He Had Me Drowned, Then Wept at My Grave novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Mine to Take

Two nights later he came off the pilot boat at dusk, and I was waiting on his stairs in the rain.

I had my hand flat on his chest and his belt already open when he said my name and tried to say something sensible.

"Dara, the man at your door."

"Is gone," I said.

"The sitter locked the chain and called the police, and Irini slept through it."

"You should be home."

"Irini is at my neighbor's tonight, with her husband, who is six-foot-five and sleeps with a bat.

"I'm here."

I pushed him back until the backs of his knees hit his bed.

He sat down hard, looking up at me.

"I told you soon," I said.

"I'm saying now."

His eyes went dark.

"Whatever you want."

"Take your sweater off."

He pulled it over his head and dropped it on the floor.

I stood between his knees in my coat with the rain still on my hair and looked at him for a long moment, the whole broad pale chest of him, the muscle under the gray hair, the pink rope scar on his forearm.

Nobody had ever sat still for me to look at them.

"Hands on the bed," I said.

He put his hands on the quilt on either side of him.

"Don't move them."

"I won't."

I took the coat off and let it fall.

I pulled my sweater over my head and my bra after it, and I stood there with my hair coming down out of its braid, naked to the waist in his lamplight.

He made a sound in his throat that was nearly pain.

His hands closed on the quilt until the knuckles went white, and he didn't move them.

"Dara."

"Look at me."

"I am looking.

"God help me, I'm looking."

I stepped out of my boots, unbuttoned my jeans, and pushed them off with my underwear.

I stood in front of him in nothing but my gold cross.

I had never in my life done that for a man on purpose.

I felt his eyes on every inch of me, and instead of the old cold flinch I felt hot and powerful and wet.

"Stand up," I said.

He stood.

I undid his belt the rest of the way, and the button, and the zipper.

I pushed his jeans and his shorts down together and he stepped out of them.

He was hard already, thick and flushed and curving up toward his stomach, with the head wet.

I took him in my hand.

He shut his eyes and his whole body went rigid.

"Look at me," I said again.

He opened them.

I held his gaze and stroked him once, slow, from the base to the tip, and a shudder ran down him.

"Is that all right?" I asked.

"It's," he said, and his voice broke, "it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

"Don't stop."

"I'm not going to."

I went to my knees on the rug in front of him.

I felt the wooden floor under it, and the heat of him against my cheek, and the faint salt smell of his skin.

I ran my tongue up the underside, slow, base to head, and tasted him.

He swore, low and long, in Norwegian.

"Hands," I said.

"On the bed."

"They're on the bed," he said.

"Keep them there."

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