CHAPTER SIX
Cameron
I must be losing it, I thought as the limo pulled up outside the stately brownstone in Rittenhouse Square.
It had been a disastrous meeting with PETA. Forget about earning their vote. After what I’d done to that stupid toad, I was, in their book, the devil. I threw out every platitude in my arsenal, and each one was met with so much resistance that I nearly lost my cool and told them all to fuck off. My father saw me losing it and came to the rescue, something I shouldn’t have let him do because, for the last fifteen minute limo ride, all I’d been listening to was him berating me and telling me how I needed to act.
I needed to cultivate patience. I needed to stop drumming my fingers on the podium when I was getting nervous. I needed to answer their questions with a question. When they pulled out the big guns, I needed to meet them with firepower of my own.
And on and on.
It didn’t fucking matter that I’d been universally praised by the media for my debating skills. My father always did it better — just ask him. I’d nodded along, sitting in the back of the limo, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Namely, in The Black Room. I thought about the way Cassandra had felt, slick and smooth on my tongue, my mouth salivating for another taste of her. She said she wouldn’t be back, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go and seek her out.
Impossible. As my father prattled on, I convinced myself that Cassandra would never happen again, and then my mind wandered to the new clerk. What was her name? Violet Wilkes.
She was frumpy, yes. It was a warm day in May, and yet she’d been wearing layers of wool and a skirt that screamed “grandmother.” But there was something about her... like she’d been trying too hard to look like an old lady. The gorgeous woman underneath was visible while she had that uptight librarian thing going on. That was fucking sexy. I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to peel off those layers, to reveal her completely to me. Only me.
I shuffled in my seat as my cock twitched to life. Fuck. I had a one-track mind because I hadn’t had sex in a while. I should’ve taken Cassandra last night when she reached for me, wanting me, but I’d fucked that up, something that was quickly becoming the biggest regret of my life.
And now I was horny as hell, and I needed to remedy that as soon as possible so my dick would fall in line and behave.
Then I looked up at the brownstone, and my dick shrank into my boxer briefs like a berated dog.
I climbed the stone staircase and rang the doorbell. Bernadette was old-fashioned, so as usual, she had the maid let me wait outside in the drizzle for a good five minutes before opening the front door. When I stood in the foyer, shaking raindrops from my hair and the jacket of my tuxedo, she made her grand entrance down the sweeping staircase.
The woman my parents had deemed as suitable as my wife was wearing a striking but modest long blue gown, her blonde hair arranged in curls atop her head. As usual, the perfect look for the occasion. As heir to the Dryden coffee fortune, she’d been going to benefits since she was a child. She knew exactly how to act in every situation, exactly what small talk to employ. She fit into these galas with ease and actually seemed to enjoy them. My father looked at her as if she was an important chess piece on his political board, and often told me what a wonderful wife and mother she would make.
A wonderful First Lady was what he really meant.
I pulled on the collar of my tuxedo like it was a noose tightening around my neck.
When she reached the landing, she held out a manicured hand to me. “Darling,” she said.
“You look lovely.” It was the obligatory response, and my cock shriveled further into my pants.
It wasn’t that Bernadette wasn’t gorgeous. She was, and she had a model’s physique, with surgically enhanced breasts and body parts shaped by daily Zumba classes. She’d been given the best of everything from her childhood, and it showed. Like me, she could pick out imitation pearls from a mile away. But she was also perfect, and stiff, and a fucking walking mannequin. She knew the perfectly diplomatic response to any social situation. Nothing about her was sensual, raw, awkward, or dirty. Nothing about her stirred me.
The evening went just like the hundreds of other benefits before. My father coming alive around Bernadette, as if he was the one trying to court her. My mother drinking too much champagne and hiccupping discretely into her hand. Strauss waltzes out the ass. Caviar, which I couldn’t stand. My father giving a speech and calling me out as the pride of the Republican Party, destined for great things. Me waving with a fake smile plastered on my face, wondering what they would all think if they knew the future of their party had been tongue-fucking a complete stranger in a sex club last night.
My father took my mother home early because she was teetering on the edge of drunkenness, and we didn’t need another scene like the one she’d done at the Ritz Carlton last month. When I escorted Bernadette home at around midnight, she kicked off her shoes in the back of the limo and started to run her bare foot up my leg.
I shifted away, yawning. She smiled, the foot climbing higher. “Don’t tell me you’re tired.”
I blinked, fighting to keep my eyes open. “Of course not.” That would show weakness, something I’d never been allowed to show, even as a small boy. I automatically sat up straighter.
“Then come inside,” she offered. “I want to show you something.”
Fuck.
Bernadette and I had slept together a handful of times, always when it agreed with her blatantly low sex drive. I knew what I was in for: Three hours of foreplay, condom, then fifteen minutes in the missionary position, driving into her as she stayed completely silent and complained if I moved too fast or too hard. That was the formula. There could be no deviation, or else sweat or other bodily fluids might be involved. I’d never thought sleep would be a more attractive alternative to sex, but I was getting there.
And if I followed my parents’ wishes, I’d be living there until death do us part.
