Cold Hearted: Bad Boy Romance

by Amy Faye

  The doctor closed her eyes and rubbed the place along her nose where the bridge piece of a pair of glasses would fall, though she wasn't wearing any.

  "Yes, I can tell you all about it, if you'll follow me, please."

  When they stepped outside, an orderly was waiting, and followed them. Lara watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was big, for a hospital employee. Somehow, deep down inside her gut, she couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't there to push dollies and make doctors coffee at one in the morning.

  Something told her that he was there for her, and if she stepped too far out of line, it wasn't going to be one bit of trouble for him to stop her from doing something to her child.

  She would never in a million years. Nobody who knew her thought that was even a risk. But when the right mouth reaches the right ears, it's not hard to get people to believe anything. And in Lara's case, it seemed she'd just about pissed off the right people.

  27

  Paul's skin felt wrong on his body. The suit was too tight, the career path too narrow, and everywhere around him, the grass was green. All except the path where he walked, where the last thousand people to walk through had left the grass dead and dying and a trail of blood to go along with it.

  Was that what he wanted? Was that what he wanted the world to be like?

  What if he didn't want to? What did that even mean? He was the Democratic nominee. The people had voted, and they'd evidently decided that he was the candidate they preferred.

  He'd always considered the mantle of President, like any other power, to be one that someone should only wield if they wanted nothing to do with it. Someone who would be reluctant to use any of his power would be even more reluctant to use it wrong.

  When had he stopped feeling that way? When had he decided that there were a thousand little things that he could fix, if only he worked hard and hoped to hell?

  What did that mean about him? Did it mean that he was moving towards a big fall? What did it say that in order to get there, to use the power that he shouldn't have wanted in the first place, he'd surrounded himself with all the muck and filth of people who shouldn't have been trusted with your dry cleaning?

  He let out a breath and looked up at the waiting room doors again, hoping that he'd see a woman who looked every bit like she was the perfect mother walking through it.

  She didn't. Lara had been gone a long time. He'd checked his watch when twenty minutes were gone, and that was a long time ago. He didn't want to check the watch again, for fear that he would find out it had only been another twenty minutes, and that she would be at least another twenty after that. Each unit of twenty seemed to be getting longer than the one before it.

  Two hours, by the time expansion he seemed to be experiencing, might take up the rest of his life, and she would come back in looking as perfect as usual to find him a withered old husk of a man. Ten years was a long time. It was a long time that had turned him from someone testing the edge of his morality into a man who knew where the lines were because he wasn't afraid to cross them to get what he needed.

  He wondered again what that meant. The sound of a door closing drew his attention and he looked up again, forcing his hope to stifle itself as long as he could. Footsteps came closer, and he allowed a little bit of it to seep in.

  Then the man turned the corner. He was tall, dark-skinned and he looked like he'd been there the better part of twenty-four straight hours. Paul watched him go with the sort of mild interest that someone has for anything changing against a blank canvas.

  The woman who seemed too fat for any single chair snored loudly, her head pressed back against a wall and her mouth lolling open. He took a deep breath and tried to pretend that he wasn't disgusted by it, but he was.

  When Lara got back, hopefully with Tim in tow… he didn't know what he'd do precisely, but something told Paul that he needed to do something. Some celebratory gesture, celebrating that Tim was fine. That there was really nothing to worry about.

  The plan formed itself in his head, and he went back to the last time he'd tried to celebrate something. The other night he'd hoped to celebrate a decent speech performance, and he'd gotten them all in a car accident. What was the next celebration going to bring? A crazed gunman?

  He nixed the idea of any sort of celebration. Everyone was tired. They could celebrate on the plane, if they wanted to. Get some fast food or something on the way to the airport and once they were in the air, break out the happy meals or whatever.

  Another deep breath and another long wait. On the television was the sort of thing that gets shown after midnight; in this case, it was a program explaining about rocks. The rocks in question, apparently, were sufficiently rare to merit discussion, but he wasn't exactly sure how that was supposed to be.

  He didn't want to pay attention to the television so he didn't. The rocks might as well have been magic rocks. Maybe then he'd at least pay that amount of attention. He pushed his hair back. It was getting a little bit long. He'd need to have it cut again before the next debate, or his disastrous hair would be all the talk.

  Kennedy had learned that lesson well. Television cameras mean that the better-looking man wins the debate, regardless of what is said. Kennedy had been the better-looking man and he'd won. Too bad good looks can't stop a bullet, or he might have had a really good run.

  Paul stood up and crossed the room, looked out and down the hall, and then crossed the room back the other way. There had to be something he could do, he told himself. There had to be. It just wasn't clear yet what that was. Who precisely did he have to cut a check to get them to give him some kind of feedback on one little boy?

  He sat down again, looked around the room, stood back up and walked over again. There was someone coming from the other side of the waiting room door. Another orderly stepped through, perhaps Lara's height. Petite. He also had a beard tracing his chin, and the entire thing smacked of a man trying somewhat too hard.

