Reckless
Chapter 16
Morning followed her night of heavy drinking in the way that morning inevitably did. The first thing Penelope felt when she woke up was the steady thrum of her head pounding. Her tongue felt like it was made out of sandpaper and her eyes were sore from sleeping with her mascara and fake lashes on. Since she turned thirty, waking up with a hangover was exponentially worse than it used to be. She groaned as she scrubbed her face with her hands. The night started harmlessly enough, with a glass of wine. She could handle wine.
"Rossi and his damn whiskey," she grumbled, filled with the notion that whatever fun she had the night before wasn't worth an entire day of head pounding and regret.
As Penelope reluctantly forced herself further into consciousness, she slowly realized she was in an unfamiliar room. Unlike the rest of her team, she wasn't a profiler. But she didn't need to be one in order to look around at the gray walls and lack of ornamentation and determine that she was in a man's bed. She mentally chided herself, reminding herself of the new years resolution she made two years before regarding her desire to find a meaningful relationship as opposed to one that only satisfied her physical needs. This was her polite way of saying she didn't want to have any more one night stands. She'd been doing a pretty good job at sticking to her resolution. Until now, apparently.
During her brief observation of the room, she spotted a glass of ice water on the bedside table next to her. Penelope lifted her head and reached for it. The condensation was cold and damp against her palm. Once she was done chugging half the water down, she held the glass against her forehead and reached for the bottle of excedrin that was sitting on the table next to the water. Whoever she went home with, at least he was considerate. That more than made up for his total lack of taste in home decor.
Penelope chased two white pills down with the rest of her water before she pushed herself into a more upright position. The movement attracted the attention of a large dog that she didn't realize was in the room until it leapt onto the bed near her feet. "Hi puppy," she cooed, reaching for the animal and smiling when it belly crawled across the bed towards her. The large shepherd type dog looked familiar, though in her current state of hungoverness, it took her a moment to remember where she saw the animal.
"Oh no," Penelope huffed, pressing her palm to her forehead in an attempt to stop the incessant pounding. As if waking up in a near stranger's bed wasn't bad enough, she was pretty sure this stranger was dating her new coworker. And not just any coworker, the one that was a black belt in karate. "Oh god," she lamented. "Toni's gonna kill me. I don't even know how to fight."
A moment after Penelope realized whose bed she was in, she heard the shower turn off behind the bathroom door. She froze, her hands gripping the sheets. The best thing for her to do was make a run for it. But she wasn't exactly dressed for running. Or dressed at all. There was no way for her to make her escape before Luke Alvez came out of the bathroom. Especially since the door was already swinging open.
"Hey, you're up," Luke offered with a smile. Other than the towel he had wrapped around his hips, he was naked. His body was still glistening from the shower, making his already muscular chest and stomach look even more defined. Penelope couldn't help but notice the way his arm muscles flexed as he rubbed at his damp curls with another towel. Seeing him bare triggered her whiskey fogged memories of what happened between them. They shared a cab home from Rossi's party. She wasn't sure who kissed who first. But after the kissing started, she was the one that climbed half into his lap and grabbed the growing bulge in his pants.
Penelope grabbed the sheet, jerking it up to cover her breasts. Not that there was a point, he'd clearly already seen everything she had to offer. And tasted most of it. Her eyes were drawn to his face. It was the first time she'd seen Luke without his eye patch on. Under the area it covered, the empty socket of his eye was sewn shut. There was a nasty scar running through the area, plus more scars that looked like they might have come from surgical procedures. They were more clean and well healed than the long jagged knife scar the Crimson King left behind. Penelope could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. He was still quite handsome despite his malformation. But seeing the evidence of what he lived through made Penelope feel a pang of empathy for Luke anyway. It made her momentarily forget about the predicament she got herself in by sleeping with him.
She must have been staring because Luke turned, dropping the towel he was using on his hair on a nearby chair before he reached for his eye patch and pulled it down to cover his scars. His obvious display of self-consciousness pulled harder at her heart strings. If she wasn't naked, Penelope wouldn't have been able to stop herself from crossing the small space between them and wrapping her arm around him. As it was, her first order of business was to get her clothes on.
Penelope looked around, shifting nervously as she took in the spartan appearance of Luke's room. And the noticeable absence of her brightly colored clothes. "Do you know where my clothes are?," she asked. He nodded, smiling as he hurried from the room. Luke handed her clothes to her in a small neatly folded stack.
"I ran it all through the washer," he explained. "I thought we could go to breakfast when you woke up…" He paused, waiting for some sort of response from her. When she didn't reply, he added, "...if you want?"
Penelope looked down at the clean, neatly folded items in her hands. She hated to admit it, but this wasn't exactly her first drunken tryst. But it was most certainly the first time a man ever washed and folded her clothes for her. She didn't even fold her own clothes. And if she did, they looked more like a balled up bundled up mess.
"You washed my clothes," she said, her statement ripe with disbelief. "You folded them. I.. uh…" Penelope lifted the small pile to her face and breathed in. "They even smell good. I can't believe it."
Luke laughed as he lowered himself down onto the edge of his bed. He was handsome no matter what expression was on his face. But the way his one good eye lit up when he smiled made it impossible not to smile back. "Will you let me?," he asked. "...take you to breakfast, I mean?"
Penelope glanced between the folded laundry in her hands and his smile a few times before she nodded her head. She wasn't sure what was going on between Luke and Toni. But at this point, the damage was already done. They slept together. And if Toni was going to kill her for that, Penelope figured she might as well die with a full stomach.