Page 43 of The Press Secretary's Passion
“Give it to me,” he growls. “It has to be now.”
And I know he’s walking the knife’s edge just as I am, and knowing I’ve brought him there, that I do that to him, throws me off the cliff.
“Ryan,” I whisper, and then I tip my head back and come.
“Yes,” he groans as he drives deeper, harder, faster again and again, and then his fingers tighten almost painfully on my thighs as he plants himself deep one more time and follows me over the edge, taking me with him yet again.
I lie there with my eyes closed for who knows how long. He sits there on his knees, touching me everywhere. He skates his hands down my legs and up my arms, just touching me wherever he can with no pattern at all.
My eyes pop open when he gently brushes a lock of my hair back from my face and then brushes the backs of his fingers down my temple.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all. He watches me for a minute as if I should say or do something, even though I don’t know what, and then he pulls out and curls to his side. He pulls my back to his front and settles the blanket over us.
I think he might be settling in to stay, and I let all the muscles in my body relax one by one, and I let out a deep breath.
It’s then he rolls me to my back and makes love to me. It’s slow and it’s sweet and it’s tender. So much so that it brings tears to my eyes. There’s so much emotion welling up inside me, and I realize I have feelings for Ryan. That somewhere along the way, he wormed his way into my heart, and I think maybe I wasn’t wrong for letting him in my bed all this time.
And then when it’s over, he places one last kiss to my lips and pulls out. And keeps on rolling out of the bed. I watch in horror, like one might watch a terrible car wreck on the interstate, as he steps into his underwear and jeans and then pulls his shirt over his head. He steps into a pair of Sperry’s, and then he’s gone without a backward glance.
Too bad the jerk stepped on my heart on his way to the door.
“Funeral of Late Socialite was Who’s Who of Politics”
Chapter 13
Ashes to ashes
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” the Pastor reads from his Bible.
It’s an unseasonably cold spring day as we stand in the crowd of mourners as Ashley Jeffries, New York socialite, former girlfriend of the President of the United States, and all-around rotten bitch from hell is laid to rest.
I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I’m also not entirely sure she hadn’t risen from hell instead of being born from her mother like other mammals.
Really, I would be more considerate if she deserved it at all. Instead, she perpetrated one heinous act against my friends after another.
“Can you believe it?” someone whispers to another. “A car accident?”
“More like a Caraaccident,” I mumble under my breath to Grace, who has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. It wouldn’t do at all for the First Lady of the United States to be caught laughing at the graveside service of her husband’s former lover. Even if the comment is more than accurate. After all, she did try to kill my Cara after she kidnapped her daughter. Not to mention, she shot Ryan. And in an effort to escape, Cara hit her in the head with a metal folding chair, breaking her neck.
But that’s need-to-know information. Somehow, the Jeffries family spun her death as a tragic car accident instead of justifiable homicide. No one is sure how that happened. And we’ve been looking into it.
By all accounts, Ashley Jeffries was nothing more than an empty-headed socialite intent on marrying into the highest echelon of political power and causing hate and discontent, no doubt. I’ve known her for years. We grew up in the same social circles, after all. In fact, I would swear she was just the kind of woman my parents would be hellbent on marrying to my brother, Gil.
Hell, they wanted nothing more than for me to be Ashley Jeffries, other than the dead as a doornail part. Although, maybe that part too. I’m useless, after all, and I have a portion of the family trust they can’t have, because I’ve already reached the payout terms.
I’m sure they would’ve finally found some value in me if I had set my cap for Jake like Ashley had. Sure, Jake is hot, everyone has always known that, but there was something about how much my longtime bestie hated him. As it would turn out, Grace protested too much. She was awfully vociferous in her complaints about Jake, not because she hated him, but because she was attracted to him. And it all seemed to work out in the end. They’re happily married and expecting a baby this summer. Well… I mean, it all worked out for everyone but Ashley, who got herself dead. But I digress.
Her dad looks this way, and for a second, he looks… angry. There’s a level of malice that crosses his face that I have never seen before. And I grew up in a home with Gilbert and Alexandra Fairchild as my parents. The level of anger they are capable of would be shocking to anyone else, and it was everyday fair in our not so happy home.
So to see such anger, such hatred on Mark Jeffries’s face is alarming. And it’s directed at me. I’ve known Mark for years. He’s an acquaintance of my own dad, and he has always been very cordial to me. I mean, it’s not like I clobbered his daughter with a card chair. Although I would have in the same situation. And as I mentioned, she did shoot Ryan. So to see him so angry with me is alarming. And then it’s just… gone, like it was never there at all. How odd.
They lower the casket into the ground, and I watch as mourners throw sand or flowers into her grave. And then out the corner of my eye, I see a man approach Ryan, who is standing just a few people in our entourage over from me. I pretend not to see him.
He says in a low voice, “I’m just the messenger.”
He hands Ryan a small note, and then he walks away.
