I Left My Husband Bleeding, and the Mob Boss Said Good novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Palms

Nahla's POV

He spread his black coat on the tile between two palms.

The air was so warm that I took off my scarf first.

The Belle Isle conservatory had closed at four.

Marwan had a brass key on his ring that opened the service door.

By the east window hung a bronze plaque with his father's family name on it.

"He paid for the glass," he said. "He never once came to look."

"Look now," I said.

Snow was coming down on the high glass dome, and it melted where it touched and ran in lines.

Under it everything was green and wet and warm.

There were ferns as tall as my shoulders and palms that went up into the dark.

Somewhere a pipe ticked, and water dripped off a leaf onto stone.

I stood in the middle of the path in my green coat and my boots.

For the first time in two months I was not cold.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

He stopped in front of me and did not touch me.

"Slow," I said. "I want it slow. I've had it fast. I want to feel every minute of this."

"Every minute," he said in Arabic, quietly.

He took my coat by the lapels and slid it off my shoulders.

He folded it over a stone bench, carefully, with his eyes on my face.

He unbuttoned the front of my dress one button at a time, from the collar down.

Every time his knuckles brushed my skin, my breath went short.

By the sixth button, my knees were not mine.

He pushed the dress open and off my shoulders and let it drop.

He knelt on the wet tile in front of me, which I had not expected, and took my boot in his hands.

"What are you doing?"

"Your feet are cold."

He unlaced the boot and pulled it off.

He wrapped both hands around my bare foot and held it, until the cold went out of it and into him.

Then he kissed the top of it.

I put my hand on his head.

He did the other foot, with the same patience, and I thought: I am going to cry in a botanical garden.

He stood and took off his own shirt and laid it over the bench.

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