Days passed and every moment was spent either sneaking off with Nathaniel or thinking of him. He was everywhere. At the pool, at the bar, at the beach, at the restaurant—in my head, bones, and soul.
At night, we were together. Hidden behind the white doors of his suite, he owned my body and I let him, but not without a fight. I challenged each of his touches with my own, our kisses were a battle of dominance, our hands weapons to make the other come undone.
I rolled across the white sheets and collapsed, staring at the perfect ceiling, crown molding lines the corners. Nathaniel lay down beside me, not hiding his quick intakes of breath, his chest glistening with sweat.
“You distracted me,” I said, trying to convey my frustration, but my voice came out breathless.
Nathaniel laughed once and put an arm behind his head. “I know your weak points. You can’t back down from a debate.”
“Bringing up the presidential elections when you’re touching me is not a weak point,” I said, weakly, pulling my hair into a loose ponytail. My whole body still tingled from his touch, hot and sweaty.
Nathaniel laughed again.
I sat up and went to stand, but as I straightened, I hissed in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Nathaniel gripped my elbow and helped me sit back down.
I clenched my teeth, looking down at my swollen feet. “It’s those damn heels.”
Nathaniel knelt down and I watched him closely as his fingers touched my ankle. I flinched and his eyes darted to mine.
He stood, gripping my calves and swinging my legs back onto the middle of the bed. He climbed on beside me and carefully moved my feet onto his lap. He leaned back, perfectly comfortable against the pillows and headboard and his fingers massaged my feet, carefully, tenderly.
“This may help,” he said.
My throat grew tight and all I could do was stare at his powerful fingers working the muscles and tissue in my sensitive feet.
When his finger touched the bone of my ankle, so delicate, so sensitive, I flinched.
“Too hard?”
I bit my lip, fighting back a moan.
“No, just surprised me,” I said, and I was still breathless.
Nathaniel turned on the television that sat on the wall across from his bed, still massaging my feet. On the screen was a black and white movie, a scene of a man playing the piano. I recognized it instantly.
“Casablanca,” I said, pressing my cheek into the pillow.
“You know it?”
I hummed. “Yeah.”
His touch, his fingers made me sleepy, made me happy and safe.
The famous tune filled the room and I couldn’t help think of the ending. How Ingrid Bergman left Humphrey Bogart. A hollowness filled my stomach.
I felt safe with Nathaniel, I felt comfortable and I couldn’t remember the last person to make me feel that way so intensely.
This was a summer affair and even as his fingers pressed into the soles of my feet, I knew he would leave me.
But I couldn’t stop the feeling.
Stop the emotions I hadn’t ever imagined wrapping around my throat and suffocating me.
But maybe, I thought as sleep dragged me further into paradise, I would pretend he was mine forever.
Each morning I rose before him, sneaking out of his bedroom and vanishing before the dawn could catch me. I had to pretend when I saw him seated on the veranda, fully dressed with black sunglasses that hid his vivid eyes from me that he hadn’t been deep inside of me the night before, large and swelling and hot. That his powerful fingers hadn’t rolled and pinched my nipples until they were raw and achy and then sucked them into his wet eager mouth. Or he had forced me to debate him about the politics of the Cuban missile crisis while his tongue teased my throbbing core, nipping on the sensitive flesh until I bit my arm to stop from calling him a god.
No.
We were mere strangers, mere competitive running mates who despised the other.
Even when he tilted his sunglasses down his elegant, sharp nose and allowed me to see those vivid eyes of intelligence and power and radiance.
Watching him and the three guys lounge under the veranda, white sheer curtains billowing around them, made the four of them seem otherworldly. Like statues I had studied in Ancient History. Perfectly symmetric features. Tall, powerful frames of strength and beauty. Untouchable. Perfect specimens that wielded too much power. Young gods untouchable, invincible, powerful.
They were the Kennedys of our world. So close, but so far away that they became legends by the press and the media.
Nathaniel opened his mouth slightly and his tongue licked his lower lip, slowly, teasingly as he watched me walk by, carrying a basket of clean white linen. Seeing his mouth, his tongue made my body shake, my nipples hard and achy, remembering that very mouth sucking, nipping, licking them until I came undone in his grasp.
It was never just sex with Nathaniel.
Even before he touched me, he brought up a subject—from health care to the Russian Revolution—and I couldn’t stop myself from arguing.
By the time the afternoon had hit, the sun high in the sky beating down on us, the cicadas were loud and vibrant. I carried a bucket of cleaning supplies, eyeing the ocean far in the distance and the high grass between us, lulling in the summer breeze.
I wiped my forehead on my arm and huffed, stopping in front of the janitor’s closet to return the cleaning supplies.
I struggled to get the key in the large door, grunting when I failed the second time.
“C’mon,” I said through my clenched teeth.
When the key finally went in, I sighed in relief and pushed the door open with my hip.
Just as I placed the bucket on the middle shelf, I heard the door close behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and it took me a moment to see it was Nathaniel.
“What are—?” My voice died when I noted his heaving chest and white-fisted hands beside his tense body.
