Page 59 of One Step After Another

16.

Penny

BEFORE, any physicalintimacy Penny willingly had with a man would end the second it was over, and she got what she wanted from it. She didn’t linger; there was nothing to stay for, really. She expected her partners to do the same and not demand anything more.

Everything was easier that way.

It worked.

Except with Luca ...

While he seemed determined to remain with her until she forced his hand—and she couldn’t leave when she was ordered to wait for The League’s signal—she also didn’t mind his company. She was, however, too prideful to admit that the days following her falling into bed with him passed quicker because he was there.

Because she couldn’t leave him alone.

It was just ... too good.

And wasn’t Penny allowed to indulge herself just once?

Naked and unbothered next to her in the bed, she could feel Luca’s gaze watching her, but she refused to turn her head his way. Instead, she focused on the cracked plaster of the ceiling over top the bed while his fingers tapped a soothing beat to the inside of her elbow. Before long, she recognized the familiar tapping. It was like the notes he was pretending to play had started to take shape in her mind, ringing out with actual sound in her brain though no one else could hear it but her.

The pianist in her was still alive and well. Her need for music had never dimmed as much as it just became secondary to everything else in her life over the years.

“Rosalynn’s third stanza of what she called The Nineth Composition,” Penny said. “She played it in Australia at every show, right?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luca’s grin. “She did. I’m not very good at piano, but I can at least play a little ... if I go slow.”

That had her snorting.

“What good is playing slow?”

She felt him shrug as he shifted on the bed to rest his head in his hand, propped up higher so now she couldn’t pretend like she was unable to see him. While her body was made up of scars that told a tale she would rather not, his was not the same. A beautiful canvas of golden, tanned skin and a muscular form that deserved to be appreciated. There was something decadent about running her hands over his chest and arms; feeling his dark dusting of hair and the way his bands of muscles jumped at her touch like he needed it.

She held back from reaching over to do just that—it would only lead them into another sweaty mess of tangled limbs, and she was trying to show some self-control.

A joke, honestly.

She wanted to fuck again and again. As soon as they were done. Day after day. Night in and night out. Self-control?

What was that?

“You still play?” he asked.

Penny smiled. “Rarely.”

“But you do.”

The lump that formed in her throat was almost impossible to swallow. It was only there because of how easily she wanted to tell him the truth about the piano and why she played so infrequently now. He made her want to talk; that was dangerous.

Still, Penny said, “I have a Baby Grand I can use whenever I want, but I don’t compose anymore. Not my own pieces, I mean. I haven’t played a show since ... before I tried to kill myself when I was sixteen. I don’t think—”

She stopped talking when his fingers drifted lower on her arm, tracing the lines upon lines that made up her skin. Faded scars that had long turned white and the few, deeper ones that were still a pinkish-red tone. Most were raised and the ridges couldn’t be missed from how she had cut into the same lines again and again.

“That still a thing?” Luca asked in a murmur.

“What?”

“Suicide. Attempts or otherwise. Curious.”