Sold to the Man Who Took Me, but I Hold His Life novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Open Door

I told him on a Sunday night, three nights after the chair.

I did not tell him in words.

At eleven I stood at the foot of the third-floor stairs in a white cotton nightgown and called his name up the dark.

He came to the landing in his shirtsleeves with a book in his hand.

He saw me, and he put the book down on the stair without taking his eyes off me.

"Come down," I said. "I want you in my room."

"Roz."

"I'm asking."

He came down the stairs one at a time, and he stopped on the bottom step so that I had to look up.

I turned and walked ahead of him along the second-floor hall.

My door was standing wide open, and the lamp was on, and the bed had been turned back.

I went in and he stopped at the threshold.

"Is a bedroom a room?" he said, and his voice was rough.

"Come in and find out."

He stepped over the sill.

I shut nothing.

The door stayed open behind him, and the hall light fell across the floor in a long bar, and I wanted it that way.

I wanted to be able to see the way out.

"Sit in the chair," I said.

There was a small armchair by the window, upholstered in green.

He sat.

I stood in front of him and put my hands on the wooden arms, on either side of his knees, and I felt him go tight from his boots to his collar.

"Same rule as before," I said. "Your hands stay on the chair until I say."

"Yes."

"If I tell you to stop, you stop. If you can't, you tell me. That's the only thing I'll ask you."

"I'll stop," Declan said. "I'll stop the second you say it."

I looked down into his face.

He was already breathing hard, and I had not touched him.

I kissed him.

It was slow, because I wanted it slow, and I took his bottom lip between my teeth and pulled until he groaned.

His hands closed on the chair arms until the knuckles went white.

I stood up and took my nightgown off over my head.

I had thought I would be afraid.

I stood in the lamplight in nothing but my skin, with my hair down my back, and he looked at me as if he did not trust his own eyes.

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