Chapter 9: What He Doesn't Say

I did not tell him.

I folded my father's letter into a square and slid it under the sole of my boot.

Then I walked into the Creighton house on Valentin's arm with my sleeve soaked red.

He didn't ask what the letter said.

He carried me up the back stairs anyway, over my protests, and kicked his bedroom door shut behind us.

It was the first time I had been inside it.

A huge dark bed.

A fireplace.

A shelf of paperbacks with cracked spines.

A pair of reading glasses on the nightstand that surprised me so much I stared at them.

He sat me on the edge of the mattress and knelt to work the boots off my feet.

He did not look at the folded square under my sole. He set it on the nightstand next to the glasses and left it alone.

"You killed two men for me tonight," he said.

"For you? I killed them because they were in my way."

"One of them had a gun on my back."

"I know."

He lifted his eyes.

Valentin looked at me as if he had decided to be careful with me.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that.

"I don't know what you are," he said. "I thought I was buying a fighter."

"Do you want your money back?"

"No."

His hand closed around my ankle, warm and rough, and slid slowly up the back of my calf.

My breath caught.

"Take my dress off," I said.

"Your arm."

"Is fine. Take it off."

He rose and turned me by the shoulders and unzipped the black dress down my spine.

His mouth followed the zipper, one slow kiss after another.

He kissed down the knobs of my back until I shivered and heard myself make a sound I had never made for anyone.

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