by Eden Butler
Maybe I should have ignored the question. Likely would have been the better decision, but where Lia was concerned, I was always shit out of luck with smart decisions.
The streets around us were empty, the cityscape disappearing into sparse, rural lots and tiny, historic buildings and I watched them, knowing Lia kept her gaze locked onto my profile.
“You’ve known me, what? More than sixteen years?” It was a question I didn’t need her to answer. She didn’t bother. “How many times you thank me for having your back? Before...” I dropped my head, shooting a glance at her, then I looked back out of the window. “Before that night at my place or that morning in the residence...before any of that, you told me I was the best. Even President Harris...” I cleared my throat when Lia exhaled as though her dead husband’s name on my lips was some cardinal sin I shouldn’t attempt committing. But there were worse sins left at my feet, some of them Lia might not ever forgive me for if she knew about them. “Your husband caught us. No way to hide it. But even before that, I was the best. You knew it. He knew it, my superiors knew it, and I suspect President Gable knows it or he wouldn’t put me in charge of your security.”
“We have history,” she said, voice stern, elevated, so much that I turned away from the window to watch her. She wasn’t nervous, not the least bit timid and I wasn’t sure if that defiant streak would ever leave her. Wasn’t sure I wanted it to. Lia relaxed against the seat when I nodded and her face lost some of its tension.
She was putting it mildly. The way she said that felt like an insult to the vivid memory of us together as kids, and six years before when we definitely weren’t kids at all.
“That’s a fact,” I said, mouth in a line as I watched her, as I let the slip of recall move through my head.
Lia slipping over me, her wet, hot pussy like a vise against my cock as she rode me, my fingers digging into her round, perfect ass, her muscles clamping tight. She held me everywhere that first night back in college—her thighs squeezing against my legs, her teeth gently scraping my skin, her fingers tugging my hair, her sweet, hot pussy milking me, taking me, and I was consumed. One touch, one taste, and Ophelia Baptiste owned me.
“You have to trust me,” I told her, grateful that she couldn’t see how tightly I squinted behind the black shades I wore. “We have history. We have issues, that’s a given, but you’re not being...rational.”
“Rational?” she tried, her voice shrieking a little before I silenced her with one shake of my head.
“Squash our history. Put it out of your head. They wanted me here because he knew I’d protect you more so than anyone because we have history. That’s precisely why it’s me watching you. I’m more invested than anyone would be. I’m more transparent. We got history...”
“Not the right kind.”
“Maybe not,” I paused, hating the sarcastic tone of her voice and how she’d gone all rigid on me again—arms crossed, jaw tight. I could stomach her anger with me, but not her doubting what I could do. Inhaling deep, I nodded once, a silent agreement I guessed she didn’t need. “But I’m here because there is still a worry. Ma’am...you aren’t safe. I’m here to change that.”
“You want me to trust you?” she said, and this time her voice was curious, the question more of a tease.
“I can promise to be on my best behavior.” She arched an eyebrow and shook her head, stopping when I pulled off my shades to look at her. “You and me and the shit that went down between us, that’s over. It won’t ever happen again.”
It only took a glance at her to know what she was thinking. Lia had an expressive face. She could throw a smile that was fake and forced to anyone else in the world and they’d never know her interest or curiosity was utter bullshit. But it only took me a half-hearted glance her way to catch her hiding what she thought. Right then, she doubted me. Right then, she was likely remembering the things I hadn’t been able to get out of my head since that first night at my apartment in New Orleans. She knew how to move, how to tempt with the long, sweet lick of her tongue against her full lips. She knew how to seduce with the faintest, earthy moan issuing from her throat when she was turned on. And my God when we were together—bodies slick and sweaty, mouths and tongue and gripping, tight touches holding and taking and moving and tugging, sweat and sex filling the room, pants and crying aches of pleasure penetrating the silence of my Felicity Street apartment bedroom—we were combustible. We were a wildfire.
