Page 55 of One Step After Another

She didn’t seem like the type to beg a man for anything, even her pleasure. Luca understood why and wouldn’t try to make her ... at least, not tonight. She could just take what she wanted from him instead, and he would be all too happy to give it to her.

“Yo—take that shit out of the hallway, or I’m getting Freddie’s ass up here!”

Penny’s teeth cut into Luca’s lower lip at the same time the warning rang out from down the hall. Her hands froze against his chest where she had started to pull at his shirt like she was going to rip it right off. Her stare flicked up to his, the amusement dancing there held no shame or embarrassment ... or control.

Like him.

All of this was just instinctual now.

A need.

“Hey, I said—”

“Fuck off,” Luca snarled to the side.

He didn’t look at the man—didn’t even see who it was. All it took was the press of his hand against Penny’s trim waist, and she slid to the side with him following right behind. She entered their room first, already pulling the tank top over her head before he had even closed the door with a slam that echoed. The button on his jeans snapped apart under his handling as she turned around.

They were two steps apart.

She closed it in a blink.

There was no softness in what came next. Their kisses stung, and his teeth left marks behind on her white skin. She gave back the same roughness she found in him, uncaring how he hissed when she yanked his shirt off before dragging her sharp nails down the expanse of his chest. When the slip of a skirt she wore fell to the floor around her heels, Luca let out a whistle.

“When did you take your panties off? How long were you walking around like that, Penny?”

She grinned, her black bra the only thing keeping any part of her body covered. He couldn’t help but admire the sight of her when she took two steps back, stopping only when her legs hit the foot of the bed.

“Since my shower,” she admitted.

“Goddamn.”

“We had to at least make it to the room, didn’t we?”

Luca cocked a brow. “But did we?”

“Stop talking, Luca,” she said, reaching up to unsnap the bra where the cups connected at the valley between her breasts, “and come fuck me.”

So brazen.

Sure.

She knew what she wanted and that called to him more than anything else. There was nothing he found more attractive than that—shit, he got off on it, really.

The bra came apart and slid down her arms, discarded to the floor. In nothing but black heels, she stood at the foot of the bed and waited. Her entire life and story stared back at him, he knew. An hourglass figure that before it had even developed had been used and abused many times over. The scars she had cut into herself to chase away the pain. A grown woman who had finally grown into someone he didn’t know at all.

But he wanted to.

God.

He wanted to know her.

“Now,” Penny demanded quietly despite her firm tone, kicking off her heels and losing four inches of height instantly. Not that it mattered—her legs were still a work of art that he wanted to get wrapped around his head while he tasted the bare heaven between her thighs.

He wanted to keep staring—learning and appreciating. Committing her to his memory because hadn’t she already warned him what would happen after this? What was inevitable? But he wouldn’t waste time, either.

Luca would take what he could get; anything she was willing to give.

She reached for him when he stepped closer, the small space of the room closing around him as her hands slipped beneath his opened jeans. His mouth crashed against hers, tasting the heat on her tongue while her hands worked magic. She stroked him with one hand while her other pulled at his jeans until she had them down around his hips.