Get a Grip
The first thing Jack thought when he opened the door was: No.
Flat. Immediate. Operational.
Because Penelope was standing in his hallway in a white sundress.
White.
Sundress.
Bare shoulders. Bare collarbones. Hair down in that slightly wind-messed way that made it look like the world had been touching her before he got to. Thin straps. Soft skirt. Buttons. Some insulting little domestic shape at the neckline like she was on her way to buy peaches from a roadside stand and not ruin him in a carpeted apartment hallway.
Then she smiled.
She had no idea yet.
Or worse, she did, and had arrived prepared to deny all charges.
“Hi?” she said, because apparently he had not said anything.
He should say hello.
That was the normal sequence. Open door. Hello. Compliment. Let her in. Go to his mother’s house like an adult man who could manage visual information without immediate structural failure.
Instead, what came out was, “No.”
Penelope blinked.
Good. Fine. Let her experience confusion. Let confusion visit her for once.
He looked at the dress again, which was a mistake, because the dress looked back.
Not literally. He was still sane. Technically.
But it had presence. It was sitting there on her body with all the smug innocence of a thing that had never once been held responsible for anything it caused.
“Hi?” she said again, slower this time.
Jack moved back.
“Come on.”
He heard his own voice and knew immediately she heard it too.
No warmth in it. No welcome. A command wrapped in a problem.
Her mouth twitched.
Ah.
There she went.
Processing.
“This is bad for you,” she said.
Jack shut the door behind her.
Worse now. Inside. Private hallway. The smell of her perfume or shampoo or whatever soft witchcraft she used rising in the warm air between them. The skirt moved when she walked, not dramatically, not for him, which was naturally the most violent possible version.
“It’s a dress,” she said, because Penelope loved facts when facts were useless.
“It’s not.”
“No?”
“No.”
He turned toward the bedroom.
He did not look back, because if he looked back, he was going to have to account for the back of the dress, and he did not currently have staffing for that department.
“We have dinner,” she said behind him.
“I know.”
“At your mom’s.”
“I know.”
“She made potatoes.”
He rolled faster.
The potatoes would have to understand.
In the bedroom, he transferred with less grace than usual and more intent. Not sloppy. Never that. But clipped. Efficient in the way he got when a thing had skipped several layers of debate and entered execution.
Penelope watched him from near the dresser.
He felt her watching.
That was part of it too. She never just looked at him. She gathered him. Took in the mechanics and the weight and the timing, the push of his shoulders, the shift of his body, the small recalibrations he made without thinking. She watched like she was learning a language she would pretend not to be fluent in.
Fine.
Good.
Let her learn this.
Then she reached back for the zipper.
Jack’s whole body objected before his mind assembled grammar.
“No.”
She froze.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
She turned her head over her shoulder. “Are we not—?”
He stared at her.
Because honestly.
Honestly.
That was the problem with Penelope. Brilliant woman. Criminal instincts. No respect for evidence.
“No—” He huffed a breath, impatient with language. “Yes. Leave it.”
Her face went blank for one second.
Then comprehension moved across it.
Slowly.
Brightly.
Disastrously.
“Ohhhhhhh.”
Jack closed his eyes for half a beat.
Terrible.
Absolutely terrible.
Now she knew.
Worse: she liked knowing.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said a whole paragraph with your face.”
“I’m just learning the rules.”
“No. You’re collecting evidence.”
“Against the dress?”
“Against me.”
She came closer, and he watched the skirt move because apparently he was committed now to making bad choices with full consciousness.
He put his hands on her waist when she reached him.
Cotton under his palms.
Thin enough to know the warmth of her through it.
That was another problem. The dress had looked sweet from a distance. Up close, it was all access disguised as manners. Soft fabric. Bare skin. One strap already slightly wrong against her shoulder because the universe was a hack writer with no restraint.
Penelope looked down at him, smiling.
“You’re very serious.”
“I am.”
“About the dress.”
“Yes.”
He slid one hand to the small of her back.
Her smile faltered.
Good.
