One
Levi
I’ve met kings. Actual royalty. Prime ministers, presidents, celebrities with egos the size of football stadiums. Thirty years in professional soccer, playing and coaching, and I’ve shaken hands with every kind of powerful person you can imagine.
Never been nervous. Not once.
So why the fuck are my palms sweating?
Get it together, Hendricks. You’re forty-five years old. This is embarrassing.
I check my tie in the hotel mirror for the third time. It’s fine. It was fine the first two times.
We’re going to the White House. Standard stuff for a home World Cup. The president hosts the team, does a photo op, and wishes us luck. I’ve done this kind of shit plenty of times in a dozen different countries.
But this time,she’llbe there.
Lina Kane. President of the United States. The woman I’ve been low-key obsessed with for longer than I’d ever admit out loud.
Fuck.
I remember exactly when it started. Eight years ago. She was running for her first term, and I was home between seasons, flipping through news channels at two in the morning because jet lag is a bitch. I wasn’t paying attention, just background noise while I answered emails, until I heardhervoice.
I looked up. And forgot how to breathe.
She was giving a campaign speech. Some rally in Ohio or Iowa or one of those swing states. But I didn’t hear a single word she said. I was too busy staring at her like a goddamn idiot.
Lina Kane.
She had to be in her mid-thirties then. Tall, curvy in a way that made my mouth water. The camera was at a distance, but I could see enough. Full hips that swayed when she moved across the stage. A waist my hands itched to wrap around. And her tits ,Jesus, full and round, straining against the fabric of her blazer in a way that made me shift on the couch.
Her skin was deep brown and smooth. She wore her hair pulled back, showing off her neck, her jaw, her gorgeous face. High cheekbones, full lips, eyes that shone with intelligence and fire.
She smiled at something the crowd did, and my dick twitched.
What the fuck?
I sat up. Turned up the volume. Watched the rest of the speech with my elbows on my knees, leaning forward like I could get closer to her through the screen.
Her voice.God, her voice. Low and smooth, the kind of voice that made you want to shut up and listen. The kind of voice you’d want whispering filthy things in your ear at three in the morning.
I was hard by the end of her speech. Fully, painfully hard. For a politician on television. A woman I’d never met.
You’re losing it, Hendricks.
But I didn’t change the channel. I watched the commentary after. Googled her name. Read her biography, her policy positions, and interviews going back years. Found photos, official ones, candid ones, ones where she was caught laughing with her head thrown back, and I stared at the smooth column of her throat and thought about pressing my lips there.
I told myself it was to keep up with current events. That I was being an informed citizen.
Yeah, right. That’s why you know her favorite book and what she orders at that coffee shop in D.C. from some interview she gave five fucking years ago. That’s why you rewatch her speeches, not because you like the way her mouth moves when she talks.
I’m a whole grown man with a celebrity crush. Like a fucking teenager with posters on his wall. Except my posters are bookmarked articles and late-night C-SPAN recordings I’ve watched more times than I’ll ever confess.
I’ve thought about her in the shower. In bed. On long flights when I couldn’t sleep. Imagined what she’d sound like moaning my name. What her body would feel like under my hands. What her face would look like when she came.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
And now I’m about to meet her. In person. For the first time.
