Chapter 13: Ask Me Tomorrow

The other three left the kitchen without being asked.

Bernard went first, and for once he didn't say a word.

Ellis put his glasses in his shirt pocket and followed.

Garson pulled the door shut behind them, and I heard their boots go away across the porch.

My hand was still on David's face.

His beard was rough under my palm, and his jaw was moving.

"It's past midnight," I said.

"It is."

"You told me to ask you tomorrow."

"I did."

"It's tomorrow. I'm asking."

He closed his hand over mine and held it against his cheek.

"Say it plainly," I said. "No more waiting for me to be calm."

"I want to know what you taste like," David said.

My breath went out of me.

"I want to hear you say my name when you don't hate me. I want to wake up and find you in the kitchen yelling about the coffee."

"I'd yell about the coffee."

"I know." His mouth tipped. "I want you in your mother's house, in the daylight, where everyone can see I'm not sorry."

"Are you sorry?"

"For the funeral. For the hotel stairs, a little." He looked straight at me. "Not for this."

I pushed the salt shaker and his phone to the far end of the table.

I turned the phone face down, where he had kept mine all day Wednesday.

Then I hitched myself up onto the edge of the wood and sat there, with my feet hanging, and looked at him.

"I'm touching you," I said. "I'm awake. My eyes are open."

"I see them."

"Take your hands off your belt, David. Put them on me."

He put them on my knees.

They were so big that they covered the whole of them.

He slid them up my thighs, slowly, and I felt the calluses catch on my jeans.

"Is this what you wanted on Wednesday, with your hand on my phone?" I said.

"Every night since."

"Then stop looking like you're asking permission."

His mouth came down on mine.

It wasn't careful.

His hand went into my hair and tilted my head, and he kissed me hungrily, with five years in it.

I grabbed his shirt in both fists.

He lifted me by the hips, only enough to get my jeans down, and set me back on the table in nothing but my sweater.

The wood was cold under me.

He knelt on the floorboards.

It was a long way down for a man his size, and he did it without looking away from my face.

"I'm going to eat you until you beg," he said.

"I'll tell you when I want more."

He pushed my knees apart.

He kissed the inside of one thigh, and then the other, and his beard scraped and my whole body jumped.

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