Chapter 12: The Key

He kissed me back.

His hand came up into my hair, and his mouth was hot and hard against mine.

I bit his lower lip, and he made a sound low in his throat.

We broke apart when the automatic doors of the emergency room slid open behind us.

A nurse came out and told us the surgery was done, and Thea was asleep, and she would live.

"Stay with her," Matthias told his driver at the car.

The driver looked at me over the roof of it.

"Miss," he said. "I would do it again."

"Don't talk to me," I said. "Not yet."

He nodded and went inside.

Matthias drove us home himself, and we did not speak once.

The dock road was empty, and the harbor was black, and my mouth still burned.

At the Kell house he held the front door and followed me in.

The hall was dark.

The whole house slept, and the stairs went up in front of me toward my room, my bed and my lock.

I turned the other way, down the ground-floor hall, to the door at the end where a light showed under it.

His study.

"Ilse," Matthias said behind me.

"Open it."

He opened it.

It was a plain room, a desk and a lamp and shelves of ledgers, a leather couch under the window.

I closed the door behind us and turned the lock.

Then I took the key to my bedroom out of my pocket and put it in his hand.

"You said you wouldn't ask for it."

"I didn't."

"I'm not asking you to keep it," I said. "I'm telling you to hold it while I do this."

His hand closed around the key, and he looked at me.

"Do what?"

I put both palms on his chest and pushed him back until the desk stopped him.

"I hate you," I said.

"I know."

"I want you anyway. I want you right now, and I don't want to talk about it after."

"Then don't talk."

I pulled his coat off his shoulders, and he let it fall.

I unbuttoned his shirt with my bandaged hand, and the fingers would not do what I told them.

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