THE TIDAL BASIN
Charlotte
That day after lunch, Matt stops by my cubicle, where Alison is showing me some pictures of him at an event that are making my toes curl.
“How’s my month looking?” He looks at me, and somehow it feels as if “month” means a whole other thing, his gaze is that searing.
I swallow at the sight of him in a crisp business shirt and plain black pants. “Busy,” I hasten to say.
I don’t know how that tiny tilt of his lips can cause such a big tilt in my chest cavity. “Just the way I like it.” He smiles at me, nods at Alison, and Alison quickly tucks the pictures against her chest and leaves.
Matt stays by the entrance for a moment. The area feels a tad smaller as he comes over, walks around my desk, and leans over my shoulder to look at my draft. “When am I free tonight?” he asks.
A shiver runs down my spine, hearing his voice so close.
I try to stop the skip of my heart as I skim down the page and tap my finger to show him.
“Perfect.” He leans over a fraction more, to my ear. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
I don’t ask him where we’re going or why, I simply nod as he walks out.
I’m quaking with nervousness as I head home to change. I don’t even know what to wear but opt for a skirt and a silky top. For some reason I keep changing shoes from ballerina flats to pumps, and the instinctive female urge to look feminine and a little sexy wins out. I suppose I’m not proud of this, but there you go. High-heeled peep-toe pumps it is.
* * *
At 6 p.m., Matt is downstairs waiting inside a black Lincoln Town Car, his detail, Wilson, opening the door for me. I’m a nervous wreck. The memory of his whisper keeps tingling down my spine, warm and exciting.
I climb into the back of the car, surprised to notice Matt is wearing black sweatpants and a black T-shirt. And running shoes.
His hair is perfect. He looks like some athletic centerfold for Nike.
As Wilson pulls us into traffic, I study my own attire—skirt and a blouse and heels—and finally ask, “We’re running?”
Matt is staring at my shoes with a tilt to his lips, his eyes rising to mine. “More like some light hiking.”
“I . . .” Helplessly, I look at my three-inch heels. “These are going to be a problem,” I say.
He just smiles at me, but he doesn’t look especially heartbroken. “They are.”
We ride in the back of the town car in silence, and I frown at him, wondering why he doesn’t even seem concerned. Matt has never struck me as selfish.
“Wilson, stop to get Miss Wells a pair of running shoes.”
“Wait. Matt!” I protest.
He grabs a white Nike cap from the back of the car and slips on a pair of Ray-Bans. “Two minutes, we’re in and out,” he tells Wilson as he climbs out and peers back inside. One eyebrow goes up in question. “You coming?”
Two minutes inside the shopping center end up being twenty.
I try on a pair of white-and-pink Nikes that I’d always salivated over, and when they fit just right, Matt glances at Wilson, and Wilson takes the box and goes to pay while Matt and I wait outside the store. People are glancing in his direction as if speculating but unsure, and Matt keeps his eye on his phone to avoid getting their attention.
When we’re back in the car and he jerks off the cap and the sunglasses and sets them aside, I say, “I guess Hamiltons never get any privacy.”
He smiles at me, but with a haunted look in his eyes. “Never.”
We ride on.
He admits, “I’ve almost forgotten what it was like when it was simpler.”
Simpler.
Like . . . taking a hike with me, I realize. People are going to see.
I’m anxious now.
“Turn the car around.”
He swings his head, shocked. “Excuse me?”
“Turn the car around now, Matt.”
He chuckles and drags a hand over his face, as if I exasperate him.
“Really. This . . . can look a way that it’s not. Tell him to turn around.” I drag my eyes to Wilson, then look back at Matt.
“I can’t.” He shakes his head in bemusement.
“Why can’t you?” I’m getting testy, and so is he.
“It’s the only slot on my schedule open and my only chance to be alone with you for a while.” He looks up at Wilson through the rearview mirror when the car stops and tells him, “See you at Jefferson Memorial in a couple of hours.”
He opens the door for me, and I grab my notepad to keep it professional. His lips quirk when he sees that, but he says nothing as we start heading down the trail, which treks around a large body of blue water surrounded by a path that runs all around the basin’s circumference. From here you can see the Washington Monument, the tall columns and majestic white dome of the Jefferson Memorial, and right up ahead, the spot where the first cherry blossom trees were planted.
