Commitment (27 page)

Lowering her
onto the bed, Shawn
positioned
himself atop her, kissing her again, but this time on the stomach and moving lower.

“No,” Riley said, frustrated. “
Now
.”

She shuffled
out of
her
tights and when Shawn raised his hips, pulled his sweats down as far as she could. Arching her
back
, she maneuvered
from
side to side
until he slipped inside her. She sighed and let her head fall
, reveling in the weight and fullness of him
. Cupping her ass, Shawn moved them up the bed and raised her hand
s
a
bove her head
, pulling her top off as he did
.
He lowered his head, taking her nipple in his mouth and teasing it.

Riley kept her hands above her head e
ven though he had released them and
Shawn gripped
the headboard with both hands, thrusting
deeply into her, his face buried in her neck. With each forward motion, Riley could feel him shudder, as though he was still holding something back, like he wanted to go even harder, deeper and further, but was restraining himself.

She
wrapped her arms about
him as tightly as she could, clenching her insides to increase the exquisite friction o
f him moving in and out of her.
When she felt the beginnings of her climax building, Shawn felt it too, and
releasing the headboard, instead
laced his fingers through hers, stretching her arms above her head once again
.

“Look at me,” he breathed. “
Look
at me.”

Riley
o
pened her eyes
and looked, as though from faraway. Every
thing appeared coated in gauze; h
er senses channeled to the point of their physical
joining
. She could scarcely even hear him, but she felt everything about him – the rough scratchiness of his face against hers, the muscles in his
thighs tense and hard, his arms
firm and flexed
as he held her hands tight
above their heads
using
them
to give him purchase.

“Say you’ll marry me,” he said against the corner of her mouth.

Riley opened her mouth but could only moan in response.

"
Say
it," Shawn said. His voice was urgent, desperate, even.

“I
. . .
I will,” she managed.

She was almost there
. . . almost . . . just a little more . . .
Riley
pulled
her
knees back further
, opening herself even wider to him.

Shawn groaned, and his movements became more rigid. Knowing that he was
on the brink
himself was what finally pushed her over the edge. She felt herself come apart, her entire body for a millisecond,
liquefying beneath him
. Then Shawn’s mouth was on hers again and he shuddered, convulsing
as she
clenched
her
thighs
about him as tightly as she could, wondering somewhere in the far reaches of her mind
if there would ever come a time when she could stand to let him go
.

g

Three
days
before Christmas
, they were married
in a private ceremony
at the City Cle
rk’s office on Queens Boulevard.
Brendan and Tracy were t
he only
guests
.
Lorna, true to her word, refused to come,
telling
Riley in a
very
brief phone conversation
that it would be
“inauthentic”
i
f she did. Riley wore a cream
pantsuit
that Tracy picked out for her.
It had a cute cropped fitted jacket with three-quarter length sleeves and wasn’t
nearly
as
corny
as
a white dress would have been.

Shawn wore a dark blue suit – it was the first time Riley had seen him in one –
and looked painfully handsome.
Because he
knew they would
want them later, Brendan hired a photographer to get a few shots of the ceremony
, even th
ough neither Shawn nor Riley had
asked him to
.
Later, t
wo of the photos
would be
leaked, probably by a photographer’s assistant, to a celebrity website and so the news was out, though largely
overshadowed by the holidays.

That
evening
, they had a small
dinner party
at
Nobu.
Brendan’s date was
a leggy
Armenian
model named
Zeina
who didn’t have much to say but kept stealing
glances
at Shawn when she thought no one was looking.
Tracy came alone,
and
Brendan kept glancing at her when
he
thought no one was looking.

All through dinner, it was hard not to think about the
fact that Lorna wasn’t there.
Even though she’d been pretty clear about her reasons, it still
caused a dull ache
in
the pit of
Riley’s
stomach
.

During the ceremony, despite
her
attack of nervousness, Riley
was surprised how easily she’d said the words ‘I will’ when called on.
Shawn
on the other hand,
got the words out almost before his cue
.
As soon as the ceremony
was
done and all through dinner he was
obviously on a high
.
At the restaurant he
even
posed for photos and signed autographs for
anyone
who
approached
.

