Chapter 4: Easy, Princess

Boots crossed the kitchen floor.

I heard a pot lid clatter, and Mabel's voice, loud and cheerful and completely fake.

"Boys, if you want coffee it's a dollar, and if you want trouble it's two."

A man laughed politely.

Rafe's hand tightened on the wall beside my head.

In the dark I could feel everything.

His chest rose against mine with each breath, slow and controlled.

His heart beat hard under the leather.

His other hand had found my waist, very carefully, below the cracked ribs.

"Don't move," he breathed against my ear.

I didn't.

But my body did something without me.

I tilted my face up, and my mouth was an inch from his jaw.

I could smell the coffee on him.

Something hard pressed against my hip through his jeans, and neither of us said a word about it.

I decided it was the shelf behind him.

It was not the shelf.

Rafe's breath caught once, quietly, and my whole body answered it.

"Rafe," I whispered, and I didn't know what I meant to say.

His thumb moved on my waist, one slow stroke over the soft cotton of the sweatpants.

His forehead came down to rest against mine.

His mouth was so close I could taste the air between us.

Outside, a man said, "What's through there?"

"Flour," Mabel said. "And a lot of rats. You want to look, go ahead."

A pause.

Then a boot scraped away from the door, and the men's voices moved out toward the yard.

Rafe didn't move.

I didn't either.

The silence in that pantry was very long.

"They're gone," I said.

"Yeah."

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