Rook (Political Royalty Book 2) (4 page)

W
ALKER WAS GOING TO WIN. Haven didn’t need the polls to tell her. She could read it in the body language of the audience watching the debate. Tomorrow they’d head to the polls and hand the state to the senator with a passion for agriculture and water rights and a relationship with union labor that would make the Democrats jealous. All the groundwork they’d done had paid off.

Collins could see it too. As the night wore on and the questions moved from foreign to domestic policy, she’d gotten increasingly defensive and edgier. It was the first time Haven had seen the other woman rattled, and it shouldn’t give her as much pleasure as it did. It wasn’t so much that she wanted the general to lose. She did, but just because she wanted Walker to win and she couldn’t have both. Even she was moved by the idea of a black woman as president, but not as moved as she was by the idea of winning a presidential campaign. And he could do it. Even against the unbeatable, impossible candidate Collins, Walker could win the nomination and then the presidency.

Haven watched him field questions with calm, reasoned answers. Some of it was policy she’d written, but by the time he delivered it, he’d made it his own and added a spin that gave his arguments depth and conviction. It was damn near impossible to teach a politician to do that. He knew it instinctively. The fact that he believed what he was selling was icing on the cake.

The moderator threw it to a commercial break and Haven was halfway across the stage before she’d decided to move. The man was dangerous to her and dangerous to her resolve. She’d been letting Justin and Travis handle the breaks, deliberately making herself scarce. He glanced up at her approach and she remembered why she’d been avoiding him. The look in his eyes when his gaze met hers burned its way into her soul. It was one thing dealing with her feelings. She was a grown woman. By now she should be able to handle it, but when she saw the hunger she felt reflected in his eyes, she lost all but a thin thread of control. Coupled with the fact that he also looked to her for approval that had nothing to do with the way her body responded to him and it was over. He owned her.

“You’re doing great, Walker,” she said when she finally managed to unstick her tongue. “You’re going to win this thing.” She shouldn’t risk jinxing things by saying it out loud. She was as superstitious as the next person who made her living reading the will of the people, but she’d already broken almost all the other rules. What was one more? Especially if it made him smile the way he was smiling at her.

“I know.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but the warning light flashed gold.

“Good.” Haven squeezed her hands to keep from touching his and then hurried back to her spot on the sidelines to watch.

She’d spent the past three months looking for reason to distrust him, trying to make him fit the preconceived idea she’d had of who he was. She’d worked so hard to find a reason to assume the worst of him, and it had all been a lie. Justin was right. William Shepherd Walker was the real thing. An honest man. A white knight. Not only the man who would be king but a man worthy of the title. She’d been his only mistake.

When the debate ended, she waited for Sandra to take the stage with Walker, kissing his cheek and looking like his perfect half—political royalty—while they beamed at the adoring crowd together. While the applause still thundered behind her, Haven left the debate site, left him, and headed for the safety of her hotel room. Realizing he was who he’d said he was made it even more important for Haven to stay away from him. She couldn’t be the one who ruined them both, not even if being with him was exactly what she wanted.

She couldn’t see a path forward. Not one that didn’t end in heartbreak. He was a good man and he was married. If she had her way, he’d be president, which meant he’d stay married for the next four to eight years. Even if she could reason her way through the sticky moral implications of breaking up a family
—a family
, she thought, picturing the way he swung his girls into his arms at the end of the debate—she couldn’t see a way forward. She could work her way through almost anything. She couldn’t work her way through this. There was no solution that didn’t end with a string of broken hearts and ruined dreams.

The tears fell silently, streaming down her face as her heart shattered at the inevitability. She was worse than a cliché. She wasn’t just a woman who’d fallen in love with a married man, who’d fallen in love with her boss. She’d finally found a man who was better than he promised and she’d have to spend the next decade watching him love another woman. Even if she quit the campaign, it wouldn’t stop. He’d be on her television every week, standing beside the woman who had a license to love him and Haven would be on the outside, looking in. Alone.

She collapsed onto the bed, unable to fight gravity any longer. Her chest felt caved in, like the center had been scooped out, leaving her hollow inside. Thank God she was alone in her room. She’d already fielded too many questions from Justin. If he’d been with her, she’d have broken down and told him everything. She was too vulnerable to hide and too exhausted to try. If she could just make it through the night, she’d have the polls to keep her busy in the morning. She’d focus on what she knew best: doing the work that was her passion, even if it left her feeling empty in comparison. She could work until the ache went away or exhaustion numbed her, but she still had to get through the next six hours.

A soft rap at the door broke through her self-pity. For a handful of heartbeats, she considered ignoring it, pretending she was already asleep, but she couldn’t. Climbing off the bed, she swiped at her tear-streaked cheeks, praying the waterproof mascara lived up to its promise. She glanced at the mirror long enough to make sure she didn’t look like a raccoon and then stood on her toes to peer through the peephole.

Walker stood on the other side of the door, his hair pointing in every direction the way it did when he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes looked haunted, not at all like a man on the cusp of winning the Nevada primary. The need to know what put the shadows under his eyes was the only thing strong enough to make her open the door.

He moved past her, stepping into the room before she invited him in. As soon as the door clicked shut, he reached for her, the desperation etched on his face.

“Walker, I can’t.” She breathed out the words, part plea and part prayer.

“I need you. I thought I could make it without you, but I can’t.” He let the words hang in the air between them, pinning her in place with his gaze.

