Chapter 11: Stand Up

He did not sit down.

He stood in the middle of the front room with his hands open at his sides.

He let me look at him.

"Doctor," Ansel said. "Your pulse."

"Check it."

I took his wrist and put it to my own throat.

His fingers settled there, warm and not quite steady.

I watched his eyes drop, and darken, and come back up.

"A hundred and thirty," he said.

"Terms," I said. "Clinical touch only."

"Then declare this a medical emergency."

I laughed, and then I stopped laughing, because his thumb had begun to move along my pulse.

I took his hand and led him up the stairs.

He took them one at a time, with his other hand on the rail, and I did not let go of him.

Neither of us said a word.

On the landing he stopped.

He turned me against the wall, gently, with his forearm beside my head.

He looked at my mouth for a long moment.

"Say it," he said.

"Kiss me."

He kissed me.

It was not gentle.

His mouth came down hard on mine, and his hand went into my hair.

I heard a sound come out of me that I had never made.

He tasted like coffee and the cold air from the terrace.

I got both hands in his shirt and pulled, and a button hit the floor.

"Bed," I said against his mouth. "Now, before your legs quit."

"They won't."

"I'm not betting on it."

He laughed into my neck, and bit it, and I nearly went down.

In his room the lamp was on.

I pushed him backward until the mattress caught the backs of his knees and he sat.

He looked up at me from there with his shirt half open and his chest rising fast.

He did not say a thing.

I took off my sweater.

I unhooked my bra and let it fall.

His breath went out of him in a rough line.

"Tessa."

"Be still."

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