  Paul stepped back, and his spirit broke enough to check the time on his watch. It hadn't been twenty minutes, thank God. It had been forty, and the whole thing together had added up to two hours so far, and no end in sight. He let out a long breath, tried to ignore the buzz-saw across the room, and paced back to his seat.

  He didn't bother to sit this time. He crossed back to the door, stepped out and into the lavatory this time. The room lights flicked on as soon as he stepped inside without any need to touch them, and he locked the door behind him with a turn of a heavy bolt into place. There was a great deal that he was more than willing to ignore. A great number of things he was willing to risk.

  For example, he'd never been a fan of condoms. It was a risk that he took, but not a risk that he was afraid of ever falling victim to. There were a thousand things that he could do to make the problem go away if it ever arose. He could pay the mother to keep quiet, for one thing. But so far, thankfully, he hadn't had to.

  He finished his business in the lavatory, straightened up, washed his hands and left. He stepped back into the waiting room, his head bowed for a moment to give his neck muscles at least a moment to relax. He was nearly to his seat when he noticed someone standing there.

  "I'm sorry I took so long," Lara said. Her voice was clipped and irritated, but for once Paul thought she didn't seem irritated with him. Something else had gotten to her. Something he didn't much care to think about, in spite of all the time that he would spend later worrying about it.

  "There's nothing to be sorry for. What's the problem?"

  She let out a long breath. "I don't know," she answered finally. "They said that he's got a fever. They think it's a bacterial infection."

  "Anything serious?"

  She shrugged. "They're going to put him on antibiotics, and he should be improved in a couple of days."

  Paul let out a long breath and lowered himself into one of the seats. "So until then we wait?"

  "I wait, at least. You don't exactly have time to waste waiting around, do you?"
<
br />   Paul closed his eyes. No, he really didn't. She was right about that. But he'd spent years worrying about all the wrong things, and this wasn't going to be one of those times, if he could help it. He could help it, just barely. He reminded himself of that.

  "I guess I technically don't," he agreed.

  "So what am I going to do? Are you going to, what, fly me back to Utah when he gets out?"

  Paul looked up. "No such thing. I won't hear a word of it. No, I'm going to wait here."

  "But you just said…"

  "I know what I said, and I said I'm going to wait here. The press can wait."

  "You don't have to do that for me," Lara answered. Paul smiled to himself, in spite of his better judgment.

  "I wouldn't. I'm awfully selfish, Lara; you know that. I'm staying because I want to stay."

  "For me?"

  "For Tim," he answered. He tried to play it off like a joke, but it wasn't. "And just a little bit for you, too, I suppose."

  28

  The question of how she was supposed to get home at who knows when at night, without getting herself mugged or shot or worse, was never a question that crossed Lara's mind. Staying up past midnight wasn't a habit that she kept, and staying out of the house past dark wasn't particularly common.

  She had everything she needed at home, with the possible exception of things like groceries. There were thousands of things to worry about out in the world, but in her little apartment, there wasn't much. Crime was fairly low, and break-ins when people were actually home? Almost unheard of. The few that happened were closer to home invasions than robberies. A jealous ex-husband decided to come and do what he wanted to punish his wife for the terrible injustice of leaving him.

  Well, she wasn't going to allow that to happen to her. It was the easiest thing in the world for Lara to avoid because she didn't have any jealous ex-husbands. She didn't have any jealous ex-boyfriends, either.

  That, she was discovering, was not entirely true. To her great relief, her jealous ex-boyfriend was sitting across from her, as the two of them rode along the street in an SUV with a big enough space in the middle of it to fuck. The comparison made her blush when she realized that she probably wouldn't have been the first to think it.

  She wondered if he'd ever tried it but didn't want to be the first to speak. The entire SUV was silent, and she kept her hands in her lap and tried not to think too hard about anything other than how her son was doing.

  "Thank you," she said. Her voice was low and hoarse and she sounded all kinds of wrong.

  "What for?" Paul looked at her, confused. As if he hadn't realized that she'd been in trouble at all.

  "For the ride home," she said. "And, you know… just… everything. I know that you didn't have to do all this, and I just wanted you to know that I do appreciate it."

  "You're welcome, I guess. It's no trouble at all. I don't even really think you need to thank me."

  She shook her head. "I do, because if I don't, I think I'm going to go crazy."

  "Crazy?"

  "I can't stop thinking. Just, about… everything."

  The thought occurred to her an instant after the words left her mouth that she'd always had one sure-fire way of forgetting about everything that was bothering her. It wasn't the sort of thing that she thought bore repeating, but that thought wormed its way into her head, deeper and deeper as they drove.

  There certainly was quite a bit of space. She'd made do before, with Paul himself, in the back of cars much smaller than this one. In positions much less comfortable than it would no-doubt be laying there. She tried to push the thought away but it came back more fiercely. She pinched her thighs together, like the old joke about aspirin birth control.

  If she'd had tighter knees before, then she wouldn't have ever had any of the trouble that had come to her. That trouble had gotten her Tim, though, and that was the single best part of her life. The one thing that she refused to do without.