She laughed, but it thinned at the edges when he pulled her in.
He liked that. Crude, yes, but not only. He liked the moment her cleverness had to make room for her body catching up. Penelope could outrun almost anything with language. Watching language lose a step on her was deeply, irresponsibly satisfying.
Especially because she trusted him with that loss.
That was the thing sitting beneath the heat, not soft enough to slow it down but present enough to sharpen it. She could be ridiculous with him. She could stand in a white dress in his bedroom making jokes because she knew he would not mistake her willingness for carelessness.
He put his mouth to the skin above the neckline.
She stopped laughing.
There.
The silence hit his bloodstream hard.
He pushed the skirt up, and she made a sound into the air above him, one hand landing on his shoulder, fingers tightening.
Good.
Fine.
Dinner could wait.
His mom could wait.
The potatoes, bless them, could sit with their choices.
Because the dress stayed on.
That was what got him. Not the obviousness of taking it off. The opposite. The sweet white public version of her still there while he had his hands under it. The absurdity of that. The obscene contrast of it. Penelope looking like she belonged in sunlight while making that broken little sound against his mouth.
He was going to have to sit across from this dress at dinner.
He had done that to himself.
A responsible man would have considered the long-term consequences.
Jack was, in many areas, a responsible man.
This was not one of those areas.
At some point she said, breathless, “We’re going to be late.”
He said, “Yes.”
Because they were.
Because he was making them late.
Because she looked pleased by that in a way he would be thinking about for a deeply inconvenient amount of time.
After, she leaned against him, laughing into his shoulder like the whole thing was unbelievable.
It was not unbelievable.
That was the problem. It was extremely believable. That dress had walked into his apartment and every system in him had made a clean, unanimous decision.
She looked down at herself.
“Oh no,” she said.
He looked too.
Mistake.
The dress was wrinkled now. One strap lower. The skirt not sitting quite right. Still white. Still sweet. Still dinner-appropriate if no one knew anything.
Jack knew everything.
He was going to be expected to eat salad next to this information.
He said, “That dress is a public safety issue.”
She laughed harder.
He did not laugh, because he was busy trying not to start over.
In the car, things did not improve.
He had thought the drive might help. Driving usually organized him. Wheel. Control. Road. Distance. Sequence. A clear set of demands.
But Penelope was in the passenger seat with her bare knees angled toward him and the hem of the dress resting higher than it had any civic right to be, and every red light became a trap laid by the Department of Transportation.
Look at the road.
Good.
Road.
Car ahead.
Brake.
Do not look.
He looked.
The strap was still wrong.
He looked back at the road.
Terrific. Excellent. Strong work. Very mature. You are thirty-something years old and have been defeated by a shoulder.
Penelope was smiling out the windshield.
Of course she was.
She was sitting there like a woman with a secret, which was infuriating because he was the secret. Or the crime. Possibly both. She had that post-sex looseness around her mouth, that faint over-brightness in her eyes, the whole radiating smugness of someone who had been wanted extremely specifically and now intended to be unbearable about it.
“Stop,” he said.
She turned her head.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“I’m sitting.”
“You’re gloating.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“How would one even gloat physically?”
“You’re finding a way.”
She faced forward again, very composed.
Insufferable.
Irritating.
Bad for traffic safety in a way that should have been ticketable.
At the next light, he looked again before he could stop himself.
She caught him.
Her smile spread.
He groaned.
It came out before he could convert it into anything civilized.
“God. Penelope. You are so annoying.”
Her delight was immediate. He felt it enter the car like weather.
“Oh my God.”
“No.”
“That was so hot.”
“Absolutely not.”
“No, sorry, that was devastating. I’ll need three to five business days.”
“Pen.”
“You’re annoyed because I’m hot.”
“I’m annoyed because you’re pleased.”
“I am pleased.”
“I know.”
“You caused this.”
“Why would you wear that.”
She made a small, delighted noise and looked out the window.
He had to put both eyes on the road before he drove them into a mailbox for psychological reasons.
By the time they reached his mother’s, Jack had achieved the outer shape of control and none of the interior material.
