by Cassie Cole
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had guys like that looking down on me my whole life. I’ve learned to bite back.”
“Guys like him?” she asked.
“You know the type,” I said. “That dude was definitely prom king at his high school back in 1950, or whenever he graduated. Probably got a sports scholarship to a D1 school. And not in football. In a preppy sport, like lacrosse.”
The smile Elizabeth was trying to suppress told me I was right.
I took a shower and changed clothes while it was still barely light out. As stereotypical as it sounded, night was the biggest danger to someone like Elizabeth. During the day an intruder would have a tough time getting by the eyes of the two officers outside. At night, it would be much easier.
“Megan’s grabbing Mexican on the way in,” Elizabeth called when I came downstairs. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you’re having,” I said.
She put her hands on her hips, showing off her figure. She was a very good looking woman. “You don’t want to think for yourself?”
“I’m easy.”
“If you say so,” she said, as if I would regret it later.
Her campaign manager, Megan Hanram, came over half an hour later. When I answered the door she dropped her bag of Mexican food and leaned back to get a long look at me. The kind that construction workers gave women who walked by a build site.
“Hello,” I said. She was young and attractive herself, and it never got old having a woman look at me this way. I worked hard to keep my body looking this way.
“Hello to you,” she said. “I wish I was an intruder so you could handcuff me. Do you have handcuffs? I can get some handcuffs if you don’t.”
Elizabeth groaned from the kitchen. “Stop harassing my bodyguard!”
Megan winked at me and slipped through the doorway, ensuring that she rubbed against half my body in the process. I shared a smile with the female officer on the porch and closed the door.
In the other room Megan said, “I can see why you changed your mind about keeping him.”
“Megan!”
“Just saying. He’s not hard on the eyes.”
I grabbed my food from the kitchen—which ended up being three spicy enchiladas, refried beans, and rice—and carried it back to the hall to eat. Elizabeth had told me that they were going to discuss some things I wasn’t privy too. I didn’t mind. Hell, I was used to confidentiality in my job—as a bodyguard and as an escort.
I took a bite from one of the enchiladas and glanced toward the kitchen. Elizabeth was watching me with a funny look on her face. The kind Megan had given me. I stared back coolly. Did she have the hots for me? Why was she still staring? This was getting weird…
Then the spiciness from the enchiladas kicked in.
“Oh,” I said with surprise. Elizabeth smiled. “Oh! Oh no!”
“Yep,” she called from the other room.
“What the actual fuck? My mouth is on fire!”
“Ghost peppers will do that,” she said, carrying a bottle of beer over to my chair. “I don’t have milk, but this might help.”
I guzzled it down. It didn’t help at all.
I managed to pull apart my enchiladas and pick out the tiny ghost pepper pieces. The food was edible after that, though my mouth remained damaged for the rest of the meal.
Eventually the senator and her campaign manager stopped giggling at my pain and got to work. They both crowded around their laptops, speaking softly while going over stacks of documents.
The sun set, and the night crawled onward.
I had a new respect for politicians. Elizabeth had gotten up early for her jog and breakfast, then got to the Hill before most of her colleagues. After working there all day she got home and continued working with her campaign manager. I was exhausted just watching her work.
I could never have a job like that. I would lose my mind.
I finished dinner and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Both of them stopped chatting while I was there, like whatever they were discussing was top secret. What subcommittees was Elizabeth on? I knew the intelligence and foreign affairs committees handled sensitive information, but the finance committee was supposed to be boring.
Then again, it was Al Capone’s tax returns which brought him down. There was something to be said for following the money.
I drank a cup of coffee and finished reading Sphere while they worked, then got started on The Andromeda Strain. There was something warm and comforting about reading a book you’d already read years ago. Like hugging an old friend after a long separation. Yeah, you knew how it would feel, but it felt good nonetheless.
It was 10:00 when Megan gathered her things and left. “Make sure you guard her body,” she said to me as she headed for the front door.
“I hear that joke on every single job I work,” I said.
That wiped the smile off her face. “Well, fuck. And here I thought I was witty. G’night, Elizabeth!”
The door opened and closed, and then it was quiet.
Elizabeth gathered her things from the kitchen table, putting the laptop and papers back into her bag. Somehow, she didn’t even look tired. She was a machine.
I couldn’t help but admire her. There was something incredibly sexy about a woman who was at the top of her profession. Hard-working and dedicated. And gorgeous. When I first saw her, I assumed she got elected solely based on her looks. Obviously I’d been wrong.
She was really good at what she did. I didn’t need to sit in on a session in the senate to know that.
Yet as sexy as she was, I kept those sorts of thoughts at bay. She was the client. I was here to protect her, not admire her. This wasn’t my escort job.
But man, if she was one of my clients…
“Ethan,” she called suddenly. “Come have a drink with me.”
I picked up my beer bottle. “Still working on this one.”