I shuddered. “All right,” I answered, climbing out of the limo and helping Bernadette step out in her glittering heels.
Her brownstone was, as usual, museum-perfect with expensive antique furnishings and pieces from her parents’ priceless art collection. She’d lost her mother a year ago, and her father, Ellery Dryden, now doted everything he could upon his princess. “What did you want to—”
Before I could finish, she’d pressed those heavy fake tits against me, her lips on mine. Her hands roved under my tuxedo jacket, cupping my ass.
I held her firm as her tongue pushed open my lips, and my thoughts went to, of all places, the yellow-horned toad. I’d probably get more aroused kissing one of them. She guided my hand to her breast implant, and as I squeezed, I imagined it bursting. Her hand reached down and caressed my flaccid dick through my pants, and I stepped away.
“Hey, wait,” I plowed all ten fingers through my hair. “The maid—”
“Oh, you’re right.” She groaned, which was par for the course for her and my father. They saw the help as furniture, as things that they owned, easily dismissed and forgotten. I thought about the way my father had treated that mousy clerk at headquarters as Bernadette began to loosen my bow tie. When she placed a hand on my chest, I wondered if I could close my eyes and pretend I was fucking the clerk. Or better yet, Cassandra, with her long legs and gorgeous tits. Bernadette batted her eyelashes flirtatiously. “What I wanted to show you was upstairs, anyway. In my bedroom.”
I blew out a breath. Not a good night for her lazy libido to stir.
“Would you like something to drink?”
I shook my head. “You know, I’m really tired, Bern, I should probably—”
“No!” she said, grabbing me by the collar and urging me up the stairs. With a heavy sigh, I followed her, wondering what the fuck had gotten into her. Yes, we’d had sex before, but she’d never been this insistent about it. I decided to be open to it. Maybe, just maybe, we could be a better match than I originally thought.
When we reached her bedroom, a fortress of eyelet and lace, something that made me think of a little girl’s bedroom, she opened her walk-in closet. Then she came out, holding a slinky black lace teddy on a silk pillowed hanger, and a long white silk gown. “Which do you want to see me in?”
I blinked, inspecting them. “For what?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you think? For tonight.”
I just stared a beat too long, my mind working out ways to get out of this. Her face started to fall, a pout appearing on her botoxed lips.
I reached over and grabbed her hand, drawing her to me. This was one of the things I couldn’t stand… the routine. Why did she have to choose a gown at all? Why did it have to be part of a production? Why couldn’t we just rip each other’s clothes off and fuck right here on the floor?
“You know, you’d look lovely in both of those,” I said to her. “But why don’t you just strip for me right here?” Her eyes widened in surprise. “I’ll bend you over the bed, take you from behind. I’ll—”
I stopped. Bernadette’s expression had transformed from surprise to… disgust.
I needed to get out of here.
Offering a tight smile, I changed course. “It’s late. I had a long day, and I’m not at my best right now. What if I make us a reservation for an early dinner later this week? And then we can come home, and we’ll have all night together.”
Her eyes gleamed as she wrapped her arms around me, her fingers digging into my suit jacket like claws. She gave me a baby-pout. “Promise?”
She sounded almost desperate. It made me wonder just what she and my father had been whispering about. “You seem different,” I ventured, wondering how to broach the subject. “Did you and my father discuss something tonight?”
She shrugged innocently, but Bernadette was anything but. She was a sly little minx. She had a mind much like my father’s, and when they got together, they didn’t just engage in pleasantries. They plotted. They conspired. “Oh, nothing much.”
Nothing much meant everything. Nothing much was her innocently planting a glossy magazine advertisement for Tiffany’s in the folds of my wallet. Nothing much was her emailing the Ritz Carlton in Rittenhouse Square to check on open dates for wedding receptions. Nothing much was discovering that she’d been practicing writing “Ms. Bernadette Dryden-Brice” on the back of Playbills in her purse. I raised an eyebrow. “Nothing much?”
She reached up and placed a hand on my shoulder, and I knew that whatever she was going to say was something I didn’t want to hear. “Well, he is concerned. The election is only six months away. The first debate in a few weeks. He told me that voters prefer married candidates to single ones at a ratio of—”
Everything inside me went cold. “Three to one, I know.” I’d heard that at least once a day since I first agreed to run for Senate. “I got it.”
She studied me, expectant. Did she want me to drop to my knee right then? I looked away, muscles stiffening. In that moment, my future began to flash through my mind — a future of plastic galas, and perfectly mannered children, and a museum-like home with the best of everything, and torturously bad sex.
“I should probably go,” I told her after a moment. “But I’ll make that reservation.”
She nodded, and I hugged her chastely, in a way I’d hug my mother. It didn’t stop her from going in for another toad-lipped kiss.
When I stepped outside, the clouds were clearing from the dark sky, so I tilted my head to the stars, taking in deep breaths of air as I wandered to the limo. Right then, more than anything, I wanted to be in that stuffy Black Room chamber, feeling Cassandra squirm and moan under my touch.
Oddly enough, when I was there, I’d never felt more free.
George wasn’t on duty, so I had no choice but to return home and find some other way to relax.