Olivia nodded.
“I completely understand that. But what if you frame it as throwing energy at additional options, but don’t give up on your bill yet? Keep fighting for your bill, but make this a new thing. Make this a new thing: about education, or health care, or housing, or some bullshit about ‘the American family’ or something. Talk to a bunch of teachers and parents and make sure you talk to the kids, too. Hell, go on a listening tour of town halls across California, focused on communities that don’t usually get heard, or youth, or whatever, to get ideas for how to help.”
He dropped his water bottle onto the blanket. Thank goodness he’d put the top on first.
“I love this idea! Town halls across California, in marginalized communities. It’s perfect. I’m going to text my chief of staff about this right now.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
Olivia laughed.
“That poor woman, getting texts from you with random ideas on a Saturday.”
Max looked up from his phone and shrugged.
“Luckily she’s used to me by now. But also luckily, I don’t have any reception up here, so I can’t send it yet. Hold on: let me just note this down so I can send it later.”
He typed busily with his thumbs for a few minutes, then put his phone away.
“Sorry about that.” He touched her cheek, just for a second. “Thank you—for the idea, and for making me feel less discouraged about everything. And I’m sorry, we’ve been talking about me a lot, haven’t we? How are you? How is the firm going, still super busy?”
Olivia made herself smile big, like she always did when she got this question, and nodded.
“Oh yeah, really busy. I’m lucky I got away all afternoon today.” Suddenly, her lies felt like ashes on her tongue. She just couldn’t do it anymore. Not with Max. “No. Wait. I’m sorry, none of that is true. It’s not that busy at all, and I’m really worried about it.”
Max looked confused.
“Wait, what do you mean? I thought you’ve been wildly busy since you started?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said again. “I know I told you that. I lied to you. I’m sorry. They say you’re supposed to fake it till you make it, and I’ve been faking it too much. We keep networking and reaching out to potential clients but we aren’t getting as much interest as I’d hoped. We have some clients, and we’ve done some pitches, but not enough, and I’m so stressed about it. I knew this would be hard, but I guess I didn’t realize how hard it would be on me.” She finally turned to look at him. “I didn’t mean to lie to you about this, but I’m just so anxious about it and scared that I made the biggest mistake of my life and that we’re not going to make this a success, and I’ll have to . . . anyway, I’m sorry.”
All her lies and anxieties came spilling out, until she forced herself to stop talking. What did Max think of her now?
She didn’t realize she cared so much about that—and about him—until this moment. In retrospect, she should have known when she agreed to go with him on a hike, of all things. And she really should have known when she went shopping for new athleisure for said hike—she, Olivia Monroe, who had said she’d never be one of those L.A. people who bought fancy yoga pants! She looked down at her brand-new $100 yoga pants and laughed at herself—these certainly did make her ass look great, at least.
How did Max manage to get her to spill her guts to him, just by sitting there next to her, with that open look on his face? He’d thought she was this successful lawyer; how would he feel now that he knew she wasn’t?
He nudged her.
“Hey,” he said softly. She turned to look at him. “It’s okay. I understand.”
The look in his eyes was so kind, it made her want to cry.
“You do?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I do. This all must be really hard on you.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close. She knew they shouldn’t be touching in public, but she was so grateful for his embrace that she ignored that.
“It is,” she said. “Especially since I know I’m good at this, I know Ellie is too, and I know we make a great team. And it was hard enough to get clients to have faith in me when I was in New York, and then I had the full backing of a big law firm.”
He patted her hair softly as he dropped his arm.
“Starting your own business is never easy, but I can only imagine how much harder it is when you’re a Black woman and have to deal with racism and sexism on top of everything else,” he said.
She took a long breath. What a relief for him to acknowledge that.
“I have full confidence in you that you’ll make it, by the way,” he said.
She squeezed his hand, then let go.
“Thank you. It means a lot to hear you say that.” She closed her eyes for a second, then looked back up at him. “Max, I have to know. You say you really like me, but is this the kind of thing you do a lot? Like, the cake, and all of that?”
He turned his whole body to face her, a very sweet smile on his face.
“No, I’ve never sent a cake before to try to get a woman to go out with me.”
That was a nice answer, but that wasn’t quite what she’d meant.
“Thank you for saying that, but I guess what I meant was . . .” Shit, how should she phrase this?
“If what you meant was, do I go around picking up women in bars on a regular basis, the answer is no,” he said. “And if what you meant was, do I go around going on dates with women and telling them I like them a lot, the answer is also no. I sent you that cake on an impulse, because you’d disappeared from my life after I saw you in that hotel bar, and when you reappeared, it felt like magic, and I refused to let you go again. And every moment I’ve been with you since then has told me that impulse was correct.”
“Oh,” she said. There he was again, making her feel wanted. More than anyone else ever had.
“I, um. I’m really glad you sent me that cake,” she said. “And I’m really glad to be here with you. I like you a lot, too.”