He parked.
Turned off the engine.
Sat for one second too long.
Penelope looked over at him.
“Are you okay?”
No.
“Yes.”
“You look upset.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re about to ask the driveway for privacy.”
He looked at her.
She smiled.
He wanted to kiss her again so badly it was inconvenient on a cellular level.
Instead he said, “We are going inside.”
“Great.”
“You are going to behave.”
“I always behave at your mom’s.”
“Not spiritually.”
She laughed all the way up the ramp, which did not help.
Maggie opened the door before they knocked, because Maggie had the timing of a woman who had raised several boys and developed supernatural threat detection.
“Hi, honey,” she said to Penelope, already smiling. “Oh, look at you. Gorgeous.”
“Thank you,” Penelope said, and sounded only a little like she had personally lit a building on fire.
Then Maggie looked at him.
Jack tried to arrange his face.
He did. He made an attempt. A sincere one.
His mom squinted.
“Jack.”
“What.”
“Jesus. Get a grip.”
Penelope turned sharply toward a family photo on the wall.
Traitor.
Jack lifted one hand toward her, palm up.
Because what was he supposed to say?
Look at her.
Look at the dress.
Look at what has happened to my evening.
“I can’t,” he said.
Maggie stared at him for one beat.
Then at Penelope.
Then back at him.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She stepped aside. “Come in before the neighbors learn something.”
Penelope walked past him into the house, shoulders shaking.
Jack watched the dress move again.
Still a problem.
Still his problem.
Still, unfortunately, not one he wanted solved.
Dinner was survivable.
Technically.
If someone were grading only external behavior, he did fine. He accepted potatoes. He answered a question about his week. He asked Maggie whether the plumber had ever called her back about the guest bathroom sink. He said hello to his brothers on FaceTime when Maggie shoved her phone near him without warning.
He was, by most visible standards, a functional adult man at a family dinner.
Internally, he was in ruins.
Across the table, Penelope sat in the white dress and behaved like a guest.
A guest.
She complimented the potatoes. She laughed at Maggie’s story about the neighbor’s decorative goose being stolen and returned with sunglasses. She passed him the salad bowl without making eye contact, which was worse than eye contact, because it meant she knew exactly what eye contact would do.
The dress looked sweet under Maggie’s kitchen lights.
That was the part that felt illegal.
Not wrinkled enough to be obvious. Not pristine enough for him to forget. The shoulder strap had been fixed, but he knew it had been wrong earlier. He knew exactly where the skirt had been bunched in his fist. He knew how her laugh had broken when she tried to keep making jokes and couldn’t.
And now she was sitting beside his mother asking whether the vinaigrette had Dijon in it.
Jack took a drink of water.
Maggie watched him over the rim of her own glass.
“Are you feeling all right?”
Penelope’s mouth twitched.
Jack did not look at her.
“I’m fine.”
“You look warm.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that twice.”
“Because I’m fine twice.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes at him.
Penelope made a tiny sound into her napkin.
Jack looked at his plate.
Survive dinner.
That was the objective.
He had done harder things than this. Airports alone. Insurance appeals. Curb cuts designed by idiots.
Then Penelope crossed one bare leg over the other beneath the glass table, and the hem shifted against her thigh.
Jack set his fork down.
Maggie said, “What now?”
“Nothing.”
“Is the chicken dry?”
“No.”
“You’re acting like the chicken has threatened you.”
Penelope looked at him then.
Just once.
A quick glance. Bright. Wicked. Entirely too pleased.
Jack looked back at his mom.
“The chicken is great.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Penelope said, very gently, “It is really good.”
Jack closed his eyes for half a second.
Cruel woman.
Beautiful, polite, dinner-appropriate, fully weaponized woman.
After dessert, Maggie packed leftovers into a glass container and handed them to Penelope.
“Take these, honey.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Jack reached for them automatically.
Penelope held the container against her chest. “I can carry potatoes, Jack.”
“Yes,” he said. “You can.”
Maggie looked between them again.
“Are the potatoes part of something I don’t want to know?”