She bent over to retrieve something from a lower cabinet, showing off that perfectly round ass pressed tight inside her pencil skirt. She came up with a bottle of something brown, which she waved at me enticingly.
“Something stronger than beer.”
I grimaced. “Alcohol makes it awfully tough to stay awake all night.”
“Irish coffee it is, then!” She gave me a look. “Come on. I need a stiff drink after four hours with Megan, and I don’t want to drink alone.”
I took a deep breath. One drink wouldn’t kill me. Especially if there was caffeine with it.
I joined her in the kitchen and watched her stir cream liqueur into a mug with coffee, then add a healthy pour of the liquor—which ended up being Jameson Whiskey. She poured two fingers into a cup for herself, neat, then raised her glass to me. “Cheers.”
“Bottom’s up,” I said, clinking my glass to hers.
She sighed as if she’d been looking forward to the drink all day. After the last 24 hours of excitement, she probably had been.
“I’m sorry Agent Santos is getting under your skin,” she said. “I can see why it would turn into a pissing contest between you two.”
“And I’m sorry he’s an uptight asshole,” I said, adding a smile to take away the sting of the words.
Elizabeth squinted at me. “You’re not helping, you know.”
“Hey, I really need this bodyguard gig to go over well. I’m doing my best to make it stick. And it’s a lot harder with someone like him punching down at me the whole time.”
She studied her drink. “You don’t like your other job?” She met my eyes. “The handyman stuff, I mean. You said it was carpentry? And some plumbing?”
I’d almost forgotten the fake story I’d given her. I shrugged. “It’s alright.”
“Just alright?”
I almost wanted to tell her the truth about what I did. That I was hired by rich women to meet in expensive hotels and perform elaborate, toe-curling sex acts on them. But she was a senator, and she’d almost certainly fire me immediately. A pro
stitute as a bodyguard would be political suicide. She’d have no choice.
“It’s just…” I said, looking for the words to help her understand without giving anything away. “I don’t know. It’s just not very fulfilling. I’m just going through the motions every day, waiting for it to end. It’s meaningless.”
“Meaningless,” she repeated.
I took another sip of coffee. The liquor had bite to it. “I want more than that. I want to do something that leaves me satisfied at the end of the day! Protecting a senator? That’s the kind of work I could look forward to every morning. Fulfilling.” I gestured at her with my glass. “You’re one of the most powerful women in Washington. Protecting you is a reason to get out of bed every morning. Much more fulfilling than my other job.”
My comment was meant to flatter her, but she seemed disappointed. Almost hurt.
“I see,” she said.
What did I say?
She knocked back the rest of her drink even though she’d just poured it. Mine was still almost completely full.
“I’m going to bed,” she said in a small voice. “Goodnight.”
She walked away.
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked, following her into the living room.
“No. I’m just suddenly very tired.”
There was more here. I was missing something. What nerve had I struck? She reached the stairs and began climbing. I wanted to follow her, to apologize for whatever I had said, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
So I let her go and cursed myself for being an idiot, even if I didn’t know why.
I turned to go back into the kitchen… And that’s when I saw it. On the mantle above the fireplace.
It had a charcoal-colored fabric base, with gold embroidery around the outside. The eyes were wide and cat-like. It shone there on the mantle, reflecting the light just right. Practically glistening.
A Venetian mask. One I was intimately familiar with.
How had I not seen it before?
I went to the mantle and picked it up with trembling hands. It might have been any other mask bought at a costume shop, except cloth had been sewn into it to cover the eye holes. I rubbed my thumb over the design, feeling the curves where it had covered her cheeks and face.
This was it. I knew it with a certainty that bordered on the supernatural.
I turned, and she was there in front of me. Elizabeth. Senator O’Hare.
My mystery client.
18
Elizabeth
The blood in my veins ran cold. Ethan was holding the mask. His eyes were wide with realization.
He’s discovered who I am.
I was such a fool. The man I was keeping around as my bodyguard, the man who I’d been paying for sex in a hotel room, had finally discovered who I was.
Because of course he had. He was bound to eventually. Whether from my tattoos, or the smell of my perfume, or any other clue. The mask was just the most obvious, stupid thing for me to leave out.
“I can explain,” I began.
He snatched my arm and pulled up my sleeve, revealing the tattoos on my right arm. His touch sent electricity up my body.
“It’s you.”
I took a step back and held out my hands. “My campaign manager booked you as a bodyguard, not me. It was a total coincidence. I should have fired you the moment I recognized you on the porch, before you found out, but I thought…”
He was staring at me intently. What was going on behind those piercing emerald eyes?
“You thought what?” he asked.
My throat was tightening, making it difficult to speak. “I’m sorry your escort job is so terrible,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have allowed myself to think… To believe that you might…”
I couldn’t say the words. They were too painful now that he’d told me the truth. That he hated his job as an escort. That it was a job he took no pleasure in.
