A Hunger Most Dark novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Please

She told me in my own room, with the lamp burning on the table and the door locked.

Lenore sat on the edge of the bed in her shift with her hands between her knees, and she did not look at me while she started.

"The night in the cellar, you were on the floor."

"You said so."

"I said the part I could say." She drew a breath. "You were burning up, Dav. Your eyes were black and you didn't know me. I stood on the third stair and said your name, and you looked up."

I sat down beside her and said nothing.

"You said please."

The word landed in the room and stayed.

"You said it to me. In a voice I'd never heard, a boy's voice, begging. Please, you said, and then you said my name, I think, or you tried to." Her mouth twisted. "For six years I had wanted that word out of you. I had stood outside your door and whispered through the keyhole and waited for you to ask me to stop."

"I never did."

"No. You never once asked. And then you said it on the floor, with your teeth showing, and I stood there thinking, there it is. And you were on me before I could breathe."

My throat was tight.

"That's why I asked it of you on the stairs," she said. "I wanted to hear it again with nobody hurt. And when you did say it, in this bed, it was..."

She did not finish.

I took her hand.

"I'm sorry," I said. "For the part I don't remember."

"I know." She turned her face to me at last. "I know you are. I believed you in the square. I just needed to say the word out loud to someone who wouldn't flinch."

"I won't flinch."

"I know that too."

She leaned in and put her forehead against mine.

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