Chapter 12 — The Dress Comes Off #4
For a while, neither of us moved. I kept touching her because I could.
Her back. Her hip. The curve of her ass.
Penny responded to aftercare like she had responded to sex, not with shyness, but with pleasure in being wanted after the show was over.
The world could look at her and see beauty.
I got to look at her like she was mine, messy and warm and still leaking me between her thighs.
That mattered to her. I could feel it in the way she stayed open under my hands instead of tucking herself away.
She let me look at the red marks my fingers had left on her hips.
Let me watch the slow slide of cum down the inside of her thigh.
Let me brush my thumb through it and see her eyes darken again even though both of us were wrecked.
"You're doing that thing," she murmured.
"What thing?"
"Looking like you're deciding whether to apologize or do it again."
"Which answer do you want?"
She lifted her head. Her hair was tangled. Her lipstick was gone. Her skin still carried the flush of my hands and mouth and the kind of sex that left evidence.
"Never apologize for that."
My chest tightened.
I kissed her shoulder, then the top of one breast, then the faint mark my mouth had left near her collarbone. She hummed, pleased and boneless, and slid her fingers through my hair.
"I like this part," she said.
"The ruined sheets?"
"The looking after." Her voice went smaller, but not weak. Honest. "The not being done with me because you came."
There went another piece of me.
I rolled her gently onto her back and propped myself on one elbow so I could see her properly.
Penny let me. Her knees fell open a little, not posing, not performing.
Trusting. The mess between her thighs gleamed in the low light, and when my gaze dropped, she didn't close her legs. She watched me watching her.
"I'm nowhere near done with you," I said.
Her smile was slow and soft and filthy at the edges. "Good."
I cleaned her with the towel Kiki had left, but I did it badly on purpose at first, slow strokes along her thighs, around her hips, across her stomach where sweat had dried. Penny caught on fast and laughed under her breath.
"This is medical care?"
"Highly advanced."
"Your credentials seem suspicious."
"I have hands."
"Strong argument."
She gasped when the towel brushed between her legs, sensitive enough that even that light touch made her hips twitch. I stopped immediately.
"Too much?"
"No." She swallowed. "Sensitive. But no."
So I slowed down. Kissed her knee. Her thigh. The soft place just above where the mess and heat began. Not starting over. Not yet. Only telling her with my mouth and hands that the sex had not used her up. It had made her more mine and more herself at the same time.
"You're still staring," she murmured.
"You're still naked in my bed."
"Fair."
"Also, I think I forgot my own name for a minute."
"Luke Whitaker," she said grandly. "Boyfriend. Homeowner. Sex hazard."
"Sex hazard?"
"I can barely feel my legs."
"You told me not to be polite."
"And I stand by that leadership decision."
She shifted, then gasped when the movement made more cum slip out of her. Her eyes went down between us, then back up to me, amused and dazed.
"You really didn't hold back."
"Not with you."
"I liked feeling it," she said, quieter. "When you came. How hard it hit you."
"You nearly killed me."
"You made that clear internally."
I laughed, then kissed her before the joke could save either of us from the tenderness underneath it. Her mouth opened softly. No rush this time. No frantic edge. Only warmth, salt, sex, and the strange relief of being allowed to keep touching after the need had broken.
Her expression changed.
Not dramatically. Penny didn't collapse into softness. She had too much style for that. But something opened. The bright edge eased. The woman underneath looked at me from inches away.
"I like that," she said. "A lot."
I kissed her forehead.
She reached blindly toward the nightstand. "Water, before I become a cautionary tale."
I grabbed the bottle Kiki had left and held it while she drank. Some of it ran down her chin. I wiped it with my thumb. She caught my hand and kissed the pad of it.
"Okay," she said. "Wild idea."
"Already nervous."
"My last year of school is light. A couple days on campus, some online work, thesis stuff I can do anywhere.
" She drew another circle on my chest, slower this time.
"I could live here. At the lake. Commute when I need to.
Not as a guest. Not as some girl who visits her boyfriend on weekends.
I mean, actually live here. My clothes. My books. My life."
She looked at me then.
There it was. The real ask. Not about square footage. Not about the drive. She was asking if the room I had already given her was a placeholder or a promise.
"Yes," I said.
Her breath caught.
"That fast?"
"That fast."
"Luke."