“Elizabeth,” he said, letting the mask drop to the floor. “I’ve dreamed of you.”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”
There were tears in my eyes. Why did this hurt so much? He was an escort. Of course he didn’t care about me. I was just a paycheck to him.
But then he made the pain go away.
“Elizabeth.” He took my hand in his and looked deep into my eyes. “I don’t enjoy my other job. It wears me down every time. Except for one part. One client who makes it all worth it. Who I’ve been dreaming of every night since she first hired me five weeks ago.”
I held my breath.
“You, Elizabeth,” he said. “There is only you.”
His lips touched mine and electricity passed through us. A thousand electrocutions tingling my nerves and making me weak. But he drew me up into his arms, carrying me forward and then lowering me to the ground until the soft carpet pressed against my back and his hot, hard, wide body blocked out all the light.
“Ethan…” I moaned.
He removed my skirt, gently rather than with the forceful exuberance of our clandestine hotel pairings. He was caring as he slipped my panties over my knees and ankles, and then removed his own pants. His cock slid inside me like it had half a dozen times before, yet completely different.
In the hotel room we’d fucked. Here we were making love.
“Elizabeth.”
My name on his tongue was a curse and a prayer, a whisper and a scream. It held all the emotion that had built up between us over the last month. Exploding into his lips and fingertips and the rock hard sensation of his cock inside me.
I wrapped my legs around him tight, desperate to feel every inch of him.
“Elizabeth,” he said again. “I’ve wanted you so much.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve yearned to stare into your eyes…”
“Yes!”
“To kiss you on the lips…”
“Yes!”
“To make love to you slowly and passionately, like we have all the time in the world.”
“Yes,” I moaned, drinking in the sight of him on top of me. “Yes, Ethan, yes, I’ve wanted all of that too.”
Somehow he felt larger inside me than normal. Swollen with lust so that he filled every inch of me from the inside, filled me to the brim, there was no room for more.
And then the most incredible thing happened. My lover’s eyes widened and he moved faster. His hand cupped my cheek and then grabbed onto my hair, and his hard jaw worked in silent screams. Ethan’s orgasm was almost painful with its urgency as he pushed himself as deep as he could go inside me, giving all of himself to me while he cried out in my apartment.
I moaned and gripped his face tightly, viewing every second of his ecstasy with voyeuristic enthusiasm. Here was the evidence I’d wanted so badly. In the hotel room, Ethan could last for hours. When he was fucking a client he could hold himself back.
When he was making love to me, here with our eyes and lips and hands locked together? Here, he was only a man, and I was only a woman.
His woman.
*
“You knew this whole time?” he asked.
We were laying on the floor of my living room, a throw blanket covering half our bodies. I was distantly aware that at any moment one of the USCP officers could come inside, or even Luca, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I traced a finger over the lines of his muscles. “I mean, I did pick you out of a digital catalog. I knew it was you the moment you showed up on my porch.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
“How could I! There’s a reason I wore that mask to our meetings. I happen to work over at that big building downtown. You know, the one with the rotunda and 534 other politicians inside? Across from the big pointy obelisk thingy?”
He shoved me playfully. “I guess I’m just shocked you kept me around. A smart politician would have sent me away immediately.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I should’ve.”
“Why did
n’t you?”
I felt myself blush, then got pissed off at my body for reacting that way. “I don’t know.”
“I have an idea.” He rolled over, putting his face an inch away from mine. “You like me.”
“Maybe a little.”
He began to sing in his deep voice. “Ethan and the senator, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”
“Shut up!”
We laughed and wrapped our arms around each other and kissed on the floor. I wanted to touch every inch of him. Examine all his nooks and crannies. It felt like luxury after being forced to wear a mask every time.
“So, you don’t like your escort job?”
He shrugged. “I mean, it’s alright. It could be worse.”
“But you love being with me.”
“Oh yeah. Big time.”
“I bet you say that to all your clients.”
“Yeah,” he replied, rolling his emerald eyes. “Sex with you is all fine and good, but what I really prefer is being with all the older, wrinkled women married to millionaires who don’t know how to please them sexually. That’s what really gets me off.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’ve made your point.”
His fingers ran through my hair and his face drew serious. “I’ve been afraid you would get bored of me.”
“Really?”
“We’d been together five times, and you have an entire catalog of escorts to choose from. All of them are practically supermodels. Every time I leave the hotel room, I’m terrified it will be the last time I get to see you.”
I made my face into a mask of puzzlement. “You know, that’s a good point. I forgot about all the other hot guys I could be paying to fuck me. Let me go grab my laptop and find one of them to be my bodyguard.”
I started to rise but he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back to the ground.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said softly. “You and I have… I don’t know. A special kind of chemistry.”
A grin split his beautiful face. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Now that we’re on the subject,” I said. “Who are some of your other clients?”