“Again?” he asks.

I try to look away, but he won’t let me. He keeps my face tilted towards his, lowering his own until our noses touch.

“God, if you only knew what it does to me to hear that you felt that way.” His voice is hoarse. “Tell me what I have to do to earn it back. Tell me what I have to do to make you as twisted up over me as I am over you. I’ll do anything. Anything.”

I can feel his breath against my lips. Warm and intimate. I should make him promise something, I should demand his fidelity or honesty or utmost care. But that would be too close to lying, and instead I admit the terrible truth.

“You don’t have to do anything, Ash. I’m already yours.”

He breathes out, a shudder going through him, and then he presses his lips to mine.

It’s nothing like our first kiss, and yet everything like it at the same time. I still feel soft and young and female as he pulls me close against his body. I still feel like I want to melt into him, dissolve into nothing and everything at once. And he still makes that low, quiet groan in the bottom of his throat, as if he can’t help himself, as if I’ve irrevocably weakened him by letting him touch my lips with his.

Our first kiss was impulsive, exhilarating and stunning, but unplanned, a kiss between strangers with no past or future. This time Ash kisses me with intent, with the promise of more, with the promise of a future and his affection and care. And I kiss him back as a woman, not as a girl, just as eager as I was then, but more experienced. All the more ready to surrender.

We break lips just for a moment, and I look up into his eyes. “Wow,” I whisper.

“Wow,” he laughs back at me.

“This is my first kiss in five years.” I don’t know why the confession is dragged out of me, but it is. I want him to know how much he meant to me, how much he means to me now.

I see the way his eyebrows pull together at my revelation, see the way he mentally tucks that information back to ask me about later, but for the moment, he only murmurs, “Then let’s make it count,” and lowers his mouth back down to mine. I smell the leaves and leather, feel the firm warmth of his mouth and the strength of his arms, and then I’m drowning in him. His certainty and his strength, his desire and his need. And then beyond a shadow of a doubt, I feel him drowning in me, feeling him giving over every atom of himself to my keeping. We are consumed and rebuilt all within the same moment of lips and hands fisting tightly in clothes.

A clearing throat interrupts us, and Ash reluctantly pulls away. I see a Secret Service agent waiting by the entrance to the garden.

“Mr. President, it’s time.”

Ash closes his eyes a moment and then opens them with a sigh. “I have a meeting with the Polish ambassador at four.”

“About Carpathia?” I ask. The war has been theoretically over for two years, but there’s no doubt that the region is still deeply volatile.

“Always about Carpathia,” he says with a rueful smile. “I’d rather spend the evening with you though.”

I want to ask when I can see him again—or more honestly, when I can kiss him again, but he beats me to it.

“Greer, my job—and the kind of man I am—I tend to ask a lot of the people I care for. My schedule is…well, it’s fucked. Constantly. I want to promise that I can see you right away, but that may not be the case.”

“I understand,” I say softly. “You forget that I know what it’s like for you better than most people.”

“I hate this,” he says suddenly, fiercely. “I want to take you home with me tonight, and I don’t want to wait to see you again.”

“Ash, really, I understand—”

“No,” he interjects. “No. I’ve waited ten years, and I refuse to wait any longer. If I send a car for you tonight, will you get in it?”

I think back to earlier, to my relief at not being smuggled into the White House like a mistress, like a dirty secret. Discretion is one thing, but is that what I want for myself? To be a late-night visitor? To be the hidden plaything of a man in power? I’ve stayed away from politics for years, built myself a nest in an ivory tower so I wouldn’t ever have to think about politics again, and I’m willing to surrender myself to the most famous politician in the world after one kiss?

But then I look again at Ash, at those green eyes burning down at me, and I realize that all this debating is pointless. Of course I’ll get in the car. Of course I’ll go to him. It almost feels like I don’t have a choice, like my choice was made when I was sixteen and pinned between the wall and an eager Army captain.

“Yes, of course,” I tell him. “I’ll go anywhere you want me to.”

8

The Present

When the car pulls up, I’m ready. I’m so ready that I’m trembling, part of me wanting to run and hide and the other part of me wanting to run straight to the White House so I don’t have to wait a second longer. I’ve showered, shaved my legs, put on makeup, taken off the makeup because it felt like too much, then put a little makeup back on…and still there’s so much time to kill. I change outfits at least three times, settling for a short blue dress of embroidered cotton with a flared skirt and cap sleeves. The short hemline and the nude high heels I pair with it are just sexy enough to signal how I’d like the evening to go, but the high neckline and sweet blue color are enough to claim innocence in case I’m wrong about what he wants with me.