Chapter 10: Public Only

I drove to the river at eleven that night.

Elias had sent the thermos to a lab that afternoon, and the results would come Monday.

I stood in the gravel outside the boathouse with nothing to carry.

The men at the door let me in without a word.

Elias was in his upstairs room with his sleeves rolled, a single lamp on, and the river black in the windows.

He looked up when I came in, and he put his pen down very slowly.

"Diana."

"My father's asleep," I said. "Marcy's gone."

"Bryson's mother is sitting in her own kitchen, deciding what kind of son she raised."

"You should be sleeping too."

"I don't want to sleep."

I crossed the room and stopped an arm's length from him.

"Two weeks ago I said what I wanted in a car, and you said not tonight."

"I remember."

"It's tonight."

His jaw moved.

"You're running on a month of nothing but fear," he said. "That isn't wanting. That's adrenaline."

"I know the difference."

"Do you?"

"Public only," I said. "There's nobody here but us."

He laughed, once, rough and short.

"That's what you said to me."

"And you said it first." I stepped in. "So tell me there's nobody here, and tell me to leave."

He didn't tell me to leave.

He looked at me for a long moment, and I watched him lose.

"Public only, you said," Elias muttered, and his hand came up and fisted in the front of my coat.

Then he kissed me.

It wasn't careful.

It was hard and hungry and slow, and it went on.

I made a sound against his mouth and pulled him closer.

He walked me backward until my spine met the desk, and the folders slid off onto the floor.

His hands found my coat buttons and undid them one by one, and I was shaking, and so were his.

"Tell me you want this," he said against my jaw.

"It's not enough."

He groaned and picked me up and set me on the desk.

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