Love Will (69 page)

“
Absolution
. I needed a reminder of my own… to forgive myself for mistakes I’ve made, but it was also an opportunity to recognize you as the thing that brings me light and life. I’ve always loved the sun anyway, and I’ve been wanting that tattoo for years, but you’re like a star to the darkness that has always resided in me. You’re bright and warm–”

“And my initials spell
sol
… the sun.”

“Shea-
soleil
,” I whisper.

“We can never get married,” she says, then breaks out in a smile.

“We can’t, because then your initials become a distress signal.” We both laugh.

“I want to marry you anyway, someday,” she says, not at all hesitant.

I nod my head, keeping steady eye contact with her. “I can see that happening someday.” I put my hand behind her neck and kiss her again. We stop when Gunner starts to get restless in her arms. “I wouldn’t have asked you to move here if I didn’t.”

She glances toward the front door. “Your family wanted to give us some time alone, but I think we should probably go in. Are you okay now?” Her fingers brush against my chest.

“I’m good. God, I’m so happy to see you.”

Jon and Livvy drive us back to their loft after the party. Jack and Emi had agreed to watch Edie for the night after she’d fallen asleep in the crib in their bedroom. I rub my sister-in-law’s tense shoulders from the back seat, sensing her immense discomfort as she reclines back and tries to relax in her very pregnant state. “Hope that wasn’t too much for you, Liv,” I say to her.

“No, it was fine. This is how I end every day.”

“It’s true,” Jon says. Shea nods her head, petting the sleeping puppy in her lap. “I got everything from the pet store you asked for. It’s in Edie’s closet… so Shea wouldn’t find it and wonder which of us was switching to The Honest Kitchen dog food or wonder why we were going to keep Willow in a crate.”

“I saw the crate,” Shea admits. “I wondered, but I just assumed it was a gift for someone.”

“For you,” I tell her.

“He’s going to outgrow that crate in a matter of months, you know?”

“I know. Then we upgrade. But we have to train him. I’ve been reading up on this. I’ve got about two months to whip him into shape before I leave.”

“You have about twenty-four hours to get him potty-trained,” my brother says. “Because I lose my patience after that. When you said you were staying with us, the dog wasn’t a part of the deal.” He’s smiling when he’s saying it, so I know he’s not serious, but I don’t want the dog making a mess of his loft any more than he does.

“I’ll be watching him like a hawk while I’m here–”

“His first lie,” he interrupts, talking to Livvy. Yeah, I do have other things on the agenda. Sleep… sex… I can’t do either of those things
and
watch the dog.

“Shea’s also narrowed down our search significantly, so I bet we’ll be out by next weekend.”

“Will, don’t let him bully you. Stay as long as you need to. Or until Willow comes. When the baby’s born, I need you out,” she says bluntly. “I can’t do one-year-old, newborn, nearly-twenty-five-year-old brother-in-law
and
puppy.”

“How the fuck did I get lumped into that?”

She and Shea both laugh at me as we pull into the drive at their building. Their doorman greets me by name, welcoming me back. I help Livvy out of the car, handing her over to Jon as soon as he walks around.

Before Shea and I head upstairs, we cross 5
^th
Avenue and walk Gunner in the park for a few minutes. When we get back into the building, I let her in on my secret.

“I need you to go upstairs and pack a bag. We’re staying somewhere else for the next two nights.”

“We are?”

“Hell, yes. My first few nights back with you? I don’t want to spend it in my brother’s place. Not with their whole open loft thing going on.”

“We have a door,” she says as the elevator takes us up to the twelfth floor.

“That’s not enough.” I see a faint tinge of pink on her cheeks as she smiles.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“I booked us a room at a
very
nice hotel.”

“But what about Gunner?” She picks him up, hugging him into her body and pouting after she asks the question.

“Of course he’s coming with us. We’re responsible pet owners. It’s his first night with us. The hotel is pet-friendly. They even have a crate waiting for him in our
very
nice room. Did I mention it was
very
nice?”

“Is it nice?” she asks me, playing along.

“
Very
. A suite on the twenty-third floor, overlooking the city
and
Central Park. Liv told me you were planning to take a couple days off, so I was hoping that was to spend some time with me.”

“To look for a place, yes.”

“
Just
to look for a place?”

“That’s what I told Livvy.” She knocks on the door to the loft before trying the handle and walking inside. I take Gunner from her, setting him on the floor but keeping him on his leash.

“Livvy’s no fool.”

“It’s our private life,” she whispers after she shushes me.

“Hey, guys,” I say to my brother and sister-in-law. “Shea and I are going to stay at the Sherry-Netherland
to look for a place
for the next two nights.” I use air quotes for added emphasis. Shea elbows me in the stomach.

“Thank God,” Jon says. “I was just discussing that with Livvy, and how awkward this could potentially be.”

“I’m just going to go pack,” my girlfriend says, scurrying out of the room quickly.

“Shea, it’s okay!” Livvy calls after her, then turns her attention to me. “We didn’t hear a thing when you stayed over Christmas.”

“I wasn’t quite as… fuck, I wasn’t quite as horny then, Livvy.”

“Shut up, Will!” Shea yells. “Get in here and pack your stuff or something!”

My brother throws a pillow at me. “Your stuff is…
everywhere
. In the back living area, mainly.”

“Is it in your way?”

