The New Hire Down the Hall Knew My Name Before HR Did novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Say Whose

His studio in Blackstone was one room with a mattress on the floor, a lamp, a card table, and a window over an alley.

He had cooked a pot of chili that was better than anything at the cook-off.

I ate two bowls standing at his counter in my coat.

He watched me do it with his arms folded and a look of such naked relief that I put the spoon down and kissed him.

That was at eight.

By nine-thirty my coat was on the floor, my dress was over the card table chair.

I was lying on my stomach on his mattress in my underwear with my cheek on his pillow.

"Stay like that," he said.

I stayed.

I heard him moving behind me, a belt, a drawer, and then his weight settled on the mattress.

His hands came down on my back.

They were warm, and so large they spanned my ribs, and he pressed them flat along my spine from my shoulders to the base, slowly.

"I want to do something," he said.

"What?"

"Whatever I like."

I turned my head on the pillow.

I could see only a slice of him, the line of his shoulder, the dark scrape of his jaw.

"Everything I do is what you like," I said. "That's the rule."

"Not that rule."

"Oh."

"Tonight I don't ask," he said. "Tonight you let me."

I lay there with my mouth dry.

I had never in my life said yes to that.

I had spent five years deciding what happened to my body, and who saw it, and when.

I had decided every time with a clipboard.

"Okay," I said.

"Say it better."

"Do whatever you like."

He breathed out, long and unsteady.

"Lift," he said.

I lifted my hips.

He slid a pillow under them, flat and firm, so that I lay tilted, with my backside raised.

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