“Specifically, right now. Tonight. The next several hours, at least.”
“I thought I would come back, straighten Cheery’s desk, and see if you wanted me to take you home.”
“Let me get my purse.”
Chapter 88
I DON’T KNOW HOW we got all the way to my apartment in the Potrero. I don’t know how Chris and I talked and drove and ignored what was tearing at us inside.
Once we got through my door, there was no stopping it. I was all over Chris; he was all over me. We only got as far as the rug in the foyer, kissing, touching, fumbling for buttons and zippers, breathing loudly.
I had forgotten how good it was to be held, to be desired by somebody I wanted, too. Once we touched, we knew enough to take our time. We both wanted it to last. Chris had what I needed more than anything else, soft hands.
I loved kissing him, loved his touch, his gentleness, then his roughness, the simple fact that he was concerned about my pleasure as much as his own. You never know until you try it out — but I loved being with Chris. I absolutely loved it.
I know it’s a cliché, but that night I made love as if it might never happen again. I felt Chris’s current, warming me, electrifying — from my womb to my thighs to the tips of my fingers and my toes. His grasp was all that held me together, kept me from breaking apart. I felt a trust for him that was unquestioning.
I held nothing back. I gave myself to Chris in a way I never had to anyone before. Not only with my body and my heart; these were things I could pull back. I gave him my hope that I could still live.
When I cried out, tremors exploding inside me, my fingers and toes stiff with joy, a voice inside me whispered what I knew was true.
I gave him everything. He gave it back.
Finally, Chris pulled off me. We were both tingling, still on fire.
“What?” I gasped for breath. “Now what?”
He looked at me and smiled. “I want to see the bedroom.”
Chapter 89
A COOL BREEZE was blowing in my face. Oh, God, what a night. What a day. What a roller coaster.
I sat wrapped in a quilt out on my terrace, overlooking the south end of the bay. Nothing moving, only the lights of San Leandro in the distance. It was quarter of two.
In the bedroom, Chris lay asleep. He’d earned some rest.
I couldn’t sleep. My body was too alive, tingling, like a distant shore with a thousand flickering lights.
I couldn’t help but smile at the thought: It had been a great day. “June twenty-seventh,” I said aloud, “I’m gonna remember you.” First we find the book. Then we arrest Jenks. I never imagined it could go any further.
But it had. It went way further. Chris and I had made love that night twice more, the last three hours a sweet dance of touching, panting, loving.
I didn’t want to feel Chris’s hands ever leave me. I didn’t ever want to miss the heat of his body. It was a new, electrifying sensation. For once, I had held nothing back, and that was very, very good.
But here, in the dark of the night, an accusing voice needled me. I was lying. I hadn’t given it all. There was the one inescapable truth that I was hiding.
I hadn’t told him about Negli’s. I didn’t know how to. Just as we had felt such life, how could I tell him I might be dying. That my body, which a moment ago was so alive with passion, was infected. In a single day, it seemed that everything in my life was transformed. I wanted to soar. I deserved it. I deserved to be happy.
But he deserved to know.
I heard a rustling behind me. It was Chris.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked. He came up behind me, placed his hands on my neck and shoulders.
I was hugging my knees, the quilt barely covering my breasts. “It’s gonna be hard,” I said, leaning my head on him, “to go back to the way things were.”
“Who said anything about going back?”