Chapter 8: The Tea

I put my hands back on him.

I laid them flat on either side of his spine, and I felt his whole back go slack under them.

I didn't mean to lean in.

My forehead came to rest between his shoulder blades, on a patch of skin the salve had already softened.

He went still.

"Susanna," he said.

"I know. Term one."

"I wrote term one."

"You did."

He turned in the chair.

He did it slowly, so that I would have time to step back.

I didn't step back.

He looked up at me from the chair, with firelight on the scars along his collarbone, and he lifted his right hand.

It was bare. It was shaking.

It stopped an inch from my face.

"I haven't touched a face in six years," he said.

"Mine's clean," I said. "I washed it."

His mouth moved, and for a second I thought he would laugh.

"It will hurt."

"You said the salve stays on your skin for an hour or two."

"It's on my hands. It isn't on yours."

"Then I'll bring mine to you."

I bent, and I laid my cheek in his palm.

He sucked in a breath through his teeth.

His whole arm trembled, from wrist to shoulder, and the fingers curved over my jaw very carefully.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Yes." His thumb moved once along my cheekbone. "I don't care."

We stayed like that.

His breath was on my mouth. I could count the gold flecks in his grey eyes.

I could feel how he wanted to close the last inch, and how he was making himself wait.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Left Her to Bleed, So She Healed the Untouchable from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.