Grace sputtered. “You could at least be a little more modest.”
“No,” he replied, grinning. “I really don’t think I can be.”
The second time, they weren’t so hurried. Once he had her naked, he kissed her in all the expected places, and some of the unexpected ones too, like the crook of her elbow and the palm of her hand. Ethan played her like a musician, strumming his fingers between her legs, fine-tuning his motions against every roll of her hip. He kissed her nipples, then sucked them hard into his mouth until both of her breasts were heavy with the ache of arousal.
Then his lips were on her neck, her breasts, her stomach, and her hips, lingering with tantalizing promise. As he teased her body with his tongue, the Irish tunes from downstairs vibrated the floor beneath them while Grace made her own song of gasps and sighs.
Emboldened, she ran her fingers through the curls on his chest, loving the rough masculine texture of him. It made her heart thump, and she startled herself with the brazen way she let her hand skim over the flat-etched lines of his stomach and even lower than that.
“Wicked temptress,” he groaned as she stroked his cock.
The feel of him, hot and hard in her hand, made her feel like a wicked temptress. It also made her feel so powerful and alluring that when he rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, she eagerly took him deep inside her.
Riding him left her completely exposed—breasts, belly, hips, legs, and ass. But there was something heady about using her hips to set the pace, undulating until he was so excited that he seemed just a little bit at her mercy for a change.
He stroked her breasts, teasing her nipples, pulling them taut. But the moment their eyes met, she realized it was a kind of worship. He loved her body, she realized, and it made her feel beautiful…truly beautiful…maybe for the first time in her life.
He slipped his thumb into her mouth, and she sucked on it, her teeth teasing the pad. He grinned at her wanton reaction and there was a glint of challenge there, as if goading her to use his body for her pleasure. It was a challenge she accepted, too, because she felt like she was on fire. The heat of her arousal blazed between her legs, licking up her belly until it scorched her hard nipples. Her orgasm sparked and exploded. And when she came, she cried out his name more than once.
He stayed with her, letting her slide her sweat-slick body up and down his until she was ready to collapse. Then, and only then, did he give himself over to his own pleasure.
After, they lay together under the covers. His dark hair was in short, sweat-dampened curls and stubble shadowed his jaw; she liked the scratch of it against her cheek. She’d known that sex with him would be fun and exciting—what she hadn’t known was that lying in his arms afterward would make her so…happy.
Ethan was a big guy. Weighty. Solid. Like a rock she could cling to in a storm. Her fingers twined with his, hers golden, his pale. The sight of it moved her. She could imagine holding his hand, just like this, forever. Unfortunately, that illusion shattered the moment she remembered how they ended up here together.
Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
She’d let him seduce her in a bar where Jackson’s people might have seen them together. No. It was worse than that. She hadn’t let him seduce her. She’d practically begged him to! Let it not be said that he didn’t know how to make a girl’s wish come true, but now she was going to have to figure out a way to sneak out of this hotel without being caught doing the walk of shame. “Um, Ethan?”
“Mmph,” he said into her hair.
“Nobody can find out about this.”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” he murmured sleepily in her ear.
“We need to keep it professional,” she insisted.
“Kinky,” he said, nipping at her shoulder.
The fact that her body reawakened under such little provocation did nothing to ease her worries. “I mean we can’t do this again. This has to be the last time.”
Against her skin, she felt his lips twitch in a smile. Then he slid his hand very provocatively down her body and she groaned. She could resist him, she told herself. She could do it. She was the girl with superhuman self-discipline…but when he tugged her tight against his hard masculine body, she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Her mind knew better, but her body squirmed in anticipation. “Again?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, sucking her earlobe between his teeth.
Grace shivered, a rush of goose bumps on her arms. “Okay…but this is the last time.”
…
It wasn’t the last time.
Two weeks later on April Fool’s Day, Ethan opened the door to his luxury suite at the hotel and found her standing there in a trench coat and red peep-toe stilettos that defied the pull of gravity. It wasn’t the stilettos but the come-hither look in her eye that woke him right up. “Is this a prank, Grace? You know it’s one in the morning, right?”
