“Have faith that it’ll all work out.”
She’s always so upbeat and somehow believes in the good. But I’ve seen too much of the bad win in this world, including her father, to allow myself to buy into any fairy tales.
Tyson stalks across the backstage area, clutching his phone in his hands. “We may have gotten a break.”
“What?” My fingers tighten on Reagan’s side as I gaze over her head. “How?”
“There’s a lot of video footage from the event in question. My people are scouring every moment, trying to find the few moments you spent with her. If we can show proof, people can no longer take her claim seriously, and we can move forward.”
Of course. I hadn’t even thought about the dozens of reporters and the hundreds of supporters in attendance, all taking video and photos from every angle possible. There’s never a moment of a rally that isn’t on tape in some shape or form. There has to be something to prove my innocence, or at least, I hope there is… God, I hope there is.
“Good work, Tyson.” Reagan turns in my arms and smiles at him. Their new respect for each other is nice but unsettling at the same time.
“Hopefully, they’ll find something on the tapes,” I say.
“If you met her, it’ll be on them. I had cameras everywhere. Plus, your supporters all had their phones out. If it happened, someone would’ve taken a photo or video,” Tyson tells us.
“It didn’t happen,” I repeat because, for some reason, I feel like Tyson hasn’t believed me.
“I know. I know.” He nods slowly before pursing his lips. “We’re going to crush that bitch.”
“Tyson,” I hiss. “Don’t ever use that demeaning language with me and especially not in front of my wife.”
“No.” Reagan turns her face toward me. “She is a bitch.”
“Okay. Okay. So now we wait and hope we have something to vindicate me.”
“Yeah,” Tyson says with a sigh. “This should all be over in forty-eight hours.”
From his mouth to God’s ears.
“Let’s get lost for the evening,” Reagan says to me, running her palms up my bare forearms. “What do you say?”
I glance over at Tyson, waiting for him to object, but he waves me off. “I thought you’d never ask,” I tell her and move toward the doorway, holding her hand, without so much as a backward glance.
My hands areover her eyes as we enter the hotel room. During dinner, I slipped away and had everything set up in the penthouse I rented for the night. I didn’t want Tyson to be able to find us, and I wanted the evening to be more special than it would’ve been in our normal hotel suite.
“Why won’t you let me see?” she asks as the door closes behind us, sealing us away from any prying eyes and the world outside.
“One second,” I tell her with my mouth next to her ear. My eyes sweep across the room, making sure everything is perfect. I’m actually surprised the concierge was able to pull everything off so quickly down to the last detail. “Now that we’re here, no more talking about anything except us. Are we clear?”
She shivers in my arms as my breath skids across her skin. “Yes, Jude,” she replies in a small, soft voice. “I understand.”
“This is about us. About pleasure. About nothing more than a husband and wife. There’s nothing but this moment. This room. The feeling of your skin against mine. No sounds other than moans of pleasure.”
Her lips are parted as she listens to me speak, but she nods, understanding every bit of what I mean. This is how I unwind, how I close myself away and forget that I’m anything more than a hungry man in love with my wife.
I move my hands away from her face, showing her the room with the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the town in the swankiest hotel money could buy in this part of Illinois.
She looks around, her eyes moving from the windows to the hundreds of flickering candles around the room. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers as I stroke the soft skin on her bare shoulders.
“No one can find us. I made sure of it,” I tell her, slowly easing down the straps of her dress.
The material falls away, pooling on the carpet around her feet. I run my fingers up her arms, causing goose bumps to break out across her flesh.
“Tonight’s mine, Reagan. You’re mine. I want to lose myself in you.” I press my lips to her neck, placing them over her pulse. “Use you every way I can until my body and yours can’t take any more.”
17
