All Night Long (14 page)

He nudged her lightly with his elbow, jogging her out of her abstraction. "Ready to go?"

Susannah looked around the room. It was empty except for the two of them and half a dozen hotel staffers busily dismantling tables and stacking chairs. "Where's your mother?"

Matt gave her a crooked grin. "It looks like your matchmaking was a success this time. She accepted Elliott's offer to see her home."

Susannah grinned back. "See what a little one-on-one can accomplish?"

He held out his hand. "Let's go get your cape," he said, thinking about a little one-on-one he was going to pursue as soon as he got her back to his apartment.

* * *

There was no attendant in the coatroom, an unusual occurrence at the Mark Hopkins. They waited for a moment or two, in case the attendant came back from wherever he had gone.

"Keep a lookout," Matt said playfully. "I'm going in."

Susannah waited for a few seconds, then a few seconds more, wondering what was taking him so long. How difficult could it be to find a velvet cape? Especially when the coatroom had to be very nearly empty. She leaned over the counter, trying to see. "Matt? Can't you find it?"

"What color is it?"

"Dark wine-red."

There was a second or two of silence.

"I can't find it," he said. "You'd better come and look."

Susannah sighed with amused exasperation. Men! They all had some sort of hereditary, gender-specific blindness when it came to things that were right in front of them. She saw the cape as soon as she entered the coatroom. "For goodness' sake, it's right—"

Her words were abruptly cut off as Matt yanked her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. Susannah forgot all about her cape. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back, just as fiercely as he was kissing her.

"God, I've been wanting to do that all night long," Matt breathed when he finally raised his head. "I couldn't wait another minute to taste you. Not another second."

"Kiss me again," Susannah demanded fiercely. She threaded her hands through his hair and pulled his head down to hers.

Matt kissed her again. And then again. And again. He ran his hands over the bodice of her dress, lightly, aware of its delicacy, but fervently, too, looking for a way under the heavily beaded chiffon. He settled, finally, for easing one of the fragile beaded straps down to her biceps, nudging it gently until, finally, he could ease his hand up under her arm and slide it inside the bodice of her dress.

She wasn't wearing a bra. He didn't know why he would have thought she was, given the construction of the dress, but it hadn't even occurred to him that she might be bare under all that beading. He was glad he hadn't thought of it. He'd have gone stark, raving crazy during dinner if he'd thought of it. He wouldn't have been able to stand up and give his speech if he'd thought of it. He brushed his thumb over the underside of her breast, his fingers caressing the full upper curves. Her swollen nipple rested in the notch between his thumb and index finger. He squeezed gently.

Susannah moaned and pressed herself into his hand. He was driving her crazy. The ravenous demand of his mouth, hungry and hard, contrasted so deliciously with the delicate touch of his hand on her flesh. Passion and tenderness. Savagery and subtlety. The combination was more erotic than anything she'd ever experienced before.

She shifted her hold on him, running one hand down his side, slipping it between them to caress his penis. He was rock-hard and ready under her hand. She moaned again and squeezed him.

He responded by groaning like a man mortally wounded and backed her up against the wall between the coats. His hand left her breast, eased out from under her bodice and headed downward, gathering up the diaphanous layers of her skirt so he could reach what lay beneath. His questing fingers brushed over a lacy stocking top, and then he hesitated, shocked and delighted to discover the smooth bare skin of her thigh. He groaned again.

"Let's get a room," he whispered against her mouth. His voice was raspy with need and sexual desire.

"Yes," Susannah whispered, her voice as raspy as his.

"It'll take too long to get back to my place. And I can't wait." He kissed her again—deeply, erotically—and brushed his fingertips against the silk that guarded her most feminine secrets. "I don't want to wait."

Susannah's whole body tensed at the delicate, butterfly caress. "Yes," she said again. "I can't wait, either. I don't want to wait. I—"

"He's a little resistant to a heavy campaign schedule but I can wo—Jesus H. Christ!" Harry Gasparini's curse bounced off the walls of the coatroom like a Ping-Pong ball gone wild, ricocheting around the two people locked in a torrid embrace. "What the hell's going on in here?" he demanded.

It was a purely rhetorical question. Any damn fool could see what was going on.

Susannah closed her eyes and hid her face in Matt's shoulder. Matt tensed and turned his body to better shield her from sight. "Give us a minute, please, Harry," he said quietly.

But Harry wasn't about to be so easily dismissed. "You just about gave me a goddamned heart attack," he complained. "What the hell were you think—"

"Now,
Harry," Matt said in a voice that brooked no argument. He waited until he heard the muffled sound of retreating footsteps, then eased his fierce hold on the woman in his arms.

Susannah looked up at him. "He wasn't alone," she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Councilman Leeland."

"Ah, well," he said, reaching to lift her beaded strap back into place on her shoulder. "It could be worse."

She eyed him skeptically.

"It could have been my mother. Or yours. Or—" he smiled wickedly "—Barbara Filbert."

"That isn't funny," Susannah said. But she giggled. "Oh, God, don't get me started. This isn't anything to laugh about."

Matt shook his head. "The only possible response to a situation like this is laughter."

"But your career. Your campaign. The newspapers will have a field day with this."

