A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)(33)

Those bastards didn’t win.

Bzzz.

“Fucking phone,” I mutter, actually grateful for a break from Lindsay. the dissonance between our professions of love and my inner turmoil too much. I check the screen. Gentian.

Your suit is out here. The bathroom’s clear if you need to shower, he texts.

I make a sound close to a grunt. He’s ready to run a presidential campaign single-handed.

Tks, I type back.

And then I’m on top of Lindsay, my hands on her neck, my thighs on either side of her hips, my chest rubbing against her breasts, the friction of skin against skin generating an impulsive energy that fuels me.

“I am dangerously close to having your father not only fire me from managing security for you, but if he finds me in your bedroom, my ass will be kicked thoroughly.”

She pinches the ass in question. “You could totally beat my daddy in a cage fight.”

I kiss her and laugh at the same time.

“Not something I really want to test out, Lindsay,” I say, pulling myself off her, grateful to have a distraction. Sliding into my shorts and sweaty t-shirt, I watch as she crawls under the covers, her gorgeous shoulders peeking out over the top of the sheet.

I sigh.

I plant my hands on my hips and think for a few seconds. My phone says it’s 5:21 a.m. To be safe, I should get out of her bedroom by six. Meeting’s at seven, here at The Grove in the senator’s office, so it’s a fifty-fifty chance whether he’ll be here in person.

I need ten minutes to shower. Ten to shave.

Fuck it.

I grab my shorts and pull them down. The waistband snags on something hard.

I’m naked in three seconds, slithering under the sheets as Lindsay squeals.

I silence her with a kiss.

“I have time for one more.”

“One more what?” she asks, batting her eyelashes with mock innocence.

“Oh, you need instructions? Let me show you,” I murmur as I split her legs open with my hands, burying myself in a place where the past doesn’t exist.

And where her pleasure is my present.





Chapter 11





“Don’t try to bullshit me, Drew. I know exactly what you were doing yesterday when you cornered Blaine Maisri and punched him. Convenient there’s no video.” Harry’s voice drops to a deadly whisper. We’re in his home office, Anya quietly leaving us alone with a reminder that Harry has a call with the party chairman in ten minutes.

It’s 7:02 a.m.

“If that’s all you’d done, we wouldn’t be in this meeting. But you dragged my innocent daughter into it, damn it. Made her faint from the stress. Just when we had our first success with reputation rehabilitation.”

I can taste his innocent daughter on my tonsils.

“Now there’s a video clip of her pointing through an open Exit door, eyes wide and fearful like Bambi after his mother was shot, complete with a fainting spell. If we don’t spin this carefully, the media’s going to resurrect her scandal.”

I bite my tongue. And inner lip. And curl my fingers into fists.

“We’re covered,” I assure him.

“I didn’t ask whether we were covered.” His look is designed to make me cower. It fails. “I am telling you that you f*cked up.”

I just look at him.

“I know why you punched him, Drew.”

Wasn’t expecting that.

“You acknowledge what he’s done? You know he’s one of Lindsay’s rapists?” I can’t keep the shock out of my response.

Harry ages ten years in two seconds.

“Jesus, Drew. You’re sure?” He looks away. His shoulders sag.

This isn’t the first time he’s been told this bit of information. I can tell.

“Absolutely sure. I was there,” I say through gritted teeth.

“They told me...” He weakens, grabbing the edge of his desk for support. “They said it was possible. Not a certainty.”

“‘They’ who?”

“The video analysts. Other advisors.” Like who, I wonder. Marshall? Victoria? Those “LB Incident” people from the meeting with Lindsay?

He gives me a bleak-eyed look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Ask you?”

“Ask Lindsay, for starters. And yes, me. We’re the victims.” I hate that word. A flash of the psychologist who helped me after the attacks hits my brain like a missile strike. I shove the image away.

Victims.

“We got reports from her doctors on the Island, but they said her information wasn’t reliable. It came through a drug fog.”

“Then let me make the truth abundantly clear to you, sir. Blaine Maisri was, without doubt, one of the people who raped and tortured your daughter.”

He bares his teeth at me, like an angry stray dog.

“I’m supporting his bid for my old House seat. I’ve endorsed his campaign. You tell me this now?”

“Don’t play dumb, Harry. It doesn’t suit you.”

He’s pale, his shoulders rising with each breath, chest moving fast. “Fuck you.”

My eyes narrow instinctively, examining him. He’s not lying.