“No,” Jack said immediately.
Penelope said, “Not yet.”
Jack turned his head slowly.
Penelope looked innocent.
Maggie pointed at her. “Oh, I like you.”
“I’m trying very hard to be normal,” Penelope said.
“I can tell,” Maggie said. “It’s adorable.”
Jack rolled toward the door. “We’re leaving.”
“You just got here.”
“We ate an entire dinner.”
“You ate like a man escaping custody.”
Penelope laughed.
Jack did not look back, because if he looked back at Penelope laughing in that dress while holding a container of his mother’s potatoes, he was going to embarrass himself in an entryway for the second time that evening.
At the door, Maggie hugged Penelope and kissed Jack on the head before he could dodge it.
“Drive safe,” she said.
“I always do.”
“I know. That was for her.”
Penelope’s laugh followed him down the ramp.
The evening air had cooled.
Penelope walked down Maggie’s ramp with the potatoes in one hand and Jack behind her, silent in a way that made her smile before she could stop herself.
She had thought dinner might dilute it.
It had not.
That became clear sometime between Maggie’s driveway and Jack’s building, when he said almost nothing for the entire ride home. Not in a sulking way. Not in a tired way. In the grim discipline of a man losing a fight somewhere more private.
Penelope sat beside him with Maggie’s potatoes in her lap and tried not to be delighted.
She was not successful.
By the time he parked, the inside of the car felt warmer than the outside world had authorized.
Penelope reached for the potatoes.
“Leave them,” he said.
She paused. “Your mom’s potatoes?”
“They’ll live.”
“She trusted us.”
“She trusted poorly.”
Penelope looked at him.
Jack turned off the engine.
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then he said, “Inside.”
Not loud.
Not theatrical.
Just wrecked enough that her stomach dropped.
They made it up to his apartment with something that could have passed, from a distance, for dignity.
Close up, no.
In the elevator, Penelope stood beside him, close enough that the skirt brushed his wheel.
Jack looked at the numbers above the door like they had personally betrayed him.
“Slow elevator,” she said.
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Penelope turned her head.
“No?”
“I’m having a personal issue.”
She bit the inside of her cheek.
Jack looked at her.
She stopped smiling.
The elevator dinged.
They got to his door. He got the key in the lock on the second try, which felt heroic under the circumstances. He pushed it open. Penelope stepped inside ahead of him.
The door clicked shut.
That was it.
No keys in the bowl. No lamp. No shoes. No careful return to the apartment as if they were civilized people who had eaten chicken and discussed grout with his mother.
The second the door caught, Jack was already reaching for her.
Penelope barely had time to turn before his hand caught the front of her dress and pulled her down onto him. Penelope went because he wanted her there and because her own body had apparently been waiting for the permission of a locked door. Her knees found either side of his thighs, one hand on the back of his neck, the other in his hair, and he was still not satisfied.
Pulling.
Pressing his mouth to every piece of her he could reach.
Like she was on him and he still needed closer.
He kissed her like the whole day had finally become available for punishment.
Mouth first. Then the corner of it. Her jaw. Her neck. The place below her ear that made her hand shoot out and catch the edge of the console table because her body briefly forgot there was furniture. His fingers were everywhere at once, greedy over cotton and skin, dragging at the waist of the dress, pushing into her ribs, finding the bare backs of her shoulders like he was trying to get his hands around the fact of her and couldn’t.
“Jack,” she breathed.
He made a sound into her neck.
Not a word.
Barely human.
The kind of sound that said the entire day had hurt him physically and now she was standing inside the apartment acting like she had not personally caused a neurological event in cotton.
His sleeves were still rolled to his forearms. White shirt open at the throat from earlier, wrinkled now, too formal for what his hands were doing. Too dinner. Too son at his mother’s table. His mouth dragging down the line of her neck to her collarbone.
Her hands were already ruining his shirt. She got one button open, then another, fingers clumsy, nails catching skin.
He jerked a breath through his teeth.
“God,” he said, low, almost angry. “Penelope.”
There.
