Sentenced to Two Wardens, I Served My Whole Term in Their Bed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Damper Sticks

At midnight at the Watchhouse stove Linnea puts her hand in Mikkel's jeans while he grips the chair, and a board creaks in the loft.

The north Watchhouse was one big room of cedar boards on a bluff, with the bay black and loud below it.

A wood stove stood in the middle of the floor.

There was a kitchen table, a counter, a cot against the wall, and a ladder going up to a loft.

Behind the stove, through a low door, was a narrow room with a narrow bed.

"That's yours," Anders said.

He laid my grandmother's quilt on the bed and stepped back out of the doorway at once.

"Breakfast is at six. The boundary walk is at seven."

"I know the boundary walk," I said.

"You'll walk it with one of us."

"I know that too."

He looked at me for a while with the lamp behind him.

"Say what you want to say, Linnea."

"I chose the bite," I said. "I knew where it sent me. I knew it would be you two."

Mikkel, at the stove, stopped feeding it.

"I've watched this post from the ridge for six years," I told them. "I watched you walk the bluff in all weather."

Anders did not answer.

"You walked me home through a snowstorm when I was twenty," I said.

"At my door you said, Go in, Linnea. Then you never said my name again until tonight."

His jaw moved under the beard.

"Go to bed," he said, lower.

He climbed the ladder into the loft, and the boards creaked over our heads and went quiet.

Mikkel shut the stove door with his boot.

"He's not as angry as he sounds," he said.

"I didn't think he was angry."

"No," Mikkel said. "I don't suppose you did."

I lay in the narrow bed in my clothes and listened to the bay.

I did not sleep.

At midnight I got up and went out barefoot, in a long T-shirt and my underwear.

The lamp was turned low.

Mikkel sat in the chair by the stove with his boots on the woodbox and a mug in his hand.

The loft above him was dark.

"The damper sticks," he said, without turning around. "You have to hit it with the heel of your hand."

"I'll remember that."

"You'll be here a year. You'd better."

I crossed the floor and took the mug out of his hand.

I set it on the woodbox, and he let me.

I sat across his lap with one knee on each side of his hips.

His hands went to the arms of the chair and closed on the wood.

"Linnea," he said.

"You're sworn not to touch me. I heard the judge. You can hold the chair."

"You'll be the death of my post."

"Probably," I said.

He was lean and warm and he smelled of woodsmoke and cold air.

His shirt was open at the throat.

I put my mouth on his.

He made a low sound in his chest and kissed me back at once, slow and thorough.

His knuckles went white on the chair, and his hands stayed exactly where they were.

I kissed his jaw, then his neck, then the hollow under his ear where his pulse was going.

"Your hands are on the chair," I said into his skin.

"They are."

"Good."

I opened his shirt button by button.

I ran my palms over his chest and down his stomach, and the muscle jumped under them.

His left sleeve was pushed to the elbow.

Across the inside of his forearm ran a half ring of small white scars, even and close together.

I touched them with one fingertip.

"Old fight," Mikkel said, and his voice had gone rough. "A man who thought he was funnier than me."

"Was he?"

"No."

I laughed against his throat, and he laughed too, shakily.

Then neither of us was laughing, because my hand was on the front of his jeans.

He was already hard.

He was thick and hot under the denim, and when I pressed my palm along him his hips came up off the chair.

"Linnea," he said. "God."

"Tell me to stop."

"I'm not going to say it," he said.

"Then don't."

I opened the button and the zipper and took him out.

He filled my hand.

He was heavy and slick at the tip, and at the base, where my fingers closed, he was thicker.

I could feel the swell there tightening.

"That's the knot," I said.

"It does that when I'm close."

"You're close already?"

"It's been a long time since a woman put a hand on me," he said, and gave a ragged laugh.

"Don't mock a man in his own chair."

I stroked him slowly from root to tip.

My thumb dragged through the wet at the head, and his breath broke in the middle.

I rocked on his thigh while I worked him, because I wanted it too.

My underwear was soaked through, and the denim under me was rough.

Every time I slid forward, the seam pressed against my clit, and I made a sound I could not stop.

"Look at me," Mikkel said.

I looked up.

His eyes were dark and wide open, and his head was back against the chair.

The muscles of his forearms stood out from gripping the wood.

"You're beautiful when you do that," he said. "Do it harder."

"Which?"

"Both."

I tightened my fist around him and ground down on his leg.

The heat gathered low and tight in me.

"Mikkel, I'm going to come on your thigh."

"Do it. God, do it. I want to feel it."

I came with my forehead on his shoulder and my hand still pulling him.

It rolled through me in long hard waves, and I bit his collarbone to keep from crying out.

He swore, softly and steadily, and his hips drove up into my fist.

"Linnea," he said. "I'm going to."

"Come for me."

He came with a hoarse shout that he tried to swallow.

It was hot and thick over my knuckles and over his stomach, and the knot at the base swelled hard against my palm and pulsed.

I kept stroking until he shook and begged me to stop.

He still did not let go of the chair.

Then he sat breathing in great gulps with his eyes shut.

I wiped my hand on his open shirt, and he opened one eye.

"That was my shirt," he said.

"It was available."

He laughed, a real laugh, helpless and loud, and clapped a hand over his own mouth.

I stayed on his lap with my cheek on his shoulder, listening to his heart slow down.

"Thank you," he said, into my hair, and he was not joking.

"You're welcome."

"You're going to do that to him next, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said. "If he lets me."

"He will."

Above us, in the dark, a board in the loft floor creaked.

Once.

Then nothing, from a man who had been lying very still, listening, for a long time.

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