Chapter 22 #2
And that would be soon enough, he was sure.
Because she was Addison Carey, and at the end of the day he was Walker Grayson.
So what did she need him for, really? She might feel like she was getting something out of this, and it might be true.
True that their fake relationship had created the buzz that she needed.
She would win this election, handily, he had no doubt.
If people had been unsure of who was running before, or who she was, they did know now.
He would go back to the way he’d been before.
His life would go back to the way it had been.
Someday, she would find that perfect man that would give her this life.
The one that she deserved, not the bullshit life that Alan had been offering her.
Or maybe it hadn’t been bullshit, but it wasn’t something that made her eyes sparkle.
Wasn’t something that made her happy. And damn it all, he would have said that he didn’t really want Addison Carey to be happy, but now he did.
Now that he realized there were parts of their souls that were more the same than they were different.
Now that he knew her. And maybe she would find that life, partly because of him.
Partly because of this. There was something satisfying about that.
To know that he might be a crucial piece of her journey.
Even the shitty things she had done to him in high school that didn’t seem so shitty now, because it just felt like teenagers, hurt, wounded teenagers who had been affected by the actions of the adults in their lives doing the wrong thing.
Because they were trying to deal with their own wounds, and doing it badly.
But as an adult man with enough wounds to keep him busy tending for the next decade or so, he knew that he couldn’t expect more out of their past selves. He could barely expect more out of himself now.
“So other than that, and the kind of marketing and prep that we’re doing, the ticket sales, not much is happening. I have a feeling that will be the big one.”
“Good.”
“My vacation rental will be available for me to go back to soon,” she said.
“Also good,” he said, but there was a twisting sensation low in his stomach. Didn’t feel all that good, to be honest. Even though he had said that it was.
“We should go out tomorrow night,” he said, his own impromptu suggestion surprising him.
“We should?”
“Yeah. We should. Because it would be good to put in another appearance before this event, don’t you think? Well, yeah.”
“We can go out for barbecue. Hit up the old saloon. No one will expect you to go rolling into that tourist trap.”
She laughed. “No they won’t. And I’m not sure that it’s the place?”
“No, it’s absolutely the place. Promise. Just trust me.”
“Okay.”
When they finished dinner, he helped her clean up, tried to get her to go sit down in the living room and not do the dishes since she had cooked everything, but she refused.
Then afterward, he went into the living room and sat down on the couch, and he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. Wearing nothing but the apron.
“God,” he said. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Oh, don’t die, Walker, then you’d be of no use to me.”
“This is going to be the death of me.”
What a way to go.
She walked over to the couch, reached behind her back and undid the waist tie on the apron, then reached up and undid the one around her neck, letting the sweet piece of pink fabric fall to the floor, leaving her completely naked in front of him.
She was a work of art. She was everything that he had ever fantasized about and more. Everything that he had ever wanted.
She sauntered over to the couch, and he knew that she intended to get on his lap, but instead, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her down onto the couch, then released her, reversing their positions so that he was the one off the couch, but kneeling in front of it.
He pushed her thighs out wide, so that he could get a good view of the most intimate part of her.
All that pink glory, and everything that he...
hell, if he could remember one view for the rest of his life, one that stuck in his mind always, he wanted it to be this.
Addison Carey, spread out on his couch like a dessert buffet.
It was more than he could have ever dreamed of.
He had acquired any number of things in his life.
An expensive truck, a beautiful home, motion-activated security cameras, high-end camp coffee makers, the best laptop he could find, tablets and brand-new phones, but none of it beat this.
None of it was better than this moment that money could never buy, and influence could never recreate.
This was everything. All that he couldn’t have had then, and all he wanted. All that he still couldn’t hope to hold onto now, but felt desperate for all the same.
He leaned in and kissed her thigh, and she whimpered.
“This evening was supposed to be for you,” she said.
“Oh, this is for me. Do you know how often I think about having my mouth on you? All the time. I think about it all the time.” Then he slicked his tongue through her intimate folds, tasted her, teased her, and he knew that he could have lost hours on just this.
Knew that he could’ve happily stayed here for more, for longer.
She was rocking her hips against his mouth, fingers speared through his hair, and he wasn’t done yet. She came once against his tongue, and then again, as he stroked and teased her with his fingers.
“Walker,” she panted.
She came again, sobbing against his mouth, and he was hard as iron, the fantasy that he had painted driving him to the brink.
He moved up, kissed her mouth, then down her neck.
He growled when he got to her breasts, sucking one deep into his mouth, while he palmed the other one.
Yes, yes, he wanted to be inside her, but he could happily explore her body for hours on end without satisfaction.
And for some reason tonight felt like the right night for it.
He kissed his way back down her body, and was nudging at her intimate flesh with his tongue again.
“Walker, I’ll die.”
“See, now you’re the one dying. We’re no good for each other.”
He lifted his head, kissed her right below her belly button, then picked her up off the couch and carried her upstairs. She clung to him, and he laid her down on the bed, on her stomach.
She looked over her shoulder, questioning, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, tilting her hips upward. Then he pushed two fingers into her from behind, as he kissed the center of her spine.
“Oh,” she whispered.
He teased her like that, in absolutely no hurry. Until he couldn’t bear it anymore. He took a condom out of the bedside drawer, and for one moment, he was resentful. Resentful of how responsible he was being, resentful of the fact that they had to have a barrier between them at all.
He had never once resented that. He was the safe sex king. Not only did he not want to get any kind of disease, he didn’t want any random kids littering the earth. And so, he had always been extremely responsible, and had never even been tempted to be anything else.
He was now, though. He was so tempted, it hurt.
He tore the condom open as quickly as possible and sheathed himself before he made a bad impulse into a dumb decision.
Then he thrust into her from behind, and she whimpered, rear end up, face buried in the mattress.
He took her over and over again, until he needed to see her face.
Then he pulled out of her quickly, flipped her onto her back and thrust into her in a smooth stroke.
She came apart, crying out his name and sobbing, arching up off the bed. He kissed her, hard, swallowing those cries. As she came hard around him, as her own release pushed him over the edge, finally.
And after he disposed of the condom in the bathroom, he simply didn’t have the energy to leave her.
He lay down beside her, beneath the covers, and pulled her up against his body, nestling her right up against him. It was good. It was so good.
She was so good.
And then for the first time in his life, Walker let himself fall asleep, in his bed, with a woman in his arms.