"With what?" he asked reasonably. "I'm not married. You're not married. They didn't catch me in here with a guy. Or by myself." He smiled teasingly and Susannah couldn't help but smile in return. "So what can they say? Candidate Matthew Ryan was caught in a passionate clinch with a gorgeous woman? They might question my judgment as regards to time and place. If they knew about it." He shrugged. "Which they won't because Harry certainly isn't going to tell anyone. Nor will Leeland. It'd be counterproductive to the campaign."

"You find your coats yet?" Harry called loudly, more loudly than he needed to.

"The attendant must be back," Matt said. "I found it," he hollered back, grabbing Susannah's cape off the hanger just as the attendant entered the coatroom.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here, Mr. Ryan," he apologized. "I didn't think I'd be gone that long. I hope you weren't too inconvenienced."

"Not at all," Matt assured him as he settled the cape around Susannah's shoulders. He pulled it close around her, smiling into her eyes as he freed her hair and then tied the velvet cords under her chin. "No inconvenience at all."

He reached into his pants pocket as they left the coatroom, extracting the folded bills he'd put there earlier, and casually dropped Heather's fifteen dollars into the tip basket as he passed it. Those few moments of heated intimacy in the coatroom would have been a bargain at twice the price.

* * *

Matt fastened his seat belt and reached for the ignition key. "Come home and spend the night with me?" he said, glancing over at his passenger.

"I shouldn't."

"Probably not."

"You know that old saying about politics making strange bedfellows?" she asked him. "That's us. We're crazy if we take this any further. Absolutely mad."

"Very likely."

"I'm against the death penalty."

"I figured you probably were," Matt said, understanding the seeming non sequitur perfectly. He'd publicly stated he was in favor of it for specific crimes.

"I'm a liberal Democrat," she elaborated, thinking that perhaps he hadn't quite understood.

"And I'm a middle-of-the-road Republican. So? It could get a little loud if we decide to talk politics but it's not exactly the Capulets and Montagues."

"I'm for stringent gun-control laws."

"Within reason," he agreed.

"I believe there's no such thing as a bad boy. Or girl."

"A little naive, but praiseworthy."

"I think there should be term limits for most elected offices so men like Councilman Leeland can't obstruct progress for years and years."

"I can understand that." He waited for a beat. "Anything else?"

"I think gays and lesbians should have equal rights under the law. And women have the right to choose. I think the
term family values
should apply to all families, not just the traditional mommy-daddy-and-two-kids kind. I don't believe in the trickle-down theory of economics. I do believe that Bush knew about Iran-Contra." She slanted a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. "I think each state should have one male and one female senator."

Matt's eyebrow rose. "Mandated by law?"

"If that's what it takes to get fair and equal representation."

Matt shook his head. "Well, I admit, I'd have to argue that last one with you, but we basically agree on the rest. Is that it?"

Susannah considered for a moment. "Yes, that's pretty much it. We don't have enough in common to start a civil conversation. And even if by some miracle, we
did
manage to build some kind of relationship, it wouldn't last."

"How do you figure that?"

"I wouldn't be good for your career, Matt. I don't mean because of what happened tonight. Passion like that will burn itself out, sooner or later." She waved her hand, brushing aside the objection she sensed he was about to make. "I mean in the long run. I'm not a political helpmate. I'm not docile. I'm not unassuming. I won't sit back and keep my mouth shut if some jackass says something I disagree with. Not for long, anyway. And if someone asks me for my opinion, I'll give it to him, even if it's different from yours. I'm not inconspicuous and I don't want to be. My mother tried to make me all those things when I was growing up—and you can see how well
that
worked."

Matt couldn't stop the grin that tugged at his lips. "Sweetheart, you couldn't be inconspicuous if you tried."

"Well, there, you see? I'm right. It would never work."

He just looked at her. "Come home and spend the night with me?"

"Yes."

Chapter 7

Matt's condominium apartment was only ten blocks away from the hotel, tucked into one of the narrow residential streets in the Russian Hill district of the city. The facade was a pleasant mix of traditional San Francisco bay windows and modern redwood siding. The interior was uncluttered and elegant, with comfortable furniture in pale grays and blues with occasional accents of dark navy and deep chrome yellow. Paintings crowded the walls.

The pieces were strikingly varied. Some were modern abstracts that were mere slashes of color, some were dreamy nudes, some were San Francisco cityscapes that Susannah recognized as having been painted by local artists and a few were delicately rendered Japanese watercolors. There were three sculptures, too, each sitting atop its own softly lighted display column. Two were sinuous, shiny metal forms that begged to be touched. The third was made of thick sea-blue glass curved into an abstract evocation of a cresting wave. Somehow, it all worked.

"You collect?" Susannah asked, surprised and entranced by this side of him.

"Not really," Matt answered, watching her move around the room, viewing his art collection. He shivered as she ran a fingertip over the curve of the glass wave. "I just buy what I like and hang it on the walls."

Susannah untied the velvet ties of her cape and shrugged out of it, pausing for a moment to drape it over the back of the sofa. The beads on the bodice of her dress glimmered even in the low light, shimmering enticingly with each movement of the slender body under it.