He was starting to reevaluate his ten-minute time table.
He’d get her off in five.
She was that needy. He knew that the minute he slid his hand down her flat stomach and felt her soaking pussy. “Fuuuuck . . .” he groaned into her mouth.
They were in an awkward position, standing with her jeans still halfway on, but he made it work, and she did too—gyrating her hips and pushing down on his hand.
“More,” she moaned into his neck. “More.” She gripped his wrist and pushed his hand down, directing him to exactly where she wanted him. He was a man who knew how to follow instructions, so without hesitation he slid two fingers inside of her. Her head fell back against the door, completely lost in the moment.
He wanted to kiss her, touch her more, but he couldn’t stop watching her face. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The way her eyes crinkled around the corner with how tightly she had them closed, the way her cupid-shaped pink lips formed an “O”—everything about the moment was erotic. She was using his hand on her—rocking her body, her hands fisting her own hair, her body arching off the door.
“Don’t stop,” she demanded in a strangled yell.
Like he would ever stop.
But then he did. Because he wasn’t ready for it to finish this way. He regretted not having tasted her in the elevator. He wasn’t going to go home without her taste on his lips.
He pushed her pants down to her ankles and she squealed in frustrated surprise when he stopped touching her. But then he got to his knees and buried his face in her pussy, and she shut the hell up. She smelled like heaven and tasted like a heady mix of Olivia and vanilla and woman. He grabbed her ass and pulled her as close to his face as he could until he felt her tremble underneath his grip and she went from wet to drenched as she came hard against his tongue.
He pressed his head against her thigh for a moment, having to catch his breath. When he finally looked up, her head was hanging down and her eyes were closed. Her face was pink and she had a sheen of sweat on her forehead.
Fucking stunning.
He kissed up her thigh as he stood, then kissed her belly button, then her neck as she slowly and lazily opened her eyes.
“Good?” he asked, placing a kiss on her right cheek, then the left.
“So much good.”
Then he kissed her forehead.
“We’re going to do that again.”
“Good plan. Good plan,” she said with a soft dreamy smile.
He kissed her lips one last time, then reached down and pulled up her jeans.
“When can I see you again?” he asked.
She opened her eyes, a little confused. “Uh . . . you tell me. You always seem to surprise me.”
Again he leaned in, but this time kissed her nose. “You’re right.” He noted that she didn’t argue about a second date or have any bullshit excuses about just having fun. “Have a good night, darlin’.”
“Wait. How . . . don’t you . . . ?” She looked down at his cock, which was painfully hard. But they didn’t have time for that and he didn’t want her to feel rushed or anxious that her daughter would walk in on them.
“I’m good. You’ll get your ten minutes on me. Don’t you worry.”
He kissed her one last time, this time on the inside of her wrists, first the right and then the left. Then reached behind her for the doorknob, forcing her to step aside.
He smiled at her one last time before walking out to his car.
She stayed put for a moment, looking . . . flustered.
He didn’t want to laugh right in front of her but he was rather pleased with himself. He needed her to remember him, but more important want him, so that she stopped questioning herself and her feelings.
* * *
“Mommmyyyyyyy . . .” Sophie whined for the umpteenth time that evening. It was late at night, two days after her date with Joey. She hadn’t talked to him since, and she kept replaying the date back in her mind to see where it had gone wrong.
He’d gone down on her.
She still couldn’t believe he’d done that, or that she’d begged him for more. It had felt so good, she had absolutely no regrets. But now she was questioning things.
Why hadn’t he called?
He’d asked to see her again. She hadn’t given him an answer mostly because she expected him to just show up, since that had pretty much been his MO since they’d met. But now, two long days later, she hadn’t heard a single peep.
She was devastated and hated admitting it. They’d had a connection—not just physical, but also they laughed, and talked, and had what she thought was a very good time.
God, she hated dating. Which was why she had avoided it for all these years.
Maybe he’d gotten the message about her not being able to get involved with so many things on her plate. She had tried to push him away.
She let out a deep breath and pushed down her disappointment and instead focused on the work she need to do.
“I need water!”
Olivia loved her five-year-old daughter, God, did she ever. She was the light of her life. But Jesus Christ, she was a handful. It was as if the terrible twos had morphed into the threes and the fours and now fives.
Olivia slid her laptop to the other side of her empty bed, got up, and padded to Sophie’s room.
Again.
“This is the last time, Soph. You’ve had three glasses of water already.”
“Okay, Mommy.” She gulped down half a sip and then pushed the glass back to her mother’s hand. “Good night.”
Sophie had the same full lips Olivia had and a cute splay of freckles on her cheeks and nose, which Olivia had had when she was about Sophie’s age. Olivia bent down, kissed her daughter’s forehead, pulled her covers up, and said good night.
Again she got into bed, grabbed her laptop, and kept on trying to work. Mark had had the brilliant idea of using social media and the internet to disseminate her fiscal plan instead of scheduling another event. The details of her agenda were going to be uploaded via a prerecorded Facebook video the next morning and she was excited to see how it would be received. The good thing about it was that if all hell broke loose, she wasn’t in front of a group of angry protestors.