"I want you here, Penny. I want the coffee cups and the impossible dress budget and the shoes in places shoes should never be. I want you walking through this house like you belong here because you do."
Her smile came slow and dangerous, but her eyes shone.
"My dress budget isn't impossible. It's ambitious."
"I stand corrected."
"And possibly sponsored."
"Apparently."
She laughed, then tucked herself closer, her body sliding against mine in a way that reminded both of us how naked we were.
"There's a bigger conversation," I said.
Her gaze sharpened, but she didn't pull away.
"All of you," I said. "What this house becomes. What permanent looks like. That should happen with everyone in the room, everyone having a voice. I don't want to make that decision around them or over them."
"I know."
"But my answer to you is yes. I want you here. I want this."
For once, Penny didn't have a joke ready.
She kissed me instead. Slow. Tender. Mouth soft, hand on my chest, her body warm and messy against mine.
"Good," she whispered. "Because I want it too."
"I noticed."
"Did you? Was I subtle?"
"Extremely. You rode me and asked me to come inside you. Nearly impossible to interpret."
She smiled into my skin. "I'm a woman of nuance."
"You're a menace."
"Your menace."
"Yes."
The word settled between us. Simple. Heavy. True.
Downstairs, the house had gone quiet. Movie night had either ended or mutated into sleep. I held Penny against me while the last of the adrenaline left our bodies, while the room smelled like sex and perfume and warm sheets, while the red dress on the floor waited for morning like proof.
Penny's breathing slowed.
Before she drifted off, she murmured, "Best night of my life."
I kissed her hair.
"Mine too."
She slept after that, warm and limp in my arms.
I stayed awake a little longer, looking at the ceiling, one hand on her back, thinking about five women downstairs, one woman in my bed, and a house that was becoming something bigger than anything I had known how to want.
***
Late morning found us by the pool.
Not the kitchen. Not coffee and eggs and everyone pretending the night before had not left fingerprints all over the house. The sun was too bright for pretending. The water was too loud. The backyard had been taken over by women in swimsuits, towels, sunglasses, and varying degrees of dignity.
Which meant very little dignity.
Shay hit the pool first with a cannonball that seemed personally angry at the concept of water. The splash caught Tatum full in the face. Tatum came up sputtering, copper hair plastered to her cheeks, freckles vivid against sun-pink skin.
"You absolute menace!"
"Accuracy matters!" Shay shouted.
"That was an act of war."
"Then retaliate, Bell."
Tatum launched herself at her. They went under in a tangle of dark hair, copper hair, limbs, laughter, and bad decisions.
Reese watched from the shallow end for maybe three seconds before she dove in after them.
That got me.
Reese was usually the girl who watched first. Who felt everything and measured the room before deciding where to stand. But she came up beside Tatum with her chestnut hair slicked back and her smile bright, then hooked an arm around Shay's waist and helped dunk her.
Shay surfaced betrayed and delighted. "Madden!"
"I'm on Tatum's team."
"You don't even know the rules."
"There are rules?"
Tatum whooped. "She gets it."
They moved together after that, all splash and laughter and wet skin, Reese right in the middle instead of at the edge.
The sight of it did something quiet and serious under my ribs.
She wasn't in my bed. Not yet. Not being rushed there.
But she was in the water, in the noise, inside the life instead of watching it through glass.
On the lounge chairs, Penny stretched on her stomach in a black bikini, platinum hair loose around her shoulders, sunglasses hiding her eyes badly.
Nothing hid the glow. Not the glasses. Not the lazy way she rested her cheek on her folded arms. Not the small satisfied smile that kept appearing whenever I walked past and her gaze followed me like she was remembering exactly what my hands had done to her.
Eden lounged beside her in a navy one-piece that looked conservative for about half a second, until you noticed the cut and the body inside it.
She had a book open in her lap. She had not turned a page since I came outside.
Her eyes moved over the pool, then Penny, then me, then Reese, cataloging everything.
But the mask was thinner today.
She laughed when Tatum tried to climb Shay's shoulders and immediately fell backward. A real laugh. Quick, surprised, gone almost before she could control it.
Penny noticed.
So did I.
Kiki came out through the sliding door with a tray of drinks balanced against one hip, golden hair pulled up, cutoffs riding low, bikini top visible under her loose white shirt. She moved through the chaos like she had been born managing beautiful disasters.