Page 29

"Shh."

"I can't be quiet."

"You can." His mouth moves back to my throat. His hand has gone down over my hip and onto the front of my leggings. He slides his palm slowly between my thighs and presses. "You're going to bite my shoulder if you have to."

"That's a terrible plan."

"It's an excellent plan." His fingers find the waistband and stop there. "Tell me."

"Yes."

He slides his hand inside. His fingers move down over my belly, beneath the cotton of my underwear, and between my thighs. He finds me wet and swollen and so ready that he swears under his breath against my ear. I put my forehead against his collarbone and bite down on his skin. He draws one slow stroke along me, and then another, firm and unhurried. My knees go weak and his arm tightens around my waist to hold me against the counter.

"You're so wet. Carolina. God."

"Don't stop."

"I'm not going to." He circles two fingers, slow and deliberate, exactly where I need him. My breath catches on a sob I swallow against his shoulder. My fingernails dig into his back. I can feel it coming, a tightness gathering low in my belly, my thighs trembling on either side of his hand. "That's it. I've got you. Just like that."

"Ethan..."

He lifts his head.

I feel it before I understand it. His whole body goes rigid against mine, his fingers still, his head turning toward the ceiling.

"Hold on," he says.

"What?"

"Shh." He's listening. I hear nothing but the refrigerator hum and my own pulse in my ears. Then, so faint it might be the pipes, a thin sound drifts down the stairs. Small and high and cracked in the middle. A whimper, and then a word that could be Daddy.

He's already withdrawn his hand. He's reached for the T-shirt on the chair and is dragging it on over his head before I have fully understood. The glasses go crooked and he rips them off, drops them on the table.

"Stay here," he says, in a voice I've never heard from him, low and flat and fast.

He's out of the kitchen and halfway up the stairs before I've found my breath.

I stand with my back against the counter and my breasts bare and my leggings pushed halfway down my hip, shaking. My whole body is a clenched fist. My skin hums where his hands were. I stay there for a full ten seconds with my eyes closed, then pull my T-shirt over my head and tug it straight and go to the foot of the stairs.

The hall is dark. Upstairs a door opens wider. A thin line of light from the bathroom falls across the landing. I stand at the bottom with my hand on the newel post, not meaning to listen, listening.

"I've got you, bug." His voice is low and unhurried, nothing like the voice from the kitchen. "It's only a dream. You're okay."

"I dreamed you went away." The words are small and thick with sleep.

"I'm right here."

"You were in the car, and the car went..." A hiccup. "It went and it didn't come back."

"I'm not in any car. Look. It's just the landing and the nightlight. I'm right here."

I can see him from where I stand, if I tip my head. He's crouched at the top of the stairs with his back to me, holding Faith against his chest with her arms around his neck and her fox crushed between them. The bathroom light catches the side of his face. He's rocking her very slightly, with one broad hand spread between her shoulder blades. She has her cheek pressed into his collarbone and her eyes squeezed shut.

"Is Carolina still here?" she says.

I stop breathing.

"She's in the spare room," Ethan says.