It’s spring, and the trees are fully bloomed, their long, slim limbs dotted with cherry blossoms.
It’s a chilly day, but the sun warms my face as we walk toward the nearest memorial, which is only a few years old.
“I’ve never taken this walk before,” I admit. I take in the huge marble carving of Martin Luther King Jr. “I’ve only been to this area once, really, when my father brought me to the paddle boats.”
“Robert in the paddle boats? That I’d like to have seen.” He seems amused at the thought as I absorb the thirty-foot-tall monument of a man whose favorite quote of mine is, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
I realize Matt is watching me, as if he knows the site by memory—but not the sight of me. My cheeks warm as I start walking down the trail by his side.
He glances at our feet, stops walking, and drops to his haunches to lace up my running shoes.
I’m breathless as he stands to his full intimidating height and jerks his head toward the white dome across the water. “See that?”
I look around, thinking he spotted some reporters. Call it paranoia.
“I don’t see.” I’m trying to figure out if anyone is recognizing him—a six-feet-plus, gorgeous-looking man, who’s not looking? I quickly open my notepad and pretend to scribble something.
He laughs and turns my head to shift me around to face the water. The touch sends a frisson down my spine and I can’t see straight. “Seriously? You think that little notebook makes a difference? People will see what they want to see. This is no different than our morning runs. Now look.”
“At what?”
He laughs softly. “Stop talking and look.”
Matt turns my face an inch higher over the water, and I see. How the monuments reflect in the water, the water doubling the effect of their beauty.
I stare at the white classical building across the water. “Oh.”
And he’s looking at me, at his finger on my chin.
“Take me,” I say, then clear my throat when I see the male laughter in his eyes as I point at the Jefferson Memorial. “I mean, take me there. I’ve never been inside.”
“That’s the plan.” He grins, obviously still just a guy with a guy’s mind underneath the famous name.
We start forward, my body acutely aware of his moving beside mine.
We pass a Japanese stone pagoda and other memorials, until we reach the Jefferson Memorial.
We take the steps, walk past the tall white columns, and walk into the cavernous building until we’re standing under a huge domed ceiling. Inscriptions cover the marble walls. Front and center, standing atop a large block of marble, is a massive nineteen-foot-tall monument to Jefferson, third president of the United States, one of our founding fathers.
We take a bench near one of the panels, one that quotes the Declaration of Independence.
I glance around the place. It’s one of those memorials that’s a little more difficult to access because there’s no parking space outside. It feels as if it stands on its own island . . . away from it all, but so close to the heart of the city at the same time.
“Do you always find far-off places to get away and think?” I ask Matt.
“I usually come alone.”
The dark flecks in his eyes look a little blacker as he takes me under the warm yellow lights above us. There’s a bright flame there, in his eyes.
“Except I find myself craving some alone time with you.” His lips tilt in mischief.
His smile soon fades and shadows enter his eyes.
“It would be easier had I not run. During my father’s terms at the White House, I used to dream about freedom. A thousand times, my father said I would be president. He told his friends, his friends’ friends, and he often told me. I’d laugh and shake it off.”
“He even told me,” I say good-naturedly, and the warmth of his smile sends shivers through me.
He makes no effort to hide the fact that he’s looking at me tenderly. “He did, didn’t he?”
His eyes.
They just eat me up.
“I lost my father the day he decided that being president would be his legacy.” His eyes are leveled on mine beneath his drawn eyebrows. “He tried juggling it all, but he couldn’t do it. We kept thinking when it was over, he’d be ours again. He kept promising when it was over, he’d have time for us again.”
I swallow a lump of emotion in my throat. I know what comes next.
“Never happened.” The cold glint in his eyes sends a chill through me.
“It’s been thousands of days since. Too many years spent living in the past. Too many years wondering why. Too many nights wanting things to be right in our country.”
We’re silent.
There’s a tension emanating from him, pulsing around me, tempting me to draw my arms around him and simply crush him against me if that were even possible.
Matt glances at the statue and drags a hand across his jaw.
“Charlotte, I have enormous respect for you and your family. In so many ways, I feel responsible for you.”
“Matt, you’re not, you’re not responsible for me—”
“I’m not supposed to want you,” he says, cutting me off.
“What?” My eyes widen in disbelief.
