"You don't know what you want." But his voice lacks conviction. "You're eighteen and inexperienced and?—"
"Stop telling me what I do and don't know," I say, surprised by the firmness in my voice. "I'm not a child, Sean. And I know I wanted that."
He stares at me, jaw tight. "This complicates everything."
"It was already complicated." I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the heat still thrumming through my body. "I want to leave. Can we leave now?"
Relief flashes across Sean's face, though he tamps it down just as quickly. "Yes. We'll leave."
He takes off his tuxedo jacket and drapes it around my shoulders, probably to hide how disheveled I look. Then he offers me his arm, formal and distant, like he didn't just have his hand under my dress.
Like he didn't just kiss me senseless and make me feel things I've never felt before.
We walk back through the gala in silence. I'm hyperaware of every eye on us, certain everyone can see what we just didwritten on my face. My lips feel swollen, my hair is half down, and I can still feel the phantom touch of his fingers between my legs.
Flynn catches Sean's eye as we pass, his eyebrows rising in question. Sean gives him a subtle signal—I'm not sure what it means, but Flynn nods and turns back to Gia, who's still hanging on his arm.
We step outside into the cold air. Sean looks around for the valet. “I’ll tell Flynn to track them down,” he says, but I shake my head.
“I just want to go,” I whisper. “Let’s just walk back to the car. The garage can’t be far.”
They will have parked the cars in a garage down the street. I give Sean a pleading look and he presses his lips together and nods.
“All right. Let’s go.”
My arm is still in his as we start to walk, quickly through the cold night. And I can’t help feeling, as we walk away, that I’m not the same person who walked into that gala tonight.
I keep changing. Keep finding new parts of myself, because of Sean.
And I don’t know if that’s for the better, or for worse.
16
SEAN
The kiss still burns on my lips as we walk through the hotel lobby toward the parking garage. I can feel Maeve trembling beside me, her hand tucked into the crook of my arm, and I don't know if it's from what happened on that balcony or the overwhelming evening she's endured. Probably both.
I shouldn't have kissed her. I definitely shouldn't have put my hands on her the way I did, shouldn't have felt the soft warmth of her skin under that dress, shouldn't have swallowed down her quiet gasps like they were oxygen and I was drowning.
But Christ, I did. And now I can't stop thinking about how she felt pressed against me, how her fingers dug into my shoulders, how she looked at me with those wide blue eyes full of want and confusion and?—
"Sean?" Her soft voice pulls me from my thoughts. "Are you all right?"
I glance down at her. Even exhausted and overwhelmed, she's worried about me. It does something to my chest, something uncomfortable and unfamiliar.
"Fine," I mutter. "Just want to get you home."
Flynn is somewhere behind us with the rest of security, I’m sure, even though I can’t see them. He's good at what he does—staying close enough to protect but far enough back to give the illusion of privacy. The parking garage is quiet as we enter it, our footsteps echoing off the concrete.
I know the minute we get inside that something's wrong.
The awareness hits me like a punch to the gut. It's too quiet. The attendant who should be at the booth is missing. There's a smell in the air that doesn't belong—something chemical and sharp underneath the usual garage stench of exhaust and oil.
"Maeve." I stop walking, my hand moving to her waist. "When I say run, you run. Understand?"
Her eyes go wide. "What?—"
I see the wire.
