My Mother Sold Me to Pay Her Dealer, and the Man Who Took Me From Him Has a Use for Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Hot Water
I ran the bath myself at six in the morning, with the storm still going.
The tub stood in the upstairs bathroom under the slope of the roof.
It was an old clawfoot, white enamel gone yellow at the drain.
The water came out of the tap brown for a minute and then clear and hot.
I stood and watched it fill.
I had not been in a bath since the ninth of October.
There had been a shower stall upstairs at the Dry Dock with a plastic curtain, and a man outside the door with a timer.
Valentine stood in the doorway in his trousers, with his arms at his sides.
"Come in," I said. "Shut the door."
He shut it.
"Take them off."
He took off the trousers.
I took off the sweater I had on, and the rest, and stepped over the rim of the tub and sank into the water up to my chin.
It was almost too hot.
I closed my eyes and felt it go into my skin.
"Get in behind me," I said.
He climbed in.
The water rose and sloshed over the lip.
He settled with his back against the slope of the enamel and his knees up on either side of me.
I leaned back against his chest.
His arms came up, hesitating, and stopped in the air above my shoulders.
"Where?" he said.
"Not yet."
I took a cake of soap from the dish.
It was his grandmother's soap, gray and rough and smelling of lye.
I scrubbed my own arms with it, hard.
I scrubbed my wrists, and my throat, and my breastbone.
I scrubbed the insides of my thighs until the skin went red.
He watched me do it in the steam, and his breathing changed.
"You can say it," I said.
"Say what?"
"What you think when you watch me."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Mother Sold Me to Pay Her Dealer, and the Man Who Took Me From Him Has a Use for Me are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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