Chapter 23: Our Rule

The apartment on Wells had a bad radiator, a corner of windows, and nothing in it but a mattress and four boxes.

I had picked it myself on Thursday and signed the lease with my own pen.

By Saturday night Tobias had hung my curtains and assembled a lamp.

I had banned him from touching the boxes marked KITCHEN.

"You're hovering," I said.

"I'm admiring the lease."

"It's a lease."

"It has your name on it and no one else's."

He came across the bare floor and took the box out of my arms.

"It's the sexiest document I've ever read."

"You read page forty-one for fun."

"I read page forty-one for you."

He put the box down.

He stood very close, and the heat of him reached me through the thin cotton of my shirt.

For two weeks we had been hurried.

We had done it against doors and on couches, in the dark, in a rush.

Tonight nothing was chasing us.

There was a lamp, a locked door, and a man with the whole night to look at me.

"Tell me what you want," Tobias said.

It was the question I had never been able to answer.

I had a whole shelf of replies now.

"Take off my shirt," I said. "Slowly."

His mouth curved.

He did, one button at a time, his knuckles brushing my skin with each one.

By the time it hung open I was breathing hard.

He pushed it off my shoulders and let it drop.

"Now the rest."

"That's not very specific."

"Bra. Jeans. All of it."

"Then take your time doing it."

He undressed me as slowly as I'd asked.

He knelt to get my jeans down and pressed his mouth to my hip, then to the inside of my thigh.

I tangled my fingers in his hair.

When I was bare, he stood and looked at me, and the lamplight made his eyes dark.

"God, Tamara."

"Your turn."

"Ask."

"Take your clothes off for me."

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