Knight (Political Royalty Book 1) (14 page)

“I run when I’m frustrated,” he said, unwilling to let her pretend she hadn’t spoken. “And I’m often frustrated.”

She laughed and when she met his gaze, any nervousness seemed to be gone. “The only way I’m running is if something with sharp teeth is chasing me. But I’m also not going to order a heart attack on a bun.”

While she ordered her salad and his burger along with a bottle of chardonnay, he shrugged out of his jacket and tugged off his tie, opening the button on his collar so he could breathe. He turned on the television, deliberately avoiding the news networks and flipping to one of the comedy channels. He should have realized at that hour, they’d be wrapped up in election coverage too. It was funnier than his regular diet of talking heads, but it cut deeper too. He made it through one comment about Walker the farmer lover losing in the third most important ag state in the nation before he had to change the channel.

“Try one of the science channels,” she said, coming to stand behind him. She rested a hand on his arm and reached for the remote. “Let me.”

Handing her the remote, he managed to take a step back before he did something crazy, like pull her into his arms. If she noticed the effect she had on him, she didn’t show it. He dropped into the small armchair, putting as much distance as he could between him and her and the bed. She settled on some kind of adventure show and relaxed into the desk chair, spinning it to face the screen. She bent to hook her finger into her shoe, tugging off the heels that had set up residence in his brain beside the lace in her suitcase. They were his new favorite thing, but they had to be killing her feet.

His gaze drifted from the image of the guy scuba diving through a shipwreck to the look of pleasure on her face as she freed herself from the shoes. Her lips parted and everything in his body tightened, roaring to life. What the fuck was he doing? If watching stupid television with her while she took off her shoes had this effect on him, he was screwed. The smart thing to do would be to make some excuse and leave. He didn’t feel particularly smart and the soft rap on the door saved him from having to decide.

“Here, take my chair,” said Haven, getting to her bare feet. His gaze stuttered over her toenails painted a pretty cherry red, but her words yanked him back to the present. “Spin it so the back faces the door.”

He wanted to protest—to say they didn’t have to hide; they weren’t doing anything wrong—but she was right. Getting caught in her hotel room wasn’t the kind of press he needed. And he didn’t believe the lie anyway. The way he felt about her was wrong, but if he’d flayed himself over the years for feelings he shouldn’t have, he wouldn’t have any skin left. Ignoring his reservations, he took her place and tried to pretend he couldn’t still feel the warmth of her body radiating from the chair.

He heard but couldn’t see her talking to the room service guy and then heard the click of the door latching and the bolt sliding home. When he turned around, she balanced two covered plates in one hand and a bottle of wine and two glasses in the other. He hurried to help her, but she handled the dishes like a pro.

“I’ve got it,” she said, motioning him away with her head. “Years of waiting tables.”

She set the food and glasses on the desk and handed him the wine and an opener. He went to work with the corkscrew, thinking about how different their lives had been. He’d never waited a table a day in his life or worked construction or did any of the other tangible things people did to earn money and make the world work. It made his slogan feel silly. The closest he’d come to real honest hard work had been when he was working on the prototypes for his aquaponics aquaculture system and even then most of the physical work fell to the farmer he’d partnered with. Walker had been the idea man and earning money had always been incidental, not something he had to do to survive.

“You’ve got to stop thinking about it,” Haven said, concern etched around her beautiful eyes. “New Hampshire is a new start.”

“What? No.” He forced his attention back to the present and her. “I wasn’t thinking about the election.”

“Well, whatever it was, it didn’t look like anything good.” She took the metal dome off a plate holding a burger and fries and set it on the table beside his chair.

“I was just thinking about how different our lives were growing up.”

She froze and he worried he’d gone too far. The last thing he wanted to do was make her think he had some kind of superiority complex when exactly the opposite was true.

“It took you this long to realize that?” She uncovered her salad and sat back down in the desk chair. He could hardly blame her for seeming guarded.

