Campaign For Seduction (15 page)

“About damn time,” she grumbled.

One edge of his mouth hitched up in a crooked grin of approval and relief, and then he swooped her off the chest of drawers and into his arms. She started to tell him that she could walk, but why would she do that when she could bury her face in his neck and
press her tongue to the frantic beat of his pulse? When his unyielding strength made her feel this feminine and powerful?

Swinging her around, he lowered her to the bed, which was already turned down to reveal cool white sheets, and then stepped away to click on the lamp on the nightstand.

“I want to see you,” he told her.

The husky urgency in his voice and unyielding gleam in his dark eyes cut through her sensual daze. Holding his gaze, savoring this moment to the darkest depths of her writhing belly, she scooted back and propped herself on her elbows.

Tracking her every movement and operating in excruciating slow motion, he took his erection in his hand and stroked himself.

Liza moaned because her body was open and ready for him—she could feel the honey flowing hot and thick between her legs—and she needed every thick inch of him inside her.

“Don’t tease me, John. I can’t take it.”

Merciless now, he ignored the begging. “Touch your breasts, Liza. Squeeze them for me.”

This man was trying to kill her.

Trembling, her gaze flickering between his unfathomable eyes and what he was doing to himself with his hands—every up and every down sent piercing streaks of pleasure to Liza’s sex—she rested her head on the pillow and cupped her breasts in her hands, hefting their weight before she flattened her palms against her nipples and circled. Another moan rose up out of her, long and earthy.

He froze. Swallowed audibly. And resumed his stroking.

Liza drank in his reactions as the spasms started in her belly. It took every ounce of self-control she had not to come then and there. When she couldn’t last another second, she reached for him, but he took one step back, stopping her.

“Are you wet for me?”

Wet? Was this a joke? Only the Pacific Ocean was wetter than she was.

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.” He paused. “You’d better check.”

Dying with embarrassment and excitement, Liza reached between her thighs and rubbed herself. Whimpering at this ex
quisite sensation, which provided only a small bit of the relief she needed, she lubricated the hard nub that was now the center of her existence.

His, too, judging from the look in his eyes. “Let me see.”

Then he was there, stretched out over her, his fingers picking up where she’d left off.

With a groan, he ran his face and hands all over her torso…one breast…the other breast…belly…hips. There wasn’t an unmarked inch of skin left when he was done with her, not one un-kissed spot. And then he buried his face in the dark triangle of her curls and tasted her, his skillful tongue as tireless as it was relentless.

With a sharp cry, Liza opened her thighs to welcome him. The edges of her vision blurred with the intensity of the pleasure; only his fingers gripping her hips kept her from squirming off the bed and into oblivion.

“John. Please.”

Taking pity on her at last, he straightened and his face was dark with purpose. He never broke eye contact as he reached for the red package on the nightstand. In seconds he was ready, but he trailed his fingers in her juices and then sucked them into his mouth just to prolong her torment.

“I’m not going to always wear these.” One of his hands gripped his length and ran it between her swollen wet lips in what could only be called torture. She arched her hips for him, but he didn’t accept the invitation. Not yet. “I don’t want anything between us.”

The note of warning in his voice surprised and distracted her and, impossible though it was, she tried to focus. “Neither do I.” She smiled to entice him. “Come here, John. I need you.”

Levering himself up over her, he stared down with a mix of exasperation and frustration in his glittering eyes. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he asked, and his voice was cool but his expression was wild and hot, almost primitive.

“No.” When was he going to get this party started? Another second or two of waiting was going to send her into cardiac arrest. “All I know is that I want you.”

“Let me spell it out.”

That broad head stroked her again, and she writhed beneath
him and let her eyes roll closed. For a second or two he nuzzled her mouth, but then he tapped her chin to get her attention.

She lifted her heavy lids and stared at him with unfocused eyes.

“I want you to be the mother of my children, Liza.”

Unsmiling, he entered her in one driving stroke that buried him to the hilt.

Chapter 14

L iza couldn’t have heard what she’d thought she’d heard, but now was not the time to figure it out. They both cried out, loud and unabashed. Moving together, surging and flowing, they clutched at each other and tried to get closer, but it was no good. Liza crossed her ankles and clung to his hips with every ounce of strength she had, absorbing each punishing thrust and needing more, but it still wasn’t enough. She almost wished she could die right now because a hundred more years of life on this earth could offer her nothing better than this.

He seemed to feel the same way and gasped. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Yes.” She almost laughed until another well-placed thrust ripped the smile off her face and trapped the air in her throat. “Ahhh…John.”

The face-to-face intimacy of their position intensified every sensation and heightened their connection more than she would have liked. It was hard to pretend this was just sex when she was staring straight into his shining eyes and seeing his every reaction even as she felt her own.

As though he knew this, he held her gaze, refusing to look away or let his lowered lids fall closed.

“Don’t you let another man touch you, Liza. Understand?”

