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ChapterEleven
Reese
Then
It’s terrifying how quickly wrong starts feeling right.
And how our illicit morning meetings—briefings in name only—become the foundation of my days.
Brennan Walker is a puzzle only I can assemble, because to the world, he’s complete, but to me, he’s a mystery I’m determined to unlock. He’s an addiction I can’t satiate, a craving I can’t fill.
I’m constantly aware of him.
As the head of the detail, I have his schedule, down to minute-by-minute increments.
Now I’m in the halls when I don’t need to be, just to catch a glimpse of him moving through the West Wing. He smiles at me as he slouches against Shannon’s doorframe, or when he’s walking into Ferraro’s office. I poke my head into the Oval and wave hello after lunch, when I know he has five minutes alone before a meeting with the national security watch.
Every interaction brings more questions than answers.
The wildness inside me is growing. The ache I feel when I’m with him lingers, bleeds from moment to moment.
His cologne follows me through the day. I stop whenever it catches up to me. More than once, Henry has caught me with my eyes closed, Yves Saint Laurent gliding over me like a memory.
Frustration spikes, and I end up pounding the pavement at all hours of the night, like I can outrun myself or these formless, senseless thoughts.
I shouldn’t have an ache in my chest whenever I think of President Walker. I shouldn’t be dreaming of his eyes or his smile.
And I absolutely shouldn’t have woken with his name on my lips and a steel-hard erection between my legs.
I’d been on my belly, humping the mattress, his name a gasp buried in my pillow. The next moment, I was diving out of bed, moving so fast I fell to my hands and knees and crawled across my bedroom, trying to escape the indistinct images propelling my dream. Flame-blue eyes, dark hair sliding through my fingers. A firm body moving against mine. A man’s hand gliding down my stomach, down—
I stopped before I could do anything unforgettable, or unforgiveable. A blistering cold shower took care of those thoughts.
I’ve been straight my whole life. I’ve never looked at a man and thought, Yes. New Orleans is a place where you can devour anything you ever dreamed of. A man going for a roll in the night with another man is part of the mosaic of life. Some guys don’t mind too much who they get down with as long as they get off.
But it’s never crossed my mind. Women are what I’ve known. Women are what I’m familiar with.
How do I even begin to understand this?
Maybe the dream wasn’t about him.
Long hours at the White House, a sexual drought since meeting Walker that I don’t want to think too hard on, and whatever this is between us have given me strange thoughts. Fever dreams.
Stress. Friction. Exhaustion, too. Wires crossing in an overheated mind.
That’s all.
* * *
Twice-weekly morning briefsturn into an invitation from Walker for coffee on a Friday morning. One Friday becomes another, and then Mondays get thrown in, until we carve minutes out of every day for each other. We create inside jokes and share smiles that belong to no one else.
We laugh. He tells me about an almost-disastrous phone call involving the Italian prime minister and a misunderstood phrase. I tell him some of the shareable gossip from the West Wing my agents have overheard. The White House, at times, is worse than a soap opera.
He takes his coffee with cream, until it’s the color of bone china. He holds his cup on his knee and looks me in the eye when we talk. His eyes crinkle when he smiles.
He asks for stories from my past. I tell him about advance trips for past presidents, managing Secret Service protection alongside forty different nations’ police forces. I tell him about training, about coordinating operations with my team down to the second, about how I can drive the tactical course at full speed in reverse without scratching the paint on the limo. I tell him about the obstacle course, how we must complete the three-mile route—running, climbing, crawling, jumping—and stop to qualify on each of the Service’s issued weapons as we go. Even with jelly legs and shaking arms, we need 90 percent accuracy or better or we’re sent packing.
He hangs on my every word. He makes me feel like a superhero. He looks at me like I’m wondrous, like I’m Captain America. Like I’ve defined something for him.
