One Step After Another (The After Another Trilogy Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  How would that help?

  Didn’t she realize at all ...

  “I fucking care,” he told her. “Don’t you get that? I care. That’s all.”

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  Not even once.

  “Penny.”

  “I know!”

  Her shriek exploded the same way the glass did when she slammed it against the marble top of the wet bar. Shards flew in every direction, one slicing the side of her hand while others tinkled as they bounced to the floor. Luca held back from rushing to help, but only because she pointed that bloody hand at him like she didn’t want him anywhere near her.

  Even when she was in pain.

  “I know that,” she said, an ache coating her every word. “I’m not that out of touch, Luca. I have a heart. And a soul, too, despite everyone who tried to sell it. Do you really think I don’t know that’s why you’ve done all of this? Why you tracked me for all this time—why you’re willing to be here right now, lying to the people you love, for me? Yes, I know!”

  That was it, he knew.

  It hit him like a brick to the chest.

  “Because you do, too. Care,” he clarified, seeing how she fought to maintain some semblance of control even as she yanked the splinter of glass from her hand without a flinch. Her hands shook, like her shoulders and her bottom lip. She fought back tears while forcing her expression to remain stone-like. “About everyone you left behind. About the kids you’re trying to help by doing what you’re doing. Me. You care about—”

  “Just ... fuck off,” she snapped.

  “No.”

  He took one step toward her.

  She shook her head. “You need to stop.”

  “Tell me that. Tell me exactly what you want me to do, Penny. Tell me no or tell me you hate me. Tell me you’re never coming back—that everything I’ve done up until now is pointless because the life you left behind is no longer yours.”

  He didn’t stop until he was right in front of her. Until their chests touched, her wrists, even the one with blood still dribbling down in a morbid trail, was locked in his hands, and he had her backed into the window.

  “Go ahead,” he murmured, tipping his head down so her eyes were locked with his. “Tell me. I’ll wait.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “That’s not a real answer.” He let go of her wrists, ready to fend off a slap or worse, but they only dropped loosely to her sides. His palms found her face, and he closed the inch left between them so she understood. It was him and her in that second. Two fucking humans with hearts and feelings and thoughts of their own. “I don’t want the programmed shit you’ve been feeding people—or they’ve been feeding you—for years. All that’s ever done is kept people from knowing you were hurting. You can put up walls and protect yourself from the world ... but not from me. You never needed to, remember? I told you once.”

  “Luca, please ... I’m begging you to just leave it—

  “I’m safe for you. Whatever kind of safe you need, Penny. Then, and now.”

  “I like this. I hate that I like this.”

  The words escaped from her in a hiss those clenched, perfect teeth that her pretty lips had parted to show him just how much the truth hurt. Clear tears had tracked lines over her near-translucent skin, finally escaping despite the fight she’d put up to keep them hidden. The wetness stopped at his hands that were still holding tighter to her face than they should. She didn’t shy away, though.

  Not from his touch.

  Or him.

  That static anger snapping between them, and the fact they both gave a shit enough to be standing there doing it at all. And that’s what she meant, he knew. He couldn’t stop himself.

  Not from saying what he already did, or even knowing that he’d finally pushed her to the edge, asking next, “You hate that you like me ... or whatever’s this is—this crazy shit. How many people make you this angry? Irrationally so. How many people have touched you because you wanted them to the way I do? That’s what you mean.”

  Her next words were not what he expected, ready for more denials or fight. Anything but the truth that kicked him straight in the goddamn heart and explained everything he needed to know in two sentences.

  “I can’t afford to let myself wonder what happens when I like this—us,” Penny said, shrugging weakly. “Life taught me not to.”

  This wasn’t the kind of thing he could push. There were just parts of Penny’s very psyche that even when she had every ounce of proof that she was fine and okay, her brain and heart didn’t believe it was true. A learned instinct. One she would have to relearn—it was a process. It started with him, though. It began with the people who gave a shit repeating things she already knew just for the sake of saying it until it became the new reality.

  The truth.

  “I’m safe, Penny.”

  Whatever kind of safe she needed—person, place, or otherwise. He would keep saying it until she finally heard it. Even if right now wasn’t the time when she did. It still needed to be said.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  He was still angry.

  Nothing was right. She hadn’t answered anything or cleared up what was happening with her people or otherwise. He didn’t know the plans—if there even were any. There were a million more questions he wanted to ask because he knew eventually, she would break and yet ...

  Luca kissed her, instead.

  Why?

  She looked like she needed it.

  God knew so did he.

  20.

  Penny

  A single kiss from Luca could change everything. The hard crush of his mouth against hers had the capability to sweep the world away. It was shocking to Penny how willing she was to let him do exactly that, too.

  Because he wasn’t wrong.

  She did want him.

  His hands tight on her body, grabbing and teasing and making her nerves sing. His taste hot in her mouth, bliss whispered in every grunt and moan. The weight of his body pressing against hers with nothing but skin between them. She wanted him.