“No, it...won’t,” she said, and I couldn’t be sure if that was a statement or question. Meant to ask, wanted her to tell me what she was thinking, but then Lia relaxed again, stretching across the seat to grab a wine glass and bottle from the compartment that separated her seat from the one to her right. “I won’t bother to ask if you’re thirsty.” The wine was white, tart from the smell I caught, and she filled it midway up the glass. “Boy Scouts don’t drink on duty.”
This time I did grin, and it floored me to realize I hadn’t done that in years. “Still not a Boy Scout.”
“No,” she said under her breath. “Definitely not.”
“Ma’am?”
“Nothing.” She drank from the glass and even doing that simple job, Lia moved like a wave—smooth, fluid, like she floated on the air and she knew no one could touch her. You just couldn’t watch her and not see all she laid out in front of her with the smallest twist of her lush, full mouth or the slow blink of her long, black lashes. She held the wine glass between her long fingers, tapping the rim with a delicate, rounded pink nail. “I just...ground rules.”
“Ground rules?”
“We need them.” Another sip, this one longer as she took a breath, like the wine was something sweet she wanted to keep on her tongue. “To establish a distance. To make sure we don’t...” A quick blush moved over her light brown skin and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from mentioning it. She was fucking beautiful. Too beautiful for anyone—me, the president, anyone that couldn’t measure up to her. No damn body could. A twitch of her mouth, like she knew I stared at her and Lia looked away, finishing her thought as she watched the darkening street around us. “You know...so we won’t be tempted to slip back into previous...habits.”
“We don’t need rules, Mrs. Harris.”
That perfect profile shifted, and I got treated to her round dark eyes and that sweet angular face. She was everything I loved about New Orleans—shades of brown and beige, heat and decadence and sultry sin you couldn’t resist. It all showed itself on her high cheekbones and square chin. A lady and a vixen and most days you couldn’t tell which you’d get.
“First rule,” she said, holding the wine glass under her chin. “Will be for you to call me Lia. I’m not the First Lady anymore.”
“I can’t call you that. I apologize.”
“Why not?”
“Against protocol, ma’am.” I hated how her amused grin lowered. Protocol had always gotten in the way. It kept me at a distance and Lia disappointed in the past. It was doing that again and though I hated it, I was still grateful for the excuse of standards we had to follow. “I...it would be too familiar to call you by your first name.”
She laughed, that grin returning and some mild hint of warning shot to life inside my head. Lia’s laugh was amused, a little astonished and still she managed to look elegant, poised. “I think we shot past too familiar territory sixteen years ago.”
I held her gaze, my eyes at hers, hiding none of the memory that crawled to the front of my mind. It was the same recall I knew Lia thought of as we watched each other. Naked, laughing, spent. Bodies exhausted and wet, deliciously aching. We’d fucked four times that first night and a dozen more in the months that followed. God, we were young and foolish and addicted to each other.
“Well,” I said, adjusting my tie. It was inappropriate to remember those days. It was stupid to wonder if she’d missed them. If she’d missed me. “Ma’am, as I said, that was a long time ago.”
Lia nodded, and I pushed back the heavy w
eight of disappointment that had taken root in my chest. Being insubordinate had gotten me reassigned to the forty-third president, a ninety-five-year-old man who spent his days sleeping in his recliner or talking my ear off about how he’d single-handedly taken out the middle east’s worst dictator.
“I’m only teasing you, Cruz.”
I couldn’t keep my attention from her, not when she said my name. Not when she said it like that, all rich and thick, like that one syllable was sweeter than chocolate and she wanted to roll it around on her tongue, savor the taste of it.
Shit.
When I cleared my throat, scanning the road around us as we crossed into Waterford, Lia’s humor died. She finished her glass of wine and poured another two fingers full before she rested back against the seat. I felt her gaze on me, soaking up the shape of my face, then the stillness of my legs pressed against the seat.
