It’s all over. I got a hundred calls today. Alan called too, his disappointment evident in his voice, considering he once maybe wanted to be the one dating me.
“You’re dating the president of the United States?”
Kayla: “I could have died when I saw the photo! I’m missing out on so much that’s happening! Charlotte! Tell me everything!”
And my mother: “I don’t know what to say. Your father and I . . .” She sounded teary. “You love him?”
“You know the answer to that, Mom. Why else would I be here? I wouldn’t ever have dreamed of finding the courage to try on a role this big if it weren’t attached to Matthew.”
“Then that’s all that matters.”
They can’t get enough of it. Not the public, not our friends and family. Matt says Beckett called and simply said, “You go, sir!”
They absolutely cannot get enough of the story.
Matthew turns off the TV as he hits the bed, where I lie in wait—so ready, so anxious, gravitating toward him as he reaches out with one powerful arm.
I can feel it—the electricity between us, the connection too strong to deny, always there, crackling, whipping around us, tugging us closer and closer yet never close enough.
We make fierce love. He tells me how beautiful I am, how special, how much he wants me. We’re sweaty and sated, my body buzzing in the aftermath, when there’s a knock on the door.
Matt leaps out of bed and slips into his slacks.
“Mr. President.” It’s Dale Coin’s voice.
Matt swings the door open and I pull the sheets up, mortified and scared to see the grim look on Dale’s face.
“There’s been a situation. Six of our crew members have been taken hostage in Syria.”
From lowered lids, Matt shoots a commanding look at me. “I’ll be back.”
“Matthew . . .” I begin, just not knowing what to say.
His eyes meet mine harshly as he slips on his shirt.
A knife of pain and concern for our people gets trapped in my throat. Matt charges down the hall, and I get dressed quickly and head to my own bedroom, where I pace, pace, pace—and pray.
I see it on the news.
The harsh reality of every catastrophe that happens to the United States of America too close now. So close. So real.
These are our people. My country attacked. My guy.
This being first lady isn’t just the interviews, the pretty dresses. It’s everything else.
I’m not sure I’m prepared. That the little bubble of a perfect life my parents created for their only daughter prepared me for this—to live this so closely.
It’s hard to keep my hope alive when I see the burning American flag on television that the rebel forces in Syria have lit.
The exploded armament trucks that had carried our troops.
I break down and cry, and I eventually fall asleep, only to wake up to my bedroom door being opened.
Matthew’s silhouette fills the doorway.
Whatever he’s ordered done—is done. I can see it in his eyes.
And a part of me doesn’t want to know if it will take more casualties, what the exact situation is.
I’m scared. I’m hurting for our country. I’m hurting for my president.
He starts walking forward, and I stand on wobbly legs, the urge to embrace him and have him embrace me too strong—but the pain feels just as strong.
He tugs on the flimsy ribbon holding my nightgown closed. “Are you okay?” I whisper.
His hand pauses; he looks at me.
“Do you want to talk?” I ask.
“No,” he rasps.
I slide my fingers up his jaw, the stubble abrading my fingertips as I rise up on tiptoe and kiss him. No tongue, just a kiss. “I don’t know what I can do. The whole country is crying. I feel a pain like I’ve never experienced, as if the whole world’s pain is mine now.”
“It is. It’s ours.” His eyes hold mine. My lungs feel like rocks; no amount of air is able to fill them.
“Let me just . . .” I glance down at myself, sure that my eyes are swollen and I look a sight. I want to look pretty; I want him to lose himself in me. I want him to take whatever he needs.
I head to the bathroom. I inhale and put water on my face, brush my hair. Try to look pretty for him. I pry the nightgown off—stripping. Stripping for him.
I step out, and he’s gone.
I fasten on a robe and head out of my room. He’s sitting in the Oval, his head in his hands, staring blindly down at some papers.
