by Amelia Wilde
“How?” Bellamy’s face is twisted in disbelief. “He’s the president. He can’t possibly be after your job.”
“No, no. He’s not after my job.” I laugh, and it sounds all wrong. “He’s after my people. God, the hours I’ve spent building the perfect team—” My hand shakes around my fork and I still it, mastering the anger with a control that is as hard-won as anything I’ve ever earned in my life. “He poaches them for White House positions. Who can turn that down? Insider experience like that is priceless in the Beltway.”
She eats three more slices of carrot, dripping in butter and brown sugar, a thoughtfulness in every line of her face. “He must not know.”
“He must not know what? Trust me, Andrew is hardly ignorant.”
“How much it hurts you.” Her gray eyes meet mine and I am rocked backward. If I’d been standing, I would have fallen by the sheer empathy in those gorgeous eyes. It’s not pity. It’s understanding.
The weight of it is too much. “He knows what he knows.” I put on a smile, a real charmer. “What about you? What made you want to be a lawyer?”
Bellamy’s mouth presses into a thin line, and all my senses tingle.
I’ve hit a nerve.
She looks down at the table, then lifts her napkin to her lips and dabs at the corners.
“Bellamy?”
She raises her head again, as if she’s made her decision. “My mother.”
I nod. “Did she dream that for you as a kid?”
“No.”
That’s not what I expected her to say.
“Really? Then—”
At the next table, a man’s phone goes off. “Shit,” he says under his breath, reaching for it to silence the alert.
“Did you read it?” The woman he’s with, her red gown sequined and shining in the candlelight, is staring down at her own screen.
The murmurs rise around us.
“Bahara.” The word hits me from a table diagonal to us.
“What’s going on?” Bellamy watches as the dining room shudders to a start and hums with new conversation. She takes out her own phone. “Unrest in Bahara? Why does everyone here look so freaked out? It’s just a little country, right?”
My heart beats faster. “There’s a pretty crucial military base there.” I gleaned at least that much from the campaign trail.
This is it—the first real crisis of my brother’s presidency.
Bellamy and I blink at each other across the table.
“Do you want to go somewhere we can watch the news?”
She takes in the nervous energy of the room. “Let’s go.”
22
Bellamy
We watch a live stream of the news on the way back to Graham’s penthouse. His jaw is set, tight, and when the anchors start repeating the same things they began the segment with, he closes the app and rubs a hand over his forehead.
I curl my hand around his shoulders. “I’m sure your brother will be okay.”
“My brother? I’m not worried about my brother.” He gives me an exasperated grin. “I’m worried about us.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
“Everything that affects my brother affects us. Just wait.”
“I don’t see how—”
Graham’s phone rings.
He answers.
“Graham Blackpool.”
The booming voice on the other end is too loud to be audible, and Graham turns down the volume of his phone, twisting away from me. His driver steers the car to the curb and Graham climbs out, sticking his hand back through the door for me.
He shakes his head and ushers me toward the front door of his building. “I understand that,” he says, his voice deadly even. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”
I keep my mouth shut, even though the curiosity is like a tornado, threatening to lift me straight off my feet.
Graham stalks over to the elevator and stabs the call button with his thumb. “Of course I’ll be there for him. In any way he needs. I’m ending this call now. Goodbye.”
He shoves the phone back into his pocket as the elevator doors close behind us.
“That sounded intense.” I’m almost afraid to ask any questions, given the raging heat in his eyes, but what’s the worst that happens? “Was it Brian? Does he need us to make an appearance?”
“No,” says Graham. “It was my father.”
I laugh a little, trying to defuse what seems like a heavy tension thickening the air. “He obviously wasn’t calling to congratulate you on a date well done. Disappointing.”
Graham looks straight ahead. “That’s the first time he’s called in more than a year. And it was to tell me that we need to support Andrew. These could be trying times.”
His jaw works, and I see it—all his pain, laid out in front of me in the lines of his body. It’s a pain that I know he will never admit to. I know it like I know I want to be touching him, so I curl my fingers through his and lean my head against his shoulder.
“Brutal honesty?” Graham says.
“Brutal.” The elevator stops, and we step out, heading for the entrance of his penthouse.
“You’re making a mistake.”
I stop dead in the center of the carpet. “What did you say?”
“You’re choosing the wrong son. I’m only telling you, so you have all the information. Andrew is the one who’s in charge of the country.” Graham looks down at me, his eyes alive with hurt. “There’s still time to change your mind.”
“Don’t.”
He turns his head to the side and raises his eyebrows. “Don’t?”
“That’s all bullshit, and you know it.” I slide my hands down his lapels and pull him closer. “The brother is always better than the president.”
“Oh? You’ve dated a lot of men in the president’s circle then?”
“I’ve dated the only man who matters.” Graham edges us toward the door and taps his phone against the smart lock. “And honestly, I’m sick of hearing about your shady brother.”
“Shady?” Graham laughs out loud; a belly laugh like I’ve never heard. “Andrew is the least shady person I’ve ever met.”
