He clenches his teeth, his jaw flexing as he searches my face. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
He nods. “I’ll say that.” He jerks his attention to Stew. “That work for you?”
My former boss nods. “Every word.”
“Then get out and leave us alone.”
50
Ellie
They don’t just leave the library. I hear Stew gather everyone up and they vacate the house. At some point Stew will be back, to tell us the details of the press conference plan, but for now, we’re alone.
Except for the RCMP officer standing at the front door.
Gavin stops me when we get to the centre hallway, about to go upstairs, and he points to the constable standing just inside the foyer. “You can wait outside.”
“Yes, sir.”
He takes his time walking back to me as I wait for him on the stairs. His face is twisted with worry, and it suddenly occurs to me—why I didn’t think of it sooner, I don’t know—that this might not be the end of this.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice wavering in the quiet stillness of this too-big, too-intense house.
He collides with me, his hands sliding into my hair as his lips part my own. His kiss is a searing brand. Mine.
I cling to him and he hoists me up, holding me tight against his front. I wrap my legs around his waist as he climbs to the second floor, not putting me down until we’re in his room. He stands me down in front of a chair, not the bed, and I sink into it.
He kicks an ottoman across from the other chair and sits right in front of me, his legs spread wide, bracketing my knees. “I need to tell you something. I should have told you months ago.”
“What?” I’m not sure how much more I can take. No, that’s not true. I’m strong enough to weather any storm. But I don’t want to. Not alone. Not when the storm is swirling out of the man I’ve come to rely on as my haven.
“The week after you started here…after that day in Stew’s office, I flew to Vancouver. Max arranged for a woman for me.” He stares right at me, unflinching in the face of what I’m sure is not a good reaction. Icy-cold fear is slithering through me again.
Seriously? What the fuck were you thinking? But I don’t say that, I don’t say anything, because he’s clearly not done. It takes every last bit of my will power to stay silent.
“She was at his place. He was not. And in the end, neither was I. I drove there, and kept going. I took Tim on quite the drive that night. And then I flew back here. I flew back to you, even though I couldn’t have you. But it’s possible that at some point, that’s going to come out. I wanted you to hear it from me. If I’d thought for a second any of this would have happened, I’d have told you first. About the video…about it all.”
“What else?” My voice is clipped and chill. “Let’s get it all out on the table. We’ve never talked about our past because I thought that’s what it was—the past. But I don’t think that’s how it works for me. I don’t think I get the luxury of truly just moving on with my life, because every inch of your life is going to be picked over. Past, present, future. Right? So what else am I going to learn?”
He doesn’t even blink. “I was in a casual relationship with a woman for two years that ended in January. I believe we ended on amicable terms. During that time I was faithful to her, but our dates were…sporadic. It’s possible that she might raise questions about that now, given how intense my relationship is with you, and what was in that video.”
I search for the right words and stumble. “Sporadic? Like it was casual?”
“Yes, casual, and strictly vanilla.” He blanches. “I dated her because it felt safe. Appropriate for someone with political aspirations. I used her, in a way, and that doesn’t feel great.”
“No, I imagine she’s feeling quite awful right now, knowing that there’s a completely different side to her ex that she never saw.” I know he meant it doesn’t feel great for him, but he’s not the only one affected by all of this and I haven’t allowed myself to snap yet today. Something’s gotta give and apparently it’s my patience. “How many submissives have you had?”
“It wasn’t like that. That woman in the video wasn’t a sub, exactly.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Valentine DeMasco—or it was. She’s married now and I don’t know if she’s changed her last name. I saw her briefly at a ten-year reunion event for our law class five years ago. She’s a practicing attorney in Vancouver and a mother of two. We dated for six months in law school.” He hesitates for a second before adding, “She had an exhibitionist streak in her. We recorded ourselves sometimes. We always deleted them after. That video maybe she kept because it didn’t show any sex? I don’t know.”
“Have you talked to her today?”
He shakes his head. “No. There’s nothing identifying in it, and I’m assuming she’s not the one who leaked it. Maybe it ended up online somehow and a reporter stumbled on it. Maybe someone’s been sitting on it for a while.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But I’m not going to give anyone her identity if I can spare her the humiliation.”
“You just told me.”
“Because you’re…” His brow tightens. “Of course I told you.”
“Is it of course?”
He reaches for my hands, his fingers warm and strong as they wrap around mine. “Yes.”
“You didn’t answer my question before.” All of a sudden it matters a great deal that I know what his history is.
“Submissives? Nothing like this. Not relationships.”
I tug my hands out of his grasp. “Now it feels like you’re avoiding the question.”
“I’m not. It’s not a question that has a direct and easy answer.”
“How many subs, Gavin? How many women have you spanked and called bad girl? How many women know your kinky side and can say the prime minister gave them a few marks?” I’m getting wound tight, burrowing back in the chair, but I shouldn’t have to spell that last point out for Christ’s sake.