That line.
The place where she knew the sensation stacked. Not gone. Not vague. Present enough to punish him.
She dragged her nails lightly across it again.
Jack’s hand tightened at her waist.
“You are so—”
He cut himself off with a rough, furious sound and pulled her closer by the skirt.
Like he was angry at the sentence for not being enough.
Like he wanted language to do something it could not do.
Penelope’s body pressed into his, one knee against the frame of his chair, one hand inside his open shirt, the other at his face, trying to hold onto him while he leaned forward into her. Too much weight and heat and wanting, forcing her back, making her laugh once because it was either that or just start openly shaking in the entryway.
He kissed down her collarbone.
Then lower.
The neckline of the dress shifted under his mouth.
Penelope’s fingers tightened in his hair.
He was everywhere at once and still not close enough. That was the thing. She was on him, in his lap, chest to chest, mouth wet from his, and he was still pulling like there was some final distance left to close.
She got her hands to his face.
“Hey.”
He looked up at her.
His mouth was red. His eyes were dark, his breathing controlled only in the way a locked door was controlled.
She swallowed.
“You want to transfer to the floor?”
Something changed in his face.
Not surprise. Recognition.
Oh. That kind of trouble.
Jack’s eyes stayed on hers.
For one second, nothing moved.
Then he said, “Fine.”
It came out almost irritated.
Like she had suggested something inconvenient.
Then, lower, almost to himself:
“Fuck.”
Penelope got off him.
Slowly enough to be cruel by accident, because her legs were not fully obeying her and because some terrible part of her wanted to watch what happened next.
Jack watched her stand.
The white dress fell back into place.
His face tightened.
Want, sharpened into annoyance.
He shifted forward in the chair.
Penelope went still.
She had seen Jack transfer a hundred times. Beds, cars, couches, showers, floor when something practical required it. She knew the mechanics well enough now that she understood what each movement meant before it finished. The set of his shoulders. The placement of his hands. The brief gathering of force before his body moved itself with the calm, efficient authority she could never quite survive watching.
But this was not practical.
Or it was.
That was the problem.
It was practical and hot enough to be indecent.
His palm went to the floor. His arms took his weight. His shoulders bunched under the rolled sleeves, shirt open now, the hard line of him working cleanly, without drama. He lowered himself down with that controlled, devastating economy that always made Penelope’s brain go too quiet.
The chair stayed behind him.
Empty.
Right there in the entry light.
Not put away. Not hidden. Just vacant.
A piece of him, suddenly unoccupied.
The sight hit her low and hard.
Jack on the floor. Chair behind him. Shirt open. Sleeves pushed to the forearm. His legs dragging quiet and narrow behind the force of his upper body, folded by the room rather than by intention.
It was too much information at once.
Too specific.
Too him.
He looked up and caught her looking.
His mouth barely moved.
“Come here.”
Penelope took exactly one step back.
Then she sat down on the floor.
With no attempt at pretty.
She sat with her back against the wall and her knees up, spread just enough to make the dress fall between them in a white, useless spill of fabric.
Jack exhaled through his nose.
A sharp, controlled sound.
Pissed.
That was what it looked like. He looked pissed at how badly he wanted it. At how quickly his body had accepted the sight of her like an order. At the fact that the floor, the dress, the empty chair, her bare knees, all of it had made a new problem and he was already moving to solve it.
“Pen,” he said.
It was not a warning.
It was barely her name.
He pulled one leg in first, bent at the knee, sideways under him. Then the other, folded narrow beneath him as he twisted his torso. Not elegant. Not ugly. Not anything the world had taught her how to look at without flinching or flattening.
Just his.
Skinny and folded and wrong-looking in the way that made her chest go tight because wrong was not the same as bad, and her body knew that before her language did.
He braced one hand against the floor and dragged himself the last stretch toward her.
Penelope stopped breathing.
The movement was rougher now. Less public. No hallway neutrality. No clean transfer demonstration. Just Jack on the floor, coming for her with the full force of what dinner had done to him.
His hand closed around her ankle.
