In the Palm of His Hand novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Kitchen Counter

He asks her to marry him in the morning and she laughs, then he lifts her onto the counter and kneels. He says he will ask again.

I made coffee because my hands needed something to do.

Cal sat at the kitchen table in one of my roommate's old sweatshirts, the only thing in the apartment that nearly fit him.

It stretched across his shoulders.

He wrapped both hands around my chipped mug and watched me move around the kitchen.

"Marry me," he said.

I put the sugar down.

"We talked about this."

"We didn't. You laughed."

"Because it was funny."

"Was it?"

I turned around and leaned on the counter.

He wasn't smiling.

"Cal, I met you eleven hours ago."

"I know."

"You had a hole in you."

"I know that too."

"I don't marry men I've known for one night and one orgasm."

"Two," he said. "I count the kiss."

I tried very hard not to laugh and lost.

He watched me laugh with a look so naked and so warm that the laugh died in my throat.

"I'm not asking for anything today."

"I am asking if you would say no when I ask properly, with a ring."

"On a day that is not the morning after I bled in your kitchen."

"I'd say no."

"Then I'll ask on a day you wouldn't."

"That's not how this works."

"It's how I work."

He set the mug down.

"I don't do things halfway, Penelope."

"When I walked away from the people I worked for, I wanted one thing, a life that was mine."

"Last night I was bleeding in an alley, and a woman walked up and put her hands on me."

I stared at him.

"That's the most unsettling thing a man has ever said to me," I said.

"Is it unsettling, or is it a yes?"

"It's unsettling."

"But you're still standing there."

I was.

I was standing against my own counter with my arms crossed.

My knees weren't working properly, and I could not make myself go sit somewhere safe.

He pushed his chair back and stood.

It was slow, because of his side, and he kept one hand on the table until he was upright.

Then he crossed the kitchen in three steps and stopped in front of me.

I had to tilt my head all the way back to look at him.

"Tell me to leave," he said.

"No."

"Tell me to go back to the couch."

"No."

"Then tell me what you want."

My mouth was dry.

"I want you to do what you did on the couch," I said. "And I want it to be me this time who says when."

His eyes went black.

"Take your underwear off."

I took them off, there in the kitchen, in daylight, and dropped them on the floor.

He put one hand on my waist and lifted me.

He couldn't have done it with the left, but he did it with the right, one arm.

He set me on the counter beside the sink, the edge under my thighs.

"Lean back on your hands."

I leaned back.

He pushed my sleep shirt up to my ribs and slid my thighs wide apart with both palms.

The cold air hit me where I was already wet.

He looked.

He looked for so long that I started to squirm.

"Cal."

"I'm memorizing it."

"That's insane."

"It's the least insane thing I've done all week."

He lowered himself onto one knee, carefully, with a grunt of pain that he covered, and put his mouth on me.

I cried out and hit the cabinet behind me with my head.

His tongue was broad and hot and slow.

He licked a long stripe from my entrance to my clit.

Then he sealed his mouth over me and sucked gently, and every nerve I had caught fire at once.

"Oh my God."

He growled against me.

The sound went through me.

He dragged his tongue in small, hard circles around my clit.

He pushed one thick finger inside me and crooked it.

His other huge hand held my hips down on the counter so I couldn't move away.

I wasn't trying to move away.

I was grinding against his face, with my fingers in his hair, and I was saying things I would never say in daylight.

"Right there. Yes. Please, Cal, right there."

"Say my name."

"Cal."

"Say whose mouth it is."

"Yours. It's yours."

He made a satisfied noise.

He added a second finger and sucked harder.

The pressure in my belly drew into one hot knot, a heartbeat from snapping.

"Look at me," he said, with his mouth wet and his eyes steady on mine from between my thighs. "Look at me when you come."

I looked.

It broke over me like a wave.

I cried out, and my thighs clamped on his shoulders, and my back arched off the cabinet.

He held me through it, licking me gently now, drawing it out until I whimpered and pushed at his head.

He sat back on his heel.

His beard shone, and his chest rose and fell.

I was crying.

I didn't know when it had started.

I laughed at the same time, because it was ridiculous, and wiped my face with my wrist.

"Hey." His voice had gone gentle. "Hey. Come here."

He stood, slowly, and pulled me off the counter and into his chest.

I put my face into the sweatshirt and let it all come out.

"I don't cry," I said. "I'm an EMT. I don't cry."

"I know."

"Nobody has ever just looked after me."

His arm tightened around my back.

"That's about to change," he said.

I pulled back and wiped my nose.

"You still can't have me for a wife."

"Not today." He kissed my forehead. "I'll ask again."

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