Married to My Ex-Father-in-Law novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Burned Eggs

He opened it on the second knock.

He was still awake.

Gray T-shirt, dark pajama pants, his reading glasses in one hand and a book in the other, his thumb holding the page.

He looked at the shirt.

Then he looked at me in it, all the way down to my bare feet and all the way back up.

He didn't say anything.

The book hit the floor.

"That's mine," he said finally. His voice came out rough.

"I took it the first week. I've slept in it every night."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"Daniela."

"Nobody voted," I said. "Nobody's watching. There's no rule. You opened the door for me on Sunday and I closed it." I put my hand flat on his chest, the way I had at the altar, and his heart was slamming. "This is my door. I'm knocking on it."

"Say you want me."

"Say it first, or I'm going back to bed."

He didn't make me wait.

He didn't move.

He just stood there in the doorway looking at me, and I watched his chest rise and fall under the gray T-shirt.

His hands were still at his sides.

I reached out and took his wrist.

His pulse was banging under my fingers.

"Bedroom," I said.

I walked him backward through the dark hall to the open door of his room.

The lamp was on beside his bed.

The window was open on the spring night, and below it the river lights ran in a long gold line.

I stopped in the middle of the floor and turned to face him.

"Say you want me."

His eyes went dark.

"Say it."

He swallowed.

"I want you. God, Daniela, I want you."

"Yes."

The word came out cleaner than I'd ever said anything in my life.

"Yes," I said again. "This is the first thing in this whole marriage I wasn't forced into, and I want it."

He reached for me.

I caught his hands.

"Not yet," I said. "You're going to unbutton it."

His eyes dropped to the white shirt.

His shirt.

"Every button," I said. "Slow. I want to watch your hands."

His jaw worked.

"My hands have been steady in a dental chair for eleven years," he said quietly. "But not now."

"Good."

He lifted his hands.

The first button was at my chest, and his fingers fumbled it.

I watched them shake.

The Don of Kansas City, who could silence a table of thirty men with one look, couldn't open a button.

I loved it.

He got the first one open, then the second.

His knuckles brushed the skin between my breasts, and I heard him exhale.

"Keep going," I said.

He worked the third button.

The fourth.

The shirt fell open to my waist, and the night air from the window found my bare skin.

He stopped.

He just looked at me, with his hands on the last button under my navel, and I felt my nipples tighten under his gaze.

"The first time I saw you," he said, "at the Sunday table, I thought, she has the steadiest hands in this family."

"Yours are shaking."

"Because I've been good," he said. "For two weeks. And you're standing in my bedroom in my shirt with nothing under it."

"Unbutton the rest."

He did.

The shirt slid off my shoulders and puddled on the floor at my feet.

I stood there in nothing but my grandmother's gold cross.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then he reached out.

His palm flattened against my stomach, warm and rough and careful.

"You're real," he said.

"I've been real the whole time."

His hand slid up.

It cupped my breast, and his thumb found my nipple.

I sucked in a breath.

"You're shaking too," he said.

"I know."

He stepped closer.

His other hand came to my jaw, two fingers under my chin, and he tipped my face up.

"No rule," he said. "No table. No vote."

"No door to close."

His mouth came down on mine.

He kissed me like he'd been deciding something for two weeks and had finally landed on an answer.

His beard scraped my skin, and his tongue slid into my mouth, and I moaned against his lips.

I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head.

He was broad and warm, gray hair on his chest, solid as a wall.

I flattened my hands on his skin and felt his heart slamming.

"You feel that?" I said.

"Every night."

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