“That’s why he gets away with it.”
“Gets away with what?” Graham presses his lips to the side of my neck, in the place that melts me down to my core.
“Whatever he’s hiding,” I say, and then all of my words are lost to his kisses.
Before we can go to the bedroom, Graham’s phone rings again.
He lets out a deep sigh at the name on the screen. He keeps his hand on my waist while he answers the call. “This had better be something only I can handle for you,” he says by way of greeting, his eyes searching mine.
The response on the other end of the line is so muffled I can’t make it out, but Graham’s face tenses, his forehead wrinkling, eyes going distant. “You’re fucking with me.” Another pause. “I’ll be right there.” He ends the call and puts his phone back in his pocket. “God, I’m sorry, Bellamy.”
“I’m not the type to beg,” I say against his shirt. “But please don’t go. Not after our date—”
“I have to. I’ll explain when I get back.” He puts his fingers under my chin and lifts my face to his. “Wait up for me.”
It’s not a request, it’s a command.
It feels so good to obey him.
I am alone, and in my loneliness, there is only Graham.
There is so much Graham in my head that finally, after he’s been gone an hour, I take my laptop out to the soft leather sofa in the living room. I have a list of jobs I’m interested in applying to. It’ll be a little bit of work getting everything transferred from the D.C. Bar, but I can do it. I just need to land a job in New York City.
At some point, I enter a fugue state. All the boxes on the screen blur into one mega-field for my entire resume. I go on autopilot, filling out cover letters, uploading them, submit, submit, submit.
Until the hand on my shoulder
scares the shit out of me.
“Jesus, Bellamy, it’s just me.”
I raise a hand to my chest. “Brutal honesty?”
Graham laughs. “Shoot.”
“Nobody calls me Bellamy. Everybody calls me Belle.”
“Belle.” He runs his hand down over my shoulder to my elbow. When his hand lifts from my arm, my whole body sags with the disappointment, but he’s back in a flash, settling onto the sofa with me. “I like that.”
“There’s another thing I didn’t mention.” His hand stops moving.
“About what?” Graham’s voice is wary, and he has every right to be. The more I learn of him, the more I see how badly he’s been burned by his own family, money or not.
“My mother.”
23
Graham
Bellamy eyes me nervously and bites her lip. “I wasn’t sure when the best time to tell you would be. I didn’t want you to think—well, maybe you already know.”
“All I know is that you’re not a terrorist.” I gather her in closer, if that’s even possible. “The Secret Service did a background check on you before the benefit gala. They obviously don’t release specific information, but I figure if you’d thrown up red flags, they’d have barred you from entering.”
“Hot.” Bellamy forces a smile. “That’s really hot.”
I lean down and kiss her, her lips soft and yielding beneath mine. When I pull back, she’s panting, her eyes glazed over. “Tell me about your mother.”
“That’s the thing.” Bellamy grabs my lapel in her fist and grips it tight, pulling me closer and closer, the distance between us closing, the air going right out of the room. “I don’t want to talk about my mother. I’m the one who brought it up, but now that you’re looking at me like that—”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to see you. Like I saw you in the green room, only…more.”
I trail a finger down the side of her neck and beneath her shirt. She’s changed into something so soft the fabric feels like it could rip with one twist of my nail. It drapes off one shoulder and I want to kiss that shoulder, the curve of her arm, the soft, creamy skin there, so I do. “You don’t hate me now. Not even a small part of you.”
Bellamy is arching toward me, the weight of her drawing closer while she tilts her head away, giving me more access to her neck. “You say that like you’re sure.”
“The way you respond to my touch, I’d bet anything that—” I dive my hand under her top. She’s not wearing a bra. She’s all warm skin and curves, and with my thumb and forefinger, I find one of her nipples, already standing at attention. All it takes is one squeeze, and Bellamy throws her head back against my arm. We’re sitting on the sofa, but I might as well be the one holding her off the floor. “No. You don’t hate me. You need me.”
She throws a hand over her eyes and struggles for breath. “A person can hate and want at the same time.”
“Some people—but not you.”
I circle her other nipple with my fingers. “You’re right.” She takes her hand away from her eyes. “God, you’re right.”
Bellamy tenses, the curved line of her body freezing. Jesus, it’s hot, the way she responds to every stroke, every brush of my fingertips, every movement I make. The connection between us is a palpable thing in my hands, heavy and electric, dangerous and sweet. I let her linger there, frozen, for the space of a few heartbeats before I put my hands on her waist. “Stand up.”
She stands, and I stand too. “Are we leaving?”
“You’re staying here.”
A shiver rocks her body and I feel it in my own. The pull to her is so strong that it’s almost impossible to walk away.
I do it anyway.
It takes less than a minute to gather what I need from the first master suite—mine—and adjust the lighting in the room. The fireplace across from the sofa springs to life with one swipe of a panel, and with the lights dimmed, Bellamy doesn’t look like a law student at a late-night study session. She looks like a goddess waiting to be claimed.