“I guess I just realized how little work I’ve actually done,” he said, needing her to understand. He wasn’t ready to spend too much time looking at it, but her good opinion of him mattered. “It makes the Walker
Moving America Forward
thing feel kind of crazy.”

She tucked her feet up underneath her and watched him over a forkful of salad.

“You’re serious,” she said, like she’d just decided he meant what he said.

“I’m not fishing. I swear. Forget I said anything.” He took a huge mouthful of burger so he couldn’t do something stupid like tell her he felt like he always fell just a little bit short of the mark he set for himself.

“You know that aquaculture thing you came up with has increased food production by over twelve percent, especially in urban areas where it’s hard to grow anything?”

It blew him away that she could pull the stats for his system off the top of her head. He loved that when she said it, she looked at him like he’d contributed something important, but he’d been serious when he said he wasn’t looking for compliments. Listening to her trying to convince him that he’d done anything he hadn’t been well-compensated for would to make him feel worse. He shrugged and went to work on his fries, hoping she’d drop the subject.

“All right,” she said after a moment. “I’m not going to pump up your ego. I’ll just have to deal with it later anyway.”

They ate and watched the guy on the TV discover coral-encrusted cannons and an anchor that had been transformed into some kind of reef. By the time the archeologist decided the real treasure must be somewhere else, half the bottle of wine was gone and Shep felt more relaxed than he had in as long as he could remember. Spending time with Haven was easy. She was funny and smart and if he found her body—and fuck, even her feet—a distraction, he’d just figure out a way to deal with it.

For a man constantly surrounded by people, he’d been damned lonely. Eating room service and watching mindless television with her was the most fun he’d had in a long time. The credits for the show started to run and he reached out to refill their glasses before either of them brought up the inevitable
time to go their separate ways
conversation. He wasn’t ready to leave her and when she leaned back into her chair and took another swallow of her wine, something deep in his chest relaxed. Maybe she wasn’t ready for him to go.

They settled in for more wine and another adventure show. Partway through, she set her glass aside and stretched her legs out in front of her, rolling her ankles and flexing her slender feet. She groaned and he made the mistake of glancing at her face and seeing her lips parted in pleasure. Just like that, his whole focus narrowed to being the one to put that look on her gorgeous face. Tamping down the hunger that roared to life like a caged animal, he reached for her foot and a way to touch her that wouldn’t send him straight to hell. Manacling her ankle with his hand, he gently tugged her chair closer to him, grateful for the wheels on the bottom that made it possible for him to position her exactly the way he needed her.

“Here, let me,” he said, fitting her foot in his lap, careful to keep it close to his knee.

She opened her mouth, he assumed to protest, but before she could speak, he ran his thumb up her arch. Her toes curled and any protest she’d been about to make morphed into a groan that sent heat straight to his groin and threatened to make the lap thing awkward fast. Running through electoral map delegate counts in his head, he started to rub her foot with strong, steady strokes, paying particular attention to her heels. Using his thumbs, he fanned out her toes and heard her breath go out on a sigh.

“God, you’ve got great hands,” she said, her eyes closed and her head tipped back in unmistakable pleasure.

“I need a fallback skill in case the politics thing goes south.”

“I think you’ve found your calling,” she said, shifting in her chair in a way that had him breaking down the electoral map by counties and districts.

He could tell her good-night and go back to his room and his cold shower, but he loved watching her face, seeing her lips part and her eyelids flutter when he hit a good spot, and he fucking loved being the one to make her feel like that. So he’d suck it up, count his delegates to keep his mind off his persistent hard-on and rub Haven’s feet.

He couldn’t leave the foot he’d already rubbed on his lap. That way led to dragons, and he didn’t want to just set it on the floor. Pulling her closer, he pressed her sole to his stomach, ignoring the way his muscles tightened at her touch and reached for her neglected foot.

“Oh God,” she said on a breath when he ran the heel of his hand over her arch.