The cab of the car smelled like her—decadent and sweet and I tried to avoid what the smell did to me, what she was doing to me just sitting here, watching the town pass by as she sat quietly sipping her wine.
“You were sent to guard 43, I heard.”
“I was,” I said, turning back from the front window when I could see nothing on the streets to raise my guard. “In Waco. Nice little farm he’s got out there.”
“Boring?” she asked, wincing when I shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“Wasn’t on you,” I told her, hoping my tone didn’t sound as petulant as I thought it did. “Shit happens...ma’am.”
“Yes. It really does.” Lia went back to sipping on her wine as the car turned two streets from the townhouse we’d set up as her home for however long it took to keep her safe. The awkwardness leveled thick, near to suffocating the closer we came to her place. She seemed to feel it, too. Lia stared at nothing, not blinking, not doing anything at all but letting her pupils widen as her lashes went still. She remembered that night in the residence. I know she did.
We’d fucked up. At least, that’s what I’d planned to tell her. The reunion party at my place had been a mistake. Months of flirting and reminiscing about college had gotten away from us. It had made me sloppy. It had made her weak.
Lia had stayed later than everyone else to help me clean away the mess. There’d been bourbon. Then, we’d gotten naked, ripping at each other’s clothes, tongues and teeth and greedy, desperate grips working us into a frenzy.
“I need you, Cruz. Please. God, you have no idea how much I need you.”
What man could say no to that?
What man in his right mind would take the president’s woman?
Me, apparently.
I’d tried to put it out of my head. There was a job to do and I’d manage it. It’s what I planned to tell her a few days later anyway, when I entered the residence.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” she’d said, curling an arm around me as I approached.
“Ma’am...”
It was one word, but it killed a little bit of her. I saw the fracture of disappointment as she stepped away. That one word snuffed out what we wanted, what we’d promised ourselves we’d have in some stupid post-coital daydream.
“Ma’am?” she’d said. There were already tears threaded between her lashes as I reached for her. “After...”
“Lia, please. This isn’t...you know this isn’t going to happen for us.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.” She’d taken me then, pulling my face to hers to kiss me. There were tears slipping down her face, wetting my cheeks. I’d told myself it would be one last time. It would be goodbye. I’d take to keep the memory fresh.
“You love me...I know you do.”
She hadn’t been wrong. God, help me, I did.
And then...we were interrupted.
Lincoln Harris had been a tall man, but not big. He was imposing, but he wasn’t athletic. He didn’t know how to fight. He didn’t know how to defend, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying that night. What could I do? No way I could clock the commander-in-chief.
Lia finished her second glass and set it in the holder, wiping her damp fingers dry on a handkerchief she pulled out from her purse.
The movement of her fingers made the overhead light catch on her ring and I blinked, tearing my attention from her wedding set. It was massive. Pointless now but seeing it did something to me—it reminded me that I’d taken something that wasn’t mine. I’d disrespected the man I was meant to protect.
Now he was gone. There wouldn’t be another chance to make things right.
“I’m...sorry,” I told her, holding my gaze to her face, hoping she knew I meant what I said. Sometimes, when I let myself think of the president’s death, the guilt consumed me. Sometimes, like right now, I thought I might suffocate from what I had and hadn’t done to protect Harris. “About your...husband and...” I nodded to her shoulder, eyebrows knitting together as I motioned to the injury. “If I’d been on your detail still...”
“You might have been killed, too.” Lia shook her head, inhaling before she shrugged, like she didn’t want to lay blame or give much weight to what-might-have-beens.
Couldn’t blame her there.
“He...didn’t hate you,” she admitted, giving me another grin. “For what happened. He said he didn’t blame you.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Who knows?” Lia rubbed her neck and I didn’t much like the frown that pulled down her mouth, but she shook her head, brushing off the comment before I could make much of it. “Doesn’t matter. He promised me you wouldn’t be fired. He promised he’d pay more attention to me because, I suppose, he thought that’s the only reason I’d cheated on him.”
