He pulls the T-shirt over my head.
He stops for one second when he sees there is nothing underneath.
His eyes go dark in a way I am going to think about every time I close my eyes for the next several months.
"Madonna," I say. Without meaning to.
He does not need a translation.
He puts his hands on me. Both hands. Open palms. The way a man holds a thing he has been told about and is finally being allowed to touch.
His thumb finds my nipple, and the file in my head goes blank.
"Sean."
"Yeah."
"Stop being careful."
"I am not being careful."
"You are."
"A little."
"Don't be."
He takes off his shirt without breaking the kiss. The dressing is bright against his skin. I am not looking at it.
He gets my jeans the rest of the way off.
He goes to his knees.
He goes to his knees with a hole in his side, on the kitchen floor of a cabin he was not supposed to know existed, and he looks up at me before he does what he is about to do.
He has been thinking about putting his mouth on me since the kitchen island. He is going to use the answer.
"Look at me."
I look at him.
"Don't close your eyes."
"I won't."
"Say it."
"I won't close my eyes."
His mouth is on me before I have finished saying it.
I make a sound, and I do not have a way to stop it.
The sound goes up the center of me and comes out of my mouth, and I have not made that sound in front of a person in years. It is not the sound of the consigliera. It is the one I have not let anyone hear since Geneva.
He hears it.
He works for more of it.
