Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: After Hours
The wind off the ocean rattled the shop's front glass, and Pearl's was dark except for the one lamp over Nana's table.
I had closed at five, with the sign flipped and the shade pulled down.
I had told him to come at six.
He stood inside the back door with snow on his shoulders.
It was the first snow of the year, the thin dry kind that blows sideways off the Boardwalk.
It had caught in his hair.
I stood by the long wooden worktable with my arms folded.
It was my grandmother's table, scarred by sixty years of cleavers and hot sugar.
I had pulled every taffy batch of my life on it.
"Lock the door," I said.
He turned the bolt.
"Come here."
He crossed the back room of the shop in his overcoat.
It was small and warm and smelled of sugar and salt and old wood.
For the first time in my life I wanted to do something dirty in it.
"This is Nana's," I said. "No one's ever been in this room but family and the man who fixed the boiler."
"I'll be careful of it."
"Don't be." I unfolded my arms. "Take your coat off."
He took it off and hung it on the nail by the door.
I took mine off, too, and my sweater.
I stood in a black slip and boots with nothing else under it.
I watched his eyes go over me, and I loved that I could stand there.
"Hands," I said.
He put them in his pockets.
I walked up to him slowly, and I untucked his shirt, and I laid my palms against his bare stomach.
He hissed.
His skin was hot, and the muscles jumped under my fingers.
"I'm going to tell you what to do," I said. "All of it. You can say yes, or you can say my name."
"Yes."
"Take your hands out."
He did.
I turned my back on him.
I walked to the table and put both hands flat on the old wood.
I leaned over it and looked at him over my shoulder.
I pulled the slip up over my hips.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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