He’s gazing at me piercingly beneath slanted eyebrows, looking a little thoughtful and a lot hungry, as if we didn’t just have dinner.

I go back to my room and wait for him to text me that the coast is clear. Ten minutes later, my secure campaign phone pings.

Ten minutes more, warm hands are sliding up my skirt to reveal my underwear. Pulling it down. Revealing every single wet fold beneath.

I’m in his room, and the next thing I know, Matt’s wet tongue is in me.

24

TOWEL

Charlotte

We’re in D.C. again.

Matt finished our last tour early and he requested a new expedited schedule, which I’ve worked on the whole night.

He said he’d meet me at his suite at The Jefferson, which he used tonight when two members of his detail informed us that his home was too swarmed with paparazzi.

Late in the morning, I knock on his suite door.

I primp my hair and then chide myself.

Stop primping, Charlotte!

I expect to find Carlisle here, but when Wilson opens the door and allows me in, I find only silence.

I wander past the living room with my printout in hand.

I freeze as Matt steps into my line of vision, his large body appearing in the open double bedroom doors.

He’s wearing nothing but a white hotel towel draped around his hips, his skin gold and smooth.

God help me.

The towel is hanging so dangerously low I can see the V at his hips. He’s got long legs with muscled thighs and calves, hair-dusted and tan. He’s also barefoot.

His hair is wet from a shower and slicked back, revealing his strong forehead and perfect features to their best advantage. Though he looks amazing in clothes, “amazing” cannot even begin to capture the complete athletic perfection of his shape and form and muscles. Every single muscle is defined and flexed hard.

And those incredible arms . . . the bulging biceps as he lifts the small towel he has in his fist and runs it over his hair to dry it.

He tosses the towel aside and runs his fingers through his hair as he turns his attention to me. “Did you get it done already?”

Oh.

Yeah.

THAT.

“Charlotte.” Chocolaty eyes begin twinkling, and my entire body flushes as I realize he clearly notices me gaping, his hair looking haphazard and even sexier as he props those glasses on his nose and reads.

I’ve tried to shift the next engagements so that our field team has time to arrive on the bus, but I can’t help that flying always gets us in earlier—even though Matt hates wasting time waiting.

“This pushes us back a day,” he says.

He groans in displeasure, and inside me, I feel a deep, instinctive, visceral tightening of my belly muscles at the sound. Not just my belly. My sex grips too. Even my chest seems to constrict. All of that in reaction to that very male, very sexy sound.

Reminding me too much of sex. Between Matt Hamilton and me.

“I’m sorry, Matt, I’m just . . . I can’t figure out how to get the rest of the team there on time to fit in another big speaking engagement. Maybe something small—”

“Hey. It’s all right.” He slaps the folder shut and eyes me. Can he tell I hardly slept? His gaze softens. “I should take you somewhere. Treat you to breakfast and coffee.”

I bite my lip.

Matt’s eyes darken.

I release it.

“I wouldn’t say no to a big vanilla coffee.”

“Let’s do it.”

I feel myself flush because—it sounds too much like a date.

“We can’t!” I laugh. “I can’t even stay here for more than a few minutes for fear of them watching us even more.”

He sits, and his thick thighs are revealed by the towel. “I’m sorry. I can’t really blame them for being obsessed with you,” I add.

He looks at me.

All I can think of are his hands on me. My hands creeping under the towel. Fingers touching his chest. And that big, heavy cock of his.

Wow. Did I just think that?

What is happening to me?

“Come kiss me.”

Matt seems to read my mind.

Startled by the command, I laugh and bite my lower lip. “What?”

“I said, come kiss me. I’m the one who should be nibbling on that lip.”

I take one step forward, Matt’s eyes darkening as he watches me.

There’s a knock on the door. Followed by the sound of a room key. I quickly take back the one step forward I took.

Carlisle and Hessler join us.

Carlisle dives straight into business after a brief, “How’s our American prince today?” and a wink in my direction. Matt heads into the bedroom, to change I suppose.

“I should go.”

Matt steps out in slacks, buttoning up a blue shirt. “No. I’ll take you home.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m meeting a friend actually for a croissant and a catch-up—it’s three blocks away. And her birthday is coming up; I promised to make it. I’ll be home later. Call if you need me.”

I hurry outside, then check the time and head to my favorite coffee bar near Women of the World. I wait there for my friend Larissa. She arrives ten minutes late, and all that time, I’m sort of mad at myself for physically responding to Matt as hard as I do.

I’ve tried so hard to be focused on work and my career. Why do I need to be falling for the man I work for?

I exhale when I spot Larissa hurrying across the restaurant, trying to push America’s Prince off my mind.

We end up doing coffee, then shopping, and then drinks.

“So what’s it like working for that god?” she asks me, lowering her voice as we sit at the bar of one of our favorite cafés. “No. Really. Tell me—I’m dying to know.”

“It’s exhausting,” I say.

Please, god, don’t let my expression give anything away.

That I want him.

That, miraculously, he wants me.

That we’ve slept together.

That I still don’t want it to end and I’m pretty sure because of the proprietary way he looked at me at his hotel room, neither does he.

As I sit there lying through my damn teeth, I realize that for the first time in my life, I’m doing something that I shouldn’t.

I realize how uncomfortable it is to have a secret. To want to scream something to the world but at the same time, want nothing more than to protect it. Have the world never, ever touch any part of this precious secret of yours.