Dying to Marry Him novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Kiss She Didn't Write

The dance ended, and Rook did not let go of my hand.

He walked me through the crowd with those new gray eyes fixed straight ahead.

Every monster we passed turned to stare at his face.

"The cloakroom," he said, low. "Now."

A small door beside the orchestra opened onto a long dim room hung with coats.

He shut it behind us, and the music dropped to a hum.

I turned around, and he was looking at me.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that, not in all of my forty-three books.

His eyes moved over my face, my hair and my mouth, and back up again, slowly.

"Your nose is crooked," he said, wondering. "There is a freckle under your left eye. Your lip is bitten on one side."

"That's my face," I said.

"It is the first thing I have ever seen."

My throat went tight, and I said what I had been afraid to say for three nights.

"Tell me the truth. Did Gilt put you up to this? Is it the show?"

"No."

"Did I write it?"

"You wrote none of this." He took one step, and the coats swayed around us. "Nobody wrote it. I wanted to."

I had written forty-three monsters, and I had never let one of them want anything I had not planned.

"Rook," I said.

He bent and kissed me.

It was not careful. It was nothing like the first kiss, when his hand had stopped an inch from my jaw.

His mouth came down hard and sure, and his arm went around my back and pulled me against him.

I made a sound into his mouth I did not recognize.

"I am going to have you against this wall," he said against my lips.

"Then do it."

He backed me into the wall of coats, and they slid and fell around my shoulders.

His hands found the pockets of the midnight dress, and he laughed, short and surprised.

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