Chapter 20: My Turn to Ask

By ten that night Cassidy was asleep in Bernie's spare room with a plate of leftovers and a cat on her feet.

Bernie had pushed me out the door again.

"Go be thirty," she said. "I'll keep the girl."

Thane opened his door before I knocked.

I walked in, shut it behind me and turned the lock.

"Sit," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.

"Where?"

"The chair by the bed."

He went.

It was a big leather chair.

He sat down in it in his shirtsleeves with his hands on the arms and his eyes on me.

I took off my jacket and dropped it on the floor.

On the wall above him hung a framed sheet of paper covered in red ink.

My own handwriting, six years old, corrected his sales numbers in the margins.

"You hung it up," I said.

"I told you I would."

"Don't move your hands."

"Nadine."

"I said don't move them."

His grip tightened on the leather, and his jaw worked.

I unbuttoned my blouse slowly, one button at a time, and let it fall.

I unhooked my bra and let that fall too.

His breath went ragged.

I stepped out of my skirt and stood in front of him in nothing but my heels.

"You've done every single thing in this apartment I asked for," I said. "Tonight I'm going to do the asking."

"Yes," he said hoarsely.

"Good."

I knelt between his knees.

I undid his belt and his trousers and took him out, already thick and heavy and hot in my hand.

He hissed through his teeth.