My Stepsister Ran From the Wedding, So My Stepmother Sold Me to the Man Who Hates Her Mother novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Tub

Nina's POV

The tub on the rebuilt seawall porch was a hundred years old and big enough for two.

It had claw feet, a chipped white rim and a brass tap that groaned.

Agata had pulled it out of the wreck of the old summerhouse in September.

Marcello's men had hauled it up the bluff on a flatbed.

I had filled it myself with water as hot as I could stand, and I had put a candle at every corner of the porch.

The Gulf lay flat and silver beyond the new rail.

It was a Sunday evening in October, ten weeks after the storm.

The first norther of the year had come through that morning and cleared the air, and the first stars had come out over the water.

Marcello stood at the edge of the tub in his trousers with his hands at his sides.

"Take them off," I said.

He took them off.

He stood naked on the porch boards with the cool wind on his skin, and I let myself look.

I had looked at him a hundred times in ten weeks, and it had never once been enough.

"In," I said.

He stepped in and sank down, his shoulders loosening as the heat took him.

I stood by the rim in my robe.

"Hands on the edge," I said. "Both. Above your head."

He lifted them.

He gripped the rim of the tub behind him, with his arms stretched and his chest wet and gleaming in the candlelight.

"Stay like that," I said.

"Yes," said Marcello.

"If you let go, I stop."

"I won't."

I dropped the robe.

I stepped in slowly, with my hand on his shoulder for balance.

The water rose around my thighs, and his eyes went dark.

I knelt astride him in the hot water, facing him, and touched him nowhere but his shoulders.

"You've been good this week," I said.

"I've tried," he said.

"You asked twice at breakfast."

"I asked three times."

"I counted," I said. "I liked all three."

He closed his eyes for a second.

I leaned in and kissed him, slow and deep, with my hands in his wet hair.

His whole body strained toward me, and his hands tightened on the porcelain.

I broke the kiss and trailed my mouth down his throat.

I bit the place where his pulse beat, and he swore.

I took my time over his chest, his nipples, his ribs, the long white scar, with my mouth and my teeth and the flat of my tongue.

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