Sold to a Marseille Don, So He Knelt at My Father's Grave novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Narrow Bed

I took him home to the Panier on Thursday, because I wanted him in my bed and not in his.

My flat sat above the atelier, up a stair so narrow his shoulders brushed both walls.

He had to duck under the lintel at the top.

"You live here," he said.

"I lived here eleven years before you bought me," I said.

"I did not buy you," he said.

"Then stop looking at the ceiling. It isn't for sale."

He laughed, once, low, and that was the end of talking.

There was one room, with a window over the stair street and a shelf of my mother's saints.

The bed was narrow, iron, with a white cover my mother had crocheted.

I lit a single candle and put it on the sill.

Then I turned to him and began to undress him myself.

I took off his coat and hung it on the back of the door.

I undid his tie, slowly, and drew it out of his collar, and let it fall.

He stood still for it.

His eyes never left my face.

"You are not in a hurry," he said.

"No," I said. "I want to see all of you."

"You have seen me," he said.

"On a roof, in the wind. In an office, with the lights off," I said. "I've never seen you in a room that was mine."

I opened his shirt, one button at a time, and put my mouth on his throat.

He breathed in, hard.

I kissed down his chest to the long white scar, and I kissed that too.

"A hook," I said. "At twelve."

"Mattei was teaching me to gut a sea bass. I was careless."

It was the first time he had said the name without flinching.

I did not say anything, because I did not want to frighten it away.

I kissed the scar again.

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