“You used to be a night owl,” she said, with a hopeful little smile.
He looked her up and down, swallowing hard at the sexual tug between them. “It’s not raining…” His gaze fell to her red painted lips, then lower to the curves that had always driven him crazy. “Are you naked under that coat?”
“Nearly,” she said, peeling back the bottom edge of her coat, to flash him one leg, hugged by the lace band of her thigh-high stockings. The sight of sexy lingerie made him instantly hard.
“If you don’t let me in,” she said, “I’m going to lose my nerve…”
For a second, he felt like a kid at a candy shop, almost giddy to unwrap her. Then, mastering the steady throb of arousal in his groin, he leaned in close. “I can’t let you in unless we get something straight.” Ethan held onto the doorknob, hovering over her. “You need to know that if I let you in, I’m going to screw your brains out all night long. You’re not leaving until the sun’s up and you’re too sore to walk straight.”
Her eyes widened as if no one had ever talked to her that way. Lust and embarrassment warred in her expression and he worried that he’d overplayed it. But all at once, her gaze melted like hot molten chocolate. “Got it.”
He stood aside and she swept past him, sashaying those hips of hers in a way that made his heart hammer in his chest. Once inside, she stood in the middle of the room and started to undo her coat. Like a little vixen, she teased him with every button until the last one.
That’s when he noticed a tremor in her hand. She was nervous. This had been a big risk for her, he knew. And now she was looking at him like a kid in school who wanted to earn a big gold star. He wanted to give her that, and then some.
He grinned.
She opened her coat.
And it almost gave him a heart attack.
Damn. In nothing but thigh-high stockings, a pair of black lace panties, and a matching bra, her body was a curvaceous playground of possibility. He wanted to oil her up and slip and slide down all those heart-stopping arches and bends.
He didn’t realize how long he’d been staring until her dark elfish brows pulled together in worry. “I couldn’t think of what kind of underwear went with April Fool’s Day.”
He laughed. “Get over here.”
Two seconds later, she was in his arms and the trench coat was down around her ankles. He kissed her hard, smearing her lipstick, forcing her to whimper. Oh, he liked that. She’d been brave and sexy and he planned to reward her for it, if only he could keep control of himself, and that wasn’t going to be easy if he let her touch him.
His pants did next to nothing to dull the sensation of her fingertips over his swollen cock. Then she unzipped him and palmed his throbbing erection in her bare hand. His mouth went dry. Another moment and he would embarrass himself. He had to distract her.
One glance at the piano and he finally thought of a use for the damned thing. Hoisting Grace in his arms, he laid her down on it. She tried to sit up, but he forced her to sprawl over the shiny black top, caressing her breasts with one hand while hitching her thigh up over
his shoulder with the other.
“Oh God,” she whispered when he lowered his head between her thighs.
It was the wet spot in the crotch of her panties that nearly made him lose his mind. Tangible proof of how turned on she was and just how much she wanted him. He closed his mouth over the fabric, sucking her sex through the cloth, knowing that the extra friction would make her crazy.
“Ethan!” she cried out, then tangled her fingers in his hair.
He liked the way she tasted. He liked the smooth, downy skin of her thighs against the rough stubble of his cheek. Liked even more the way her mound quivered against his mouth when he yanked her panties down and begin licking her in earnest. He wanted to make her come hard and fast because once he was inside her, he wasn’t sure he could think about anyone else’s pleasure but his own. He used his tongue to torture her until she was nearly struggling to get away, her damp skin sliding on the piano top. But then he found just the right spot and her thighs clamped around his ears.
He kept her there, hovering right on the edge, until he was sure she couldn’t take anymore. Then he slipped his hands up over her breasts and tugged both her nipples, twisting them gently until she began to scream.
