He Bought My Father's Debt, So Now He Owns Me novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Open Door

I never drilled the bolt in.

I sat on the edge of the bed for an hour with the paper bag in my lap, listening to the house.

He was in the kitchen.

I heard the tap run and stop, and a glass set down on stone.

Then I heard his footsteps in the hall, one pair of bare feet on cypress, slow.

They stopped outside my door.

I put the paper bag on the nightstand.

"It's open," I said.

He came in and left the hall light behind him.

He had taken off the jacket, and the shirt was open at the throat.

In the half dark he was only a shape, tall and broad and very still.

"I owe you something first," he said. "I told you the door was yours. I'll say the rest."

"Say it."

"You can leave this house any morning you like. You can walk down that dock to a car and drive to your mother. The notes come due the same day, every one, and I won't stop them." His voice was level. "I want you to know I'll do it. And I want you to know I will never use it to keep you in this room."

I stood up.

I crossed the floor in my bare feet until I could feel the heat coming off his chest.

"Then hear mine," I said. "I won't be bought for that debt. If I do this, I'm doing it. It's mine. It isn't for the house and it isn't for my daddy. If you ever tell me what I owe you in a bed, I walk."

"Understood."

"Say it back."

"You are not a payment," he said. "You're not what you're paying with."

I laid my hand flat on his chest.

His heart was going hard and fast under my palm.

"Then take your shirt off, Mr. Reese."

He pulled it over his head in one move.

I had told myself I wouldn't look, and I looked.

He was broad through the shoulders and heavy in the chest.

His skin was dark and took the hall light like polished wood.

I slid both hands up over his ribs and shoulders, and he stood absolutely still and let me.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"You on the bed."

"No."

I looked up at him.

"I'll sit when you tell me to," he said, low. "But you're going to tell me where. All of it. Out loud."

A heat went through me, sudden and hot, that I did not want to name.

"Sit on the edge," I said.

He sat.

I stood between his knees, and he put his hands on my hips, only that, his big palms spread over the denim.

He waited.

"Take my jeans off," I said.

He undid the button.

He drew the zipper down so slowly I heard every tooth of it.

He pushed the denim to my knees, and then my panties, with a care that made me want to scream.

I stepped out of them.

I stood there bare from the waist down in front of the man who owned my father's house.

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