Chapter 16: The Bag Empties

He did not wait for the kettle.

The front door closed behind us, and Abel put me against it, and kissed me until my knees went.

"Say it again," he said against my mouth. "What you said on the gravel."

"I think about you more than the chair."

"Again."

"I think about you all day."

His hands were under my coat, then under my sweater, rough on the skin of my back.

I had not been touched like that in a year.

I had not been touched like I was wanted in longer than that.

I pulled off the gray cap myself.

I held it a second, and then I let it fall.

"Look at me," I said. "Look at all of it. I'm not going to hide it from you in the dark."

He looked.

He took his time over it.

He looked at my bare scalp, the hollows under my collarbones, and the port scar on my chest.

"God, you're beautiful," he said, and it did not sound like a line.

It sounded like something he had been carrying for weeks.

"I look like a plucked bird."

"You look like the only thing in this house that's alive."

He picked me up.

It was easy for him.

I wrapped my legs around his hips and locked my ankles, and felt him through the denim, hard against me.

I gasped.

He laughed low in his throat and carried me down the hall to the bedroom.

He laid me on the quilt and pulled off his flannel shirt and the T-shirt under it.

The lamp light fell across his chest.

He was broad, and scarred, and more solid than I had imagined.

"Come here," I said.

"In a minute. I measured twice. I'm going to cut very carefully."

"Abel."

"Let me."

He undressed me one piece at a time.

Sweater, then the thin undershirt, then my jeans, which he drew down my legs and tossed over his shoulder.

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