The Scandal Before the Vows novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Taunt
The house was empty by seven, and Elliot made me eat first.
He stood in the kitchen with his arms crossed and watched me finish a bowl of Margo's soup.
"You're doing it again," I said.
"What?"
"Treating me."
"I'm feeding you."
"Same face."
He took the bowl away and rinsed it, and I watched his back, and the line of his shoulders in the work shirt.
"I don't date anyone I've treated," I said, in a flat, fair imitation of his voice. "Is this a date, Ranney?"
He set the bowl in the rack and turned around slowly.
"No," he said.
"Then what is it?"
"It's you in my house, in my mother's cardigan, asking me to say it out loud."
"Say it."
"I'm taking you upstairs." His voice was low and not at all polite. "I'm going to take off everything you have on, and I'm going to find out what you sound like."
My knees did a stupid thing.
I held out my good hand to him.
His room was at the back of the house, small and neat, with a narrow window and a bed made with army corners.
He shut the door and stood against it.
"Corina," he said.
"Come here."
He crossed the room in two steps.
He took my face in both hands and kissed me, deep and slow, and he took his time about it.
I pulled his shirt out of his jeans with my good hand and ran my palm up his stomach.
He was warm and hard-muscled, with a scar under his ribs, and his breath caught when I touched it.
"What's that?"
"A dog, in the second year. Later."
"Take it off," I said. "All of it."
He pulled the shirt over his head.
I looked at him for a long moment.
He let me.
Then his hands went to the buttons on Margo's cardigan, one at a time, careful of my wrist, careful of everything.
The cardigan fell to the floor, then my shirt.
He saw the bruise along my ribs, yellow and green, and his face tightened.
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