“And...did he?”
Lia shook her head again, not smiling at all now. “He never broke a promise to any man once he made it.” She crossed her ankles, shoving the handkerchief back into her purse. “I, however, am no man.”
The car slowed, and I twisted in my seat, nodding to the drive, silently directing Johnson and Nelson and the agents in the car behind us to descend on the small driveway nestled in the center of a small courtyard. There was a paved walkway with solar lights lining the cobblestone and a brick building that looked like more of a cottage than a townhouse.
“We’ll wait for the clear,” I told her, catching the low, sharp voice in my ear when Johnson, already inside the townhouse doing a check, mentioned the rooms he entered and their security level. Two minutes later, Johnson returned with an “all clear” and I slid to the door, opening it for Lia as she followed.
“Thanks...oops...” she started, her heel catching between a broken cobblestone and the edging, grabbing hold of my arm to steady herself.
“It’s stuck,” I said, catching Johnson and Nelson’s gaze as I knelt in front of her. She wore a pantsuit, very elegant, but still so damn sexy that I had to squeeze my eyes shut as I reached for her shoe, holding her calf to guide the heel out of the broken stone.
Her thigh brushed my arm, her calf flexing under my palm as she stood there next to me and I tried to hurry to free her from the stone. I tried to tell myself that she was just the job, that there wouldn’t be a problem keeping myself from wanting her or touching her like I wanted.
“You...get it?” she asked, voice breathy, curious.
I looked up, gaze on her face as I watched her, still working her heel free from the stone. “Yes, ma’am,” I finally told her, not releasing her once the stone broke free. “I got it.”
It took five seconds for Lia to realize I hadn’t let go of her and in that time she held her breath, giving back the same look she got from me.
It wasn’t until Johnson cleared his throat and I stood, holding out my hand to guide her from the car completely that I realized I’d already lied to her.
I didn’t have a damn thing. The least of which was anything resembling control of myself when Lia Harris was around.
THREE
Lia
Lincoln slept with Leta Miller, t
he daughter of the Secretary of Defense, the night of my thirtieth birthday. It wasn’t a secret for long because my husband wasn’t known for his subtility and on that night, Martha Wilkens, a veteran former First Lady nearing her seventies, pulled me aside to inform me that my husband’s wayward cock was “the nature of the job.”
“To fuck around in the West Wing?” I’d asked, getting only a shrug and Martha’s bored laugh in return. I’d decided right then to stop caring about my husband and the things he did when I wasn’t looking. Ben Miller discovered his precious twenty-four-year-old daughter and the president, and Lincoln sported a cut lip for two weeks after Miller clocked him. He left his resignation on Lincoln’s desk the next morning.
Miller spent the next few months raising campaign contributions and got just a few electoral votes shy of besting Lincoln in his second run for president. Based on the ads Miller ran and his attitude and insults during the debates, I guessed he’d never forgiven Lincoln for bedding his daughter.
Three hours after Miller clocked my husband, I stopped telling myself Cruz wasn’t important to me; that I didn’t still want him. That had led to disaster.
The townhouse Roni had chosen for me was luxurious, but then, I knew it would be. Lincoln had been wealthy when he died. I’d been well off before my marriage, thanks to my father’s old New Orleans big wigging. As Lincoln’s wife, I got his trust. I’d be provided for no matter where in the world I went. No matter who I became once my life was my own again. If that day ever came.
There was a fireplace in my bedroom and one in the guest bedroom downstairs. Another bedroom was situated at the front of the townhouse downstairs and a large kitchen and living area functioned as a dining room next to the sunroom near the back courtyard. Roni had decorated the place in a style she knew I’d like. She’d hired my favorite D.C. designer and had chosen the palettes and textures I’d preferred before the White House had become our home.
