Chapter 11: Mine

Hugh took off his reading glasses.

He folded them and put them in the pocket of his sweater, slowly.

"What do you want?" he said.

"You know what I want."

"I want to hear you say it. Nobody's picked anything for you in this doorway. So pick."

I stepped over the threshold.

I put both hands flat on his chest, on the soft gray wool, and felt his heart going hard under it.

"You," I said.

His face softened.

Then his hands were on my face, and his mouth was on mine.

It wasn't like the truck.

The truck had been rain and surprise and a hundred and fifty brides in a window.

This was slow. This was a man who had decided.

He kissed me, deep and unhurried, his thumbs at my jaw, tilting my head where he wanted it.

My coat hit the floor.

I didn't know which of us had pushed it off.

He walked me backward into the house without lifting his mouth from mine.

My back met a wall, and a picture frame rattled next to my head.

"Sorry," he said against my lips.

"Don't be."

I pulled his sweater up.

He reached back with one hand and dragged it off over his head in one motion and dropped it.

Under it he was broad and warm and solid, a deckhand's body that had never quite left the boats.

There was an old white rope scar across his ribs on the left side.

I put my mouth on it.

He made a rough sound and his hand came into my hair.

"Edie."

"I've wanted to do that since you went in the bay."

"In a wet shirt?"

"Especially in a wet shirt."

He laughed, low, and bent and picked me up.

He did it, his hands under my thighs.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him while he carried me down a dark hallway.

His bedroom faced the water.

A big bed with a wool blanket. A window with no curtains.

Out past the glass, the lights of the ferry crawled across the black Sound toward Vashon.

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