She opened her mouth to tell him to go, that they couldn’t do this, but she couldn’t force the words past her too-tight throat. He waited a heartbeat longer and then he pulled her into his arms and she was lost, drowning in the feel of him. His mouth crushed hers, branding her. Owning her, and she gave him everything. This close to him—feeling his arms around her, breathing in the scent of him—she didn’t stand a chance. The pull was too strong, like fighting an undertow she was helpless against. It didn’t matter that her mind knew there was no future for her but to be smashed against the rocks. Her heart didn’t care. Struggling for breath and breathing with him instead, she gave up and fell.

––––––––

S
HEP WALKER SHOULD be flying. Nothing was certain until the caucus closed tomorrow night but he knew Nevada was his. He could feel it. Something changed the last couple of days of campaigning. It felt as if the tide turned and everything started running his way. Everything except Haven.

He knew she believed him about the pregnant woman, but it hadn’t mattered. She’d called him Senator and kept her distance, pushing jobs she used to handle off on Justin or Travis. Until they were on the debate stage tonight and she’d looked him in the eye and called him by his name. Having her meet his gaze, knowing she really saw him, suddenly became more than he could handle. He made it through the rest of the debate, did the kiss and camera stuff with Sandra and then hustled her and the girls onto the plane headed back to South Carolina. It hadn’t been difficult to convince his wife to go. Once the cameras disappeared, she was more than happy to race for home under the guise of maintaining the girls’ schedules.

The hard part had been waiting for Haven to open the door and watching her to see if she’d kick him out again. He gave her just enough time to say no, praying the whole time that she wouldn’t, and then he kissed her and parts of his world that had been wrong slid back into alignment. He hadn’t realized how lost he’d been until his lips touched hers and he found his way home again.

Right and wrong was irrelevant. He needed her like he needed air or food and he didn’t think that was going to change. Her rejection was the only thing strong enough to keep him away—not his vows, or his family or anything else. And then she was kissing him back, taking what she needed from his lips and for just a moment, he forgot how to breathe.

He didn’t wait to move her the few steps to the bed. Never taking his lips from hers, he backed her up against the wall, determined to be inside her before she came to her senses and changed her mind. If one of them had to be smart, it would have to be her. He couldn’t see anything beyond wanting her.

She didn’t resist him; she curled her body around his, wrapping her arms around his neck and draping her leg over his hips. It was as if now that she’d decided to let him in, she couldn’t get close enough and he fucking loved it. Cupping her breast over the silk of her blouse, he felt her nipple pebble against his palm. He wanted too many things at once—his mouth on her, drawing those sweet cries from her lips; his hand teasing her until she cried out for him. His body buried balls deep inside hers, giving them what they both ached for. He froze for a fraction of a heartbeat, deciding which way to go first, and she took the choice away from him, reaching between them for his belt.

Tugging on his waistband, she managed to unzip his pants and slide her small hand past his boxer briefs. When her fingers closed around him, his priorities reordered themselves and there was nothing he wanted more than to be inside her. Reaching under her skirt, he yanked at the scrap of lace covering her, groaning when he felt how wet she was, how ready.

“Fuck, Haven.” He said the words against her lips as he dragged the panties down her legs, baring her for him.

She freed him from his briefs and then he was wedged against her opening. He broke the kiss so he could look in her eyes as he palmed her ass and drove into her. The breath left him and for a moment, he froze, feeling the sweet perfection of her body vised tight around his. Her eyelids fluttered and he started to move, rocking her against the wall with every thrust.

“God. I need. Walker.”

The words fell from her lips in a continuous stream, each plea driving him higher, forcing him to give her everything. Her head banged against the wall and her body tightened around him the way it did when she was close. Keeping an iron grip on her ass, he slid his hand between their bodies to her swollen clit. He pinched the slick bundle of nerves and she exploded around him, pulsing as the orgasm tore through her. Her climax triggered his and he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to. Her body still spasmed around him as he pulsed inside her.

“I know it’s wrong,” he said, still holding her in his arms against the wall, their bodies still wedded to each other. “I don’t care. I’m not doing this without you. I can’t. Not anymore.”

He searched her face, waiting for the answer that would make everything okay. There wasn’t one. He knew that. He couldn’t divorce his wife in the middle of a campaign and he couldn’t live without Haven. It was an impossible situation. One even his brilliant campaign manager couldn’t fix. She shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears, and everything else became incidental.

“We don’t have a choice.”

M
ATT SLID HIS KEYCARD INTO the reader and pushed open the door to the fitness room. Instead of being hit with the odor of stale sweat and mildew common in the places he usually stayed, he smelled the clean citrus scent that belied the cost of his room upstairs. He and Jess had gone in together, but they’d still both had to chip in a little extra to cover the cost of the room in the upscale Roanoke hotel.

She’d picked it because she liked the architecture, which was kind of crazy because the historic hotel had tiny rooms. It didn’t matter. The bed more than made up for it—six feet of down-on-down bliss with crisp white sheets and a willing bedmate with no agenda other than multiple orgasms and as much sleep as possible. Hell, at this point the sleep almost edged out the orgasms. The schedule Walker kept leading up to Super Tuesday had been brutal: fourteen states in a week, including a crazy private jet flight to Alaska.

The senator touched down long enough to shake some hands and get his picture taken. If anyone asked him, Matt would have said it was a crazy use of resources for a share of the twenty-eight delegates, but nobody asked him. Only a couple of press members went on the trip and Matt wasn’t one of them. There was no way his paper would pony up for that kind of expense, which suited him fine. All the running around since Nevada, combined with bad road food, made him feel a couple of decades older than his twenty-six years, which was why he’d dragged his sorry butt out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn to log a couple of miles on the treadmill.