Not gently.
He pulled.
Her heel slid against the floor, and the sound that came out of her was embarrassingly immediate.
Jack heard it.
His eyes flicked up.
Then his face changed.
Not softened.
Worse.
Confirmed.
He pulled himself closer, body pressing between the space of her legs, one hand at her ankle, the other at her thigh, the skirt of the dress catching under his fingers. He shoved it higher with a kind of rough impatience that made her head hit the wall behind her.
“Jack.”
He groaned against her knee.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t say my name like that unless you want this to get worse.”
Penelope’s laugh broke halfway through.
“It can get worse?”
His mouth moved higher along the inside of her thigh.
Her hand shot into his hair.
He answered against her skin.
“Yes.”
It was not funny.
That was why it ruined her.
His head disappeared under the fall of the dress, white cotton falling over his hair, over his shoulder, absurdly sweet over the obscene focus of him. Penelope stared down at the shape of him there, the dress tented by his body, his hands hard on her hips now, pulling her in with a greedy precision that made her spine arch off the wall.
The empty chair sat a few feet away.
Silent.
Ordinary.
Vacant.
And Jack was here instead.
On the floor.
Folded under himself.
Twisted and completely in command.
The contrast went through her like a live wire.
His mouth moved higher.
Penelope’s hand clenched.
“Oh my God.”
Jack groaned into her.
The sound was rough and muffled and so clearly involuntary that it felt like being touched somewhere deeper than skin. He was reacting to her. To the sounds she couldn’t stop making. To the way her thighs shifted open without permission from the civilized part of her. To the way the dress kept slipping and catching and hiding him from view until the whole thing felt both private and exposed.
His fingers dug into her hips.
Hard.
Not careless.
Claiming the leverage he needed. Taking the angle. Pulling her into him with enough force that her body slid slightly down the wall.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
His answer was another low groan, dragged out against her like he was the one losing control.
Penelope tried to look at all of it at once and failed.
Her gaze kept snagging: the white fabric over his head, his open shirt, the hard shift of his shoulders, the vulnerable angle of his legs tucked sideways, the vacancy of the chair beside him like proof that he had left one version of himself parked there and come to her as this one.
He pulled back just enough for air.
The dress slid off his hair but stayed bunched around his shoulders.
He looked up at her from between her knees.
Mouth wet. Face flushed. Eyes too focused.
Penelope made the mistake of looking down.
His hand slid from her hip to her thigh and tightened.
“Look at me,” he said.
She did.
Barely.
He breathed out again through his nose, rough and wrecked.
“You have no idea how annoying you are.”
Her laugh came out as a gasp.
“I think I have some idea.”
“No,” he said.
Then he lowered his mouth again.
The joke left her completely.
Her head tipped back against the wall. Her fingers twisted in his hair. Her other hand reached blindly for something, anything, and found the front bar of the empty chair beside them.
That undid her.
Her hand on the chair.
His mouth under the dress.
His body on the floor.
His legs folded under him at that impossible-looking angle.
The room did not give her a cleaner version of it.
He was not being looked after.
He was taking.
Greedy. Pissed. Exact.
Her fingers tightened on the frame.
Jack felt the shift.
He lifted his head immediately.
His eyes followed her arm, saw her hand on the chair, saw her face, saw too much because he always did.
For one second, the air changed.
Not softer.
More dangerous.
His voice dropped.
“Pen.”
She couldn’t answer.
He read that too.
His fingers eased at her hip, not letting go, just asking without turning it into a question.
She nodded.
Once.
Tiny.
His hand tightened again.
Good.
His mouth went back to her skin, and she broke around the relief of not having to explain.
He did not make it tender.
That would have been unbearable.
He made it clear.
He kissed her thigh like he knew exactly where she had gone in her head and intended to meet her there without saying its name. His hands held her open, held her close, adjusted her with the kind of practical care that only made the wanting worse. He was rough because she wanted rough. Careful because he was Jack. Greedy because the dress had ruined him and dinner had failed to fix it.
Penelope made a sound she did not recognize.