He has the good grace to at least look a little embarrassed. “They were mostly women at clubs.”
“Sex clubs.”
“They’re private.”
“Like sex tape private or threesome with your intern and your security chief private?”
His jaw clenches. “Are you turning this into a fight?”
“No.” Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. “You’re so damn confident that nothing’s wrong, but then I have to see you holding a crop, larger than life in the middle of Pearson Airport. Can you see where I’m struggling with the whole private thing?”
“And this is damn embarrassing for me, too.”
“I know.”
“What’s this really about, Sprite?” He falls to his knees in front of me, pushing the ottoman back and out of his way. He’s big and warm against my legs, and I just want to fold over him and never let go.
I settle for running my hands through his hair, then I trace the contours of his face with my fingertips. “There’s still so much I don’t know about, isn’t there?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m thirty-nine. I’ve had a reasonable amount of safe sex with consenting partners. Some of them wanted some pain with their pleasure. Sometimes I wanted to deliver that for them. That’s it. I don’t even own leather pants, Sprite. I’m not any different from the man you were with two weeks ago.”
When I was the one on my knees, sucking him off in his office in Centre Block. My voice cracks as I voice what’s really gripping my heart. “Am I enough?”
He groans and tightens his arms around my waist. “You’re everything.”
“I’m not, though. You’ve done things that we never will together, and I knew that before, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and I can’t un-see that.”
“No, Ellie…no. It’s not like that for me.”
“You had me make a list of everything I wanted to do, Gavin.” My voice hitches and I realize I’m crying. When did the t
ears start falling? I can’t even feel them, I’m so numb. “But I don’t know your list.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Do you want to whip me?”
“I’m here, on my knees, telling you that you’re my everything.”
“I know you love me. That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I’ve…experimented with specific acts, tried them on like a yoga class versus Pilates, hiking versus downhill skiing. It’s not the sport that matters. It’s not about satisfying a specific kink, Ellie, it’s about finding the woman that makes me want to satisfy her kinks.”
“I don’t have any kinks.”
“Of course you do. Role-play and bondage. Spanking.” He sits up again and wraps my hands in his, tightening his hold on me so I can’t pull away as he tugs me closer, moving me to the edge of the chair. His voice is low, rough, and intimate, but still raw. “You’re a natural submissive, dying to have something in all of your holes.”
I flinch at the crass words, but it’s true. My body reacts to the memory of each of those acts in a primal way.
“My kink is simply being in control. Doing all of that to you. Pushing you to the edge of your limits so you can feel that bite. But I’m not a sadist. I don’t want to hurt you, and no, I don’t ever need to whip you. My arm is more than a little out of practise.”
“You’ve done that before?”
“Yes. Remember I told you about the couple that mentored me early on in my kink exploration?”
I do remember now. Impact toys, he’d said. “Toys.”
His grip tightens. “That’s the term.”
“For whips?” Like, real ones?
“And floggers, dragontails, paddles, canes, crops…” I don’t know why I’m speechless, but I am, and he trails off. “Too much?”
“Long day.” That’s a serious understatement.
He sighs and pulls me close. “Can we lie down for a bit?”
“Yes.” I sag against him. “Definitely, yes.”
51
Gavin
Lying down turns into Ellie falling asleep for the night, burrowed deep into my chest.
This means she’s out like a light when Stew returns, which is for the best. I go downstairs long enough to confirm that we’ll do a press conference together the next afternoon, then I return to our bed and wrap myself around her again.
We always sleep naked.
Tonight we don’t, and that’s a little thing that feels so fucking huge it hurts my chest.
I drift off after the light outside fades to darkness, and I’m disoriented when I wake with a start, the remnants of an angry nightmare ringing in my ears.
The bedside clock tells me it’s three in the morning. I feel like I’ve hardly slept a wink. Ellie’s curled tight into a ball, still facing me, but her knees have pulled up and her hands are clenched into fists. I stroke my palm over her arm, her side, her hip. I want to pull her tight against me again, so tight she imprints on my body, but I don’t want to wake her up, either.
It’s going to take a hell of a lot to make this right.
To fix this.
And it’s probably not the last time we’ll face a challenge like this—although I’m confident she knows all the skeletons in my closet, and when I’m not filled with rage, I can objectively rationalize that there aren’t that many.
I haven’t done anything wrong.
I haven’t even done anything wrong when it comes to Ellie, although this is a big fucking lesson in being open and transparent with her.
But still, we’re being rocked by waves caused by others, and that’s scary.
I lay there, touching her gently, watching her, until dawn breaks.
When she sighs and uncurls her body, finally relaxing after hours of what I fear must have been tortured sleep, I finally drop off again, Ellie draped over the left side of my body.
