by Desiree Holt
Until the Dawn
Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand
Madison Sommers is sure she has the world in her hands—a great job working for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a beautiful townhouse in Georgetown, her ambassador father finally at home rather than at the other end of the world. And in Dan Foreman, a lover she adores. The sex is beyond anything she could have imagined, for Dan knows how to use every part of his body, including his talented hands and mouth, to give her screaming orgasms. She wonders if life could possibly get any better.
Then Dan disappears and her world turns upside down—until he reappears in the dark to addle her brain with the hottest sex she’s ever known and a secret that could bring down the country.
An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Until the Dawn
ISBN 9781419929403
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Until the Dawn Copyright © 2010 Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand
Edited by Helen Woodall
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book publication September 2010
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Until the Dawn
Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand
Dedication
To our favorite thriller writers and inspirations! Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, Nelson DeMille, Vince Flynn. We love you.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Bell UH-1: Bell Helicopter Corporation
Blackberry: Research In Motion Limited Corporation
Bush Intercontinental Airport: City of Houston (Texas)
Dodge: DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Glock: Glock Inc. Corporation
Hyatt Regency: Hyatt Corporation
Jacuzzi: Jacuzzi Spas International Inc.
Keurig: Keurig, Incorporated
Kia: Kia Motors Corporation
Mercedes: DaimlerChrysler AG Corporation
Metro: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Patek: Patek Philippe SA
Stetson: John B. Stetson Company
Chapter One
Dangerously gorgeous guys were not on Madison Sommers’ list of acceptable men. Since the age of sixteen, she’d stayed away from any man who didn’t look like an accountant and have the libido of one. She stayed away for her sanity. For her career.
But one look at Daniel Foreman four weeks ago as he appeared in her office for an interview had Maddie eating her words. And later, as she saw his tempting self day after day, eating her heart out, too.
Not a smart move, Maddie, girl, to crave this luscious piece of man in your bed. In your cunt.
Still, admiring Dan’s tight ass, the come-to-daddy pecs, the black-as-thunder hair and those grass-green eyes made her turn away now to thread her fingers through her chignon, take another sip of her gin and tonic and swallow her desire for him.
“Good thing you faced me, Madison, sweetie,” crooned Josh Holbrook, their mutual boss’s press secretary as they stood at the bar of the North Capital Street Hyatt ballroom. “You were about to lose your Ice Queen nickname drooling over Danny Boy.”
Madison chuckled at her friend’s insight. “Can’t hide anything from you, can I?”
“Nor should you.” Josh lifted his martini in a toast. “That’s how you and I serve our country,” and he tipped his head toward the white-haired hulk who was the Speaker of the House, “and our god, over there.”
“So what do you think of Dan’s performance so far?” she asked the co-worker whose opinion she trusted above all others on the Speaker Paul Trask’s staff.
“He hasn’t been here that long but Dan the Man is stellar. Fast thinker. Knows more about the federal transportation regs than the boys over at 1600. Better yet, he charms the panties off every man, woman and beast he deigns to smile at. And the only girl he really wants—” Josh arched a blond brow at her, “is you.”
“Please,” she scoffed, but her traitorous pulse jumped at the very idea.
Josh snorted. “Do not tell me you haven’t noticed.”
She had. Oh, she had. The startling green eyes that slid down her body the first day she interviewed him for the job of policy analyst on homeland security issues. The height, tall as heaven, all six-four hovering over her when he appeared at her desk as if he were a shield protecting her from hell. The mouth, generous and oh so kiss-me-baby sweet. The voice like gravel that scraped her raw with wild desire to strip and have him then and there. Anywhere. On her desk, on the floor. All be damned, Dan Foreman made her want to chuck every rule she’d ever made about whom to date and whom to fuck.
“What do you two think?” that booming voice came from behind her. “Can we blow this party now?”
Maddie turned, her body spinning against flesh that was a wall of stone. Dan Foreman was hard, massive and warm. Her hand reached out to steady herself from pressing against him. But Dan snatched up her fingers to hold her palm to his chest and what do you know, her pussy wept in want of him. “Ohh, I think we’ve done our duty for tonight.” She gazed up at him, continuing to cream so much her thong got soaked with need. Her mouth opened at the half-lidded beauty of Dan’s manly face. “We can leave.”
“Good. I think we need dinner,” Dan said, his voice a rough velvet seduction, his eyes drifting from her swept-up hair to her lips and the red silk cocktail dress. His invitation was clearly for her alone.
Her nipples peaked. Her pussy pounded. She bit her lower lip. “I don’t—”
“Eat?” Dan asked, his dark brows rising in shock. “Of course, you do. And I love to eat. Need to. Often. I am a big man. And you are hungry.”
“Oh, yes.” She gulped. What the hell were they talking about here? “I’m tired.”
