Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (30 page)

“It didn’t go in,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Just scraped past.”

We had no medical supplies so we just had to do the best we could. The room had a coffee maker and I used that to boil some water, then let it cool and washed the wound out as best I could. Then I ripped strips from his shirt and used those as bandages. I could feel his body tensing in pain under my hands but he never once cried out.

When I was done, he turned on the TV and flicked to a 24-hour news channel. He grabbed my hand and held it: I didn’t understand why, at first.

Then the picture appeared and I gripped his hand harder than I ever had before.

“—White House still won’t release any information on the status of the President,” said the anchorwoman. “We know that he was shot, at an event at the Museum of Natural History, and that he was rushed to George Washington hospital where he remains. The First Lady is said to be at the White House. We don’t know—” She broke off. “I’ve just been told that we’re going live to the White House for an emergency press conference.”

The screen changed to a shot of Jessica standing in the White House Press Briefing Room. She’d aged at least ten years since I’d seen her a few hours ago. She cleared her throat. “I have a short statement,” she said. “I won’t be taking any questions.” She swallowed. I’d never seen her so hesitant, so downright
scared.
“Approximately ten minutes ago, there was an emergency Cabinet meeting. Under Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, the powers and duties of the President have been transferred to the Vice-President. The Vice-President is currently at a secure location and will address the nation shortly. That is all.”

Jessica turned away but there was an immediate uproar. Every single member of the press corps jumped to their feet. “Jessica! Is the President alive?”

“Has anyone claimed responsibility for the shooting?

“Is a suspect in custody?”

Jessica started to walk off stage.

A man at the back yelled, “Jessica, what about Emily? Where is the President’s daughter?”

Jessica looked towards the man and there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head and walked off stage.

As the news channel returned to the studio, I started to shake and couldn’t stop.

Edward Kerrigan was now the most powerful man in the world.

Emily

“We—We have to go there.” I was babbling, the words flooding out as uncontrollably as my shivers. “We have to go there and tell them, we have to tell everybody—”

“We can’t go to the White House,” said Kian.

I gaped at him. “We
have to!
We have to tell everyone what happened!
Kerrigan is running the country!”

He gently placed his hands on my shoulders. “It isn’t safe anymore,” he said, the emotion making the Irish come through in his voice. “Look.” He pointed to the TV.

The shaken anchorwoman was now talking through the implications of Kerrigan becoming President. Over her shoulder, live footage from the White House Press Briefing Room showed Jessica being escorted off stage... by two guys in Rexortech uniforms.

“This is what I was afraid of,” said Kian. “Kerrigan can do anything he likes now. And the first thing he’s done is to put his own people into the White House—he’ll say it’s additional security, to back up the Secret Service. No one’s going to question it, after what happened at the museum. Those guys will be loyal to him and they’re just
waiting
for us to show our faces. We’re the only ones who know what Kerrigan’s done. He wants us both dead.”

Now I understood. If we called for rescue, Kerrigan would insist that Rexortech, not the Secret Service, be the ones to pick us up. And then, on the way to the White House, there’d be another attack by the Brothers of Freedom. We’d never make it to the White House alive.

“Kian,
my mom is there,”
I said. “They said she’s in the White House. The Secret Service are probably too scared to let her leave to visit my dad, like after I was shot. That means she’s
right there with Kerrigan’s guys!”

He pulled me close, folding me into his arms. “She’ll be okay. She doesn’t know what Kerrigan’s done: she’s no threat to him.”

My stomach churned. I could see the sense in what he was saying, but I hated to think of her there, unaware that she was now right in the middle of the lion’s den. “We could call someone we trust,” I said in a small, scared voice. “Harlan. Even Miller. Get them to bring us in.”

Kian shook his head. “Remember, Rexortech are tied into all the White House communications equipment. They’d intercept the call... and they still have people cruising the streets looking for us. They’d get here before the Secret Service could. Even if we
could
get to the White House, the place is filled with Rexortech guys. That building is the most dangerous place in the world for you, right now. All he’d have to do is get someone to slip something in your drink or inject you with something while you slept. I can’t protect you there.”

My last hopes crumbled. The one place I always thought was safe was now a trap. I buried my face in Kian’s chest. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.

His hands tightened around my back. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I swear to you, I’ll get you out of this.” I was still shaking—from the fear and from the cold. I’d been sitting there in my freezing, soaked dress the whole time. “God, you’re freezing,” he told me.

He picked me up and carried me, taking most of my weight on his good arm, then put me down in the tiny bathroom. He turned on the shower, waited until the water ran hot, then pulled off my heels and pushed me inside, still in my dress. I gasped as the water sluiced down over my scalp and shoulders, almost too hot to bear... but then the warmth started to soak into my bare arms and it felt good. While I warmed up, he worked at getting my soaked dress off me—not easy, because the fabric was clinging to me, but he gradually managed to work it up over my head and off. My breasts sprang free, the flesh chilled and the nipples hard from the cold. Then the water hit them, too, and I caught my breath as they started to warm up.

Kian hooked his thumbs into the waistband of my panties and stripped them down my legs and off—even they were soaked. The water ran down my stomach, over my thighs, gradually warming me from the top down. My toes were numb from trudging along in the freezing rain but they started to thaw, burning and tingling. I hugged my arms around myself and lifted my face up to the water, letting the heat sink into me. I felt better... but not right. Inside, I was still trembling.

