Page 158 of The Sun & Her Burn

“Where are we going now?” Linnea asked me, carding her hands through my thick hair as if it were the golden fleece.

“Sebastian is meeting us at the house,” I told her. “For our private celebration. There is something I want to do first, though.”

“I hope it involves orgasms,” Linnea suggested with a coquettish smile.

I laughed, feeling as if I’d swallowed the sun. “Later, yes. But now, I’d like to get something back that should have been Sebastian’s all along. I gave you a ring tonight, but I’d like us to give him something, too.”

“Because he belongs with us,” she said, as if it were as easy as that.

“Yes,” I said, the word thick in my mouth. “Because he belongs with us.”

“Okay, let’s get it,” she said, leaning down to kiss me again as if she couldn’t help herself.

Her physical response to me was unlike any woman’s I’d ever known. Even though Savannah had loved sex and submission, she had also always been wary, even a little ashamed of her own predilections. Linnea didn’t have a drop of shame or pretense in her body. Everything she felt was expressed in her face or her voice, in the flush of her body and the way she placed it in my care.

It was fucking addictive.

We made out in the back of the limousine like teenagers as it plodded through the after-ceremony traffic and finally took off toward Brentwood. Only when we pulled into the driveway beside the gate intercom did I find the resolve to stop kissing her.

I traced a thumb over her swollen lower lip and looked into her twilight-sky eyes. “You’ve heard Sebastian and me talk about an impossible universe before.”

“Yes, one where you can be together in light as well as the shadows.”

I nodded. “I gave him a Patek Phillipe Celestial watch ten years ago in London. It felt like a pledge that I would always try to love him the way he deserved to be loved, even if I couldn’t do it openly.” My heart rattled in my chest like something old and broken as I remembered the look of betrayal in his eyes when I’d told him to leave. “I broke that promise, but I’d like to make it again and mean it this time.”

“Do you think he’ll really stay with us?” she whispered, as if speaking it too loudly would make the hope disappear. “That we could be enough for him like this?”

“I hope so,” I said, and then corrected myself. “I plan to make it so. Between the two of us, I think we can keep him filled with enough love to endure any of the pain that will inevitably come from hiding what we mean to each other. We aren’t the firstpeople to hide their love for fear of repercussion, and we won’t be the last.”

Her nails scratched lightly over my scalp. “Do you think, maybe someday when we’re older and you’ve done five Daventry films and Sebastian’s won another Oscar or two for his screenwriting, that we could say fuck it to all things Hollywood and retire into obscurity to be the three of us as we were meant to be?”

I hadn’t allowed myself that fantasy. It seemed too impossible to imagine. We had so many obstacles to endure and years to weather before that seemed like a possibility and even then, we’d have to live with the idea that our life’s work might be judged as poor just because we loved in an unorthodox manner.

Still, my heart raced as if toward that future.

“Maybe,” I allowed even though fear was metallic on the back of my tongue. “But first, let’s focus on convincing Sebastian that he is part of our forever, too.”

“You’re going to ask for the watch back,” my clever girl surmised, twisting to peer through the window at the huge Tudor monstrosity through the gate. “I don’t love the idea of you speaking to Savannah, but I guess you want to go in without me.”

“She can be cruel and jealous. It’s better if I don’t rub her face in the fact that I have moved only to sunny and green pastures.” I pressed a hard kiss to her mouth and then forgot why I wasn’t kissing her thoroughly again for some long minutes.

“Are you going to buzz in or will I die in this limo?” Chaucer called from the front seat.

Linnea laughed against my lips and slid off my lap to take my hand.

“Buzz us in, Chaucer, we’ll behave.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she grumbled, but a moment later the gates swung open and we were ascending the drive to the house.

“Weren’t the Meyers at the Oscars tonight?” Linnea asked.

“Tate was. I saw him speaking to Sebastian and Andrea at one point, no doubt pressing his case for buying the rights toThe Dream & The Dreamer.” Linnea and I had already signed a contract that said we were a nonnegotiable part of the package, alongside Andrea as director and Sebastian as the other lead. No matter where the film was optioned, the three of us would be working together.

It was almost too much to ask for, the idea of collaborating on a film written by the genius man I loved with my other lover. Too many good things coalesced into one, making me wary of the inevitable bad stroke of luck life liked to throw my way when the going was just getting good.

“Savannah is at home,” Chaucer said as the partition between us opened. “I texted her. You can go on in, Adam.”

Linnea’s grip on my hand tightened as I made to pull away, and when I looked into her face, I was surprised by the glower there.