I Broke His Rule to Get Near Him, So the Billionaire Made Me Count novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Over the Fig Tree

Mari's POV

My mother's kitchen light was on forty feet away, and Royce was kissing my throat on my own narrow bed.

"Leave the lamp on," I said.

He lifted his head.

"I want to see you," I said. "I don't want to be in the dark with anything tonight."

"Then it stays on."

The garage apartment is one room over a one-car garage.

It has a window unit that rattles and a quilt my grandmother sewed.

The bed is not wide.

He had to lie on his side to fit in it, and I lay facing him, so close that our noses touched.

The window unit hummed.

Past the glass, the fig tree stood bare in the porch light, and across the yard my mother's curtains were shut.

"She can hear everything," I whispered.

"Then we'll be quiet."

"I'm not good at quiet."

"I know," he said, and his mouth curved. "I've noticed."

I laughed into his lips, softly, and kissed him again.

It was the slowest kiss we had ever had.

It had no order in it and no count.

His hand lay warm and still against the side of my face.

He did not undress me.

He waited, and I understood that he was waiting for me to do it.

I sat up and pulled my sweater over my head, and my bra after it.

I lay down again, bare to the waist, under the lamp.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Mari."

"Yes."

"Nothing," he said. "I only wanted to say it."

He laid his palm flat on my breastbone, over the little red padlock on its cord.

Then his thumb moved across my nipple until it hardened, and I breathed in through my teeth.

I unbuttoned his shirt with fingers that were not steady.

He shrugged out of it and lay back down facing me.

His skin was warm, and it smelled of my mother's soap.

I put my mouth on his collarbone and tasted the salt there.

He drew me closer by the hip, and my bare thigh slid over his.

I felt how hard he was already, against my belly.

I reached down, opened his trousers, and took him in my hand.

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