I walk in and he lifts his head, and I open my robe. “If you think I can’t handle what you have to give me right now, you’re wrong,” I say, my voice thick with emotion.
His jaw starts ticking as I shrug my arms from my robe sleeves.
He comes to a stand and I throw the robe at my feet. He catches me when I approach, boosts me up to his desk, spreads my legs open, and licks me.
Right there.
I come.
I come.
A moan of ecstasy slips past my lips as I jerk beneath his mouth, coming with his mouth pressing tighter and deeper on me, Matt drinking up my orgasm like a starved man.
I sag with a soft cry.
Matt eases himself up and looks down at me, his pupils so dilated I can hardly make out the color of his eyes.
He scoops me up and covers me with my robe.
And steps outside.
“Sir,” Secret Service says as he steps forward.
“I’ve got her,” he tells both the agent and the doorman who walks him to his room every day when he also steps up to help. He motions to me to follow.
The staff that we pass on our way there? They smile under their gazes, and too late I worry that this will erupt into a media frenzy.
“My bedroom is that way.” I point when we reach the residence.
“We’re not going to your bedroom.”
The doorman opens the door to Matt’s bedroom, and Matt thanks him. “Go to bed, Bill—we’re done here.”
The door shuts behind us as he drops me down on the bed. I cling and kiss him, burning for him.
He strips quickly and I look at him. All that strength. His muscled arms with silky, dark hairs running along the backs of his forearms. The soft mat of hair on his chest and the line tapering beneath his pants. My gaze following the arrow of hair from his belly button down to the cock beneath.
He crawls on the bed over me, his body hovering over mine, and we’re eye to eye.
He trails his tongue along the seam of my lips. I mewl. “Tell me you want it.”
His erection is heavy against my abdomen as he grips my hip with one hand and my face with the other. He dips his tongue into my mouth with a slow, wet, powerful flick. “Tell me.”
“I want you,” I breathe, arching beneath him.
He slides his hand from my face downward.
Down my throat.
Down my cleavage.
Across my belly button.
Down.
To cup my sex.
And penetrate me with two fingers.
His features tighten with raw passion.
A groan vibrates up his chest. A groan just like the one that vibrates up my own chest.
I shudder beneath him.
He watches me for a moment, eyes darkening by the second as he takes his cock and teases my wet entrance with the head. I’m waiting for him, panting. Wanting. He rocks back and then starts filling me, not with a fast thrust, but with a slow, deliberate drive of his hips that makes me aware of every inch of him entering—every inch possessing me.
He fills me—no condom, all bare, just him—as if he doesn’t plan to leave an inch of me unclaimed, unfucked, or empty. He fills me as if he’s home. He tenses when he’s fully inside, and groans when my body clutches him greedily—my channel gripping his hot length, not wanting to let him go.
We’re both fighting for control, to take it slow, his body shaking with his need. I rock my hips and
he does the same, a low growl rumbling up his chest as he lifts his head from my breasts and kisses me, kisses me as if I’m all there is right now, all he wants.
“You’re everything, everything good and pure and right,” he rasps into my mouth. He seizes me by the hips and pulls out only to drive in, so deeply I feel him in my heart.
“And you’re all I want,” I gasp, and he slips his hands under the small of my back and grabs me by the ass, holding me there as he starts pounding me harder. He lowers his head. Forehead hovering above mine. Pounding inside me.
My body starts seizing as I hit the pinnacle. His hard, muscular body moving over me without mercy now. Tears of pleasure burn in my eyes as Matt relentlessly drives in and out, in and out, watching me now—watching me take it, take him, writhe for him, go off for him.
I cry out, a soft yell I fear echoes all over the White House.
I’m lost. I’m his. I don’t want to be anywhere else, will never be anyone else’s, he’s my guy, my commander, my god.
As I come, his eyes flash as he looks down at me, every raw emotion written on his face, every feeling he’s tried to hide in public is out here in the open for me, every ounce of passion etched across his normally impassive face here for me to see.