“All the more reason to eat.” He pressed her fingers against his heart that pounded like a gong against her flesh. “Come with me.”
An invitation she should refuse.
“Okay, you two.” Josh plunked his glass on the bar. “Go. Me? Do not feel remorse for me. I am going home. Gotta get packing for my vacation next week.”
Dan didn’t glance at Josh.
Neither did she.
But as Josh bade his goodbyes, Maddie couldn’t seem to move. Captive of Dan’s charisma, captive of her own weak need to see if he was all she fantasized he was, Maddie gave in and grabbed up her evening bag. “Shall we go downstairs in the restaurant? The fish there is so fresh.”
“No.” Dan took her elbow in a grip that brooked no d
ebate as he led her toward the double doors to the hallway.
“All right, no fish.” She waved goodbye to Speaker Trask and a few guests as she fought to keep up with Dan’s big strides. She racked her brain for places they could go that had plenty of light, bad acoustics and no banquettes where she would be tempted to sit next to him and feel every bulging muscle in his body. “Steak?”
“My pick,” he asserted, his jaw tight and his eyes straight ahead.
“Okay.” She began to stop in front of the elevator, but he hurried her toward the stairs. “Where are we going? The elevator will come in a minute.”
“Yeah.” Dan thrust a shoulder into the stairwell door, pulled her through and pressed her to the wall. “But so will I.” He cupped her chin, her head against the cold cinderblock as he flowed so close to her, she wondered if his breath were hers. “Watching you laugh with Josh made me nuts. I decided I cannot do this any longer.”
“What?” she whispered, her eyes searching the torrid way his examined her mouth.
“Wait for you to decide when you’re going to taste me.” His arms enveloped her. His body absorbed her. His lips took hers. Once, fast and hard.
She tore her mouth from his. “Oh, god, I shouldn’t.” Her eyes closed, her head lolled against the wall, but her arms betrayed her as they crushed him impossibly closer, the solid strength of him a wealth she’d never felt before. “I don’t do staff.”
“Look at me,” he demanded, his fingers lifting her jaw so that she stared right into those mesmerizing green eyes. “Christ, you are one beauty. The Ice Queen with a reputation for never doing anyone.” His forefinger traced her lower lip and then inserted it into her mouth where she sucked him with a slow delight. He groaned and with a hand to her ass, pushed her mound up against the hard proof he wanted her. “I am not anyone. You know it. I do. So tell me what we both know is true.”
She met his dare with her own madness and on a voice clear with the ring of undeniable fact, she whispered, “I want to fuck you.”
He swallowed hard. “Where?”
She let her purse drop to the floor. Then her hands wended down his sides and between their bodies where she felt the incomparable length and girth of his desire. “If you’ve got something to complement this,” she caressed him through his trousers, “the best place would be here.” She barely finished before he claimed her mouth like a madman who’d never have enough.
“Hold that thought, baby,” he ground out and felt inside one of his trouser pockets. As he held her against him, he fingered out a strip of packets, tore one off its strip with his teeth and undid his zipper.
And she felt his cock spring free. Pushing him slightly away, she glanced down and gasped at the sight of the thick blue-veined creature pointed up at her. Her knees buckled. “Dan,” she reached out to touch him, stroke him, big and hot and long as sin, “Hurry.”
He rolled on the condom with a one-handed precision she admired. But flush against the wall, she had no idea what to do, how to proceed. She didn’t do stairwells and fast fucks. He stepped closer, ran a hot palm up one of her thighs and leaned in to speak on her mouth. “You kill me in this slip of a dress.” He cupped her lush pubic curls. “Wow, honey. Look how wet you are.”
“For you,” she whispered, bold to tell him of her body’s betrayal.
His eyes narrowed at her in delight as he stretched the crotch of her thong, ripped it off, let it fall to the floor and inserted two blunt fingers inside her ever-so-ready pussy. “Oh, baby,” he crooned as she writhed in joy, “good thing we’re getting going on us or you’d be wasting all this cream and it is—” he hoisted her up with her legs around his hips, “mine.”
He possessed her with one long, swift, sure ram of his cock. The size of him, the heat of him, the delight of him bucked her back against the unforgiving wall. And she keened. Clutched his shoulders. Rode with him, moaned with him, reveled in the raging assurance of his strokes. She panted, snatching every second of his grinding claim, wringing a pulsing completion from his every thrust, his every groan. Seared by the fire of his possession, she began to feel the roll of her climax.
“Go with me, baby.” He pounded against her, shoving himself impossibly higher into her cunt, then caught her at an angle that assuaged the mad demands of her swollen, greedy little clit. He kissed her cheek, bit her earlobe. “Trust me.”