That was his girl, he thought, ridiculously smug about how easy it was to get her off. She was still writhing with pleasure when he slid on a condom, then slipped into her slick, swollen passage.
She made a sound of mingled arousal and relief when he started moving inside her. He groaned too. Damn, it felt good. He loved having her legs wrapped around his waist; he loved it almost as much as the feel of her soft but fevered skin under his hands. She belonged under him.
And that’s where he intended to keep her all night long.
…
The only thing more exciting than having an affair with Ethan Castle was having a secret affair with Ethan Castle. Grace could have written off St. Patrick’s Day as a lapse in judgment. But how could she explain last night’s romp on the grand piano? If last night was a mistake, it was a mistake she wanted to repeat, over and over again. This morning, even armed with a list of ten thousand things to do, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. It would be easier if her body wasn’t still tingling and overstimulated. Pressing her thighs together, she still felt a dull but pleasurable ache between them, and the memory of what Ethan had done made her squirm.
She’d never imagined herself as the kind of girl who might sneak into a man’s hotel room wearing nothing but a trench coat and sexy underwear, but Grace was starting to think she didn’t know herself at all. Or maybe she was just becoming someone else…someone sexier, more womanly, more confident. This man was making her aware of herself in a way she never had been before.
The strange thing was, she felt that way outside the bedroom, too. When she’d first taken over as campaign manager, she felt like someone called her up from a fantasy football league to try her hand at the real thing. But she was starting to get the hang of it, even without Blain calling her twenty times every day—which he did, because when he wasn’t in physical therapy, he had nothing to do but read newspapers and watch television.
“Grace, turn on the television,” Blain said into the phone, his voice at once urgent and amused.
She flipped on her office television. “I see Dale Delmont reporting outside the Bethesda Metro station. So what?”
“Turn up the volume. Your boy is a complete wack job.”
“My boy?” Grace watched as the camera panned down through throngs of commuters stepping over, past, and around the prone bodies of Dr. Dark Ages and his campaign volunteers lying on the pavement in a chalk line.
“I want people to understand that if we don’t prepare for pandemic diseases,” the professor was saying, “this could be what things look like. You’d have people dropping down sick in crowded areas, with too few medical personnel available to help them.”
“He’s a total crackpot!” Blain crowed while the camera panned to where Ethan Castle and PolitiGal handed out campaign literature to curious Metro passengers.
On the television, Dale Delmont asked, “Mr. Castle, how long is your candidate going to play dead?”
Ethan actually winked at the camera. “Just until we’ve made the point. We don’t want to cause a traffic jam in rush hour.”
Blain laughed. “What an attention whore.”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
“It’ll backfire,” Blain said. “Nothing angers Maryland commuters more than someone getting in their way.”
Grace didn’t agree. Or maybe she was just particularly susceptible to Ethan’s charm. “I think he just scored a point.”
“No way.”
Blain seemed convinced and, truthfully, Grace couldn’t imagine voting for somebody who would lie down on the pavement with dirt and discarded gum. But she had to admit, she was curious now. Was it possible a flu bug could incapacitate the state? And if she was wondering, were the voters wondering, too?
…
Ethan shook off his umbrella and glanced at his watch. As anticipated, Grace arrived at seven on the dot; she was nothing if not punctual. Too bad he couldn’t throw her down onto a conference table and have his way with her without six dozen aging Rotarians looking on.
Tonight was Professor Kim’s first political speaking engagement and Ethan was here to lend support. Grace, on the other hand, would be speaking for Old Man Halloway, who was either too busy—or too addled—to speak on his own behalf. She looked unusually confident, at least until Ethan let his eyes wander up and down her figure in that familiar raincoat and flashed her a knowing grin.
Enjoying every minute of the flush that crept up her neck and turned her cheeks pink, Ethan couldn’t remember when he’d had this much fun on a campaign. Inching next to her while Grace poured herself a soda, he flashed her a look of frank sensual appreciation.
She suppressed a grin. “Stop it.”