52
Ellie
I wake up in the morning and Gavin’s beside me.
“Breakfast?” he asks softly as he brushes a lock of hair off my cheek.
I must look like a total mess. “Shower first?”
“Sure.”
“You want to join me?”
“Always.”
He keeps his hands on me in one way or another until we’re in the bathroom, then he slowly, reverently strips me out of the travel clothes I fell asleep in the night before. I fumble with his clothes, but he does most of the work there, too, and when the shower is hot, he guides me under the spray and turns me every which way until I’m scrubbed clean.
As he rinses the last of the soap away, he starts talking again, like we’re still having the conversation from the day before. “I never wanted this, you know. Growing up, I always thought it would be Pia who’d follow in my parents’ footsteps. Even when I ran for office the first time…I didn’t think I’d win. I never thought I’d become the de facto leader of a broken party, and end up here two years later.”
I blink through the steam at him. I mean, I knew some of that, but not all, and it breaks my heart. “Gavin…you do want it now, right?”
Because if he doesn’t, life is too short for this shit.
He gives me a tortured look that says it all. “With all my heart.” And at almost any price. He starts to talk again and I don’t need to hear anymore. I press against him, silencing him with a soft, wet open-mouthed kiss.
“Okay,” I whisper as I kiss his jaw. His neck. I press my face into his wet skin and nod. “Then I want this for you, too. And we’ll survive it.”
His arms tighten around me and we stand under the water until it starts to run cold.
When we get out, he wraps me in his robe before looping a towel around his waist and tucking the nubby cotton over itself. My eyes tangle on the dip of the fabric there, where he’s tucked it in. At the ridge of muscle and the dark edge of pubic hair.
“What do you want to eat?”
You is probably an inappropriate answer right now. But I suddenly crave him. “I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sure?” He clears his throat. “Look at me.”
I jerk my eyes up.
“Hungry for something else, Sprite?”
I reach for a jar of moisturizer I’ve left here and smooth it over my face instead of answering. I don’t want to lie to him, but sex right now could take us sideways into ugliness.
“It might be good to reconnect,” he says quietly, coming closer. He catches his lower lip between his teeth as he tugs on the bathrobe belt. “If you want.”
It’s the most vanilla sex invitation he’s ever given me.
I tilt my head to the side, trying to puzzle out how I feel about that. “Is that what you want?”
He tugs me closer. A little harder. A little less vanilla. “I want you to know that I’m yours in every way. I want you to know that you are my everything. I’m going to keep telling you that until you believe it in your heart. That I would do anything for you.”
“And if I freak out? Start crying because I can’t get that picture of you with someone else out of my head?”
“Then we’ll do whatever we need to do to replace those images with ones that don’t make you cry.”
“I don’t know—”
“I do.” His hands are fisted in the terrycloth now, and his expression is fierce. “Let me love you, Ellie.”
I nod once, a slow, stuttering jerk of my head.
He exhales and tugs the bathrobe open, dropping it in a puddle around my feet. “Turn around, Sprite.”
I face the mirror and he reaches past me to grab my comb. I watch, wide-eyed, as he carefully detangles my hair, starting at the bottom, then combing more and more of it until he’s starting at my scalp and slowly sliding the teeth through my tresses to the very tips in the middle of my back.
It’s a simple act. One of careful kindness, and not overtly sexual. But with each stroke, my breasts grow heavy and my nipples tighten. Goosebumps break out on my skin, pebbling my entire torso. Gavin graz
es me here and there with his fingertips.
Each caress a promise. Here, I will kiss you. Here, I will lick you. Here, I will love you.
He’s watching me in the mirror as he gathers my hair, first all in one fist, then he starts dividing it between his hands. Our gazes stay locked together as he braids the strands. Tug, over, exchange hands. Next piece of hair, back to the other side. Each tug shoots down my spine and makes me stand a little taller.
There’s a hair clip sitting next to my moisturizer and he picks it up, but he doesn’t use it to fasten the end of the braid.
Instead he runs it up my arm and curves over my shoulder. “I’ve never had a woman’s stuff in my bathroom like this.” He opens the clip and slides his hand down my chest, until the clip is parallel to my nipples, between my breasts. “One day I should see what sort of fun we can get up to with this.”
He snaps it shut and I jump at the sharp little sound.
The burst of adrenaline shifting me from hungry but wary to one hundred percent ready for anything. “Yes, Sir.”
His hands fall to my hips and he pulls me back against him. Warm skin and hard muscle. The soft rub of his towel-covered erection against the curve of my bottom. He lowers his mouth to my ear.
“Anything in your head that you don’t want there right now, Sprite?”
I shake my head. Only him. Only us. “No, Sir.”
He fixes my braid and finishes it with the clip. That won’t hold, but it doesn’t matter.
Prime Minister (Frisky Beavers #1) Page 30
