Chapter 37 I’m not sharing you with the hat. #2
“No.” I bring my lips within a feather’s brush of his.
“We only get to have this one nice thing this once, so we’re going to make it last as long as possible.
We’re going to drag this out until we can’t stand it anymore.
You’re gonna make me beg for it. And I’m gonna make you beg for it.
And only when we’re literally dying of want for each other are we going to finally give in. ”
His serious Captain Footwork expression shifts to something more tender.
“C’mere to me.” He slides his hands around my ribcage to my back, pressing me against him, and his kiss is soft and slow and delicate, like one of those mournful guitar songs on his playlist. I melt into him, holding on tight.
To him. To us. To this moment, which will soon be a memory.
But I don’t want to be sad. This time I have with Sean is a gift, and I need to treat it that way.
Suddenly, the whoop of a siren pierces the night. Our kiss breaks to flashing blue and red lights.
“Is it a raid?” I ask.
“Well, this is Van Nuys,” Sean says, looking nervous.
“We should get out of here.”
“We should do that, yes.” He takes off his hat, tucking it against him like a small animal needing protection.
“Wait, you don’t think they’re here for that, do you?” I ask. When he shrugs, I laugh. “Well, leave it here.”
He gives me a pained look. “I was going to turn it in!”
Three officers pour out of the elevator. I’m not laughing anymore. “It’s just a hat, Sean. Let them find it. Come on, we have to go!”
He sets the hat on an abandoned stool. For a second, I think he’s going to bid it farewell, but he only gives it a final, reluctant glance. “All right. Let’s go.”
We slip down the stairs, hand in hand, carried along with the crowd.
It’s thrilling, making me feel brave and wild.
Sean O’Sullivan is mine! I kiss him the entire drive to Bel-Air.
He manages to kiss me back, even while he’s driving.
God, that mouth. I’m going to let it destroy me.
I’m giving it the key to the city. I’m putting it in my will—that’s right, Sean O’Sullivan’s mouth is getting everything.
By the time he pulls the Fiat into his enormous driveway, I’m not sure we’re even going to make it inside.
Somehow, we do, tangled up in each other’s embrace.
The front door slams behind us, sending an echo through the cavernous foyer with its cathedral ceilings and marble soul.
Sean’s keys fall to the floor with a clang.
In our outrageous scuffle up the stairs, we lose my hat, our jacket, my shoes, his boots, and one of my tall white stockings.
I’m fighting with the button on his fly when he finally drops me onto the shiny gold comforter of his cherry wood four-poster bed.
“Wait.” He places a hand over mine to stop my furious unbuttoning. “Let me do it.”
I prop myself up on my elbows, and my jaw actually drops as he peels the frilly white shirt over his head, throwing it to the side.
Lord have all the mercies, he’s got the body of a Greek statue.
Every visually stimulated cell in my body wants to leap off this bed and take bites out of him.
He finagles the stubborn button on his pants, and those go down, too.
I’m not sure what Revolutionary War underwear looked like, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the bulging black banana hammock I’m staring at.
He flexes his bicep and strikes a pose. Of course he does.
I start to rise up off the bed, possessed by a visceral desire to do things to this man that will make him sell his soul to me.
But he lays me back down with a gentle firmness and begins unbuttoning my own white shirt, parting the two halves of it with patience.
I’m pretty sure Thomas Jefferson didn’t wear a bra under his blouse, but mine is lacy and red.
His fingers caress my shoulders as he slides the straps down. He’s so slow. It’s torture.
“Sean,” I moan. “Please hurry.”
“No,” the captain says. “I don’t want to rush this.”
Oh God, I forgot. How could I forget? This is the one and done. Tomorrow, we’ll be breaking up, publicly, and I’ll never have him again.
Something splits inside me, but I ignore it and pull him down on top of me.
That pouty, perfect mouth is ready for mine.
His bare skin, unencumbered by costume or clothes, burns against me every place we touch.
As he peppers kisses down my neck to my collarbone, I don’t think about how I’m breaking the rules by doing this, how I forfeited a right to the Sean O’Sullivans and their world a long time ago and how the ghost of Chuy is probably documenting this transgression right now and calculating the price.
Instead, I let the weight of this glorious man’s body tear down all my walls, melt all my frozen parts.
“It’s a good thing you’re breaking up with me tomorrow,” he whispers against my mouth.
“Oh?” I mumble. “Because you’re about to use up all your good tricks?”
“I’ll save one for the morning. But no, that’s not it.”
“What is it then?”
“Because otherwise, I might never let you leave this bed.”
I twirl my finger in his lock of yellow hair. “So you are obsessed with me, Sean O’Sullivan?”
He doesn’t smile, not even playfully. His kiss is soft, tender, melancholy. “Hopelessly.”