“Beckett was telling me some stories . . .” I tell him.
He eyes his friend dubiously as if suddenly, he just doesn’t trust him.
“He said you’d do anything to get rid of your detail. That you learned to fly the Marine One helicopter as your eighteenth birthday present from your dad, and that your first dog in the White House was named Lucky but your mother called him Loki because he loved to tear up the tulip beds.”
“Did he tell you all that?” He lowers one brow a little farther than the other and gives him a you didn’t look, and Beckett laughs.
“I couldn’t resist.”
He slaps his back and as Beckett stands up to cede his seat next to me I swear he tells him, “I don’t blame you.”
Butterflies pop in my stomach, swift and violent. It’s not just the words but the tender tone that surprise me. I tear my eyes away and stare at the glass in my hand, suddenly very preoccupied with how much liquid is in there and the exact situation of the wine.
Matt simply says something to Beckett that I can’t hear, his hand resting on the back of the chair Beckett just vacated.
I sit here, struggling with all my emotions.
“If these are the crowds you draw as a candidate, I won’t want to know what kind of power you’ll hold as president,” I say as I glance around.
Matt watches me all this time. His sharp espresso eyes narrow a little. “What else did Beckett tell you?” he asks suspiciously.
I shrug mysteriously, and his lips quirk over my stubbornness when Carlisle comes and asks Matt to give a speech.
As Matt stands and crosses the room, the crowd breaks out in applause, and I get hit with a THIS IS WHO YOU ARE moment. THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
I can’t stop smiling.
He’s quiet as he goes up on a small podium. Matt Hamilton. I want the warmth of the light that Matt Hamilton represents.
Matt waits for everyone to settle down and then everyone waits in silence, all eyes on him.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight—nice to see so many familiar faces and so many new ones as well.” He nods at everyone. “I’m sure you’ve noticed we lack slogans in tonight’s decorations . . . I’d like to thank my team for their efforts—the truth of the matter is, nobody pays attention to slogans anymore.”
“They need to know what you bring to the table!” a very boisterous elderly man yells.
“I bring me.”
Silence.
He spreads his palms on the podium and leans forward. “For years the public has come to believe every promise made by every candidate has been a lie. Nobody believes in them anymore. Politics have been totally tainted by propaganda. I want it to be clear we’re running a very easy slogan campaign, and a no-slandering campaign. I serve my country. When asked how I plan to serve, my team,” he looks pointedly at me, “and I have to come to this.” He nods behind him to where Carlisle has turned on a visual. “We’re calling it the alphabet campaign. We’re fixing, reworking, and improving everything from A to Z in this country. It’s an ambitious goal and one I will work tirelessly to achieve. There are so many things right about this country, and so many things that can be better than right. We want to go back to the times—we want to even surpass the times—when they’ve been phenomenal.” He starts naming them. “Arts. Bureaucracy. Culture. Debt. Education. Foreign relations policies . . .”
There are titters of excitement rushing across the room.
I stand there, awed like the rest of the room, feeling a connection to him.
A kind of connection I’ve never in my life felt before.
20
ONE TOUCH
Charlotte
The crowds are surging.
For the past month, we’ve had over 500,000 people in each state.
Strange. But I somehow feel like I know these people. Sometimes it’s the look in their eyes. Like Matt is their only hope in the world.
He speaks to them about everything, not just the present, but how we mold the future within our present. How the decisions we make now affect those who haven’t lived yet.
Our best engagements come with kids. But guess what?
They cannot vote!
And still, they’re my favorites.
There’s something about Matt when he’s with children that tugs at me on so many levels.
Today we’re leaving a children’s hospital, and I’ve been handing out treats to the kids when Matt walks up to me and tells me it’s time to leave.
That’s when one of them yells, “Kiss her, Matt, kiss her!”
Carlisle instantly mutters in Matt’s direction, “Yeah, that’s probably the opposition wanting to hang you for it later.”
“He’s a kid,” Matt tells Carlisle, laughing.
He shoots him an amused look, then me—our eyes meeting, something mischievous lurking in his gaze as he lifts my hand and passes his warm, velvet lips across my knuckles.
There’s a dark sparkle in his gaze, reminding me that we both know a secret that nobody but him and I know.
It’s over too soon; and I drop my hand as if he burned me and try to focus on the delighted kids, all giggling because of what Matt did.
The touch stays with me. It stays with me as we head out to the car, where savvy reporters who’d been peering through the hospital windows mill about.
“Matt, do it again—we missed it!” a reporter yells.
“Good.” He grins as he helps me into the car and shuts the door. We all head off.
I’m silent, the hand he kissed sort of balled protectively over my lap. I’m aware of our shoulders inches apart. Our thighs touching, his scent in my lungs.
And his kiss remains. His touch remains. He remains.
I shift and put some distance between us as I pretend to peer out the window. My thoughts race to the pounding of my heart. I feel him glance at my profile, his stare like a weight, tangible on me. He’ll know how you feel, Charlotte.