Thoughts of Joey kept creeping in and messing with her concentration as she tried to make sure everything was in order for the next day. After the seven o’clock post, she had an intimate speech at a meeting room in a hotel downtown, and then the rest of the day was a slew of back-to-back meetings. She would be lucky if she got home by ten in the evening tomorrow. Thank God for Winnie and her availability to watch Sophie all the time.
But Joey’s blue eyes, those dimples, the way the material of his shirt around his bicep pulled, was what kept drifting through her mind. She especially loved how she had to look up when she spoke to him. At five foot ten, she was usually either the same size or taller than her dates, especially when she wore heels, but not with Joey.
And damn, had she wanted him to kiss her good night. Why hadn’t he? “Arghh,” she whispered out loud.
“Mommmmyyyy! Mommy!”
Being a single mother was rough, and being a single mother with a demanding job was nearly impossible some days. Again, she got out of bed and crossed the hall to her daughter’s room. It was almost two in the morning and she still had so much to do.
“What now, Soph?”
“You didn’t check under the bed. Check under the bed. There could be monsters, Mommy.”
“Sophie, honey, I’ve checked under the bed, I’ve checked the closet. I’ve gotten you water, I’ve lowered the temperature, and I’ve read you two bedtime stories. Go to sleep.”
Again, Olivia walked back into the room and just as she expected, a minute later, Sophie was standing in front of her bed, tears in her eyes and her blankie draping behind her. Knowing that there were battles worth fighting, Olivia closed her laptop, put it on the night table and lifted the covers for Sophie to climb in. It was
late, at this point, all they’d do was frustrate each other and eventually Sophie would end up in her bed anyway. So she skipped the middleman and just let her daughter in the bed.
“I love you, Mommy.”
The girl had her wrapped around her finger. She kissed her cheek and turned off the lap. “I love you too, sweets.”
Exhaustion took over almost immediately. Work would have to wait. Within minutes, both were fast asleep.
Four hours later, Olivia was sitting on her couch, the laptop on her lap, a mug of coffee in her hand, awaiting the scheduled post.
As soon as it went live, the comments, likes, and shares began to flood her professional Facebook page. She was nervous about turning on the television. Around eight in the morning, Mark called her.
“Did you see the news? No major issues. Representative Warner had a few choice words to say about the appropriations to Florida Fish and Wildlife and the Everglades Preservation Project, but that was expected. McGregor has a press conference scheduled this afternoon and I have our interns answering questions on social media.”
She exhaled. “Okay, great. It’s still early, people are still waking up. We’ll see how things go throughout the day.”
“Are you on your way to take Sophie to school?”
She and Sophie were already ready. “Yes. As soon as Tom gets here we’ll head out. I’ll see you in about forty-five minutes.”
“Be wary, Miami has a putrid smell of algae this morning.”
“Really?” She hadn’t stepped outside yet. “Okay.”
“See you soon,” Mark said, hanging up. Shortly after, Tom arrived and Olivia headed out to drop off Sophie at school and then make her way to the hotel where she was supposed to be giving a speech.
* * *
Olivia was used to speaking in front of large crowds. She stood behind the podium and smiled and began talking. She spoke about her major platform points, which were education and the local environment. First she gave the crowd her well-known history working at the school board and all the groundbreaking changes she’d made during her tenure. She promised to continue to fight for the children, especially funding programs to help the special education initiatives she’d created. She was a big advocate of innovative approaches for children on the autism spectrum as well as alternative teaching methods for children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder while trying to avoid medication whenever possible. She understood how it wasn’t always possible, but before going that route, she wanted parents to have tools available to them in the public school system. There were pushbacks, even in her own party, regarding the cost it would take to run these programs, but her budgets were rock solid and she believed in this wholeheartedly.
Then came her other big platform. The Everglades Preservation Project. This was causing the most pushback, more than any gun control initiative and even more than some controversial bonds that had been proposed. There were some big-time lobbyists, mostly within the sugar industry, who wanted to carve out thousands of acres of the Everglades. She, on the other hand, wanted to get back miles and miles of land from the sugar industry in order to build new dams, which was one of the ways to control the algae. She was also a big advocate of regulating the sugar farmer’s pesticide runoff into the Florida waterways. The toxic algae that had sprung up a few months earlier was causing the environment to be pushed forward as a major topic of the campaign and she had been hard-nosed about her stance. Luck was on her side, as messed up as it sounded, because the horrible stench outside was a perfect segue into the conversation. There was no way anyone could deny that the pollution was a real thing when they couldn’t walk outside without being hit head-on with the sickening smell.
When she was finished with her speech she was received with a standing ovation by most. Not all. The few boos, however, didn’t overshadow the success of the morning.
What had made Olivia climb the political ladder so quickly was the way she’d gotten through to her constituents. She was firm in her platform but listened. She had compassion where her opponent tended to be somewhat removed and a bit callous. She could see the other side’s point even if she didn’t agree with it, and that helped her get through to them because she anticipated every move, every posture. And at the end, she may not have gained their vote but she’d definitely gained their respect. And eventually, as it was with politics, when her opponent screwed up, the scales would tip in her favor. At least that was how she ran her campaign. It wasn’t the customary way, but it was her way, and Mark and the rest of her staff supported her one hundred percent.
