Chapter 9: Number Two

I kissed him back until the bowl of dough hit the floor.

Neither of us looked down.

His hands were in my hair, and mine were under his shirt, flat against hot skin.

He made a sound against my mouth that I felt in my knees.

"Say it again," he said.

"Terms. Number two."

"Say what it's for."

"It's for family. For the people who watch."

"Nobody's watching, Molly."

"Then I don't care what it says."

He lifted me.

He did it easily, with both hands under my thighs, and my back hit the edge of the counter.

I laughed in his mouth.

"You can walk," I said.

"Mostly."

"You can carry a person."

"Mostly," he said again, and bit my lip, and carried me out of the kitchen.

He did not use the cane.

It stayed on the floor by the table where he had dropped it.

His bedroom was dark and smelled of cedar and rain.

He set me down on the white bed and stood over me with his chest going hard.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

"Come here."

"If you want to."

"Ethan." I pulled his shirt over his head. "I'm telling you the opposite."

He knelt over me, and I got my first look at him.

He was long and lean, hard through the shoulders, with a thick scar curling down the left forearm and another running up his thigh into the dark.

I traced the one on his arm with my thumb.

He caught his breath.

"Does it hurt?"

"Not like that," he said.

I took the grey shirt off over my head.

He stopped.

His eyes went over me slowly, and his hands, which had been so sure on the stairs, shook a little when they came to my ribs.

"You're beautiful," he said.

"Don't say it like a bad thing."

"It is a bad thing. I'd forgotten what it was to want something I couldn't afford."

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