She did. She had. And with that realization, she shattered into a thousand pulsing pieces while he climbed his own mountain of release, his head thrown back, his eyes squeezed closed, his shout of delight scalding her as the two of them melted to the wall.
He nuzzled her throat. “You’re wonderful, baby.”
She sighed in joy and smiled. “Makes two of us.”
He pulled away to view her contentment. His smile became a grin, his big white teeth looking rather like a wolf’s. “I need more.”
“Me, too.” She reached out to stroke his cheek. “I’ve wanted to do this for days.”
He planted a kiss in her palm. “I know. You murder my concentration.”
“Glad you did this now then. Wouldn’t want to mark you down on your performance appraisal.”
He shifted his cock up inside her. “You haven’t seen the half of what I can do.”
She gave a laugh and rolled her hips on his wonderful shaft. “How can you still be hard?”
“How?” he asked, wild-eyed as he splayed one hand up into the wealth of her chignon. Hairpins pinged to the concrete floor as his lips took hers in a marauding kiss that captured all her breath. “Because looking at your blue eyes and your white-blonde hair and your rosy lips has made me rock hard 24/7 for the past fourteen days, and I doubt I’ll ever be limp again.”
“Oh, be still my heart,” she chided him on a whimper of need.
“Where are we going? Shall I get a room here?”
People’s voices drifted through the heavy doors.
With his rod still inside her, he shifted so that anyone looking through the fire door’s wired window would not see her face. “Don’t move.”
She bit her lip, examining him. But people came and went into the elevator, and as another wave came and departed, nerves overtook her. She began to giggle.
He massaged the back of her head and led her face against his massive chest. “Shh, baby. They’ll go soon.”
She inhaled the musk of his cologne, an intriguing mix of juniper, man and sex. She rubbed her nose against his sternum. “Love the way you smell.”
He groaned and shifted inside her. “Stop that.”
The imp in her came out to play and she let her head fall back to admire his sculpted features. His eyes were half-closed in need. And his handsomeness burrowed into her body and her mind. She knew now she had defied every rule she’d ever made for herself. It was so easy to be easy with Dan Foreman. “What if I don’t?”
“Ah, honey, give a man a break.” He was laughing as he swayed against her, giving her reason to believe he might just be able to love her again and so soon, too. “Let me get us out of here before the rest of the party comes and joins us.”
She squeezed his shaft in agreement and he grunted. “Let’s go down the stairs.”
He stroked her hair that now fell to her waist. “Give me a minute to decompress here.”
She shivered against him. “I love the way you feel inside me.” Another imprudent confession, Madison, of how you want to be totally free with this man. So what was one more statement? “Don’t know if I can let you go.”
“Don’t have to. Madison? Baby, look at me.” He tipped up her chin, and his eyes were mellow green pools of care. “This is going to happen again tonight and—” he kissed her nose, “in a bed.”
“Come home with me,” she offered, jolted that she trusted him enough to take him to the sanctuary that was her quiet little house.
He withdrew slowly from her body with a luscious pop, making her moan in objection as he rolled off the full condom and zipped up his trousers. “You want me
to come to Georgetown?”
“I have a king-size bed that has never had a man in it.” She knew she’d said that in a small and soundless voice.
“The Speaker of the House’s Chief of Staff, the famous Ice Queen, invites me to come grace her bed?”
She nodded. Held her breath. Hoped she hadn’t made a fool of herself.
He crushed her close. “My fondest wish is to make love to you, baby. And I damn well wouldn’t want to do it any place else that didn’t mean something to you.”
She let out her breath, reached up on tiptoes and held his face in her hands. “I can’t wait.”
She kissed him. The lips she’d coveted for days. The hard, smooth feel of his satin mouth. The thrust of his tongue inside her mouth. The sounds of his passion for her as he bent her back in his arms and planted kisses down her throat and her cleavage.
“Ah, Christ.” He broke away, heaving and out of breath. “No more here.” He grabbed her hand and began to head down the stairs.
“Wait.” She bent to pick up her purse and then ruefully examined the tatters of her thong. “These things don’t cover much anyway.”
He chuckled and grabbed her around her waist to kiss her lips. “You won’t need those ever again.”
“Sure of your prowess, are you?”
He lifted her hips and pressed her against his. “With you?” He bent to slide his hand up her thigh to plunge two fingers inside her wet and tender labia and she arched into his bold possession. “If we dared, you’d have me again here and now.” Extracting his fingers, he smoothed her dress, then took the thong from her fingers and shoved it in his suit coat pocket. “We have better things to do with your sweet pussy than cover it up. Come on.”
Chapter Two
Grateful that no one had opened the door from the hallway, they took the stairs to the next floor where he led them around to the service elevator. When the doors opened and no one was inside, he pressed her to the wall and kissed her nipple through the thin silk sheath. One hand cupped the weight of her breast.