Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

“Jesus. I couldn’t imagine marrying someone I didn’t love. Being forced into something for a name or money. It seems archaic.”

“It is,” he confirmed. “Now…who told you about Katherine?”

“I met this woman in the restroom. Addie.”

“Oh god,” Penn groaned. “Addie was there?”

“Yeah. She said that you all were using and manipulating me.”

Penn sighed heavily. “That sounds like Addie.”

“Why?”

“We had a falling-out during high school. She was one of us, and then we had a friend leave school. She blamed us and left our group. We’ve been cordial, but she still blames us.”

“Is it warranted?”

Penn shrugged. “She thought it was. But strangely, it coincided with Addie and Lewis’s enormous breakup after dating on and off their entire life.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

“You think so little of us, so easily.”

“Past experience tends to blend with the present. And anyway, what was that shit about you and Katherine?”

“Why?” he asked, taking a step closer. He was standing so near that our breaths mingled in the space between us. “Are you jealous?”

“No,” I growled.

Yes. Definitely.

“Would it make you feel better if I said that there is nothing between me and Katherine?”

“I don’t feel anything,” I lied.

His hand slid up my arm to my shoulder and then into the perfect supermodel hair. “Liar.”

“You don’t know anything about me, Penn Kensington.”

“I know that, right now, you want me to kiss you.”

“And what would Katherine think?”

“I don’t care. I feel nothing for Katherine. Nothing.” His blue gaze held mine firm. “I’ve known her my entire life. If I had wanted to be with her before now, I could have been. But I don’t want her. I want you.”

“You do?”

He nodded.

His thumb trailed across my bottom lip, evaporating all the objections I’d had. My eyes closed, and my breathing hitched. Warmth spread through my lower half. I wanted him, too. Fuck, that was so much easier to admit than I’d thought it would be. The last three weeks had been some kind of slow torture of wanting him so desperately and knowing I shouldn’t.

“Penn…”

“Natalie…”

“We shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s…a bad idea,” I whispered.

“It’s not.”

“We end in flame.”

“Burn with me.”

I groaned at the words and then did what I never thought I would do again—I kissed him.

And it was everything. His lips were even better than I’d remembered. His hands were in my hair. I grabbed his tux. Our lips melded together in a frenzy that spoke of endless passion.

I couldn’t get enough. There would never be enough. It was like falling, falling, falling with no end in sight. Just spiraling through this abyss and never coming up for air. No hope of landing. At least, not successfully. Because it wasn’t really a landing if all you did was crash and burn.

“Penn,” I pleaded against his lips.

“Don’t.”

And then he was kissing me again. Making me forget all about how unlikely we were to come out of this unscathed. Instead, there was just the way his lips moved, the swirl of his tongue against my own, the need to touch him everywhere. Up his chest, over his shoulders, his hair, his cheeks, that jaw. Dear god, this man!

I couldn’t deny how good he felt. How my brain, my overactive writer’s brain, screeched to a halt under his careful ministrations. The way he coaxed life out of me and made me feel as if I was finally living again. Forget my recent dry spell, everything felt dull and gray next to his vibrant Technicolor.

“My room,” he suggested, walking us a step backward.

I opened my eyes and met his blue with my own. Saw the desire laced in his expression. The need to have me again. Claim me as he once had.

It was powerful. Heady. Potent.

And a reminder of what had happened last time.

The girl I’d been.

The girl he’d ruined.

I jerked backward. My hand flew to my mouth. Those traitorous lips.

He saw it. He knew what it meant. “Natalie, please.”

“I…I can’t,” I gasped. “I don’t want this. I don’t want you.”

He reached out as if he could change my mind. And I was sure those hands could. I knew the power they held and the things they could do to my body.

But I didn’t have any other words for him. I couldn’t be that person again.

Penn

16

What the fuck had just happened?

Natalie had just fled.

This had never happened to me before. Not that every girl wanted to fuck me, but the ones who came back to my apartment and made out with me did. And here Natalie was, in my apartment, in that incredible fucking dress with bedroom eyes…and she’d claimed she didn’t want me.

It was a bald-faced lie. And yet she’d looked terrified when she uttered it.

Terrified. Like I would hurt her again. Like I had the last time. Here it was. The moment of truth. My past coming back to bite me in the ass. Again. Just like it always did. No matter what I did to come out on the other side, it was always there, taunting me. And I saw it there on her face as clear as day. But I didn’t want it there. I wanted to make it right.