What can I say when he looks at me in that way?
He’s looking at me as if he’s frustrated that he wants me.
Silence settles between us.
“I think of you. I think of you too often, if you ask me,” he says.
I nervously tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear and stare at my lap. “I think of you too.”
My comment seems to come as no surprise. “So what are we going to do about it?” he asks softly.
“Nothing,” I say.
He laughs, and drags a hand over his face and tsks, shaking his head. “Nothing’s just not in my vocabulary. Is it risky? Yes. Is it selfish on my part? Maybe. But I’m not just going to do nothing.”
I swallow. “Matt.” I glance around nervously, trying to steer away from the path this conversation has taken. “Have you realized people could talk if anyone recognized us? Why did you bring me here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I knew you’d love it here.”
I laugh. “I really do, you wicked man.” I try to push at his chest teasingly, but he catches my wrist and pulls me closer, his eyes darker.
“I’m so wicked you have no idea.”
He’s looking at my mouth not as if he wants to kiss it.
Matt is staring at my mouth as if he means to devour it.
“You know you can’t kiss me,” I croak even as we now look at each other’s lips.
He brushes his thumb over my lips. “I can kiss you. I definitely want to kiss you. I think we both know I mean to kiss you. Long and hard. I want my tongue rolling around yours, Charlotte, and I want your delicate little moans, too.”
God help me. I’m pretty sure nothing could stop this man from getting anything he wants—nothing. Except maybe me.
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.
“I’ll find a way to get you alone with me. I want to spend time with you. I want to feel more of you,” he rasps, kissing my earlobe, his breath hot and haggard on my skin as he lets his fingers trail up and down my thigh, beneath my skirt.
His fingers sweep across my panties again—eliciting another mewl from my lips.
“I’d like that,” I moan when he rubs my nub a little.
He looks down at me with primal possessiveness, watching me catch my breath and moan as he rubs harder, when a new group of people walk into the monument.
He clenches his jaw, then smoothly pulls his hand away. I breathe, “Is this a mistake?”
“It won’t be.” His voice is firm. Eyes flashing and determined as he lifts his head to scan the crowd. “Let’s go,” he says gently, taking my elbow and guiding me.
We head back to the car in silence—his hand on the small of my back as he guides me into the backseat. His touch searing—reminding me of where else his fingers have just been.
Matt
I usher Charlotte into the car, and Wilson shoots me a look through the rearview mirror when we settle in. I shoot one back that tells him to save it.
I close the partition between us, and my gaze lands on Charlotte.
She sits quietly in the back of the car, and I can’t fucking shake off the taste of her in my mouth. My heart is kicking into my rib cage, my body wound up with desire. The feel of the damp spot I caressed between her legs is seared on my fingertips.
I might excel at being in control and I may feel protective of her, but I’m a man. I have instincts; I have needs. And those needs have been building up, every day looking at her, every night thinking of her, and right now I just damn well need her. I want to taste her mouth again. I want to taste every inch of her until we both drown in pleasure and then, I want to do it all over again.
I study her lovely profile and god, she’s so beautiful.
“Should we forget what happened?” she asks, bringing her eyes to mine.
I smile, shaking my head no.
“No,” I tell her, my voice thick.
I reach out and gently seize the back of her neck, pulling her to me, unable to resist crushing her lips beneath mine.
As I feel her sag, I rub my tongue along hers, coaxing her to let go as I use my other hand to run it up her side, around her waist and to her back, pulling her flush so her breasts are crushed against my chest and the only thing between me and feeling those lush little nipples is our clothes.
She’s soft all over and god, she smells as good as she feels.
I groan at the thought of having her beneath me, wanton and wild. As things get heated and I’ve got her breast in one hand, her nipple puckered under my circling thumb, our panting breaths become audible in the back of the car and I kiss her lips, then go to town with the skin on her neck and jaw. I trail a path to the back of her ear, where she quivers and seems to go even crazier with desire.
We’re both out of control, an urgency to our kisses, our movements, our need.
I slip my hand under her skirt and ease her panties aside, easing my middle finger through her opening. She jerks and her fingers sink into my shoulders, her breaths blasting out of her lips and into my mouth.
“I want you,” I tell her, dipping my tongue into her mouth as I pull out my finger and insert it back in, feeling her shudder from the pleasure. “I mean to have you writhing in pleasure like this,” I promise.