I reached out toward Kian. “Please,” I said. “Hold me.”

He stripped off his pants and shoes and stepped into the shower, his big body hulking over me. For a second, he blocked the spray and I went cold... but then the water cascaded down from his shoulders and hit me, warming both of us. He pulled me into his arms and cradled me there, my cheek against his chest, and we let the water flow down our backs while our fronts warmed each other. My trembling slowed and finally stopped.

I began to run my hands up and down his arms. I needed to feel him, needed to reassure myself that he was real. He was the one thing I had left to hang onto now that everything else had been ripped away.

And he was the only thing I needed.

My palms smoothed over his shoulders, taking in their wideness and the hard bulk of the muscle there. They swept down, remembering to dodge the bandaged wound, and my fingers skimmed the slippery-wet bulges of his biceps. The size of him, the sheer power of his body made me feel safe... and made me go weak. My hands worked back around him, tracing the contours of his back, my fingers so delicate next to him: I was a vine, clinging to a rock face.

He responded, pushing my wet hair back away from my face and gathering it into a rope so that he could bend over me and kiss my neck. I pushed against him, my breasts pillowing against his chest, as his lips worked their way down behind my ear, his teeth nibbling at my shoulder. He drew back and we nuzzled against each other, noses brushing cheeks, lips brushing chins. I could feel the tension in his body, his hands starting to squeeze as he worked them down my sides and onto my hips. We were at the tipping point, sliding from
comforting
to raw and sexual.

I parted my lips... and that was all it took to tip us over the edge.

Immediately, he was kissing me, his tongue teasing the edges of my lips and then plunging deep to own me. I moaned through it, running my hands down his body. Back in my bedroom at the White House, he’d done most of the touching. Now I was free to explore him, feeling the hardness of his ass and the brute power of his thighs. As I shifted against him, I felt his cock swelling against my thigh, already half-hard. I reached down and curled my fingers around it and he gasped. God, so thick, so hot, stiffening and growing under my fingers in a way that made my chest flutter. I started to stroke it and he growled and pushed me back against the tiled wall.

“Christ,” he muttered, and that gleam of Irish silver was thick in his voice. “You’ve got no feckin’ idea how much I want you.”

His hand slid down my wet stomach and then on down between my thighs. I caught my breath and parted my legs for him. His fingers brushed through the damp curls of my hair and found my lips. He rubbed me there and then pushed slowly inward, one thick finger sliding up into me. I groaned in response, mashing my ass back against the tiles. His palm was hard against my clit and I rocked against it.

We pressed our bodies together, him fingering me and me stroking him as the water sluiced down on us, trapping us in our own little world of heat and comfort. His finger moved faster and then he added a second finger, stretching me just right. My nipples were hard again, scarlet threads of pleasure lashing through me every time they scraped against his wet chest. I kissed a line between his nipples, burying my lips in the deep center line that ran down his chest. He growled, then pushed back and looked into my eyes.

“Don’t move,” he told me. He stepped out of the shower, retrieved something from his discarded pants then stepped back against me. He tore open the packet, rolled on the condom and then he was stepping between my legs, knocking them wider with his knees. The tip of him rubbed up against my lips, throbbing and hot, and I grabbed for his shoulders. Then he was easing into me, one glorious, heated millimeter at a time.

This time, I didn’t have to worry about making a noise. In fact, with the water pounding down all around us and the fact we were in a tight little room within a room, in theory I could really let loose.
If only I was like that,
I thought. I’d never dared to be vocal with the few boyfriends I’d had: I was too self-conscious. Even now, I—

The head of his cock reached its widest point, stretching me, and then slipped in. “
Ah!”
I gasped, unable to stop myself. Immediately, I flushed. But Kian was staring down at me with nothing but lust in his eyes. He
wanted
to hear me.

He pressed me back hard against the wall, pinning my shoulders there with both hands, and started to move deeper, never moving faster than a few millimeters a second. I began to pant: the sensation of being steadily filled, of being made aware of how damn wet I was, was indescribable. Pleasure blossomed outward, making me claw helplessly at his arms.

His thighs pressed between mine, his groin coming closer and closer to my body as he lunged up into me. My eyes opened wide, staring into his, and it began as a low, guttural cry of pleasure that rose and rose. “
Kiiiiiaaann!”
My eyes squeezed tight shut as I felt him go
deep...
and then fluttered open as I felt his groin kiss my body and realized he was in me completely.

He lowered his head to mine and kissed me like that, deep and hungry, my wet hair cushioning my head against the tiles as we twisted and turned, our kisses open-mouthed and desperate. Every tiny movement we made moved me around his cock, making me gasp and shudder. The last vestiges of who I used to be—or who I
thought
I used to be—slipped away. I was still the President’s daughter, but I didn’t feel like a good girl, anymore.

He moved his hands to my hips, holding me fast against the tiles and tilting me up to meet him. At his first slow, deep stroke I felt the pleasure tighten, squeezing into a red-hot ball. Then, as those powerful hips began to slam between my thighs, his groin grinding against my clit, I began to twitch and mumble, eyes closed, water sluicing down my face. “God,
yes!
Yes, yes, yes!”