Saving Liberty (Kissing #6)
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Authors: Helena Newbury
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© Copyright Helena Newbury 2016
The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+.
Cover by Mayhem Cover Creations
Main cover model photo image licensed from (and copyright remains with) NT Lady/Shutterstock
Acknowledgments
Thank you Liz - you went the extra mile on this one.
Thank you Pearl for the beta read.
And thank you to my readers, who let me do what I love.
Emily
Sometimes I think: five minutes earlier or five minutes later. That’s all it would have taken. If Kian hadn’t strolled towards me right when he did, we’d never have met... and I’d be dead.
It was a gloriously warm September day. No one expected any trouble, so I only had the normal level of protection: five guys from the Secret Service plus a perimeter guarded by the Washington DC police. The park had been swept at dawn for bombs, there was a helicopter circling overhead, and two streets had been temporarily closed.
You know:
normal.
When you’re the President’s daughter.
Anacostia Park was a sprawling oasis of green in the heart of DC’s gray. The science fair’s organizers had made towering sculptures of DNA strands from red and yellow balloons, bright and glossy against the blue sky. The press photographers were going nuts, snapping picture after picture of me talking to the kids. I nodded enthusiastically as they told me about their solar-powered radios and battling robots. I wasn’t faking it, either. The exhibits blew me away: they made my own vinegar-and-soda volcano back in high school seem pretty lame. Choosing just one winner was going to be heartbreaking.
I checked out the final entry, told the kids I had to consult with the other judges and stepped away to get some water. And that’s when I saw him for the very first time.
I actually saw the guy he was with first: just another corporate sponsor in a suit, hurrying towards me to get a picture shaking my hand. He fitted the scene. Then I saw the guy following just behind him and my brain went
wait, what?
Because that guy didn’t fit the scene at all.
Everything about him raged against the neat, safe, family-friendly atmosphere. He wasn’t wearing handmade Italian shoes like all the senators who’d stopped by; he was wearing lace-up leather boots that could have come straight from the Army. And not as some kind of fashion statement: these looked worn and battered, like they’d actually been to a warzone. His blue jeans had that perfect, lazy fit that you only get from a favorite pair that’s been worn
a lot,
when the fabric goes super-soft and barely seems to be there, the next best thing to being naked when it’s a warm day. The blue denim was stretched tight over muscled calves and hard thighs that could have graced a linebacker.
I blinked and stared at those strong legs as he strolled towards me. His walk didn’t fit, either. All the guys in DC walk like they’re trying to prove something, whether they’re a senator or a lowly aide. It’s all the testosterone in the air and the constant eyes of the press. But this guy strolled through the scene as if oblivious to the cameras. As if he was experiencing life instead of acting it out. He looked...
real
.
I blinked as the sun glinted off his belt buckle. That didn’t fit either: big and brash and definitely not picked out by some overpaid personal stylist. And then the breeze lifted the bottom of his t-shirt a few inches and my eyes were drawn inexorably
up….
His abs looked hard as rock: smooth, warm, rock, tanned from the sun and so very strokable—God, I could see the deep crease of his Adonis belt leading diagonally down towards—
The t-shirt dropped back into place but my eyes kept following the line—
No, I’m not going to look at his—
But my eyes were already on the heavy bulge between those strong thighs. Heavy and...
hard.
I could feel my face heating up.
Everyone else in Washington is oddly sexless. Oh, sure, power is an aphrodisiac and senators will bend their naive young assistants over the desks just to prove how goddamn awesome they are, but it’s all done in a polite, carefully-choreographed ballet. This is a city where husbands and wives only argue over their affairs when one of them is indiscreet and threatens the other’s chances for re-election.
This guy was the polar opposite of that. Raw and wild, untamed. He didn’t hide his sexuality behind double-talk and mind games. He wasn’t hiding the fact he was getting hard, under that tight denim. Whichever woman he was checking out would know
,
when she looked down and saw that bulge, that he was thinking about—
Wait, who
was
he checking out? He seemed to be looking my way. I twisted around, frowning, but I couldn’t see anyone behind me.....
My eyes widened. He was looking at
me...
and he was still approaching.
I snapped back to front and hauled my eyes desperately
up.
The breeze was plastering the soft cotton of his t-shirt against his torso, now, a vertical cliff as solid and unyielding as granite. I could see the shallow depression where the fabric blew into his navel: an
inny,
same as me. We’d match.
Wait, why am I even thinking that?
I found my eyes being drawn up, hypnotized by the swing of his pecs under that tight black cotton. Wide shoulders and broad, huge pecs that didn’t make me think of DC gym bunnies who get up at 5am to pump iron. It put me in mind of a soldier, a
warrior:
muscles that weren’t just for show. And, yep, I could see ink on those thick biceps, tattoos that looked like they could be military.
The guy was
big,
bigger than any of the suits around me, bigger than any of my Secret Service detail. And a
lot
bigger than my own small frame. In fact: if I stood up against him, like
right up against him
with my front pressed to his front, and someone looked at him from behind, I’d disappear, completely hidden by that big body. I reeled a little, imagining it. My nose would be near the tops of his pecs, my lips perfectly positioned to kiss across that warm expanse of flesh, my breasts would be brushing that hard torso and, further down, his groin would be—