“Are you seeing anyone else?” he said, his voice calm and cool, but his dark expression, his eyes dark and narrowed, anything but. “I thought we’d agreed to be exclusive.”
I gawked at him, shocked to see him so rattled.
“What? No—” I shook my head, but he moved closer, his steps large and powerful, eating up the space between us.
“Senator Scott just told a group of men you want his cock. That you’ve been flirting with him,” he said, his ocean eyes a storm raging at me.
I scowled. “No. He disgusts me. He tried to flirt with me, but I turned him down.” I eyed him, watching his fists loosen only slightly beside him. “Do you really think I’d flirt with anyone else?”
“You’re very ambitious,” he said gruffly, his lashes lowering, his eyes watching me from underneath them. “I wouldn’t hold that against you.”
A sharp pain erupted in my chest. Like he had stabbed me. I tried to recover before he saw, but his expression changed fast and he reached out.
I stepped back, my hip hitting the shelves behind me. “I’m not that desperate to further my career, Nathaniel.” I glared at him. “And you thinking I would—”
“If push came to shove, we both know we’d destroy or use anyone to get the future we want,” he said, leaning closer, his hand resting on the shelf beside my head. His eyes flickered downward, scanning my parted mouth and over my constricting throat. Like he wanted to kiss me there. “But no one else can have your body or your mind.”
I glowered, but his body so close to mine, his head lowering.
He didn’t say a word.
He didn’t move and simply stared.
But his stare alone said more.
He had been jealous.
Seeing the calm man on edge, not so perfect and proper and collected.
Because of me.
All my anger transformed and I surged forward, catching his mouth in a brutal kiss.
He didn’t stop me, only wrapped a hand around my neck and jerked me forward, his erection hard and hot through his dress pants.
His other hand gripped my ass cheek, forcing my leg to wrap around his hip.
He shoved me into the shelves and let go of my neck, struggling to undo his pant zipper. When I heard the sound of it, I sighed in relief and then groaned when his blunt head edged into my pulsing core.
With one stroke, he was deep inside of me.
“Fuck,” he breathed out slowly, eyes closed. “I was inside you just hours ago, yet it feels like an eternity has gone by.” His eyes snapped open, lust and need and anger swirling in their depth. “Tell me you’re mine, Juliette. Tell me who owns this pussy for the summer.”
When I refused to answer, he ceased all movements and I fought a frustrated moan. My hand shot between us to press down on my clit. His gaze seemed to darken as it lowered to my hand. His lips parted, teeth sinking into the plump flesh of his bottom lip.
If the bastard didn’t give me what I want, I’d damn well take it myself.
“Tell me, Juliette,” he repeated on a grunt. Eyes glued to my filthy hand circling my clit with intent. When my fingers brushed the base of his cock, I pretended it was an accident and smirked at the low hiss he let out.
“I’m yours,” I said, because my hand wasn’t enough. I needed him to move and I needed him to do it now. I brought my hand to his parted lips, brushing the tips to his bottom lip, spreading my taste there. Branding him. Branding his mouth as mine and mine alone. “And you’re mine.”
His only answer was to withdraw completely until the head of his cock flirted with my entrance. Then, he slammed back in with a powerful thrust that had us both clench our jaws painfully to silence our moans.
We fought for our release and he continued to kiss every part of me he could reach.
I was so close, so close to the edge, and then someone knocked at the door.
“Juliette?”
Mandy’s voice.
My heart froze, but Nathaniel didn’t stop. His fingers bit into my jaw as he forced me to look away from the door and back at him.
The door knob jiggled.
“Juliette?”
“Fuck,” I groaned when Nathaniel’s strokes grew fast and hard, his thumb finding my clit and rolling his thumb along it.
Mandy knocked again, but I couldn’t hear her. Not when my own breathing grew vicious and fast.
I leaned forward and bit into Nathaniel’s shoulder as the orgasm overcame me.
Nathaniel hissed and jolted against me, thrust deep. His warmth erupted inside of me and we both wilted against each other.
“Why the fuck is this locked?” Mandy groaned from the other side of the door.
I swore under my breath and let go of Nathaniel, fixing my skirt.
I heard the key turning and quickly opened it, slipping through and shutting it behind me.
Mandy’s brow lifted in shock and then it lowered. “What are you doing?”
I swallowed, trying to catch my breath. “Just cleaning the room up. It was a mess.”
Mandy pressed her mouth into a thin line. “I heard you talking to someone.”
Panic seized me. “I was talking to myself.”
Mandy gave me a look and my cheeks burnt. But I’d live with it. If she found out who was behind the door, who had just come inside of me, she would hate me.
“Okay… Well. I’m going to go for a lunch break. I’ll see you later,” she said and turned, glancing back at me once.
My shoulders sagged and I turned around, stepping back into the room.
Nathaniel stood there, pants still unbuttoned.
“We can’t keep sneaking around,” I said, pressing a hand to my forehead. “Someone’s going to catch us. And you won’t get in trouble, but I will. This job is important to me.”
He stared back at me, his head slightly tilted as if examining an animal that fascinated him more than scared him.
“I have a place that no one would interrupt us,” he said, moving closer. “A place for just you and I.”