He’ll know that a part of you is right now only thinking—kiss me. Kiss me when we’re alone. Kiss me because you want to, like you did in D.C.
I fight the feeling all night in my hotel room, telling myself that it’s better we haven’t picked up after that night at the Tidal Basin. It’s risky, and the country’s future matters more than a week or a month of delicious sexual activity.
Matt was just indulging the child at the hospital, I remind myself. But no matter how much I analyze it, the flutters won’t stop; this want for him builds and builds inside of me with nowhere to go.
I head to bed early, with images of watching him work out that morning at the hotel gym dancing through my head.
He loves working out. He’s been giving this campaign all he’s got. I wonder if he’s as arduous in loving as he is in the rest of the things he does. I picture him in the highest office in the land, his bed always warmed by someone capable of relieving the stresses a president must endure. I feel a pang of jealousy, then press my lips together in disgust at myself and push the thoughts out of my mind—opting to pick up some of my work files because I already know I won’t be able to sleep yet.
I grab my pens and start making notes when there’s a knock on the door.
21
MEETING
Charlotte
It’s midnight.
So why is there a knock on the door?
Matt.
The name sort of blooms in my mind and suddenly, deep in my stomach and in my chest cavity, hope is kicking and leaping and screaming as I pull a robe over me, tie the sash, and hurry to open the door.
Be Matt.
Be Matt.
Wilson stands on the other side. “He wants to see you.” He scans my room over my shoulder. “Alone.”
Oh. God.
Ten.
It’s been ten days since he said he wanted me.
I wondered when the day would come. I’d even started to believe it might not ever happen.
But now Wilson is at my door. Sayi
ng Matt wants to see me.
I don’t even know what to expect of this meeting. He could very well want nothing but to brainstorm—or to maybe tell me it’s a bad idea, now that he’s had time to reflect on it.
He’d be right. So right.
So I try to calm down my reckless desire for Matt Heavenly Kisser Hamilton and I prepare for a professional meeting—notebook in hand, ready to record any ideas or changes. Even though Wilson said he wanted to see me alone, I refuse to get my hopes up . . . or have them drowned.
I have trouble swallowing as I nod and say, “I’ll meet you at the elevator bank in two minutes.”
I shut the door and then lean on it, trying to catch a big breath.
Fuck.
Matt is going to be the end of me.
Maybe the end of my career, too.
And I should probably take that into serious consideration before I do something reckless.
I don’t.
I kick into action and rush to my small closet. I change into a skirt and blouse, gather my things, grab my room key, and shut my door, following Wilson to the elevators, then down the back exit to the hotel’s underground parking lot.
The door opens from within the car as I approach.
“Charlotte,” a deliciously wicked voice murmurs from the shadows of the backseat.
“Matt.”
I swallow the lump of excitement and desire that gathers in my throat. I’m wet already. Nipples pressing into the fabric of my bra and blouse. He scoots over and I slip inside, shutting the door behind me.
He’s dressed in black.
Smells expensive.
And he looks hotter than sin.
He also moves fast as sin as he reaches out to take my chin between his thumb and finger and forces me to look into his beautiful dark eyes. “I hope I didn’t disturb your sleep.”
His voice is husky, and so is mine.
“Actually, you did. But you didn’t have to send Wilson to knock on my door to do that.”
He smiles and gazes at me, sliding his other hand over the seat until it covers mine. I catch my breath at the touch. He squeezes my fingers, forcing me to meet his gaze.
Wilson drives down the darkened streets while Matt lifts my hand with both of his, turns it over, and drops a kiss on the inside of my palm.
I catch my breath, the warm and silky tip of his tongue flicking out. Circling the sensitive skin at the center of my palm.
I groan, inching closer to his body. Emanating heat.
Matt grips me by the hips and pulls me the rest of the way to him. He brushes my hair behind my forehead. “I asked Wilson to help me secure some privacy for us.” He studies my features.
“I’m glad,” I admit, thickly.
I reach up to his shadowed face.
God, is this happening?
Really?
I’m stroking my fingers lightly over his taut flesh. Loving the feel of the shadow of beard across his jaw beneath my fingertips. The way his jaw clenches as he lets me touch him, his eyes absolutely feasting on my face.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that, we won’t make it to the elevators,” he warns.
“How am I looking at you?”
“The same way you looked at me when I kissed your knuckles at the hospital.”
“Oh no! I looked at you a certain way? That can’t be too good! People could see.”
His lips tug at the corners. “They’re used to girls flirting with me. It’s my own reactions I need to watch.” He smiles, then leans over and pecks my lips.
I lick my lips, tasting him on them. “You’re very good at controlling your reactions.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. My grandfather’s on to me.”
“He hates me, doesn’t he?”
“He hates the idea of anything standing between me and what he wants for me.”
I exhale.
“You looked great with the kids out there today. At the hospital,” he says. Voice low and appreciative.
“Me? It’s you they love.”
He chuckles, slowly shaking his head. “If that’s true, then you’ve won them over just as much; otherwise why would they ask me to kiss a girl if it’s not someone they’d want to see me with?” He smiles and leans back, eyeing me. “See, kids aren’t affected by norms and rules. They just see what is and know exactly how they’d like it to be.”