Jack groaned again, harder this time, his forehead pressing briefly to her thigh like he needed one second to survive her.
“Fuck,” he said into the cotton. “Penelope.”
It wasn’t a line.
It was the whole problem.
She looked down at him again, at the bend of his body, at the shirt open across his back, at the folded thinness of his legs beneath him, at the way one foot had turned uselessly inward on the floor.
Her stomach dropped.
He was so close.
Still not close enough.
Apparently he felt the same, because his hands slid beneath her, hauling her closer with a rough sound of effort. Her hips came off the floor, her dress bunched higher, and her hand flew from the chair to his shoulder.
“Jack.”
“Yeah,” he said, breath hot against her. “I know.”
Again, that.
The plain knowing.
The refusal to make her translate.
Then he shifted his weight, pulled himself farther over her, his torso covering more of her now, the pressure of him pinning her back against the wall and floor in pieces. His legs stayed folded under him, dragged close, still and slight and intensely visible beneath the open architecture of his body.
Penelope’s hands went to his face.
She pulled him up.
He came because she pulled, because he wanted to, because the motion cost him something and he gave it without ceremony.
His mouth found hers.
Hard.
Messy.
Her fingers wrapped around his head, pulling him closer, and the sound he made when she kissed him back was so raw she felt it in her knees.
Her nails raked down his open shirt again, grazing that sensitive line at his ribs.
Jack broke the kiss with a sharp inhale.
“Jesus.”
“You like that.”
He gave her a look that was almost furious.
“Yes.”
The honesty hit harder than any joke could have.
She did it again.
His hand shot to the wall beside her head.
Not to stop her.
To hold himself up.
His mouth hovered right beside hers.
For one breath, they stayed like that: his hand braced by her head, her nails still at his ribs, both of them shaking.
Then he said, low and wrecked, “Again.”
So she did.
Nails again, light and deliberate, down that narrow line at his ribs where she knew the answer lived. Jack’s breath broke hard on the way in.
There.
That.
His mouth opened against hers, but not quite a kiss yet — more like he had lost the ability to choose between staying still and coming closer, so for one wrecked second he did both. His hand stayed braced by her head, arm shaking once with the effort of holding himself there, and Penelope felt that too. The cost of the angle. The strain in it. The fact that he was giving it to her anyway.
“Penelope,” he said, like the name itself had turned accusatory under the circumstances.
She laughed once, breathless and almost mean with how gone she was. “I know.”
“No,” he said, and the word landed rough. “You don’t.”
Then he kissed her.
Harder than before. Focused. Like he had decided the only remaining solution to the problem of her was more pressure, more mouth, more of him between her knees and over her body until she stopped sounding that pleased with herself.
It did not work.
Or rather, it worked in every way except the one that would have helped him.
Because Penelope made that small, helpless sound again when he shifted closer, and Jack actually stopped for half a beat with his forehead against hers, eyes shut, jaw tight, like the sound had gone clean through him and lodged somewhere operational.
“God,” he said under his breath.
Her fingers slid into his hair and held. “Jack.”
That got his eyes open.
And there it was again — the hover, the shake, the hand by her head holding him up, the other one hard at her waist like he no longer trusted distance at any scale. His face was flushed now, mouth red, shirt open and ruined, and something about the sheer visible effort of him in that position made her want to be much, much worse.
So she wrapped her hand around his side and dragged her nails along that same live line, from the back of his ribs toward his stomach.
Jack’s whole body answered.
His head tipped back just enough to show it, throat working, breath leaving him in a wrecked, involuntary rush that would have been satisfying if it hadn’t been so catastrophic.
Then he looked at her with a kind of furious clarity.
“That,” he said, voice low and shaking at the edges, “is a hostile use of information.”
Penelope laughed so hard she almost lost the wall behind her.
“Yeah,” she said. “Obviously.”
Jack stared at her for one beat — at her wrecked dress, her hand still in his hair, the delighted criminal look on her face — and then dropped back down to kiss her like she had just made things much worse for herself.
Which, in fairness, she had.
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