Page 51 of One Second After Another

A drug.

Made just for her.

She wanted another hit.

As quickly as the two had melted into silence to watch the darkness creep through the skies, they as easily moved back into something carnal. All it took was the widening of her thighs when he pressed in between her, and the way she dragged her fingernails from his chest down to his stomach and over his sides.

He got himself hard by kissing her while she rubbed against him. She found paradise when he filled her full, the sting of being stretched open again that night too delicious not to share. Her nails bit into his skin to give it back just as much.

He said nothing.

No dark words.

No dirty promises.

Not while he watched and fucked her. He just took in everything she gave. Each little sound. How her air started to catch when his pace came in with fast, long relentless strokes. His hands tightened to her small waist, holding tight enough to hurt while her fingers locked around his wrists.

She came hard like that.

She bet he still didn’t believe her, though. He wouldn’t say it—but he was hurt. Because she left him. She didn’t give him a reason not to be.

Either way ...

Penny would come back.

• • •

“ACTUALLY, SHE JUST walked through the door, Naz,” Luca said as the hotel’s door clicked shut under Penny’s hand.

She hadn’t expected to sleep beyond nine—she blamed Luca for that—so the trip to the motel took longer than she expected. With the sun crawling high in the sky, it was already well past noon. At least, Luca didn’t seem surprised that she was back.

Maybe he had believed her.

She didn’t expect to get back and find him on the phone with Nazio, though. She didn’t know whether to deal with that first, or the fact that the small nineteen-inch flatscreen television was turned on showcasing a news reporter discussing her mother.

Allegra’s face—in a photograph from her wedding to Penny’s father—stayed plastered in the top, left-hand corner of the screen as the woman behind the glass desk spoke.

“Thousands of images of Allegra Dunsworth’s estranged—and currently missing—daughter, Penny Dunsworth, have surfaced all over the internet. What appeared as a file dump of child pornography on the dark web quickly made its way to the public interwebs on chat forums. It was a quick leap from there to being widely shared across social media platforms as people connected—”

“Shut it off,” Penny said, air stinging in her chest.

She knew it was going to hurt. She knew it would be bad. Yet. Penny hadn’t been ready.

Luca didn’t say anything, simply reached for the small remote to point at the television. It took a press of one button for the screen to blank out entirely. Immediately, she felt better. The anxiety ebbed away, but it was a false sense of security. Everything was still out there. She couldn’t take that back.

Ever.

Luca muttered something to the man on the phone. A quick, “Yeah, all right.” Then, he set it down on the small table beside the loveseat at the foot of the bed. She thought he hung it up, but apparently, he just put it on speakerphone.

“She there?” Naz asked.

Penny swallowed hard, giving Luca a look.

He only shrugged back.

Damn.

“I’m here,” she said.