Chapter 10: Rule One

Linnea's POV

He did not tell me not to touch him.

He stood very still in the work light with sawdust on his forearms and looked at me.

"Say it," I said.

"I can't."

"Then I'm touching you."

I put my palm flat on his chest.

His heart was going as hard as mine.

"I want you to know something first," he said, and his voice was rough. "It's the thing I haven't said."

"Say it."

"You lived four years next to him, Linnea. Four years. And you never asked him one question about that night."

His hand closed around my wrist, not hard.

"I'm not angry at you," he said. "I'm angry that it was so easy for everybody."

It stung because it was true.

"I know," I said. "I'm asking now."

"Not tonight."

"I'm not asking that." I stepped into him. "I'm asking this."

He kissed me.

It was nothing like the kiss for Greta.

It was hungry and quiet, his hand sliding into my hair and tilting my head back.

He made a low sound in his throat that I felt in my knees.

I pulled at his jacket and he shrugged out of it without breaking the kiss.

We got as far as the stairs.

He backed me against the rail at the third step and kissed my neck.

Then he pulled my borrowed sweatshirt up and over my head.

The cold hit my skin.

Then his mouth did, hot, at my collarbone, and I stopped feeling cold at all.

"Inside," he said against my throat. "Moby will watch."

"Moby has seen worse."

"Not from me."

Upstairs he lifted me onto the kitchen counter.

I wrapped my legs around his hips and he groaned and pressed his forehead to mine.

"Rule one," he said.

"Nobody's watching, Ekdahl."

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