Because Rhonda is right.

What we’re doing together transcends me, transcends even him.

And even though I’m twenty-two, I know that getting Matt back into the White House will be the biggest thing I ever did.

“Except … C is for campaigning. We can’t do something foolish,” I say, trying to brainwash myself that I don’t want this just as much.

He smiles tenderly. “If you’d ask me right now, C is for Charlotte coming in my arms.”

Shocked and breathless by his bluntness, I turn to stare blindly at the inscription of freedom on the wall across from me—of all of us having freedom. And yet I have never been more aware of not having the freedom to fall in love with this man.

“There won’t be any of that,” I say.

Matt slides his hand to stroke the top of mine, pausing and leaving it over mine when a group of teenagers shuffles into the cavern, and he tightens his jaw and remains silent as, fortunately, they don’t glance our way.

I shift on the bench—an inch away from his touch—then turn back to Matt and narrow my eyes in exaggerated suspicion, wondering how many women have caught his interest. And how long it lasts. “Why aren’t you married yet, anyway?”

“I’m waiting for her to grow up.”

He’s leaning forward now to recover the space I just put between us, his eyes dancing in a way that makes my heart thud a million miles an hour.

“Well,” I fumble for a reply, “I suppose that’s why you’re a playboy—you’ve been practicing all this time, so your child bride can eventually enjoy your expertise . . .”

“She will definitely enjoy it.” He nods in mock somberness.

“Okay,” I say flippantly. As if my stomach isn’t flipping and I’m not clenching my thighs together in my seat.

Matt’s eyebrow quirks. “You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, I don’t want a sample. Thank you. Besides. You can’t take a woman like me.”

“Woman?” he scoffs. “You’re what? Eighteen years old?” He leans back and stretches his arm out behind me, eyeing me.

“Eighteen to your fifty!” I shoot back.

He’s leaning forward again, his shoulder touching mine, and the teasing in his eyes has become more dangerous and exciting, a little more challenging.

“One day I’ll do all the things I need to. And she’ll be mine. Mark my words.”

“Does she know this yet?” I ask, quietly.

“I just told her,” he says.

His voice is thick and low, but his eyes are still alight with mischief.

“Maybe . . . maybe she’s already yours.”

“Is she?”

“Just a little bit,” I say, lifting my thumb and index finger to draw a centimeter.

He glances at my fingers, then at me.

“I'm not a man that is satisfied with just a little bit.” He smiles.

“That’s all she’s got.”

He shakes his head. “She can do better. Much better.”

The teenagers shuffle out of the memorial, and Matt and I are left alone again.

He slides his hand to cup the back of my neck in a proprietary gesture, then he gazes into my eyes with such a possessive look that a million butterflies flutter in my stomach. A smile begins to tug at the corners of his mouth. “Come here, Charlotte,” he softly commands.

I sort of freeze.

He said he doesn’t mean to do nothing, and now I can see in his eyes he’s got a whole lot of something in mind.

Matt’s smile fades, and he grabs the back of my neck and pulls me closer, then he leans his forehead on mine, his eyes holding me spellbound. “They’ll try to find dirt on me. Anything they can find. I don’t want you to be on that list. You’re better than three minutes on the evening news meant to attack my character.”

“I might not be concerned about me if it didn’t affect you,” I breathe.

“I can handle their attacks. I don’t want them laying them on you,” he angrily lashes.

He scrapes his thumb across my lower lip.

Impulsively, I lick the pad of his finger.

For one heartbeat, his eyes streak with need. Then he gingerly tips up my face as he lowers his to bring our eyes to the same level. First he nuzzles my nose and strokes his thumb again across my lower lip. He presses gently down on my lip to open my mouth. My eyes drift shut. Every thought in my head scatters to nothing when he swoops down and takes my mouth with his.

Everything falls away.

He kisses me gently the first second, and then without apology, deeply, like the revving of a rocket engine, followed by the launch into space, and then I’m in a galaxy of pure bright stars and endless night, lost and weightless, warmed by a sun I cannot see, his mouth a hungry vortex, a delicious black hole, sucking me in.

He holds my face in one hand, doing the most wicked things to my tongue until he tears his lips away, glancing at my mouth.

He looks at my kissed lips as he slips his hand beneath my skirt, touching the bare skin on the inside of my thigh. His fingertip touches me over my underwear—trailing a feather-like path across my wet sex.

It’s a ghost touch—barely there, but it causes a shudder to run through me.

I moan, and his forehead hovers above mine as we both pant and brush our lips across the other’s. Matt licks my bottom lip, then inside my mouth before he retreats.

He sets his face on mine and smells my neck. He groans again and kisses me, tongue plunging heatedly inside. Pulling back seconds later.

“Are you torturing me?” I gasp, so aroused my whole body is shaking.

He’s breathing hard, his chest expanding with each breath. “If I’m torturing you, then what I’m doing to myself has no name.”

“You’re unobtainable, Matt.” I look at his GQ-cover face. “Matt Hamilton. You’re so unobtainable you’re like a poster, something I can look at but not touch.”

A dark look settles in his gaze as he leans forward again.

I’m thoughtless, mindless as he presses his lips to mine. A kiss with just one flick of his tongue. So perfect and so right, I forget that it’s wrong. I inhale, and he inhales me through his mouth.

I groan his name this time.

“Matt.”

It cannot work. It won’t work. The scandal it would cause, the way it would ruin everything that he—that we—are so methodically working for.