Off the Record (Record #1)(27)

Liz was too flushed to color at the comment. She liked everything he did at this point.

Her body didn’t give her any warning this time. She saw spots with the intensity of it all, and buried her head into the pillow. She heard Brady grunt and then come, doubling over on top of her.

They both lay there, breathing heavily, unable to think, let alone move.

After a while, Brady moved out of her and padded to the bathroom to clean up. Liz collapsed forward onto the bed, curling up around herself. Exhaustion hit her with the strength of a bulldozer, and she felt herself drifting off.

Brady returned a minute later, replacing his boxer briefs and curling up into bed next to her. “Hey, your turn,” he whispered, kissing her shoulder.

Liz grumbled but stood shakily and cleaned up. The overpowering smell of sex hit her when she walked back into the room, and she smiled lazily as she crawled under the covers. Brady pulled her close to him, cradling her in his arms.

“You’re amazing,” he told her, running his hand up and down her arm.

“You’re pretty amazing yourself,” she murmured drowsily.

They lay there together in the silence, absorbed in the ecstasy of their actions. Liz was nearly asleep when Brady spoke again. “Are you asleep?”

She yawned and rolled over to face him. “Not anymore.”

He smiled sweetly at her and threaded his hand through her blond hair. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift again. He bent down and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “There’s your kiss.”

“You were right,” she whispered.

“About what?”

“I’m pretty senseless,” she told him.

He chuckled softly, giving her another kiss. “I like you like this. Not quite so snippy, are you?”

“You don’t like me snippy?” she asked between yawns.

“Wouldn’t change it for the world.”

She smiled brightly at that comment and leaned into his shoulder. She was really enjoying the way he was playing with her hair. If he kept it up, she would be asleep soon enough.

“Tell me something no one else knows about you,” he said, kissing down her jawline.

“Something no one else knows about me?” Liz opened her eyes and gazed up at him.

“Yes. I want something that no one else has.”

“I slept with a Senator,” she murmured, leaning her forehead into him to hide her face.

He chuckled softly and raised her chin with his fingers. “Are you embarrassed?”

“No,” she said, blushing furiously.

“Oh really?”

“I’m not!” she told him.

“Fine.” He planted a kiss on her red cheeks. “But you didn’t answer my question. I already knew that. I want to know something no one else knows.”

“That’s all. That’s the only thing no one else knows about me,” she told him, biting her lip.

“You don’t have any secrets?”

“You’re my only secret.”

“I’ll keep that one,” he told her.

Chapter 9

THE AFTERMATH

Life after Brady was like watching a film in black and white. It was really quite beautiful, but it felt like something was missing.

Liz went about her daily life—class, newspaper, sleep. It was all important, but it suddenly felt entirely too dull without him. She wasn’t the type to get easily attached, and she found that she didn’t understand her feelings toward him. They had spoken only twice, and for rather brief periods of time. She hardly knew him at all. Yet she had gone back to his hotel room with him. It made no sense. She wasn’t that girl. When it came down to it, she couldn’t decide whether she actually liked Brady or it was simply infatuation.

Either way, she didn’t care. She just wanted more of him.

Instead she was stuck in her journalism class for the summer. The class was interesting, and she absolutely loved the professor. She’d had her the previous semester, and it was one of the main reasons she was taking the class. Professor Mires was particularly flexible around the summer session. She was allowing Liz to use her experience on the paper as her project for the semester, taking a huge weight off of her shoulders. It gave Liz a lot more time to focus on the local elections than she had been expecting, and she had taken to obsessing over campaign schedules.

Normally it would have been a light election season, picking up ferocity right around the time school started again in the fall. But since Senator Abbot and Representative Huntington had announced their retirement in the spring, contenders had started popping up like wildflowers. She was concentrating her efforts on the House campaign, and then would move on to the Senate. Three main candidates appeared on each side of the aisle for the House race, and Liz had opened her column with a daily focus on each of them.

Liz was on day six now, saving the best for last.

She stared down at the picture she had chosen of Brady out of the shots Hayden had taken at the Raleigh press conference. Brady’s charismatic smile was missing from his face, and he actually managed to look serious. Liz wondered when this picture had been taken. He looked as if he were staring straight through her. She squirmed under his scrutiny and stood, stretching her aching muscles.

The paper was dead quiet, and all the lights had been shut off except for Hayden’s office, which she had confiscated for the summer. She yawned, rolling a kink out of her neck. It was midnight, an hour past building close. She was glad she had the all-access key.