She understood the primal possessiveness in his expression, all right, and she loved it—even if it set womankind back a thousand years.

“Yes.”

“Is this what you need from me?” John’s hips pivoted, every movement an act of ownership and a brand that made her his and no one else’s. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want it harder?”

“Yes.”

Dark humor shone in his eyes. “I don’t think so.” The wicked man slowed down until he inched into and out of her body as though he was determined to take all night with this single stroke.

Liza’s heart nearly gave out. Beside herself now, covered with her sweat and his, trembling and hovering at the precipice of an earth-shattering orgasm, she dug her nails into his nape, arched her breasts against slick slabs of his chest and begged.

“Do it harder,” she panted against his lips. “Harder.”

“No.”

Taking her mouth, he kissed her long and deep, an unbearable counterpoint to the slow pace of his thrusts. After a few seconds of this torture, he resumed his interrogation.

“It’s never been like this for you before.” He said it with the kind of complete certainty that would have annoyed her if she’d been in her right mind. “Has it?”

Was this a joke? Did he seriously need to ask?

But still…she didn’t want to admit it. She hesitated, and he knew.

“Don’t you lie to me.” The warning couldn’t have been clearer. “Has anyone else ever loved you like this?”

Liza gave up. How could she resist him? Why did she even want to?

“No.”

The lamp provided enough light for her to see the raw satis
faction in his eyes. He glowed with it, wallowed in it. “And no one ever will.”

No, she silently agreed. No one ever would.

Catching her mouth again, he licked and nipped his way inside, and the sounds he made were helpless and broken. Thrilling. This time when he pulled back, there was a half smile on his swollen lips.

“You’re never getting rid of me now, Liza. You know that, right?”

Wrung out as she was, she still managed a quick responding smile, a whispered tease. “Why would I ever want to get rid of you, Senator?”

His attention slipped away with a groan, and that was it for the talking.

Something about their position apparently dissatisfied him and, without warning, he gripped her butt, surged to his feet, swung her around and, still deep inside her, backed her against the wall.

Cursing, he buried his face between her neck and shoulder and increased his tempo until his hips moved with the force of a piston. His frenzied pumping nearly drove her through the plaster into the room on the other side.

It was the ride of her life. Frantic now, hanging on for all she was worth, Liza tightened her thighs around his hips, adjusted her body just slightly and angled herself so that he hit the exact right spot.

Ecstasy streaked through her. Ruined by the force of it, Liza threw her head back and came, the violent inner clenching of her muscles strong and endless enough to trigger an earthquake.

Her keening was so loud by then that she almost missed the hoarse shout that told her he was coming, too. But there was no way she could miss the way his shudders shook his big body and turned all that living marble to stone as his muscles tensed. Tightening his hold on her, he rode it out, crying her name over and over again.

They’d collapsed against the wall and were still trying to recover enough to catch their breath when a terrible noise destroyed the moment in the worst kind of surprise: his phone chirped from the nightstand.

Liza froze, and John swore. All their separate realities reared their ugly heads, reminding Liza that even if she wanted a relationship, she could never have one with him because his responsibilities took him in one direction and hers took her in another.

His fingers tightened reflexively on her hips, holding her to him, but then he raised his head and there was open regret in his eyes.

“I have to get that. I’m sorry.”

Liza nodded, mortification already setting in.

Moving carefully and with all the reluctance in the world, he set her on her feet and snatched his phone up by the fourth ring. “Yeah?” he snarled, grabbing her when she would have stepped away and reeling her in until her back was to his front and he’d pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He kept her close and listened and did not let her go even when he heard something that made his entire body stiffen.

“Give me ten minutes.” He hung up and let her go. When she turned to face him, his face was tight with worry. “There’s been a string of tornadoes in Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Alabama. It’s bad. We’ve got to go.”

“Oh, God. That’s part of the nasty storm system that grounded our flight.”

“Yeah.” Nodding, he took a deep breath. “We need to talk, Liza.”

She knew he was right, but the enormity of what they had done was beginning to set in and she just couldn’t deal with A Big Talk now. Not with his delicious musk on her skin, his taste in her mouth and her skin still hungry for his touch.

“It’s a little late for talking, isn’t it?” Pulling free, she turned her back on his grim face and found her clothes.

Despite the emergency, he seemed in no hurry to do the same and, after getting rid of the condom in the bathroom, came back and stood there in all his considerable glory. “How can we build a relationship?”

“We can’t,” she said flatly. “This was a one-time thing.”

“Liza—”

“Do you know what’s going to happen if we keep this up?”

He answered with unmistakable dread. “No.”

“I’m going to end up like that woman in The Godfather novel—”

“No, Liza.”

The sudden sharpness in his tone told her he knew exactly which woman she was talking about. She tried to laugh, but there was nothing amusing about any of this.