Like every goddess, she’s verging on defiant when she looks at me again, chin raised, eyes blazing. “This isn’t fair.”
“Why would you expect anything to be fair?” I move behind her and she turns her head to press her lips against mine. “All this has been deliciously unfair. To me.”
“To you? No, I’m pretty sure that—”
I cover her mouth with my hand and bend to speak directly into her ear. “You’re a fiery little thing, sweetness. You chase men out onto the street and ruin their lives, then act above it all. You withhold secrets—”
Her lips move against my palm and I give her an inch of space.
“What was that?”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Brutal honesty.”
“There will be time for talking later. Right now, it’s time to end this pointless torture.” I stroke my hand downward to where her legs meet. It’s like touching a live wire. She jerks back against me, her hand flying down to grip my belt. I let her keep it there until it has to come over her head. I lift her top up and over, and let the fabric fall to the carpet. Bellamy turns in my arms and I kneel on the floor, taking her pants—the same, soft weave—with me.
Her panties are all that are left.
I take her hips in my hands and pull her closer to me, my lips brushing against the black scrap of fabric, and Bellamy’s hands dig into my shoulders. I press a kiss to that same place and Bellamy trembles.
“Spread your legs.”
“Who says I take orders from you?” I can feel her nervousness through her hands, and when I look up into her eyes, it’s reflected there too.
Her legs are already spread enough for me to fit two fingers into that dark, secret place.
Her panties are already soaked.
“You can’t lie to me here, sweetness.”
Bellamy’s eyelashes flutter closed, the muscles all along her body tensing, and I drag my fingers against the damp, overheated fabric. It’s all that’s left between us. She grits her teeth. “Graham.”
“If you want me to stop, tell me now.”
Her eyes fly open. “I don’t want you to stop. I want you to fuck me before I lose my mind.”
24
Bellamy
Graham puts his fingers into the waistband of my panties and yanks them down, then he’s on his feet. My heart hammers against the walls of my ribs.
I can hardly control the trembling in my legs, in my arms, in the center of me. His touch is like fire. His touch is like ice. And I want more of it.
He strips down, right there in front of the sofa, and for the first time, we’re equal.
He might as well be carved from marble, his muscles are that defined, and my brain tries to make sense of it. Why was he only a secondary figure while his brother ran for the presidency? If I were behind a camera, he’s all I’d want to see in front of it. The line of that jaw. Those strong shoulders. The nip of his waist into abs so defined I can’t stop myself from running my fingertips down the ridges, and then lower—
“God, you’re—” He’s magnificent. Eight inches of hard, flawless cock. Eight inches at least.
“God has nothing to do with it.” He takes my hand in his and wraps it around his length. Power. That’s what I’m holding in my hand. Sheer power.
And I want it inside me.
No ambiguities. No pretending. I want Graham Blackpool to fuck me silly, because that is the only way I can get closer to him, and I want that. I need that. I can’t explain it; I can’t find the words, with my pussy hot and clenching for him already, but there’s something about him that draws me in like a black hole. I can’t get away and I don’t want to.
He runs a hand over my hair and down to my jaw, a certain amusement on his face. “Do you still want to hurry?”
His tone is almost teasing, but I see through it to what it is—an open door. If this is too much for me, he’s giving me an out.
&nbs
p; I don’t like that.
“Don’t be such a gentleman all the time.” I squeeze him harder and a muscle in his jaw twitches. “I want this.”
Graham stops being a gentleman.
He crushes his lips to mine so hard I rock backward. He catches me before I can fall to the sofa and pulls me forward, his cock sliding between my legs.
“That’s it,” he growls in my ear. “Get it all wet. You’re going to need it.”
This, of course, only makes me hotter, wetter, and I am becoming the kind of woman I never thought I’d be—writhing, panting, begging him for more, even while a bright, cold nervousness flares in my gut.
Will he even fit?
He’s thick and hard and longer than I’ve ever seen. I’m wound so tight that when Graham does turn us, pulling me on top of him as he sits on the sofa, I gasp in surprise. It’s heaven to let his hands tell me what to do, to spread me apart over him, to make me straddle him. This is what I’m good at. I’m good at following the rules. I’m good at obeying. Even when the person in charge is Graham Blackpool, America’s most reckless playboy and my fake fiancé.
He takes my jaw in his hand. “Brutal honesty.”
“Yes.” I hiss the word over my pounding heart.
“Are you afraid?”
“I’m nervous you won’t fit.”
He bends to kiss me again, the tip of his tongue flicking out to caress my bottom lip, and he strokes two fingers between my legs. “You’d be surprised.” Then he neatly breaks the kiss, tapping the small of my back. “Up.”
I rise on my knees, creating space between us, and Graham positions me over him.
“Come back down, sweetness.”
Hands on his shoulders, I lower myself toward that eight inches of perfection, my entire body singing with anticipation. Oh, God. Oh, God.
His crown makes contact with my opening, and I tense in his hands. His green eyes lock on mine and my face heats—this is so much more intimate than I thought it would be. “Relax.”