“We’ll deal with it until you get the whole
looking for a place
thing out of your system. Livvy knows the urgency of that
really
well.”

I don’t see it, but I hear the smack of her palm on his arm and the
ouch!
that follows. He may have let it slip when he was in LA that both pregnancies have been really good for his sex life, as well. Her hormones are apparently out of whack very much in his favor.

“I have a path to walk, Will. That’s what he meant to say.”

“That’s what I thought I heard.” I say, turning around and nodding at her before heading toward my things. My guitars are lined up against the wall. I always take my Martin everywhere I go, but I decide to leave it here this time, wanting to devote all my attention to Shea. Since I’d known our plans, I had already packed my duffel and stowed it in a larger suitcase when I was in LA, so now, all I have to do is get Gunner’s things together.

It takes about an hour to get the puppy settled in his admittedly luxurious crate at the hotel. We’d played ball with him and took him outside one last time, then babied him until he fell asleep in my lap. He didn’t want to be put inside his cage and he cried for awhile, but eventually, he dozes off again.

Already changed into more comfortable clothes, Shea and I lie across the bed on our stomachs, watching him growl and bark as he sleeps.

“Like that little thing is going to provide me protection,” she says, looking at me skeptically. “He’s afraid of his own dreams.”

“Like you never had nightmares as a child,” I respond. “Once you learned self-defense, you fought back. Gunner won’t let you down. I give you my word.”

She smiles and leans to her side. I take that as my invitation to move in for a kiss. As soon as our lips are touching, her hand is on my naked back, scraping, trying to pull me on top of her.

That’s
my invitation for a lot more, and I don’t waste any time. Her legs have me trapped between them as I move against her in expeditious foreplay. She easily slips out of her oversized satin robe, leaving her in a matching top and relatively modest underwear. I push myself onto my knees and lightly press my palms flat against her abdomen, dragging them slowly up with the hem of her shirt in between my fingers. My hands linger on her breasts until they beckon to be caressed with my tongue and lips. Shea vocalizes her satisfaction in a long, airy hum that I can feel with every point of my body that touches hers.

She finishes taking off her top and fists my hair, eventually bringing my mouth up to hers. I roll over onto my back, bringing her on top of me, just to make it easy to undress her the rest of the way. As she’s kicking off her panties, I slide my hand in between our bodies and groan when I feel just how badly she wants me right now.

She breaks our kiss, first to laugh at my reaction, and then to crawl down my body to carefully remove my boxers. Before I can even move, her lips are around me, her tongue swirling and jutting against my sensitive skin.

“Shea?” I’m barely able to speak.

“Mmmm?” she murmurs, and I sit up abruptly to keep myself from coming right then and there.

“What?” she asks, surprised by my response.

I’m up on my knees, meeting her eye-to-eye. “I am
not
immobile, and I don’t want to have sex with you like I am…”

“That’s… intense…” she says, suddenly turning from sexy to smitten and allowing me to take her into my arms and lay her against the bed with a little more force than I’ve probably ever done before. “What are you gonna do?” she asks me, breathless.

“I’m gonna make love to you–because that’s all I ever want to do with you–but I want it
bad
tonight.” She gasps when I say
bad
, surprised to feel me inside her. I stay still, enjoying the ecstasy I feel in the warmth of her.

“Oh, god,” she sighs. “Do it again.”

I thrust again, going harder and faster and deeper.

“Ohhh…” Her eyes shut, but her mouth is open; her tongue lingers just behind her teeth as if it’s looking for words, but I realize it’s just yearning for mine. When they finally touch, they entangle, mimicking the motion of our bodies, and weeks of pent-up frustration carom between us: in pushes and pulls, in yells and in whispers, in pleasure and in good,
good
pain.

We end up at an odd angle with me grasping the side of the headboard and holding her leg over my back with my other hand when I feel her
entire
body tightening around mine. I’d managed to hold out until I could make sure she was with me, all the way.

Crashing our lips together, we hold the air between us. I can barely move, but the faint oscillations are all it takes to bring us both to a euphoric state I know
I’ve
never been in before. The earth moves beneath me in gentle waves. All of the tension leaves my body. I could swear there is a moment of temporary blindness, but my sight is filled with all the colors of the spectrum. And to combat the cold that takes over my body, there’s a tightness around my heart.

When I finally open my eyes, the glow of her cheeks and the glimmer in her eye make her appear more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. Before I saw it, I would have said it wasn’t possible.

If I believed in heaven, this would be it for me.

I kiss her softly and smooth out her wild hair.

“Let’s get you under the covers,” she says, noticing my trembling. We both rearrange ourselves and pick up the pillows off the floor, nestling together under the blankets. “As many touch points as possible,” she whispers, pressing her body against mine before running her fingers through my hair.

I take a few deep breaths, smiling at the familiarity of the smell of her shampoo. I pull her in for a quick hug when I think about the fact that I get to spend a few uninterrupted months with her.
We could do this nightly. And daily. Multiple times a day, maybe
.

After kissing the top of her head, I glance over at the dog crate. He must be really tired to have slept through all of that.

“Shea, if I ever die while we’re having sex, I want you to know that I died happy.”

“What?!” she says, pushing away from me.

“I’m cold. Come back.”

She looks at me like I’m crazy for about ten more seconds before snuggling back into me. “Don’t ever say anything like that again.”

“Okay. But I don’t want you to feel guilty or anything,” I continue.