My Stepfather Sold Me at the Card Table, and the Man Who Won Me Never Looked My Way novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: First Night

I led him up the stairs by the hand, and he let me.

He came as if he had been told he could walk only where I walked.

Eleven steps.

I counted them out of habit, and on the ninth I stopped counting, because his thumb moved over my knuckles and I lost the number.

At the top I opened the door of the cold room at the back and pulled him in after me.

The bolt was in my hand.

I looked at it, and I did not turn it to locked.

I slid it all the way open, so it stood out of the plate, and I let go.

"It's open," I said. "Anybody can walk in."

"Nobody will."

"I know. I want it open."

He stood in the middle of the rag rug with his big hands hanging, in his open collar, his black coat still on his shoulders.

The little lamp lit one side of his face.

He didn't look at the bed.

He looked at me.

He had been looking at me since the kitchen, with his whole face, like a man who had been blind and was afraid of what the light would do.

"Take off your coat," I said.

He took it off, and it dropped on the chair.

"The shirt."

His fingers found the buttons.

They were not steady, and he was slow, and I stood and watched every button give way.

His chest was wide and hard, with red-brown hair going gray.

A long white scar ran under his left ribs.

I put my palm flat over it, and his whole stomach drew in.

"That's from a mine cage," he said, rough. "I was nineteen."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not any more."

I traced it with one finger from his ribs to his hip, to the top of his belt.

I felt the muscle jump under my nail.

"Your belt," I said.

"Maeve."

"Take it off, Cormick."

It was the first time I had said his name, too, and I watched it go through him.

His hands went to the buckle.

The belt slid from the loops and dropped to the floor.

He stood in front of me with his trousers open at the waist and his breath coming short.

"Now you," he said, hoarse. "If you will. I'll not ask for it."

"You're asking."

"I know I am."

I pulled the scrub top over my head.

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