A wide, bright, joyful smile spread across Max’s face.
“You do?” he asked.
She’d tried so hard to fight it, but she couldn’t anymore.
“I do,” she said. Everything about Max was unexpected, and Olivia had never liked the unexpected. But somehow, she couldn’t get enough of Max.
He picked up the cheese and crackers and put them back into his backpack.
“Great. Then how about we go back to my house and take our clothes off?”
She laughed out loud.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Nine
It took a great deal of self-control for Max not to drive back to his house like a bat out of hell. Only two things stopped him: (1) he did not want the headlines that would come if he was stopped for speeding; and (2) he was driving Olivia’s brand-new car, and if he did anything to risk it, she might murder him before he got the chance to have sex with her.
“I just want to be clear on this,” he said on the drive back to his house. “Are we, like, together together now?”
Even while driving, he could tell she was laughing at, not with, him.
“ ‘Together together?’ Is that some sort of official designation, Senator?”
He slid his hand onto her thigh and forced himself to keep his eyes on the road.
“You know what I mean.”
She put her hand on top of his.
“Yeah, I guess I do. And yeah, I guess we are. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’m not quite ready to publicly be senator Maxwell Stewart Powell’s girlfriend, if that’s okay. I mean, I at least have to get a haircut, and some new lipstick, before I have to be in paparazzi pictures.”
He laughed.
“I’m not famous enough for paparazzi pictures.” He turned his hand over and squeezed hers. “But I know what you mean; it’s early for all of that.”
She’d turned it into a joke, but h
e understood. They had really only just started; he didn’t want to invite the rest of the world into their relationship yet, either.
“Plus,” she went on, “your staff will probably freak out if they find out you’re dating someone who got arrested as a teenager.”
He laughed and touched her cheek.
“Number one, your records are sealed, no one has to know about that. And number two, I know at least three people on my staff who have been arrested much more recently, so they have no grounds to complain.”
They got to his house after a much longer drive than he wanted it to be. As soon as he closed the door behind them, he reached for Olivia.
He kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her. All of the kisses he’d wanted to give her while they were on the hike, while she’d given him advice and confessed about her own anxieties, he gave her now, again and again and again.
And then, suddenly, kissing her wasn’t enough.
He took her hand and led her into his living room, and fell down with her on the couch while they laughed together. And then, finally, he reached for the bottom of her shirt, that T-shirt that was so snug, that shirt that had been driving him wild all day.
“I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for this,” she said.
He leaned forward to kiss her again, just for that.
“Good God, it’s been a nightmare,” he said.
She ran her fingers from his temple to his chin.
“This whole waiting thing was your idea, you know.”
He shook his head.
“Don’t remind me, especially right now. I feel like the stupidest person in Congress, and that’s saying something.”
He tugged off her shirt, and then sat back to stare.
“Holy shit, Olivia.”
She smiled wickedly at him.
“Hmmmm?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“If I had known all day that you were wearing this underneath that shirt, I might have aborted the whole ‘hike’ idea and never even left the house.”
Her bra was the sexiest thing he’d seen in months, with the exception of the woman wearing it. It was hot-pink sheer lace, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to rip it right off her body or to have her keep it on as long as possible.
“It’s not the kind of bra you’re supposed to wear on hikes, but I had to draw the line somewhere,” she said.
“My God, you’re amazing,” he said. He reached for her again, and let his thumbs dance over her dark nipples.
“Do you like that?” he asked.
Her eyes closed halfway, and she nodded.
“I like it a lot,” she said.
He kept touching her, sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, to see how she responded, what made her bite her lip, or moan, or toss her head back. After he felt like he’d driven them both to the breaking point, he sat up and pulled her pants off.
“You have matching panties?” he almost shouted.
She laughed out loud.
“Look, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen today, but a girl can hope, can’t she?”
He reached for her hands and pulled her upright.
“That’s it. The couch is all well and good for some things, but right now, I need you in my bed.”
She tossed her head—and her ass—as she walked ahead of him toward the stairs.
“And what do you propose to do while we’re in there, hmm?”
He walked behind her up the stairs and blessed his good fortune.
“Well,” he said as he joined her at the top of the stairs. “First, I’m going to rip those panties right off of you. Then I’m going to make you come so hard you’re gasping for air. And then I’m going to fuck you until neither of us can remember our names. Does that sound good to you?”
She reached for his fly and unzipped his pants.
“Mmm, that sounds excellent, but can I suggest a slight change in the agenda?”
She didn’t wait for his answer before she pulled his pants down.
“The thing is,” she said as she pushed his underwear to join his pants on the floor, “I’ve been waiting to see this for quite some time.” She wrapped her hand around his hard cock. “And, as I anticipated, it doesn’t disappoint. So, if you could just . . . give me a moment here.”
