Chapter 7: The First Night

Nobody spoke in the car.

Soren drove with both hands on the wheel.

I sat with Lars's friend's card in my lap and my heart going.

Rosalyn had said goodnight on the sidewalk and told me not to do anything stupid.

"Define stupid," I'd said.

She had looked at Soren, then at me, and put a peppermint in my hand.

"Eat that instead."

Now the car stopped in front of his crooked porch.

The engine ticked.

"You were something in there," Soren said.

"I was shaking."

"I could tell. It didn't change anything. They watched you walk down that aisle like the room had been waiting for you."

I turned the card over in my fingers.

"I'm not on your couch," I said. "I'm fed. I've had a shower and a night's sleep."

"And I'd like to stop being careful with you."

His breath caught.

"Annika."

"You told me to want it when I wasn't starving," I said. "I'm not starving. I want it."

I got out of the car.

He followed me up the steps, and he unlocked the door with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

We didn't make it to the light switch.

I turned in the dark hall and pulled him down by his lapels.

He kissed me.

The coat hit the floor.

His mouth moved to my jaw and the hollow under my ear, and I heard my own voice, low and rough, say his name.

"Say it again," he muttered against my throat.

"Soren."

"Again."

"Soren, upstairs."

He laughed against my skin and lifted me.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.

He carried me up the narrow staircase.

His bedroom was at the top.

A wide bed, a window, the streetlight laying a pale stripe over the blankets.

He set me on my feet at the edge of the bed.

His hands found the zipper at the back of Rosalyn's daughter's dress and went slowly down my spine, one inch at a time.

I shivered.

"Cold?"

"No."

The dress slid off my shoulders and pooled on the floor.

I stood in the stripe of light in my plain white underwear, thin as a rail.

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