Chapter 11: Your Rule, Marrin

My mother went downstairs at nine to play cards with the laundromat owner, and she took her time deciding which cardigan to wear.

She looked straight at me from the door.

"I'll be a while," she said. "Don't wait up."

Then she was gone, and the studio was very quiet.

Caleb stood at the sink with his back to me, washing a cup that was already clean.

The lawyer's office had said Monday.

The diner notebook was in the drawer with the tin.

Everything we could do tonight was done.

"Your mother is not subtle," I said.

"No."

"She left us alone on purpose."

"I noticed."

He set the cup down and turned around.

His face was tired and shadowed, and his eyes were not the kind eyes from the ballroom.

"We had a rule, Marrin," he said.

He had not called me Marrin since the day we met.

"You broke it first," I said. "In the pantry."

"You were the one who looked up."

"You were the one with his hand in my hair."

He crossed the room in three steps.

He didn't touch me.

He stopped with his chest an inch from mine and looked down.

"Tell me to stop," he said, rough. "Now. While I can still hear you."

"Don't."

"Marrin."

"Don't stop."

He kissed me against the kitchen counter, hard enough to rock it.

I had my hands in his shirt before his tongue was in my mouth.

He tasted like coffee and the cold night, and I made a sound I hadn't made in weeks.

He lifted me onto the counter.

The cabinets rattled behind my back, and he pushed my knees apart and stepped between them.

"Ten days," he said into my neck. "I've thought about this every night on that cot."

His hands went under my dress and up my thighs.

They were rough, and they stopped at the edge of my underwear, and my whole body strained toward them.

"Say what you want," he said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Broke Up With My Poor Boyfriend to Date a Rich Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.