The Gold Digger's Ledger novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Night One

The long way took us twice around the park.

Neither of us said a word for the first lap.

On the second, I moved my hand from my lap to his thigh and left it there.

He stopped breathing.

"Miranda."

"I say so," I said. "That was the term. I'm saying so."

He turned his head, and his grey eyes were black in the dark of the car.

"Now?"

"Not in the back seat of a hired car, Tristan."

"Home," he told the driver, in a voice I had never heard him use.

We didn't touch on the front steps.

We didn't touch in the hall.

He took my hand on the second landing and led me up past the library.

We climbed to the third floor and walked to a door at the end of a bare corridor.

His bedroom held a bed, a chair, and a lamp.

Nothing else.

I noticed the bare walls, and then he turned me around by the shoulders, and I stopped noticing anything.

He unzipped me from behind, slowly, one inch at a time, with his mouth following the zipper down my spine.

My dress fell to my hips.

"This is what I said," he murmured against the back of my neck. "Slowly."

"You also said you'd make me say your name."

"I'm getting there."

His hands came around my ribs, warm and certain, and cupped my breasts through the thin lace.

I leaned back against his chest.

I heard myself make a sound I had never made for a man who was paying.

He pushed the dress the rest of the way down.

I stepped out of it, turned, and started on his buttons.

My fingers weren't steady.

His chest was broad and pale, with a line of dark hair running down to his belt.

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