“Isn’t this funny? I’ve seen the movie a million times, and I don’t even know the woman’s name. You know who I mean. Sonny’s mistress? She waits in the shadows for him and has no life of her own. And then when he has time he rounds up ten body guards, and they all go over to her dark little apartment—”

“Don’t—”

“—and he has sex with her up against the wall, like we just did, and the bodyguards always wait outside and snicker—they don’t show that part in the movie, but you know that’s what they’re doing—”

This time, he grabbed her upper arms and shook her once. “No.”

“—and then Sonny leaves with a smile on his face and the woman is left alone again in her dark little apartment, waiting for him to come back the next time, whenever he can squeeze her into his busy life.”

They stared at each other and there was nothing but pain between them.

True to his reputation, the senator didn’t go down without a fight. Those hands skimmed up into her nape again for a caress so tender she questioned everything she thought she knew about herself and what she wanted. Surely any sacrifice—her reputation, her career, her self-esteem—would be worth it if he continued to touch her like this.

“That’s not what I want for us, Liza. That’s not where we’re headed.”

She believed he meant it—maybe he wanted their affair to be more involved than what she’d just described—but that was irrelevant. “That’s all you can offer me at this point in your life.”

“The hell it is.”

That light was back in his eyes, the one that was somehow quiet and wild at the same time and always scared her to death. His expression forcibly reminded her of what he’d said when he slid inside her—I want you to be the mother of my children—and panic stuttered in her chest. Had he really said that? Why had he said that? Why did those words touch such a deep chord within her?

Acting quickly, she held up her hands to stop him before he told her something else she didn’t want to hear and couldn’t handle.

“I don’t do relationships anyway, Senator, so this whole discussion is moot.”

He stilled, his features cold and icy-sharp now. “Why?”

“I can’t make them work.”

“Because your marriage failed?” He made her sound like the world’s most yellow-bellied coward when he said it like that. “And that gives you…what? A lifelong exemption from trying?”

“Because I have a tendency to screw things up and have zero skills when it comes to picking men. I chose one who didn’t see the need to stop dating just because he was married.”

“I can go you one better,” he told her. “I chose a woman who died on me.”

Liza gaped at him. “It’s not the same thing at all. There’s a difference between selecting the worst possible person to be your life partner and selecting a person who gets a terrible disease and dies involuntarily. You went to law school—I’m sure you can see the distinction.”

“I don’t think you understand. I watched the woman I loved waste away to nothing, and I wished I could die with her. I prayed to die with her. For three—no, four—months after she died, I cried myself to sleep every night. If I can try again after that nightmare, why can’t you? If I can take a risk, why can’t you?”

“I don’t do relationships.” She reverted to her stubborn mantra because she was too drained to go head-to-head with any logical arguments.

“You’ve never been in one with the right man.”

“The right man?” she muttered. “Talk about your oxymorons.”

That was the wrong thing to say, judging from what she saw of his murderous expression before she had to glance away. Stalemated, they glared at opposite sides of the bedroom.

After a minute she heard a harsh sigh. “Liza.”

She didn’t answer.

“Look at me.”

His infinite calm made her feel all the more strung out in comparison. Mutinous, she met his steady gaze and waited.

“This thing with us,” he said, his measured voice full of warning, as though he needed to make her understand that she’d drown if she insisted on swimming in the undertow. “I’m not
saying it’s convenient. It’s not. This isn’t a good time for either one of us. But you and I are going to have to deal with our feelings for each other.”

“We just dealt with them.”

This lame attempt at defiance wavered before the absolute intransigence in his flashing eyes.

“Darlin’,” he said, unsmiling, “we haven’t even scratched the surface.”

Another burst of overwrought emotions erupted from her, as uncontrollable as the last. “Don’t try to guilt me for protecting myself. Do you know what kind of risk I just took by having sex with you? If people find out about us, you may lose the presidency, but you’ll still be a senator. But my reputation as an ethical journalist will be ruined forever. Forever. Everything I’ve spent my entire life working for would be lost like that.” She snapped her fingers. “What would I do then? I support myself and my father—what would I do for money? Write a tell-all? Forgive me if I don’t want to end up like one of those disgraced political mistresses, with offers to pose nude pouring in from Playboy and no one wanting to hire her—”

“That’s the last thing I want for you. Believe it.”

Startled by his sudden urgency and vehemence, she stilled. He looked fierce, protective—as though he valued her well-being as much as his own. Sensing an opening, she tried to take advantage of it.

“Since we’re on the same page, Senator—”

His low growl told her she was skating on splintered ice by using his title.

“—let’s just agree that what happened here tonight will never happen again.”

“I can’t do that.” he said. “I’ll never do that.”

“Why not?”

He swallowed hard, a flush creeping over his cheeks.

“Because I’m in love with you.”

It was nearly dawn by the time the senator and his staffers and Liza, Takashi and the rest of the press corps converged on the plane. The only question was where the campaign was going.
Adena wanted to go back to Washington as planned, at least for now, but the senator wouldn’t hear of it.