  Willingly.

  Completely.

  That terrified her.

  But it was also easy.

  Scarily so.

  It was far too easy to slip into the need that coursed through her body with every slash of his tongue against hers. The chaotic rush of his hands to strip her of the over-sized T-shirt matched the demand of her own to get him naked, too.

  Before she even understood what happened, her back pressed against the window. Cold glass kissed her bare ass. She shoved his pants down to let his cock spring free. He was already hard and hissing when she wrapped her fingers around the heavy girth of his length to stroke him until she could feel his pulsing in her palm.

  Maybe they had talked enough. Or maybe he didn’t know what else to say to try to tempt truths from Penny that she wasn’t willing to give him. Either way, they were all out of words.

  Their fight was different, now.

  Still harsh.

  Every touch ached.

  She tasted his blood when her teeth caught his lip, but it only made him kiss her harder. The copper flavor washing over her tongue as his cussed fuck pounded against her mouth. And then he was lifting her to the window without warning.

  Her fingernails found purchase in his strong shoulders, digging in for stability when the flex of his hips drove him home. Straight into heaven.

  Bliss could be heaven, she knew.

  With him.

  She felt every glorious inch of him. How he filled her without a sense of hesitation. The sting was beautifully real while she tensed, and her sensitive tissues accommodated his size. The sharp lines of his face were all the more intense from the shadows casting over his features. Yet, it hid nothing.

  Not the hunger.

  The want ...

  Or the drive she found there.

  She melted into him; from the kiss he stole to the way her thighs widened under his demanding hand
s. Her body gave into his torturous control, and the pleasure she knew would soon follow them both straight over the cliff into something wicked and good.

  Luca had been right.

  He was safe for her. Safe to trust that his hands wouldn’t hurt even when they pinned her to the glass, so she couldn’t move while he pounded into her. Her heart jumpstarted and stuttered when his mouth traveled from hers to the line of her jaw where he could lick and bite—but it didn’t start in any kind of fear. And when he did finally start murmuring dirty promises and other sinful words that made her shake, there was no disgust pounding at her insides.

  Every grunted take that cock and his breathy you’re loving this made her hotter until she was ready to scream. He liked those sounds, too. Each whine and whisper. He licked every single one from her mouth the second it left her lips.

  Nothing about him was wrong.

  Or bad.

  It was all good for her. Especially like this. Safe in a way not many people have ever afforded her. Not as easily as Luca did.

  “You drive me crazy,” he panted against her parted lips, the flex of his hips slapping against hers at a pace that already had her spiraling. His hands held tighter like if he didn’t, she might burst all apart. “There it is, yeah?”

  All she could do was nod. The orgasm clutched at her throat as it ripped through her womb. There was something to be said about pleasure when it was raw; how it raked over every nerve almost violently, but it still felt perfect.

  Like nothing else.

  He’d not slowed under her orgasm began to wane and even then, he teased her body with long, languid strokes. She was wet enough to hear every drive of his cock into her sex, but it was the drag of his length along every tensing inner muscle that kept her live like a wire.

  “You drive me crazy,” he told her.

  The only thing Penny could think to say when Luca pulled her away from the window and bent her over the back of the couch was, “We’re both crazy.”

  He fucked her harder like that—with fingers tangled into her hair while his palm left behind red prints on her ass until the heat spread everywhere all over again.

  For a time, she forgot everything. All of it. She didn’t want reality to catch up, but it would ...

  Soon.

  It always did.

  PENNY SHOULD BE SLEEPING, lost in dreamland while wrapped in the arms of a man she wasn’t supposed to have. She should have appreciated the fact she could do that at all but instead, she was spiraling.

  Not that Luca was aware.

  Over the edge of her laptop, she could see him stretched out on his stomach where he slept without worry. He used one arm to bunch around a pillow, keeping it higher for his head, while his other rested limply across her side of the bed. Like maybe he knew she had gotten up after he fell asleep, and even in his slumber, he was trying to reach for her.

  To pull her back.

  He was constantly pulling her back.

  Did he know that?

  Did he know how it confused her?

  It was a horrible feeling to both want something but know it could never be hers. That’s exactly what Luca was for her. A piece of her past that she hadn’t even asked for until it was laid at her feet, but there was no way she could keep him.

  The white sheets pooled just below his waist, the curve of his backside teasing the fabric low enough that she could appreciate the sight of his body even in the darkness. Strong shoulders. A back still red with lines from her fingernails. Skin that she could still feel moving against hers if she dared to let her mind wander back that way.

  But she couldn’t.

  Not now ...

  Instead, she spiraled.

  Behind the screen of a laptop, she fell even more into the rabbit hole of information in front of her. Anything she could find on her mother or the man Allegra was meant to marry, she absorbed each word like it might keep her alive. Already, she had worked her way through every article that had ever been published on the Jersey senator, his daughters, and even his wife that had died in a tragic car accident only a few years prior.

