Chapter 23: Thirty Buttons

Gemma's POV

We left the reception at eleven, when the head cook declared the cake finished.

The guests were three songs past sober.

Nico drove. I sat sideways in the seat with the dress bunched up around my knees and watched his hands on the wheel.

He had not said much since the terrace. Neither had I.

At the boathouse he cut the engine and sat there for a second.

"Wait," he said, and he got out and came around and opened my door.

"It's my father's boathouse," I said.

"It's your father's wedding present." He held out his hand. "He pressed the key into my palm before the cake."

"He did not."

"He said you'd stopped locking it anyway."

I let him lift me out.

He carried me across the threshold, and I let him do that, too.

The lamp was already on, and someone had lit the stove.

On the table were a bottle of wine and a note in the cook's handwriting that said *EAT SOMETHING.*

Nico set me on my feet in the middle of the kitchen.

The room was quiet. The bay moved under the floor.

"Turn around," he said.

I turned.

I felt him touch the first button, at the nape of my neck, and I shut my eyes.

"One," he said.

He undid it slowly. His knuckles brushed my spine.

"Two."

"You don't have to count."

"I want to. I've been counting since you came out of the doors this morning." His mouth touched my shoulder. "Three."

By the tenth button my breath had gone ragged.

By the twentieth I had my palms flat against the counter and my head down.

"Twenty-six," he said, against my skin. His voice was rough. "Twenty-seven."

"Nico."

"Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine."

He stopped.

"Thirty," I said.

"Thirty."

The satin slid down my hips to the floor.

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