The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Door Closes

He crossed the hall in three steps.

I turned my back against my bedroom door, and his hand came up beside my head and stopped on the wood.

He was breathing hard.

"Tell me what you want," he said, very low.

"You."

"Here?"

"Here. Now. All of it."

"June."

"Ben." I took his collar in both fists. "I've been wanting you since you handed me back my son."

He made a sound I felt in my teeth.

Then his mouth was on mine, and it wasn't careful.

It was hot and hungry and he tasted like coffee and the faint sweetness of the pancakes we hadn't made.

I dragged him through the door by his shirt.

He kicked it shut behind us.

We didn't make it to the bed right away.

He pressed me against the wall beside the dresser.

He kissed my jaw, and my throat, and the soft place under my ear that made my knees give.

His hands went under my sweater and spread across my ribs.

They were rough and warm, and they stopped, just under my breasts, and waited.

"Yes," I said. "Please."

He pushed the sweater up and over my head.

I stood in the lamplight in an old nursing bra, in a body that had done something enormous.

I did not cover it.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"God," he said. "Look at you."

"I'm soft. I've got marks."

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

He said it plainly, as a fact, and I believed him.

I tugged at his shirt, and he reached behind his neck and pulled it off in one motion.

He had a broad chest with a scatter of gray in the hair, and a long scar under his ribs.

I put my mouth on it.

He swore.

His hands slid into my hair.

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