Chapter 21: Her Name Said Right

I took him up to my old bedroom at the end of the east corridor, the one with the narrow window over the oaks.

It still had my school books on the shelf.

Nobody had touched it in three years.

Dermot stopped in the doorway with his hand on the frame.

"I've never been in here," he said. "Alastair said the east corridor was family."

"You were always family."

"I'd like to knock anyway."

I laughed, and it came out unsteady.

"Come in, Dermot."

He closed the door behind him.

For a moment we stood there, three feet apart, in the lamplight.

Neither of us had a rule left.

"Tell me what's allowed," he said.

"Everything."

"Say it slower."

"Touch me, anywhere, for as long as you want," I said. "I want it to take all night."

He crossed the room and lifted my chin with two fingers.

He kissed me so gently that my eyes stung.

It was nothing like the chair, or the wall in my mother's front room.

He kissed my mouth, and my jaw, and the place below my ear.

His hands went to the zip at the back of my dress, and he drew it down an inch at a time.

I stepped out of it and stood in front of him in my underwear, and he looked at me for a long moment before he touched me.

"What?" I said.

"I'm memorizing it."

"You've seen it."

"Not in daylight. Not without being afraid you'd leave."

I took hold of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

I put my mouth on the scar on his ribs, and I felt his stomach pull in.

He undid my bra and let it fall.

His thumbs circled my nipples until I was breathing hard, and then his mouth was there, hot and wet, and I put my fingers in his hair and held on.

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