  He seemed like a good man.

  On paper, everyone did.

  Penny knew that better than anyone.

  The scars she hid beneath the sweats and hoodie she had thrown on after getting out of bed itched and burned. It started the second she dared to open her laptop and type in Allegra’s new name, determined to find the proof that she needed.

  The proof her mother hadn’t changed. Monsters never did. They were who they were. Of course, she knew Allegra was the same bitch she had been when Penny was under her control ... the actions and business of The Elite was more than enough to tell her that.

  But she had to know ...

  Those little girls—were they next?

  Were they Allegra’s next Penny? The next perfect little girl to train and groom and sell to the highest bidder ... after bidder.

  Because it wouldn’t end.

  Once it started, there was no stopping the lifelong horrors that followed. Even after Penny escaped through cutting and misbehavior that caused her parents to discard her to whatever private institution would take her, it still didn’t fucking end. She felt it in every scar; lived with the pain in her mind that wasn’t physical but affected her all the same.

  Her memories lived on, too.

  Crystal clear.

  It didn’t matter that her mother had been living under the radar since her deceased husband’s arrest years ago and his subsequent murder behind bars. The woman hadn’t stepped back from the pedophile ring her father—Penny’s grandfather—had been running for decades. The sex trafficking business was lucrative one but especially when it came to the filthy rich where cost was no issue to feed their addictions and depravities.

  Penny already had her answer; she didn’t need to look for another sign to further prove what she believed to be true. Jules and Jennifer Tracey were in the mouth of a lion—only ten and twelve years old, how could they possibly know?

  Did their father?

  How could he not?

  It made Penny angry. Drunk and pissed off wasn’t a good combination for her—especially not when she was already dancing between the present and the past while she stared at the photo of her mother, the senator, and his two daughters on the laptop screen.

  Underneath the photo was an article discussing the happy couple and their next plans. The announcement of an upcoming engagement dinner at a restaurant owned by the Tracey family in New York City.

  Penny could end it ...

  All of it.

  She just needed the chance.

  Scrolling back up the article to the photo, she stared at the monster looking back. Allegra smiled her smile. The one that blinded the world to the dangers and vile truths hiding behind her beauty. A smile she had turned on Penny like a weapon time and time again.

  She couldn’t forget.

  She tried.

  Sometimes, she was lucky enough to go days now without a memory or a dream that threw her back in time. The PTSD that once kept her locked in a constant haze of hell had lessened with training, purpose, and life.

  But those things did nothing for her then. It didn’t protect her from slipping into a memory of a six-year-old her that had finally started to learn what it meant when her mother smiled.

  “Don’t you want to make Daddy happy, Penny?”

  Her mother smiled, her perfect white teeth matching the color of the dress that swished when she walked, her tall heels clicking against wood floors as she came closer. The rest of the world saw that smile and grinned back. Penny saw her mother’s smile and shrunk away, knowing what it meant ...

  “Stop your crying—good girls don’t cry.” Only a few feet away from where Penny sat on the edge of the piano bench, Allegra sighed where she stopped. “Are you going to wipe away those tears, or should I?”

  Penny did it.

  Pretty girls didn’t cry, either.

  “Now, are you about done?�
� Allegra asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  A promise she had to keep.

  Even though she could barely stand to hold her knees together how she had been told to by her mother while she waited for her father to arrive for another lesson, she did it. She did everything she was told despite the constant pain that accompanied every movement and the dry spot of blood she had found in her panties that morning.

  Because like her mother explained ...

  A good girl was treated well.

  But a pretty girl was treated even better.

  Allegra clapped her hands together, her pleasure with Penny clear as she called over her shoulder, “Preston, we’re ready to begin.”

  Penny came out of the memory with a gasping sob that caught in her throat. She barely managed to muffle the sound into her hand. But it took biting into the heel of her palm to keep the next one from coming out.

  The sting was everything. An addictive sensation.

  It took away the bad. Numbed. Left her with nothing. And nothing was better than the alternative.

  The form on the bed shifted, but Luca didn’t wake up. Penny’s teeth didn’t release the bite until her breaths had steadied. Her heart still raced out of control, though.

  It was one memory in a million. One moment of too many ...

  The very idea that another little girl—or two, as it were—might be put through the same hell Penny had lived with for years under the direction and control of her mother ... well, it was just too much to handle. A part of her felt fractured from that alone. Somehow, despite being battered into a billion pieces, parts of her remained that could still break.

  Her orders from The League about this were clear. She understood why.

  She also knew that if she did nothing, then she was complicit in someone else’s pain. One she was far too familiar with and that no one deserved.

  It was time to slay another monster. Even if it meant ruining everything for everyone else.

  Penny no longer cared as she deposited her laptop to the chair after standing with her final decision cemented in her heart.