Page 52 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heiress

She’s right, which is going to be the general condition of the rest of my life. I woke at five to no war in the room, and I’ve been lying in it ever since like a man in a house with the alarms cut. Every person who’s ever been in a bed with me wanted a thing I could put a number on. She’s got nothing left to want off me. The whole file’s open, my father, the paper, the four months of long lens, the chair I mean to sit in, and she took all of it last night and told me she loved me anyway. I have no idea how to hold a thing that isn’t pulling in the opposite direction.

“You got up in the night,” I say.

“You heard me?”

“You painted at four in the morning at my kitchen island. The whole floor smells like a hardware store.”

“So you were awake, and you didn’t come out.” She props herself up on an elbow, hair sliding off her shoulder, and the sheet goes with it. “Why not?”

“Because it wasn’t mine to help with.”

Her mouth does something she can’t get on top of fast enough, and she puts her forehead down on my sternum to hide it, which is the least effective thing she’s ever attempted.

“One coat’s on,” she says to my chest. “It needs a second. It always needs a second; the first one goes on like water, and you feel like a fraud the entire time.”

“How long does the second take?”

“Twenty minutes, and then eight hours of nobody touching it, and if Danil so much as breathes on that frame, I’ll have him doing craft corner through the summer.” Her palm comes flat over my ribs, over the cathedral, and she starts moving her thumb across the domes one at a time. “How many are there?”

“Five.”

“Five domes, and you’ve got them going right up under your arm where nobody would ever see them, which tells me they’re not for anybody.” Her thumb stops on the fourth. “What are they for?”

“A dome’s a term served. Two of mine were served, and three were paid off.” I take her wrist and move her hand one rib lower, to the one nobody’s ever asked about. “That one’s the year my mother died. It doesn’t go with the others, and the man who put it there charged me double for the argument.”

She’s quiet for a stretch, and then her mouth is on it, on that one, once, and her hair comes down over my whole side.

Nineteen years I’ve kept an inventory of what every person in a room could take off me. She’s got the entire list now, and she’s kissing the bottom of my ribcage at seven in the morning with paint on her knuckles.

“You’re not breathing,” she says.

“I’m breathing.”

“You’re doing the thing where you hold it and then let it out in one go so nobody hears the first part. I’ve been studying you since December; I’m extremely good at this now. It’s my only hobby.” She comes up onto her arms over me, and her hair falls in a curtain on both sides of my face, and the whole room goes down to what’s inside it. “Say something honest before I lose my nerve.”

“I don’t want the day to start.”

“That’s not honest, that’s a man scheduling.”

“I’ve been afraid twice,” I say. “Once at fifteen in the back of a fish house. Once two weeks ago on a couch with another man’s blood in your hair. That’s the whole list, and you’re on it twice, because the first one made me, and the second one is going to unmake me.”

Her breath goes out of her all at once against my mouth.

“Okay,” she says. “That’s honest. Fuck.”

Then she slides a leg over me, slow, and the sheet drags with it, and my body comes up off the bed without any permission from me, because her body is a promise and mine is the only honest liar I’ve got left. Her hands go into my hair, and her thumbs trace my temples, and for the first time in weeks I’m not being held by a woman who’s performing for a stranger in the dark. She’s holding her husband. Her husband is hard against her in a room with the sun coming up, and she’s not hurrying.

Her hands slide under the blanket down my abdomen. I sleep in my underwear. She sleeps in a nightshirt. It’s the difference between a body that’s always ready and a body that requires strategy. Her fingers trace the waist of my boxers, once, twice, and then dip under, no hesitation. Her thumb finds the head, circles it once, slowly, and my hips move without me telling them to.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says into my ear.

I roll her, and the sheet comes with her, and she’s naked under the nightshirt, and that’s it for the slow one. That’s the end of that plan. I get the shirt over her head and her hair is everywhere, and her breasts are small and perfect, and she’s looking at me like she’s got all the answers to a test I didn’t know I was taking. My hands go to my boxers, and I pull them down to my thighs. Her eyes go dark.

“You’re not a patient man, are you?” Her smile is small and wicked.

“I’m a patient man,” I say, and I put a knee between her legs and push them apart. “I’m not a gentle one.”

“Show me.”