“It made me laugh that you indulged the kids but not the nosy reporters.”
“They threw it as bait, I’m not giving them that. At least, not willingly.” He looks at me then, and the understanding of the risks weighs down the silence between us.
Wilson pulls into a smaller hotel just a few blocks away from ours.
It’s more low-key, not exactly one-star but not five, either. A place where Matt wouldn’t be expected to stay.
“I’m right behind you. Power off your phone,” Matt instructs.
I’m so nervous that I’m chewing on my lower lip as I take the room key Matt gives me before I open the car door.
“Don’t play too hard with that lip—that’s for me to do later.”
I pause.
Release my lip.
Watch his lips curve into a slow, satisfied smile.
And I smile back.
Then I quickly turn off my phone, exhale, tuck the key into my side pocket, and head to the elevators.
This is so reckless. So reckless, but the prospect of his touch is too thrilling.
A woman in a red sweater boards the elevator with me.
My heart starts thrumming in my chest.
I keep my head down, busily staring at my Mary Janes. My pulse throbs with adrenaline, anticipation, and fear. Down the hall, I slide the key into the slot and enter the room.
Spacious, simple, modern, and elegant.
I hurry to the bathroom, shake my hair loose, pinch my cheeks, and then head outside, pacing.
I wait for minutes, until . . .
The door opens.
His tall form fills the doorway. Still dressed in black—except for a cap on his head.
The only guy I’ve ever wanted.
He steps in and shuts the door with one elbow.
I exhale. “Did anyone see you?” I ask.
He takes off the New York cap. “No.”
“I was sure to keep my head down, I—”
Large and agile and gorgeous, he crosses the room, takes my hand, lifts it to his mouth, and skims a kiss over the back of my fingers.
I watch, transfixed, when he starts to suck the tips ever so exquisitely in his warm mouth. His gaze is like a missile of heat aiming straight for the hot spot between my legs as he licks me. Watching me with heated eyes as he nibbles and sucks carefully on each one. I groan softly.
He releases my hand, his warm fingers curving around my hip. I feel his nose at the top of my head, against my scalp.
The stroke of one hand on my hair, from the top of my head to my back.
Under my shirt, his arm now sliding around my waist, pulling us flush.
I’m so undone, a shudder wracks me. Making him tighten his hold more.
I know I shouldn’t want these things.
He won’t be the kind of man to kiss me goodnight every night. He might have so much that it’d even be understandable if he forgot your birthday. He’s not the guy you can have your happy life with; he’s the guy women throw themselves at, he’s the guy who wants more than what you can give and he will always restlessly pursue it.
I know all this, but I cannot stop from moving closer and feeling his heartbeat through the cotton of his shirt.
We’ve been working tirelessly for months.
He feels too good right now.
And it feels too good to feel his eyes quietly caress me as his hands slowly stroke my hair and he tells me, “Have you thought about this?”
I nod.
He grabs the back of my neck and holds me still and kisses me.
The next few minutes, I’m trembling under his
kisses and caresses. His hand running from the top of my head down to my feet as he removes my shoes. I feel protected, cherished …
What we’re doing is risky, but how can it be wrong when it feels so right?
Matt eases back and cups my face, and he looks so hot right now, I could be staring at the sun. He’s staring at me as if I dazzle him too, and the smile on his lips softens a little as his eyes start pulsing like a living, breathing thing. We’re both high from the adrenaline, the forbiddenness of finally, finally giving in to this attraction between us.
He scoops me up by the hips and lifts me in the air, just a few inches, so that my lips are exactly where he wants them.
And he takes them. Hard.
His lips forcing mine apart, his tongue plunging, his head angled for the best, most instant access.
The longing that’s been building inside of me bubbles up and I wrap my arms around his shoulders.
It feels as if every day since I joined his campaign, I’ve been waiting for this. To feel Matt’s hands around me, holding me to his hard chest. Engulfing me in his strong embrace.
All my resistance vanishes as his tongue strokes mine, and I suck and lick and rub his tongue back in a whirl of heat and passion and recklessness. I tighten my arms around his neck, and he makes a low sound from deep in his chest, as if he approves of my wild kiss.
He’s breathing fast, but I’m breathing faster. He sets me on my feet, and his hand covers my cheek and his fingers stroke along my temples. “I’ve been trying to do the right thing. I fucking can’t,” he says.
“Don’t.”
I turn my lips to nip at the heel of his palm. He releases a sound I’d never heard him make before, like a growl that contains one word inside it: Charlotte.
His lips smash down on mine.
We kiss madly for about thirty seconds, then pull free to study each other.
I look into his face, and he stares down at me, still the guy I craved when I was younger, but now so much hotter, and more unattainable than ever.
Nothing matters, it doesn’t matter.
All I know is I want him. My body is so on fire I could splinter any second.
I take his hand and put it on my shirt and drag it lower, lower, beneath the fabric of my blouse, then upward, pressing it to my breast—over my bra.