My Pet Sold Me novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Loft

He stopped on the bottom rung with his boots in the straw.

The big gray dog sat down beside him.

He looked at me with the patience of a dog who had been up the ladder for a week.

"Your grandmother talks," I said.

"My grandmother is a menace."

"She says you sleep out here."

"The big bed is cold."

"It wasn't cold on Friday."

"No," said Dane. "It wasn't."

He did not say anything else.

I walked up to him in the dark yard, close enough to feel the heat coming off his chest through his flannel.

"There's a lock on the inside of my guest room," I said. "I haven't used it since the night after the gym."

"I noticed."

"I don't want it."

"Lara."

"I'm not saying I want to be anybody's anything. I'm saying I want to be where you are."

His throat worked.

Then he put a hand to my face, very slowly, and waited to see whether I would turn away.

I turned into it.

He kissed me, and it was gentle, so gentle that the ache in my chest went loose.

"Up," I said against his mouth. "Not the house. The loft."

"The pack's in the house."

"That's why."

He laughed and picked me up and carried me up the ladder against his chest.

The dog stayed below to guard it.

The loft was warm and smelled of hay and old wood.

A single cot stood under the eaves with a wool blanket, and a battered lantern sat on an upturned crate.

He set me down and lit the lantern, and the whole loft went gold.

"I should have asked you to my bed in the house," he said. "Properly."

"This is proper."

"It's a cot."

"I like the cot."

I pulled his flannel off over his shoulders and kissed the scar through his eyebrow.

His hands found the hem of my sweater, and he stopped.

"Say yes."

"Yes, Dane."

He peeled it over my head.

He kissed my throat, and my collarbone, and the swell of each breast, and took his time.

His mouth was slow, and warm, and when it closed around my nipple I put both hands in his hair and arched into him.

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