She pushed him against the wall, right outside his bedroom door, and sank to her knees. Then she looked up at him and smiled.
“Is that all right with you?”
He’d lost all ability to speak. The sight of her there, in that hot-as-hell lingerie, her lips less than an inch from his cock . . . he was surprised he was still standing.
But she was clearly waiting for some sort of signal from him, so finally he nodded. Seconds later, her tongue darted out of her mouth and licked the tip of his cock. He closed his eyes but immediately opened them again. He had to keep watching her.
First she licked him from the tip to the base, then she wrapped her hand around his cock and sucked him into her mouth.
Holy shit, she was so fucking good at this. He wanted to tell her that, he wanted to say something, but all he could do was stare at her and enjoy the hell out of this.
It felt so good—her lips around him, the friction of her hand and of her tongue, her other hand gripping his ass—he knew he wasn’t going to last long. He closed his eyes to try to hold himself together, but then he felt the scrape of her teeth against him, and he knew he was done.
He collapsed on the floor next to her after he came, and when he could open his eyes again, she was smiling down at him.
“We haven’t even made it to the bedroom yet,” he said.
She smiled again and reached for his hand to pull him up.
“I think it’s time, don’t you?”
Olivia couldn’t help herself from a little swagger as she pulled Max into his bedroom, both of them giggling like teenagers. He had clearly enjoyed the hell out of that blow job, but the weird thing was, she’d enjoyed giving it to him almost as much as he’d enjoyed getting it. She usually could take or leave giving blow jobs—men were often gross and smelly, they always tried to push your head in one direction or another, which just made you feel like a blow-up doll, and they were rarely appropriately appreciative, and instead just seemed to think of blow jobs as their due.
But it had been different with Max. It was only because of the way he’d looked at her on the couch and again on the way up the stairs that she’d done it at all. She couldn’t remember anyone ever looking at her like that—with awe and excitement, like he’d unwrapped a present he’d wanted for years. When they got to the top of the stairs and he was still looking at her like that, she had to pull his pants off; she couldn’t help herself.
They tumbled together into his bed and turned to look at each other, both with big grins on their faces. It felt strange and impossible and completely right that she was here with him.
He pulled her against his chest, and they lay there for a while together. It had been a long time since she was this happy, this comfortable, lying like this in a man’s arms. She hadn’t realized how much she missed this feeling.
Or maybe she felt that way now because she was with Max. Maybe she just missed every moment she hadn’t spent with him.
She trailed her hand over his springy dark chest hair and then back down. He laughed and flipped her over before she could get where she was going.
“I’m going to need a little more recovery time than that, you know. I’m thirty-nine, after all.”
She smiled up at him.
“I think I remember you saying something a few minutes ago about what we were going to do in here—Senator Powell, do you fulfill your campaign promises?”
He hooked his thumbs around her panties, and with one quick tug, they were off her body and thrown across the room.
“Absolutely I do,” he said. Then he slid down her body and proceeded to make her come so hard she was gasping for air.
When she had—sort of—recov
ered, she reached down for that excellent dick again.
“Ahhh, here we are,” she said as her hand closed around it.
“Here we are indeed.” He kissed her greedily, like he couldn’t get enough of her. Dear God, she felt like she was being tricked, like she was in a dream. Not just how good they were together in bed—that was a delight, of course. But the way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the way he treated her, was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Like he felt lucky to be with her. She could get addicted to this.
“Hold on one second.” He let go of her and rolled over to the other side of his bed. He opened a drawer of his nightstand and then fumbled with a box. She sat up with a grin.
“New box?” she asked.
He looked sideways at her and shrugged.
“I bought it after our first date. My old ones had all expired, and I was . . . well, I was hopeful.”
She dropped back down onto the bed while he pulled a condom out of the box. After that night, she thought he hadn’t been interested in her at all, and meanwhile he was out there buying condoms with her in mind. This was one of the few times she was very happy to have been wrong.
It took him only a few seconds to get the condom out of the box and on.
“I like the way you watch me do that,” he said.
She ran her hands up and down his chest, his back, and let them come to rest on his butt.
“I liked the way you watched me, too,” she said.
Suddenly, there was no time for talking, just kissing, and touching, and stroking, and sucking. At long last, he slid between her legs, then paused and looked down at her.
“Please,” she asked.
He pushed inside her, and she gasped.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
To the contrary.
“No, no, it just felt so good.”
He grinned.
“Thank God.”
And then he did the same thing again, but harder, and again, and again. Her gasps and his moans were the only sounds in the room. It felt so good, she wanted this to go on forever; it felt too good, so good she almost couldn’t handle it. Then he reached his hand down between them to touch her in exactly the place he knew she wanted to be touched, and she pressed her mouth into his shoulder so she wouldn’t scream. He went faster and faster, and then collapsed on top of her.
Party of Two: The brilliant opposites-attract rom-com from the author of The Proposal! Page 13