid dark.
Cars packed along the road. The kind of young, loud, pretty chaos that looked harmless until you remembered everyone inside had phones, alcohol, opinions, and just enough confidence to make bad ideas feel like destiny.
Penny squeezed my hand before we reached the steps.
"Ready?" she asked.
"No."
Her smile flashed. "Good."
Then she walked up the porch with me beside her, fingers threaded through mine, red dress moving over her body in a way that turned the whole entrance into an announcement.
People noticed.
Not dramatically. No record scratched. Nobody dropped a glass. But heads turned. Eyes tracked. Conversations snagged for half a beat and restarted with new material. Penny Rourke in that dress would have drawn attention if she had arrived alone.
Penny Rourke arriving with my hand locked in hers made the attention sharpen.
She liked it.
That was the first thing I felt. Not nerves. Not performance. Pleasure. The quiet, controlled satisfaction of a woman who had decided what she wanted people to see and was getting exactly the reaction she had aimed for.
It made me want her so badly my teeth hurt.
Avery found us in the entryway, glossy dark hair swinging, one hand lifted like she was greeting royalty and also possibly managing an event crisis.
"You came!" she said, hugging Penny first, then leaning back to look at both of us. Her eyes moved from the dress to our joined hands to my face. Her smile grew wicked. "Oh. Oh, this is a situation."
Penny's hand tightened around mine. "You remember Luke."
"No," Avery said. "I remember Luke from the fair. This is different." Her grin widened. "This is boyfriend Luke."
The word landed.
It landed on Avery's grin. On the two women by the stairs who immediately looked at each other. On a guy near the hallway who raised his eyebrows and tried not to be obvious about staring at Penny's dress. It landed in my chest hardest of all, hot and bright and almost painful.
"My boyfriend," Penny said, warm and certain.
Avery pressed a hand to her chest. "I knew it. I knew it at the fair. Sienna owes me twenty dollars and a public apology."
"Sienna owes everyone a public apology," said a woman drifting up beside her.
Sienna Brooks had bright eyes, a sharp smile, and the energy of someone who knew exactly when to say the thing everyone else was thinking. She looked me over without pretending not to. Then she turned to Penny.
"You undersold him."
Penny leaned into my side. "I didn't want you forming expectations."
"My expectations are now furious they were underfed." Sienna smiled at me. "Hi again, Luke. I promise I'm only moderately invasive unless there's tequila."
"Good to know."
"There's tequila," Avery said.
"Then Godspeed to us all."
Miles Arden appeared from the kitchen with a beer in one hand and an expression so relaxed it made the whole room feel less sharp. He smiled at Penny, then offered me an easy nod.
"Good to see you again, man," he said. "Penny's been impossible about you."
"I have not," Penny said.
Miles took a sip of beer. "You absolutely have. But in a charming way. Mostly."
Penny pointed at him. "Decent men don't testify against their friends."
"Decent men tell the truth and accept consequences."
I liked him immediately.
Avery handed us drinks, then pulled Penny into a group photo before either of us could protest. Sienna angled the lights, Miles held a phone, and within seconds I was standing behind Penny with my arm around her waist and her back against my chest, the open back of her dress leaving my palm on bare skin.
That was my undoing for the next twenty minutes.
Bare skin. Warm. Smooth. Penny leaning into me like she belonged there, her ass brushing the front of my jeans every time someone told us to shift closer. The room watching. The camera flashing. Avery making a wounded sound when she checked the photo.
"Disgusting," Avery said. "Actually unfair. You two look like a perfume ad for morally complicated people."
"Post it," Penny said.
I looked down at her. "You sure?"
She tilted her face up. "I'm sure."
There it was again. The choice. The public shape of it. Penny wasn't hiding. Not here, not among friends who knew how to read body language and didn't have years of family trust blinding them to the obvious.
She wanted to be seen with me.
So I let myself be seen with her.
We danced on the back patio under string lights, bodies pressed close enough that every beat of the music moved through both of us. Penny's arms went around my neck. My hands stayed on her waist until she looked up at me with one raised brow, then I let one palm slide lower to the curve of her hip.
