The Unsent Appeal novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Morning Light

I woke in Elliott's bed with the sun full on my face.

It was the first morning in eight years that nothing was waiting for me.

No transfer to make, no text to answer, no door that wouldn't open.

I lay still and listened to him breathe beside me, slow and deep.

He lay on his stomach with one arm across my waist.

The light fell across his bare shoulder and the long scar that ran down his hip.

I had only ever seen him by lamplight or in the dark.

Now I looked at all of him, and nobody could take it from me.

I traced the scar with one finger, from the bone at his hip to the back of his knee.

He stirred.

"You're staring," he said into the pillow.

"I'm allowed."

"You're allowed." He turned his head and opened one gray eye. "What do you see?"

"A man who walked into my brother's lobby on a bad leg and told the truth."

"That's a lot to see in a back."

"I'm not done."

He rolled over onto his back and drew me on top of him, and I felt how awake he already was.

I laughed against his throat.

"Good morning," I said.

"It's about to be."

His hands slid up under the borrowed shirt and spread across my back, warm and slow.

I sat up over him and pulled the shirt over my head.

His eyes went over me in the light with nothing hidden in them.

"Rose."

"Yes."

"You're beautiful."

I felt it in my whole body, and I did not look away.

He took his time. He kissed the corner of my mouth, the line of my jaw, the hollow of my throat.

His mouth moved lower and closed around me, and I arched with a cry I didn't try to swallow.

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