  So maybe mistakes weren't so bad. She found her knees getting looser as the thought ran through her mind. "Come here," she purred.

  Paul raised an eyebrow and pushed a button on the separator between front and back, raising a privacy shield, and then he slid across the car.

  "Lara, it's two in the morning."

  "Are you saying you're not interested?"

  She pressed a kiss against his lips and he didn't pull away.

  "I'm always interested," he answered. "But are you sure you don't want to rest?"

  "Fuck rest," she answered. She pushed his hand up her skirt and it didn't take long before he got the idea, moving and touching and caressing and making a very good little job of it.

  "I don't know if this is a very good idea," he said, but his teeth scraped against her skin and the resulting warmth that spread in her belly, the feeling of pleasure that threatened to completely overwhelm whatever thoughts she might have otherwise had, told her otherwise.

  "Paul?" She rubbed her hands on the rapidly-forming bulge at the front of his trousers. He grunted a 'hm?' "I know you're very smart, but right now I'm not using you as an idea man. I've got my own ideas."

  "Oh yeah?" He rubbed his thumb along the top of her pussy, teasing the hardened nub at the top and driving her a little bit past wild.

  "Yeah."

  "Mind sharing?"

  "I need you to get on your knees, and we'll figure it out from there."

  As it turned out, Paul didn't need much instruction beyond that. She lifted his hips a little ways and then her pantyhose were pulling over her ass and down her legs, exposing her skin to the climate-controlled cool air in the back of that SUV.

  Paul's lips traced a line up her thigh, each kiss burning like he was the one with the fever, but she knew that there was more to it than just body heat. Her gut started to twist and she wanted him to move faster. Silently she sent as many psychic instructions to get to it, to dig in and lick her god damned pussy.

  If he got the messages he ignored them. He traced that same line down her opposite thigh, the opposite direction of where she wanted. Her toes were already starting to curl in anticipation but he made her wait there, her legs propped up on the seat opposite her and everything about her body tenser and waiting for him to loosen her up, to give her what she needed.

  "You smell good," he told her, and for a lurching moment she wanted to slap him. Instead she grabbed his head and pushed it where she wanted him to go. He didn't waste any more time digging in, tasting her. His tongue traced lines and shapes around her, each little movement sending fire up her spine, twisting up her insides a little more until they were as tight as piano-wire and any little movement felt as if it might send her over the edge.

  He didn't stop to admire her coming to the end of her rope. Instead, he moved more roughly, his tongue exploring even as his fingers moved to make sure that nothing was ever left without attention for too long. The tightness of building orgasm finally reached a breaking point and she snapped and let out a scream as her legs, previously hanging over his shoulders, tightened around his neck and pulled him in tight, pulled his mouth in closer to her core.

  Her body rode his face, regardless of what he did, as the orgasm started to fade. She laid her head back against the headrest and took a deep breath, the car smelling like her sex and she wondered if that was all they were going to do. She was ready for so much more, and if she knew Paul at all, he wasn't exactly going to be hesitating to accommodate her, either.

  Her body relaxed and she let his head go. He pulled away, but his hands didn't. They kept playing, kept teasing, kept moving and wriggling inside her, finding all the right places. The fire in her gut started to rekindle itself even after she thought that he'd doused the whole thing. Her hips moved before she even knew what she was doing to meet him, rolling so that his hand would touch her in the right spots over and over again. And then, all at once, she could feel that she was starting to get close again, starting to build again to another orgasm on the horizon.

  It w
as only then that he finally pulled away, sat back on the opposite bench seat and looked at her. She must have been quite a spectacle sitting there, skirt pushed up to her waist and pantyhose around her ankles, but God did she feel good. And the way that he was looking at her, she guessed that he wasn't planning on being quite finished with her just yet.

  She forced herself forward and settled onto his lap, her weight distributed between his legs.

  "Is there something you wanted in return, Mr. Senator?"

  He pressed a kiss against her jaw and took one full breast in his hand and she knew that he had some ideas.

  29

  Paul's body hummed with arousal, and the woman who was going to deal with it sat on his lap, almost fully dressed. That was going to have to change.

  He had some practice undressing women, and her clothes were not so unusual that he had trouble figuring this one out, either. A thin, little zipper pull between his fingers and he worked it down. He allowed a finger to drag behind, touching her skin as it was revealed. His body started to tighten in anticipation, his hardness nestled between her thighs and getting harder with every second.

  "God, you have no idea what you do to me," he growled. The smile on her face seemed to suggest that maybe she had some idea of what she was doing to him after all. The zipper reached the bottom of its track and she started to pull the garment forward and off, revealing a black bra. It stood off against her pale skin attractively, but where he was sitting in that moment, it was little more than in the way.

  Again, one handed, he moved to twist with his fingers and the clasp came apart in his fingers easily. She let that slip from her shoulders as well, revealing her breasts.

  They were surprisingly perfect, he thought. For a woman her age, they were almost impossibly nice. For a mother? He'd found himself a little miracle for himself in the world. He pressed his lips against those breasts, enjoying the taste of her skin and the soft feeling under his lips.