He glanced over to find her watching him, her eyes heavy-lidded and glassy, partly from the wine, but he hoped more from the pleasure he wanted to give her. Meeting his gaze, her lips parted, and he felt like a man standing in a pool of gasoline, playing with matches. Making a decision he knew he’d regret and somehow unable to stop himself, he let go of her feet and dropped to his knees on the floor in front of her.

Giving both of them plenty of time to come to their senses, he leaned forward until his lips were a breath away from hers. When she didn’t stop him, he reached up and cupped her face with his hands, searching her eyes for any sign that she didn’t want him the way he wanted her. All he saw was a hunger that mirrored his own. Feeling her breath warm against his lips, he closed the space between them, deliberately drawing out the moment before his mouth covered hers. On a cellular level, he knew that when that happened he’d be lost, and he wanted as much time as he could have to get his feet under him before he drowned himself in the gorgeous woman in front of him.

His plans didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her, and his body had its own ideas. His lips covered hers and he was gone, washed away in the feeling of Haven’s mouth on his. Of his hands tangled in her hair. Of her in his arms, feeling like for this one frozen moment in time they were both exactly where they were supposed to be.

––––––––

H
AVEN’S MIND STUTTERED, crashing into itself as she tried to figure out how to make sense of kissing Walker. He was her candidate, her
married
candidate, and she couldn’t care less. Every fiber of her being wanted him. There wasn’t room for regret or common sense. She simply couldn’t see past the want.

Holding onto his shoulders, never letting her mouth leave his, she slid onto her knees in front of him. He tightened his grip on her hair, anchoring her in place, and the delicious tug bumped the kiss to scorching. She leaned into him, pressing her thighs against his, feeling the long, hard length of him against the soft mound of her stomach. She should stop. They had to stop while they still could, but even as she had the thought, she knew it wasn’t going to happen.

She’d been with other men, but she’d never wanted anyone the way she wanted Walker.

“Haven,” he whispered, his lips against hers. “Tell me to stop.”

He kissed his way along her jaw to her neck and she tipped her head to the side, offering herself to him. His mouth burned a hot trail of kisses down her throat to her collarbone, and she had to dig her fingers into his shoulders to keep from dissolving in front of him.

“Can’t,” she said, letting the last of her breath out on a sigh. “I want you too much.”

Her words flipped a switch for both of them, as if all he’d been waiting for was her permission. He reached for the buttons on her blouse, growling when he couldn’t get them open fast enough. He finally settled for yanking the two halves of the silk apart, sending the tiny buttons scattering over the carpet. She tugged at his shirt, desperate to free it from his belt. She started working on the buttons with fingers made shaky by wine and need. Before she bared more than half his chest, he slid his hands over her rib cage to cup her breasts and any plans she had vanished in his touch.

Catching her gaze for a moment, he watched her face as he ran his thumbs over her nipples. Even through the lace, his touch felt electric, sending small jolts of pleasure coursing through her body. She struggled to keep her eyes open, but she didn’t want to lose the connection she saw in his gaze. As long as they were looking at each other, no one else existed in the world. There was no right or wrong or consequences to follow. Nothing existed but the two of them and the way they made each other feel.

Skimming his hands over her breasts, he ran his palms over the tight peaks of her nipples and up across her collarbones to slide the blouse off her shoulders. Keeping his gaze locked on her, he took her hand and helped them both to stand. Haven reached behind her back and unhooked the clasp on her bra, letting it fall to the floor beside her shirt.

“Fuck, Haven,” he said, his voice rough.

“That’s the idea.” Her nerves brought out her inner smart ass. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She wasn’t ready to bare her soul, but she didn’t want to hide behind her words. If they were going to do this, she wanted them to be honest with each other.

“You’re so beautiful.” His voice sounded reverent, at odds with the heat and wanton disregard they’d both been feeling moments earlier.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to catalogue all the things they had to lose. There wasn’t room in the space between them.

“I’ve never wanted anything more.”

She wanted so desperately to believe him, so she did. For the brief span of a night, in the confines of her hotel room, she’d let herself believe everything he told her was true and she wouldn’t think about what happened later.