A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Clerk, Not Bed

She came to the study at midnight, with her hair down and the coat left behind.

I was at the desk with the Rooke register open in front of me, reading the cut edge of the paper for the tenth time.

Lenore shut the door and stood against it.

"I'm back on my own terms," she said. "I'll say them to you privately, since the hall isn't here."

"Say them."

"I stay until Midwinter because I choose to, not because of a page with my blood on it. I come to your bed when I want. And if you want me, you ask."

I closed the register.

She had stood in front of four hundred merchants and named terms, and I had not thought she could look more sure of herself than she had that day.

I was wrong.

"My clerk, not my bed," I said. "Those were the words. You wrote them down yourself."

Her eyes narrowed.

"You're throwing that at me."

"You threw it at me on the first night. You said the terms, my lord, in my own room, and then you took off my coat."

"I did."

"Go downstairs, Rooke."

She smiled slowly, and it was the smile from the stairs.

"No," Lenore said. "Ask me."

I stood up.

I came around the desk, and she did not move from the door, and I put my hand flat on the wood beside her face.

"Stay," I said. "Please."

"Better."

She took my coat by the front and pulled me down to her mouth.

It was slow for a moment, and then it was not.

She shoved me back against the desk and the ledgers went sliding, and an inkwell hit the floor and rolled.

Neither of us looked at it.

She pulled my shirt over my head and put her palms flat on my chest, and I felt her hands shaking.

"I've wanted to do this since the bookcase," she said.

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