The mouth I want beneath mine again. Here, there’s no reason for me not to take it, devour its softness until she gasps. I inch down and slide my arms around her waist, pulling her closer, then I brush her wet mouth with my lips.

I’m using her. I can’t use her like this. But I can’t stop myself.

My alarm wakes me.

I jerk my arm out and shut it off, then pull back the covers and head to the shower stall. Ten minutes under the cold water and I still can’t cool down, counting the hours until I can get her alone again.

“I want to see Charlotte tonight. I need your assistance again.”

Wilson glances at me as we have coffee in my suite at The Jefferson, waiting for the rest of my team to get their asses over here.

Wilson eyes me in silence, then drags his hand over his bald head. “What are you doing, Matt? I thought you worked this shit out of your system in college, man.”

I shake my head. “It’s not what you think—it’s different with her.” I meet his gaze. “I want you to treat her differently. I want you to protect her as if she were me. If this shit gets out, I don’t want Hessler or Carlisle throwing her under the bus.”

“It won’t get out. Not on my watch,” Wilson states.

I clench my jaw and stare into my coffee and just see her. Only her.

“I can’t not pursue her. I can’t give her up yet.” I laugh sardonically. “You probably think it’s an obsession . . . but it’s more than that. She means more than that.”

She grounds me.

She obsesses me.

She fuels me.

This woman not only makes me want to be a great man, she makes me want to be the best goddamn president that ever lived.

She’s what I never knew I wanted and have discovered that I need.

I know full well I’m going to have to give her up soon—but I can’t bring myself to give her up yet.

Wilson nods. “I got your back.”

27

INTENSE

Charlotte

Before we left D.C., Matt booked us a suite at a small five-star hotel, where he had one of D.C.’s best restaurants deliver an amazing dinner. It felt like a very secret, very wonderful date with the man the country swoons over and the one that I am slowly and secretly falling for, and now each time our eyes have met afterward, it seems like we’re both remembering that evening and the night of hot sex we shared.

Unfortunately, the last time for a while.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been intensely campaigning. The race feels so real now. We’re in Matt’s suite at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. The work has been so consuming, we haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy any more private moments save for one—all the others have been stolen seconds that almost always happen with a room full of people.

A kiss here.

A brush of his fingers there.

Hessler, a man with even less sense of humor than Carlisle, seems to have cracked his first smile in all the months that I’ve known him as he skims the most recent poll results. “Polls are giving you the lead.”

“No time to sit back and sing a victory song just yet,” Matt says, his Starbucks in hand.

I’ve already finished my coffee.

When coffee fails to do the trick to keep you awake, it’s really time to switch to Red Bull.

I’m barely awake right now.

I’m sitting on the couch, and my head is leaning on my hand as I try to keep my eyes open. I don’t want to miss a single word from the anchors on TV, and at the same time, hearing the men’s conversation swirling around me lulls me to sleep. Since we’ve started, it’s been so many months of extensive traveling and nights like this.

Brainstorming, planning, thinking, and, for me, wanting. Wanting him . . . so much.

I thought that with time, it would get easier. His proximity.

And instead it’s grown harder.

We still have a few months of campaigning left. Odd how I yearn for it to be over so I can get over him, and at the same time, I’m so alive—I feel like I’m participating in something historical, something that will define our collective futures—I just don’t want it to end.

“Charlotte, go get some sleep,” Matt says.

I try to shake myself awake when I hear the command nearby.

God. I was snoozing on the couch?

I crack my eyes open and Matt is leaning over me, his shadow covering my whole body.

His eyes are a swirl of bronze, and I wonder if they see right through me. His hand is a brand of its own kind, one that penetrates my skin. Like the touch of a live wire, his grip on my shoulder shoots sparks through my body. How I can possibly sit here and remain still while all this happens inside me is a mystery.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I say, smiling halfheartedly.

A brief smile touches his lips.

It’s his amused smile, the one that makes his eyes a shade lighter.

I sit upright, glad that the campaign managers are busy taking notes. Matt hands me a cup of coffee, and I know it’s his because I was the one who brought them and marked each with a felt-tip pen. His has the word Matt inscribed in my own handwriting.

I lift his cup, and it’s still warm. He takes a seat beside me and my tiredness fades a bit.

It’s hard not to feel the things I do for this man when we’ve traveled together for months. When I’ve seen him holding babies, dancing with old ladies; when I’ve seen him stir the crowds into a roar; and especially when I’ve seen him with his hair rumpled and a pair of reading glasses on as he skims the morning newspapers, tactically gauging the effects of the campaign we’re waging against the Republicans and the Democrats.

Jack bounds up onto the couch between us so part of his head is on Matt and his body is fully on me.

It’s amazing how much I’ve grown to love his dog, considering the way we met was less than stellar. Now I crave his fuzzy warmth, the lick of his warm, wet tongue on my cheeks. As I sip my coffee, Matt reaches down to pet him at the same time I do.

Matt’s thumb traces the back of one of his dog’s ears, stroking slow and long, as I stroke the other, both of us looking down at Jack as we pet him.

I steal a look at Matt’s profile and he looks thoughtful, a muscle working in the back of his jaw.

I’m remembering our last time alone, a fifteen-minute tryst where he followed me to the women’s bathroom, locked us in, and kissed me like crazy as he eased his fingers into my panties. He licked his fingers afterward, and I spent all day swooning whenever he met my gaze, brought the tip of his finger to his lips, and then brought out his tongue to lick it.