I come even harder, if that’s possible, my body reverberating top to bottom, side to side, and down to the marrow of my bones.
He reaches his climax right in my depths, and I know it’s because my own climax detonated him. His body pulses with his orgasm. I’m still going off in a crazy undulating motion beneath him, but he holds me down by the hips and forces me to take everything. A thousand bursts of color behind my eyelids. I cling to his body and hear him exhale in satisfaction against the top of my head.
We fall still, our breaths echoing in the Lincoln bedroom. I ache because of him and I also ache for more. Even when he’s still hard inside me.
A sheen of sweat coats our bodies. Matt’s coffee gaze feathers over my naked form.
“I can’t get enough of you.”
He sounds amazed and a little frustrated as he cradles the back of my head as he lifts me up an inch for his mouth. He pushes his tongue inside until I mewl softly. “Fuck if I’m not ready to take you again,” he says, his voice gruff as he slides his large, gentle hand down my abdomen.
He cups me between my thighs and gently feels me.
“How sensitive are you, Charlotte?” he asks, lightly rubbing his index finger along my opening.
I hear a low mewl leave me. I want to lick him up, every inch of him, and I definitely crave to lick every inch of his big presidential cock.
“I want you,” I breathe. “Again and again. And I want to …”
I let my eyes fall on his erection and shuffle my body closer. I stare at his cock, the head turgid and swollen, the veins popping up the length. Matt is so swollen he feels heavy in my hand as I reach him. I cup his balls in both my hands, then slide my fingers upward, encircling his width with both my hands as I take him in my mouth.
The taste of the salty drop of pre-cum already on the tip of his cock along my tongue makes me moan deep inside.
A groan rumbles up his throat as he begins to pump into my mouth. His hands are fisted in my hair. He’s plunging deeper, filling my mouth with his cock. With every upward thrust groaning my name, Charlotte.
Before he starts coming, he pulls me back and dives for my mouth with his hungry one.
His kiss so hard our teeth gnash together, our tongues tangle without holding back.
“More,” I moan as we keep kissing and running our hands all over each other’s sweat-slicked bodies.
He instantly rolls me to my back, and goes where he wants to go.
The pace is frantic, the bed squeaking, he’s fucking me so hard, his eyes watching me as if there is nothing more beautiful, nothing he’d rather see, than me—naked and writhing—in his bed.
He fucks me primally, like he knows he’s the most powerful man in the world, and I’m so hot for him I come right away.
I’m loose in bed, languid in his arms, Matt chuckling when I groan as if in pain.
“You okay?” He cups my face and inspects my features, then all of me, sort of in a concerned but admiring way.
“Better than okay. I just bagged the president.” I smile, a sad, forlorn, haunted smile, then Matt looks down at me as he pinches my nipple, playfully.
“I just fucked the daylights out of the first lady and I don’t intend to let up anytime soon.”
Matt brings a Kleenex and wipes me between my legs, and watching him do this makes my heart sort of crumble.
“I’m sorry. I got carried away. I’ll be more careful.” He cups my face and kisses my forehead, looking into my eyes. “Are we going to be okay?”
I look into his eyes, realizing what he’s asking me. If there’s a risk of me getting pregnant.
“I think we’re okay,” I breathe, then nod more firmly. “Yes.”
He smiles at that, kisses me on the lips. “You felt incredible,” he assures.
When he returns and sits at the side of the bed, he’s silent, and although he’s leaning forward on his elbows, his broad shoulders tense.
“If you need to go, I don’t want to keep you,” I whisper.
He drags a hand over his face and glances at me. “Nothing I can do right now. I made the call. I’m meeting in the Situation Room”—he glances at the clock on the nightstand, then shakes his head—“later.”
I knee my way on the bed toward him. “Will they be okay?”
