Chapter 8: Exactly Enough

He kicked the door shut behind us.

It was dark in the flat, with only the streetlight coming through my grandmother's lace curtains.

I backed against the kitchen counter with his jacket still bunched in my fists.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm not cold."

"I know you're not."

He took my wrists and set my hands on his chest, one on each side.

Then he went down on one knee on the kitchen floor.

I stared at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking your shoes off." He lifted my foot and undid the wet strap.

He did it.

He did the other one.

Then he put his palms flat on my calves and slid them slowly up over the wet fabric of my trousers.

I forgot how to stand.

"Rafe."

"You said you wanted me in your bed."

"I did."

"I'm getting there."

He undid my trousers and pulled them down my legs, and kissed the inside of my knee.

I made a sound I had never made in my life.

He looked up at me from the floor with those dark green eyes.

I put my fingers in his hair.

He turned his face into my thigh and breathed out against my skin.

"You're beautiful," he said. "I want you to stop doing that thing where you wait for me to be wrong."

"What thing?"

"You're holding your stomach in."

I hadn't known.

I let it go, and he pressed his mouth right there, just under my navel.

I laughed and shook and had to hold the counter behind me with both hands.

He stood, picked me up under my thighs and carried me down the hall.

The bedroom was small, with a narrow iron bed and my grandmother's quilt.

He set me down on it, and for a moment he only stood looking.

Then he pulled his shirt over his head.

He was broad and brown from working outdoors, with a long old scar down his left side.

A line of dark hair ran down his stomach and disappeared into his belt.

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