Lifting his hand that had been holding her down, he pulled her up so her back was solid against his chest and then he reached around to strum her clit. Again and again he pushed into her until his balls tightened and he knew he was close, so fucking close.
He squeezed her clit between his fingers right as he buried himself as deep inside her as he could. She cried out, her pussy clamping down on his dick as she came. That was all it took. Sawyer went over the edge with Penny, sailing into an oblivion where only the two of them mattered.
Collapsing backward, he was careful to make sure her downward trip to the bed was gentle.
“Now I know.” She smiled and her eyelids fluttered shut.
But she didn’t. That had been different—that had been only with her—but if the fantasy turned her on, he’d keep playing along. “Next time, I’ll show you what else I did.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead and got up.
After a quick trip to the bathroom to dispose of the condom, he came back to find her curled up on her side under the covers. He lifted the blanket and snuggled up behind her. Tucking her closer so she fit perfectly against him as he spooned her, Sawyer took a deep whiff of her peach-scented hair and tried to figure out what in the hell had just happened, because everything seemed different.
Penny was beautiful, but it was more than just that. It was her sass, her determination, her persistence and her talent. If she ever found out about the bet he’d made with D’Andre, she’d walk away without a second look back. Just imagining that was like getting sucker punched in the kidneys. He’d call D’Andre tomorrow and tell him the whole thing was off. Then he had to do whatever it took to make sure she never found out and, if she did, pray she wouldn’t hate him for keeping it secret.
Chapter Seven
The beeping wouldn’t stop. Sitting up in the darkness, Penny slapped around the bed trying to find the noise’s origin when she could barely open her eyes. Her palm smacked against something big and man smelling. She went hunted-rabbit-in-a-nature-documentary still, except for her jack-hammering pulse.
“Five more minutes,” Sawyer mumbled as he rolled over, taking most of the blankets with him.
The pent-up breath she’d been holding whooshed out. Okay, the hard thing was the man who’d rocked her world a few hours ago, but the beeping, she still had no—the portfolio!
“Wake up.” She threw back the covers, scrambled out of bed and flipped on the light. “It’s the GPS. The thief is on the move.”
Sawyer bolted out of bed and managed to get his clothes on before she’d even found her underwear.
“How did you do that?” she asked, pulling back the covers in search of her missing panties.
He grinned as he balled up her hot pink panties and tossed them at her. “Working undercover in vice trains you to be ready to scatter at a moment’s notice.”
After that it was a mad dash to get dressed, out the door and down to the parking garage.
“You navigate and I’ll drive.” Penny unlocked her black Lexus hardtop convertible. The car was her baby, no one was driving it.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sawyer gave her a teasing salute before getting in on the passenger side. “Okay, it looks like the perp just left Daring Ink and is on North Miami Avenue headed toward downtown.”
For the next twenty minutes they drove in silence, trying to catch up to the blinking red dot on Sawyer’s cellphone. Penny followed his directions to turn left or right or continue straight ahead all while she tried to work out the puzzle of what had just happened between them. They’d had sex. Duh. But they’d done it at her condo, a huge no-no in her book. Plus, he wasn’t a guy she’d be able to avoid on a permanent basis unless she moved, and that wasn’t happening.
So what was next? She had no frickin’ clue.
“Turn right at the next light,” he said. “So what’s the deal with your no boyfriends rule?”
The conversational changeup should have made her pause, but she was beginning to realize that the unexpected was his version of normal. “I don’t believe in commitments.”
“Sounds like the beginning of a story.” He kept his eyes on his phone or the road, but some of his attention zeroed in on her.
“Not really. I found out a year ago that the man I’d grown up thinking was my father, wasn’t.” Talking about her mother’s lies usually made her stomach twist and her palms sweat, but being in the car with Sawyer as they drove around Miami after midnight gave her emotional distance and made it easier to talk about. “My real dad is a rich dude named Paul Dare who, eons ago, decided to try the straight life so his snooty family wouldn’t hate him for being gay. It sucks that he had to do that. I feel bad for the guy.”
“I’m not tracking,” he said. “How does that affect your opinion about commitments?”
“The woman Paul tried to go straight with was my mom She got knocked up with my brother and I. She was young and scared so she left Miami and went back to her small hometown in the Florida panhandle.” Responding to Sawyer’s pointing, Penny turned right. Her hands were steady on the steering wheel and her nerves were as calm as if she was telling the sad sack life of some other girl. “Mom told my brother and I that our dad was Paul Dare, a long-haul trucker who abandoned her. I don’t know why, it wasn’t like the truth was something to be ashamed of, at least for most people. For a girl from the sticks in conservative country? Maybe it was enough to lie to her children for their entire lives.”
The all too familiar bitterness of a wasted childhood spent thinking she was fatherless, when her father had been out there the whole time, welled up within her. It burned the back of her throat and turned her tongue to acid. The betrayal still hurt like a fresh wound.
“I ended up back in Miami on a fluke—or at least I thought it was,” she continued. “Turned out my mom had been collecting money from Paul for years to raise his darling secret babies. She took the money, but she’d never let him see us. She told him it would just confuse us. But after we graduated high school, Paul must have figured all bets were off. He managed to track my brother Copper and I down, but didn’t make a move to meet us. Instead, he worked some back channels to get me accepted to art school here. Copper ended up at a university with the best engineering program in the country. For me, getting that acceptance letter to art school with a full scholarship was like winning the lottery.”
She still had that letter in the back of a filing cabinet in her office at Daring Ink. The scholarship had been a lie, she’d found out later. Paul had paid for it all and arranged for her application to end up on the top of the pile. He may have gotten her in, but she’d been the one to earn her degree.
“I didn’t know a thing about Paul until after I graduated and started Daring Ink. He just showed up on my doorstep one day and told me who he was, and what he’d done. He said he didn’t want to pressure me into a relationship but he had hope I would someday. Then he said I had the Dare head for business and that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was call. After he left, I confronted my mom on the phone. It wasn’t pretty.” Now that was the understatement of the year. Sawyer pointed right. She made the turn into a neighborhood of bungalows familiar enough to give her deja vu. “She admitted to everything and that’s how I learned the lesson that even the people you love the most—the ones you trust the most—will lie to you without flinching. Now if that can’t turn a girl into an untrusting commitment-phobe, I don’t know what will.”
“I’m sorry.” He laid his hand on her thigh and gave her a quick squeeze. “But maybe I can help change your mind about boyfriends.”
The underlying buzz of attraction was there, but it was the warm comfort of having someone beside her that flooded through her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until that moment. After finding out about her mom’s lies, she’d pushed everyone away and focused only on Daring Ink because work never betrayed her. But now, with Sawyer, things felt different…better…hopeful.
She put her hand on top of his. “Maybe you already have.”
“Best news I’ve heard all day.” His phone beeped and he looked down at the glowing screen. “We’re close.”
The windows in the bungalows lining the street were dark—except for one. Penny’s stomach sank. She knew that house. Knew its chipped paint on the front porch and the bucket of sand stuffed with cigarette butts near the front door. She’d only been here once, when Chase had needed a ride home late one night.
She slowed down and parked in front of his house. Anger, hurt and disappointment beat against her with hurricane-wind strength.
Sawyer looked up. “How did you know we were here?”
“Your gut was right.” She shoved back the emotions whirling around inside of her. None of it would help. The only way to get through this was not to care at all. She opened her door. “It’s Chase’s house. Come on, let’s get this over with.”
The short walk to the front door felt like a mile and each step up the front porch was a mountain. God she hated this. She hated herself for getting hurt, yet again, because she’d misplaced her trust. When would she learn?