“That was great, Livie,” Mark said as he led her off the stage.
“They were tough,” she said, looking down at her phone.
“We expected that. Still, you held your own.” They walked briskly to the car as he read something on his phone. “The polls are looking favorable.”
“Good. Good. Is lunch with John and Muriel still on?” John was a local commissioner who’d been very supportive, and Muriel was his wife.
“Yes. Let’s go, we’re running a little late.” Mark looked around for her Lexus. “Where’s Tom?”
The driver slash bodyguard wasn’t working out so well. Maybe Joey had gotten into her head and made her open her eyes, but Tom wasn’t great. At all.
He was never around when she needed him, like during his smoking break at the fundraiser. Truth be told, she’d been opposed to having a bodyguard to begin with, but it was customary to have one and Florida, being such a populous state, sometimes the crowds were overwhelming.
On one occasion, when she’d been swarmed by cameras while having dinner alone with Sophie, she’d relented. “He was by the left wing of the stage while you were speaking. I told him to bring the car around,” Mark said. As he was pulling out his phone to call Tom, the car pulled up.
Olivia pointed. “Come on, he’s here.”
Tom jumped out of the car and around to the passenger side to open the back door for Olivia. When she didn’t have to drive, she preferred to sit in the back with Mark and get some work done from the car.
As soon as she stepped inside she gasped, her palm covering her mouth.
“Oh my God!” She held out her hand to stop Tom from closing the door.
“What is it, Ms. Russo?” he asked.
She pointed to the back of the leather seat. Carved into the black leather in jagged edges, the seat’s stuffing spilling out, it said LIAR.
Mark ran around to the other side of the car and opened the door. “Shit,” he gasped, looking at the back of the driver’s side passenger seat where the word WHORE was carved into the leather.
“Outta the car, Ms. Russo,” Tom demanded, pulling her out.
Whore?
Liar?
Her hands and legs began to tremble.
There were photographers around and she didn’t want to draw attention, but they were leaving a conference full of local politicians and Tom, a big hulk of a man, and Mark, her older but also very fit advisor, were both standing with phones in hands, talking, arms flailing, looking not at all calm, cool, or collected. “Stay back, Ms. Russo. Police are on their way.”
“You didn’t check the vehicle before you drove up?” Mark asked. Olivia didn’t know much about bodyguarding but that seemed like a logical thing for him to have done.
“It’s a four-door sedan. There wasn’t anyone in the backseat or anything.” She supposed that was true. Why would he check the back of the seats? But how’d they get inside?
“Was the car locked? I mean, the windows aren’t broken, so either this person had the keys or you left it unlocked,” Oliva said, shaken up by the words.
Liar. Whore.
The only reason she could think for the word “whore” was her date or elevator makeout session with Joey. Liar—well, it was standard political crap. But whore? That was personal.
When she’d run her first campaign, her opponent for superintendent had called her all sorts of things from insinuating that as a singl
e mother she was not equipped for the position to saying she was uneducated and therefore not qualified. This was not her first rodeo, but it was the first time the words had shifted into something physical. Vandalizing her car was not the same thing as a Twitter post or television ad.
“Of course it was locked,” Tom replied indignantly. He looked around as if searching for clues and then moved closer to the door. “Look.” He pointed to a bunch of tiny, barely noticeable scratches by the back passenger-side window. “Someone picked the lock. In a car like this, you really have to know what you’re doing to get inside.” Then he jogged to the front and bent down underneath the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked.
“I’m looking for—yep, they disengaged the alarm when it went off and then reconnected it. Whoever did this went through a great deal of trouble, Ms. Russo.”
“Shit,” she whispered.
The next two hours were chaos. Tom’s employer, G & F Security Services, had come in and started barking orders which riled up the police who were heading some sort of investigation. Everyone had told her, none-too-nicely, that she needed to get back into the building as it was uncertain who had done the vandalism and whether it was safe for her to be outside in the open. Meanwhile, everyone who had a cell phone had taken photos and videos of the scene. Needless to say, she’d missed lunch and it wasn’t until five o’clock in the afternoon that she finally headed home—exhausted from a rough night with Sophie, an early morning because of the Facebook post, and the scare from the events at the speech. All her afternoon meetings had been canceled, which meant that her already hectic week would surely be even busier as these meeting would have to be squeezed in somewhere. She was answering emails from her phone, distractedly, when she finally walked into her house.
“You’re all over the news.” Winnie, who picked up Sophie from school daily, was waiting for her inside. Snatching the phone from Olivia’s hand, she replaced it with a glass of wine. They’d spoken throughout the day, and Winnie knew about the incident.
She should have been all over the news for her innovative campaign strategy and for her budget plan, instead she was all over the news because of a bullshit vandal. “Just politics,” she said, trying to soften the situation and not wanting to worry her friend.
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