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“Everyone on duty from dinner has been relieved. Half are probably already asleep in the bunks downstairs. Everyone else is at their usual posts. The White House is secure, Mr. President. The doors are shut, and the drawbridge is up.”
Someone drops a piece of silverware in the East Room. The clatter rolls down the hall and breaks against us. Pumpkins indeed.
Reese offers me his elbow. “I’ll walk you home?”
A risk, but it’s late, and as he said, the drawbridge is up. I wrap my hand around his elbow. We sway together and apart and then together again.
“Did you enjoy your first state dinner?”
We climb the staircase to the Residence.
“It was a success beyond all my expectations. I am amazed at how seamless it was.”
He tips his head back and laughs as we round the bend in the stairs. I almost miss the next step. He’s too captivating. The arch of his neck and the way the chandelier light glides down the broad expanse of his back. I want to freeze time, capture him in my mind exactly like this. Laughing with me like he doesn’t care who hears or sees.
“It was far from seamless,” he says as we make our way up to the landing. We’re back where we started the evening, where he gave me the cue to begin the procession. Maybe this is where we’ll end it, bring everything full circle.
But I don’t want the night to end. Not yet.
“State dinners are moving cogs inside moving cogs inside moving cogs. The Service’s piece alone is gargantuan, but if we do it right, no one notices us. No one is staring at us all night, like they are at the band or the decor or the food. If it was seamless to you, though, that means it was a success.”
We’re in the Residence, but I don’t take my hand from his elbow. We move to the Yellow Oval together.
It’s like walking into a hotel suite after the after-party. Discarded champagne flutes litter the end tables and the mantel, the crystal stained with half-moons of pink and red lipstick. Napkins are scattered on the carpet. There’s a half-eaten shrimp cocktail abandoned on the windowsill.
“Like I said, it’s hardly seamless.” Reese shakes his head. “Someone is going to have an aneurysm when they realize they forgot this.”
“You also said it was a gargantuan night.”
There’s a tray of clean champagne flutes from the Kennedy administration in the corner, next to an unopened bottle listing sideways in a mostly melted ice bucket. “Let me pour you a drink?”
“I can’t stay.” Regret stains his voice.
“We’ve barely seen each other.”
His gaze slides to the windows as he bites down on the inside of his lip. “Mon cher, I wish I could stay forever.”
Forever is a dream too wild to dare. I want to spend forever knowing this man, exploring the intricacies of his heart and soul, but I’ll start with tonight. “Can we have an hour?”
He hesitates, then nods.
I twist the foil off the champagne bottle, and he sheds his tuxedo jacket and hands it to me.
“Cover the cork with this. That should muffle the sound. Sometimes these things make the agents double check what that pop was.”
I can’t get my hands to work, and the simple mechanical movements of taking his jacket and laying it over the bottle are far too complex. Cotton shifts over his biceps and chest. I want to take him to my bed and peel off each piece of clothing. Run my lips from his head to his toes, kiss an exploration that maps every sigh and shiver he can create.
He turns to the windows overlooking the balcony, and I can finally think again. He’s right, the jacket does muffle the pop of the cork, but I spill bubbles on his sleeve and the carpet before I can get a glass beneath the fizz. “Oops.”
His reflection smiles at me. “Not the first time there’s been champagne on this rug.”
He takes the glass I hand him as we step out onto the Truman Balcony again. There is the spot I recorded my yoga video, almost exactly where I joked with my fellow heads of government. Reese and I made out on my chaise lounge over there, him above me as he kissed away my moans and the sound of his name when I came apart beneath his touch.
We lean against the railing side by side as we drink. He undoes his bow tie and lets the ends dangle, then tugs open the top two buttons of his shirt. My eyes go right to the hollow of his throat, the triangle of skin he’s exposed.
The champagne bottle rests between us, and he refills our glasses and then steps behind me. His arms wrap around my waist, and he molds his body to mine with a sigh. His face in my hair, his lips on my neck. We’re cocooned in darkness, lit only by starlight and the glow of the White House.
My heart is racing. It’s so quiet I can hear the fountain burbling on the South Lawn.