Riley watched as he downed champagne and joked around with
Brendan, talking a blue streak.
Whenever
their eyes met across the table
,
everything he felt about her was so plainly on his face, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t
seen
it
all along
.

They
spent the night
back at their suite in the Four Seasons
before taking an early flight to Montego Bay
for their honeymoon
.
Negril
,
Jamaica was the destination they
’d
finally settled on, even though Shawn
had tirelessly
lobbied for Thailand, worried that anyplace less isolated would make it too easy for Brendan to interrupt with some not-t
o-be-missed career opportunity.
But Riley had never been to
Jamaica
, and had heard so much about it from Tr
acy that he eventually gave in.

She
slept for most of the
three-and-a-half hour
plane ride,
all of the tumultuous emotions and anticipation of the previous weeks coming crashing down all at once and resulting in an exhaustion she was powerless to fight. She
only
became
completely alert
as
they drove by private car along a
single
-lane highway that followed the coast, offering spectacu
lar views of the Caribbean Sea.
It was so breathtaking she didn’t utter a single word until the
y arrived at their destination.
Brendan had
found
them
a resort
w
here the guest quarters were grass-thatched huts, set
high
on rocks
overlooking the
water
, with
out phones or air conditioning.

Each night t
hey were lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves and the
muted rhythm of the ceiling fan
and
were
awakened each morning by a ro
oster crowing in the distance.
The
two-week
honeymoon was the first time since they’d met that they spent so many consecutive
days and
nights together
uninterrupted by the flow of
everyday
life
.
Riley
sometimes
had trouble sleeping
and
she
almost
always woke up sometime around
four
a.m., spending at least an hour staring at the ceiling, trying to get accustomed to the sound of his b
reathing
and the permanence of their new status as husband and wife
.
T
he waves
always
ushered
her to back to sleep
and she
a
woke
again
around noon,
only when it became too hot to stay in bed.

By then,
Shawn had
often
already gone
parasailing, jet-skiing or
just to hang
out in town
.
Everyone knew who he was of course, but he got special props because
he’d used reggae samples on his last
CD.
He loved walking the streets of what used to be a small fishing village, but was now one of the isla
nd’s most popular resort towns.
Peo
ple were friendly, but not pushy
, wanting to shake his hand but ultimately leaving
him alone to explore in peace.
A few guys
in town
wanted to sell him some chronic which he claimed to refuse, though Riley
suspected that was not always
strictly
true
.

I
n the aft
ernoons they did tourist things
,
exhausting things
–
taking long drives in the
countryside
rafting on the Rio Grande,
z
ip
-lining and climbing Mayfield Falls – all
distracting them from the fact that they were
still, in some ways,
unfamiliar with
each other’s moods and routines.
Some
night
s
Shawn went to local street-
dances
with
a couple
of the guys he hung out with on the beach,
coming back laden with
CDs
of dancehall
music
and Rastafarian art and crafts.

Acutely aware that in his real life he was seldom permitted the opportunity to do anything by himself, Riley generally declined when he asked if she wanted to come.
While he was
gone
,
Riley
sat by the water to read,
or
had dinner with
some
of the
other
guests
.
When
Shawn
returned
, it was
usually
well after midnight and he
was drunk,
invariably
smelling of
ganja
and Jamaican white rum, tasting like the spicy jerk
foods
he’d eaten, and elated at being able to walk among regular folks
and, at least for a little while, become one of them.

On New Year’s Eve, instead of joining the party on the beach, they stayed in their room
, drowsy from a long day in the water. At midnight, they sat on the balcony, Riley’s feet resting in Shawn’s lap as they watched the fireworks
explode across the water
. It was a new year, and she was ringing it in, not with Tracy in Time
s
Square as she had done for so many years prior but sitting overlooking the Caribbean Sea with
her
husband. Her
husband
.