Her smile went soft and dangerous.
"Careful," she said.
"Trying."
"Try less."
I pulled her closer.
Her thigh slid between mine, and the slit in the dress opened as she moved.
I caught flashes of leg, the smooth line from her knee to the high inside of her thigh, the red fabric shifting over her small, tight ass as she turned in my hands.
Every time I thought I had adjusted to the sight of her, she moved again and proved me wrong.
The room noticed that too.
Sienna filmed ten seconds of us dancing and declared it illegal.
Avery demanded another photo. Miles lifted his beer in silent approval from the deck rail.
Penny laughed more than I had ever seen her laugh in public, not because she was performing, but because she was enjoying the performance for once.
Then Rhett Calder walked in.
I knew who he was before anyone said his name.
Some men enter a room looking for friends. Rhett entered like he was checking whether the room had remembered him correctly. Tall. Good-looking. Shirt open one button too far. The kind of confidence that had probably been rewarded often enough to become a personality.
His eyes found Penny and stayed there.
Not surprised. Not respectful.
Interested, in the way men get interested when they have already decided a woman is available unless proven otherwise.
Penny felt my hand tighten at her waist.
"Rhett," she said when he reached us.
"Penny Rourke." He smiled like her name belonged in his mouth. "Didn't know you were back."
"I'm here."
"Clearly." His gaze dipped to the dress, lingered a beat too long, then moved to me. "And you brought company."
Penny's smile didn't change, but her body shifted half an inch closer to mine.
"I brought my boyfriend," she said. "Luke."
Rhett processed the word. His smile stayed in place, but something behind it recalculated and didn't like the answer.
"Boyfriend," he said. "Didn't know you did those."
"I do this one."
Sienna, standing near the cooler, coughed into her drink.
I offered Rhett my hand because I was old enough to know when manners were more effective than teeth. His handshake was firm, performative, and a fraction too long.
"Good to meet you," he said.
"You too."
Behind him, a woman in a black dress with dark hair and red lips turned from a conversation and looked straight at me.
Noelle Price didn't pretend curiosity was accidental. Her gaze moved over my face, my shoulders, the hand I had on Penny, then back to my eyes. She smiled like she had found something worth testing.
"Luke," she said, coming up beside Rhett. "I'm Noelle."
"Good to meet you."
"I'm sure it's."
Penny's fingers slid over my wrist. Not nervous. Claiming.
Noelle caught the movement. Her smile widened.
"You two are new?" she asked.
Penny answered before I could. "No."
It was such a Penny answer. Short, polished, impossible to challenge without looking rude.
Noelle laughed. "That's not an answer."
"It's," Penny said. "Just not the one you wanted."
Rhett's gaze moved to Penny's mouth. "Still sharp."
"Still taken."
That should have ended it. It didn't. Not completely.
But Avery swept in with drinks and noise and perfect host timing, and the moment dissolved back into music, laughter, and people calling for the next song.
Penny kept my hand. I kept my palm low on her back.
Rhett watched from the edge of the patio.
Noelle watched me whenever she thought Penny wasn't looking.
Penny was always looking.
The party rolled on around us, bright and loose and hungry.
Couples kissed against doorframes. Girls sat on boyfriends' laps.
Phones came out every three minutes. Someone spilled a drink and laughed hard enough that nobody cared.
Penny stayed glued to me through all of it, fingers interlaced, hip against my thigh, mouth brushing my jaw when she wanted to say something private.
At one point Sienna looked at us, then at Avery, then back at us.
"You know what they are?" she said.
"Hot?" Avery offered.
"Obviously. But more specific." Sienna pointed with her cup. "They're the anti-swap couple."
Penny's mouth curved. "The what?"
"The couple that makes everyone else look unstable for even thinking about trying."
Avery snapped her fingers. "Correct. Strong diagnosis."
I laughed, but Penny turned into me, slid her hand under my open jacket, and pressed her palm flat to my chest.
"I like that," she said.
So did I.
More than I should have.