Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Pit in the Snow

Lotta's POV

The firebox door of the first smoker stood open, and the whole floor of the Pit glowed red.

Outside, the snow had closed the West Bottoms for the second night, and the plows had not come.

Ronan had fed the fires at midnight and again at four, and now there was nothing left to tend but each other.

I had spread every coat in the building on the concrete in front of the open door.

His canvas coat, my Duluth coat, three aprons, and a wool blanket from the cot lay in a heap.

The heat from the iron poured over it.

I stood on it in my socks and undid his shirt.

"Yesterday you asked me something," I said.

"I did."

"I told you about the pills. I didn't tell you the rest," I said.

"No."

"I'm answering now."

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders.

I laid my palms on his chest and felt the slow heavy beat under them, and I kissed the center of it.

He was holding himself very still.

He had been holding himself still for two days.

"Not with words," I said. "Not yet."

"Lotta."

"Lie down."

He lay back on the coats, and the firelight washed over his chest and the long scars on his forearms.

I knelt astride his hips and took my sweater off over my head.

I did not hurry.

I had learned something in the loft: that the slowest way is the way that undoes me.

I leaned down and kissed his mouth, softly, again and again, until he lifted his hand to my face.

"Let me," he said.

"Go on."

He rolled me onto my back.

He knelt over me and undid my jeans, and I lifted my hips so he could draw them away with my underwear and my socks.

He put them aside.

Then he kissed my ankle.

He kissed the inside of my knee, and the inside of my thigh, and his beard dragged over me in slow, warm passes.

He found the scar on my palm, took my hand, and pressed his mouth to it.

He found the pale one on my ribs and kissed that too.

"Every one," he said, quietly. "I want every one."

"There are more."

"Then I'll find them."

He kissed the line of my hip and the soft place under my navel, and he did not stop there.

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