“What?” he asked, stabbing a chunk of cheese with a toothpick. “I’m hungry.”
Grace averted her gaze, grinning into her paper cup. “So you’re only standing way too close to me because you want access to the cheese plate?”
Access. The word sounded slightly provocative on her tongue and he liked it. “I never could resist a spicy, full-bodied…pepper jack.”
“Ethan, we’re working tonight,” she reminded him.
“Then let’s talk about the campaign. How’d you like my escapade at the Metro station?”
Smirking, she gave a shake of her head, which sent spikes of her hair in all directions, only making her look more stylish than before. “I’ve got to hand it to you. Crime-scene tape and chalk outlines are perfect visuals for a campaign on life support…”
“Ouch.” The jab might’ve hurt more if he wasn’t feeling so smug. “We’ve had free press attention for three days running and it touched off a slew of donations and calls from potential volunteers.”
“Volunteers, or nutjobs?” she asked.
Some were nutjobs—Ethan was going to have to weed them out—but the campaign now had money. With money, he could buy posters, pamphlets, lawn signs, and phone lines. With luck, Ethan might even score some transportation to help get voters to the polls on primary day, but that was still a pipe dream. All things he wanted to share with Grace, but knew better. “Didn’t you wonder why I chose Bethesda?”
Grace kept her eyes straight ahead. “Because Montgomery County is one of the most politically active counties in the state?”
That was another good reason, but Ethan added, “Because that Metro station is near the National Institutes of Health, where a lot of commuters are doctors who care about pandemic diseases. Donations from members of the AMA are sweet.”
She took another sip of her soda, apparently enjoying the sparring as much as he was. “So, it’s all about the money even for grassroots campaigns like yours.”
“Careful, Grace. Your Potomac Fever is showing.”
She gave him a mock glare. “Potomac Fever?
”
“Yeah, it’s the pandemic disease that senators and their staffers get when they’ve been in government so long they think it’s a birthright. It’s easy to pretend you don’t care about campaign fund-raising when your war chests are full.”
He was only teasing her, but a spark of genuine fire lit behind her eyes. “I was eleven years old the first time I worked on the Halloway campaign. We worked out of his garage. I donated my crayons.”
It was so endearing, the way she defended her boss, that he didn’t even feel like arguing. What she was doing, taking on a campaign without prior experience, was an act of raw courage. And in spite of everything, her loyalty to her boss inspired him and touched him somewhere deep. She was a maddening, kooky, frustrating woman…and he was falling in love with her.
He might have even said so, had the Rotarians not called the meeting to order. “Batter up,” Ethan said, leaving Grace when Professor Kim took the podium. His candidate was jittery, but Ethan quietly grunted in approval every time Professor Kim hit one of the talking points Ethan had drawn up about disease and public safety.
Then it was Grace’s turn. She took the podium, tossed that sassy hairdo of hers out of her eyes, then addressed the crowd. “On behalf of Senator Halloway, I’d like to thank Professor Kim for sounding the alarm on the public safety crisis of pandemic disease. Senator Halloway isn’t able to be here tonight precisely because he’s voting on a bill that will increase funding to our first responders so they can better protect us from all disasters—not just disease.”
Pow! It was a sucker punch to the gut that Ethan should have seen coming. With just a few words, Grace painted her boss as someone who was actually doing something about the problems Professor Kim just talked about.
Ethan was kind of pissed that he didn’t check the legislative agenda for the night, but he couldn’t help but feel proud of her.
Then someone broke protocol and shouted a question about Senator Halloway making national news for sexual harassment. Grace did the best she could answering the question, but it was fast becoming the Achilles’ heel of her entire campaign. Senator Halloway’s behavior had forced the governor to issue an apology to his own assistant and there was absolutely nothing Grace could do to tamp down the feeding frenzy. For all her good intentions, the momentum was getting away from her candidate. Ethan hoped she realized there were just some things that no campaign manager could fix.
In Bed With the Opposition Page 15