I ease back and look down at her, and Charlotte inhales sharply as I stroke my finger along the outside of her folds, now slick and wanting me.
I smile and rub the pad of my thumb of my other hand along her lower lip, pulling it apart from the top.
I groan when her breath catches, getting one last taste of her and one last feel of her sex clenching around my finger as I drive it inside.
I’m playing with fire and I don’t care.
This girl does things to me, from the way her hair smells to the way she moves right now as I move my finger. I’ve never wanted to take a woman the way I want her.
When the car stops, I hold her small face between my hands, ease back, and lower my forehead to hers, my gaze hovering before hers as I look into her glazed, lust-filled eyes. “I’ll find the right time for us. Let’s keep our head in the game. For now,” I rasp.
A quivering smile appears on her lips, then she gets out of the car and into her apartment building. I press the mic button.
“Wait until she’s safely inside,” I tell Wilson. “And don’t even say it.”
“I didn’t say shit,” Wilson says.
I laugh to myself, my eyes falling on her retreating back. My blood is boiling in my veins as I watch her disappear. I stick my finger into my mouth, suck her sweet and acid taste, and shut my eyes. I let my head drop back and stare at the roof of the car, exhaling heavily as I lower my hand.
Keep our head in the game, I said. Though she and I both know, it’s a whole other game we’re now playing.
* * *
When I get to my apartment, my best friend from college, Beckett, is at the door, clad in jeans and a turtleneck, with his usual preppy sweater draped around his neck.
“Well, hello, Romeo,” he snickers.
I frown at the comment, open the door, and let him inside, tossing my keys and my wallet on the coffee table.
“Moody. I take it it’s the redhead,” Beckett says.
“What?” I turn round to face him, and Beckett seems taken aback by how fast he was able to bait me when usually . . . I never take the bait.
“It’s all over the news. You took her shoe shopping. How suave,” Beckett explains, snickering on the last word.
What the . . .
Charging across my living room, I turn on the television and spot the headline.
“Matt Hamilton shopping with mysterious redhead . . .”
“Jesus.” I throw the remote aside, punch my hand into a pillow, then I grab a beer and toss one to Beckett as I drop down on the couch. “This girl has me losing my mind.” I drag my hand over my face, my molars gritted hard enough to break a lesser man’s jaw.
“What’s going on?”
“She’s in my campaign. Senator Wells’s daughter.”
He sighs. “Matt, shit, man, you need to be careful.”
“Hell, I know that. You think I don’t?” I scrape my hand across my jaw, trying to loosen it, then I take a swig of my beer, drop my head back on the couch, and exhale. “I’m so wrapped up in this girl. With the tension of the election, and the fact that I see her every day, I’m going insane.” I shake my head.
It was reckless—and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but feeding this wild thirst. Getting rid of that fucking feeling of having my hands tied. Quenching the hunger to touch her, fully knowing that she wanted it, craved it like me.
I not only want this girl, I enjoy being with her.
Growing up the way I did, it feels like a thousand and one expectations are piled on me, one after the other. It can be isolating when people put you up on a pedestal.
It wears on you, having to be the bigger man all the time, to always live up to the Hamilton name.
Everybody has always wanted me to be something bigger than I am. To guard and follow the legacy of my father and the family name.
Even as it feels as if it is my one driving desire to do just that, with her, it feels like she wants me to be nothing more than I am, and nothing less. The few moments together that we’ve had, I was able to let loose with her. Be real with her. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been truly confident won’t leave my bed and take our story to the press. The only girl I’m myself with, no mistrust there, no other agenda—not from me, and not from her.
But I also know that I may have a dose of pixie dust with the public. They’ve been forgiving with me, with my every transgression, rumored or real. But I can’t say they would be as forgiving with her if this got out.
“Yeah. I need to be more careful.” I glance at Beckett, a ton of frustration weighing on me.
Wilson’s familiar three knocks resound in the room, and he opens the door. I know what he’s about to say. The press is probably outside. And they want a statement.
“Are they all outside?” He knows very well who they are.
“Yep.”
I get to my feet. “Let’s go, Beckett—let’s give them a diversion to keep them away from her door.”
“How can you stand having to give a statement for every time you take a shit, man?” Beckett growls.
“You get used to it.”