He clenches his jaw as I wrap my arms around his shoulders. “I’m betting a rescue team of eight on that.” He nods firmly, his eyes glazed, warlike.
“Can I do anything?” I ask.
He kisses me, thoughtful. “Pray.”
“I’m sorry this happened.”
“There’s a price for peace. Always.” He looks at me. “But it’s worth it.” He runs a hand down the back of my head. “Go to sleep, baby.”
I lie back down, and he stretches out beside me, a pillow propped behind his back as he pulls me to his side.
My eyes drift shut. No matter what goes on outside this room, in these arms, I feel safer than I ever do anywhere else, and the relaxation seeps into my pores as I drift off and keep my arms around him—as if I, just a small, normal girl, could somehow comfort the most powerful man in the world.
I wake up at 5 a.m. Matt isn’t there. I sit up. “Matt?”
I look around the empty bedroom, ease out of bed, and quickly get dressed. I find him in the small family kitchen. “Are you all right?”
He takes my hand and draws me to sit next to him, then he presses his thumb into my palm, quiet. My heart speeds up with a mix of panic and dread. It feels as if my ribs have just collapsed in my chest, crushing my lungs.
“I had an early meeting in the Situation Room.”
I know why. It’s not easy to make the hard calls. But then our eyes connect again, and a smile tugs his lips. “It’s done. The men are free. A couple wounded, but no casualties. The rescue team did an outstanding job.”
“Oh, thank god.”
“Yeah, thank god.”
“And you. And them.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, then pulls me to him, pressing his lips to mine. Pressing them hard.
“Mr. President,” a Secret Service agent says. “Marine One’s ready, sir.”
“Let’s go,” he tells the agent as he reaches for the suit jacket he has draped behind his chair. “They’re flying them in. I’ll be there to receive them.”
“I have to do a talk at a middle school in New Orleans.”
He nods. “I’ll see you this weekend.”
He’s flying to Fort Lee.
I watch out the window as several marine helicopters depart at the same time. Only one carries Matt.
19
HOME
Matt
I spend two days with our men and their families. I engaged in a meeting with some of my
generals, and requested several new and detailed plans for the handling of the Middle East crisis.
It’s late evening when I climb into the state car along with Wilson, who joins me in the back as we head to Marine One to return to D.C.
“She’s home?” I ask Wilson.
It’s pretty convenient that my agents have constant contact with her.
I’m eager to see her. I shed more than my clothes when I’m with her. I shed every preconceived notion of who I should be. My last name, the presidency, everything is gone—only I remain. A man, flesh and blood, not perfect, but trying his damn best to be, and a man who wants her. Bad.
“Yes, sir.” Even Wilson sounds amused.
Shit, I’m too old for this.
My heart is pounding like a wild thing and I’m drumming my fingers on our way there.
Just remembering the way she gave herself to me, open to whatever I needed, so sweet and vulnerable, makes me thirstier, hungrier.
I reach the White House and Jack is barking at the top of his lungs. “Go find her,” I say.
And I follow him as he dashes up the steps and stops at her room, wagging his tail.
“Good boy.” I pat the back of his head, then I twist the knob, telling him under my breath, “Stay,” and walk inside.
She’s reading on the bed. Looking up to see me, her eyes widening, her mouth parting in a tiny O.
I clench my hands. The need to protect her burns me on the inside. To rid the world of every evil, every injustice, everything that could hurt her or anyone like her.
I’m wired, have had little sleep, and am instantly hard. I should step away, chill with a glass of wine. Fucking unwind. But I couldn’t move away if threatened with a bullet to the head.
She uncurls that sweet body and comes to her feet, setting her book down.
I head over to where she stands at the foot of the bed and pull her to me, lowering my head. A graze first, my lips on hers. It turns hungry. One second, two, and my hands are diving into her hair, grabbing her to me.
“You seem happy to see me.”
“You know damn well that I am,” I growl, feeling possessive, smiling at how pleased she seems.