He slowly drags a finger from my cheek to my lower lip, resting it there. My tongue slips out, tasting his finger. Salt and lime and him, yum. He lets out a ragged breath as I take his finger into my mouth, sucking lightly on it.
He groans. “No. Holy fuck, Penny, no,” he mumbles, his body falling against me. “Now I’m losing it too.”
I cast him a hooded gaze through my eyelashes. I don’t know how to explain it, other than that Luke unleashes a side of me no one else can. With him, I’m only doing what feels right. Putting as much of my skin against his, tasting whatever I can of him, bathing in his essence . . . that feels right.
“Baby,” he whispers, his voice low and throaty. “You keep doing that and there’s gonna be trouble.”
I suck on his finger more, dancing my tongue along the tip, sliding it along the sides, giving him a promise of what’s to come.
Because right now? I want trouble.
Luke
Yeah, come to think of it, no. We didn’t see the cameras. But we had a good night. Penny fell asleep on the cab ride back, so I carried her inside. We’re ready, though. We’ve never felt better. We’re gonna make up some ground.
Luke’s Confessional, Day 8
I didn’t sleep all night. Didn’t even try. Sat out on the balcony and watched the sun rise over Boston Harbor before I went off for a quick morning confessional.
But Penny? She’s another story. Out like a light from the moment I carried her inside.
I knew the second I laid her down in bed that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My mind was racing with thoughts of her, my cock hard as a rock for her. For this little girl who keeps opening herself up to me in the best of ways, like a Christmas present I get to unwrap every morning.
At six, I have to wake her up.
She’s lying with her face under the pillow, her hair loose around her. When I tell her we have to go, she moans. “Oh, no no no. I’m dying.”
“No, you’re not,” I tell her when she rips the pillow off her face and stares at me with bloodshot eyes. “What do you want? Hair of the dog? Grease? Or the old standby—water and ibuprofen? I got it all. Your choice.”
She feels around for her glasses. I hand them to her. She puts them on and smooths her hair back as she blinks at the tray of bacon and eggs I brought up from the restaurant and the full minibar I have open for her. “Hair of the what?” She squeezes the bridge of her nose. “Forget it. Ibuprofen, please.”
I hand her two and a bottle of water. She downs them. “Are we late?”
“We got about fifteen minutes to be downstairs.”
She starts to pull off the covers and looks down at herself. At my T-shirt. And she goes from green to pale. “Why . . . what did we . . .”
She doesn’t remember. Doesn’t remember any of it. Doesn’t remember that if she’d have had her way, we would’ve fucked in the street. I bet she doesn’t even remember the way she licked my fingers and wrapped herself around me and told me she wanted to fuck.
“No. I couldn’t find your pajamas.”
Color floods her cheeks. “You . . . changed me?”
I nod. “Didn’t peek. Much.”
She looks around, almost accepting that, but then alarm fills her face. She rushes to the bathroom and starts puking her guts out. A minute later, I find her sprawled on the tile, her cheek pressed against the toilet seat. “I don’t even have clean clothes for today,” she whines.
I hand her the water. “You do. I told the producers, and they let me pick out some underwear for you at the gift shop. And Charity loaned you some of her shit.”
She sips the water, then crawls over to the pile of clothing. She picks up the panties with a finger. “This is, like, dental floss. You really think I wear underwear like this?”
Back to the old Penny. “Just get changed, girl.”
We wind up having to rent a car and drive through to Vermont. It’s a good thing. Penny gets to sleep off her hangover in the passenger seat as I drive the four hours to our next challenge. But on the way there, I start sneezing. By the time we pull up at the Maple Run Sugar Shack, I’m blasting