Three more strokes and I was gone, my orgasm slamming into me with enough force to white out my vision and make my ears ring. I came hard, spilling over my fist and onto my stomach, shooting up to my chin.
“Fuck.” His hips stuttered, then stilled as he buried himself deep one final time, coming with my name on his lips.
When he collapsed down on top of me, I welcomed his weight—felt grounded by the solid warmth of him, by the slowing thunder of his heartbeat against mine.
Eventually, he pulled out, and I winced. He dealt with the condom, then grabbed my t-shirt to give us a cursory cleaning. Then he pulled me against his chest, rolling onto his back. I went willingly, draping myself across him and pressing my face into his shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked softly, his fingers carding through my hair.
“More than okay.” I pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “That was …”
Perfect didn’t cover it. Neither did 'intense' or 'incredible' or any other word I could think of.
It had been intimate in a way I’d never experienced before. Like we’d cracked ourselves open and let each other crawl inside—both literally and figuratively.
It was the most vulnerable I’d ever been with another person and somehow also the safest I’d ever felt.
But how did I say any of that?
It turned out, I didn’t have to.
“Everything,” he whispered, his arms tightening around me.
CHAPTER 18
SEBASTIAN
I’d been sittingin Kendra Bancroft’s campaign headquarters in a brick building overlooking Portland’s harbor for the better part of three hours, fielding questions about crisis management, opposition research, and media buys from her team.
I’d just finished walking them through the strategies I'd devised for a high-profile governor's re-election campaign and how I'd worked tirelessly to get Wyatt's last bill over the finish line when Michael Chen leaned back in his chair, linking his fingers together on top of his stomach. “Hastings told me you’re the best in the business, and we’d be idiots not to hire you.”
To my right, Kendra's communications director—a well-dressed man named David Reyes who’d spent forty-five minutes grilling me on media management strategies—wrote something down on a legal pad. “Hastings isn’t exactly generous with praise, so the fact that he gave you a full-throated endorsement says a lot.”
Unbidden, a memory of Wyatt on his knees, my cock down his throat, flashed through my mind.
I sputtered, covering my mouth and trying to play it off as a cough.
David couldn’t possibly know the double entendre he’d just lobbed my way. Full-throated indeed.
Wyatt’s endorsementdidsay a lot, though. For all his faults, the man understood politics. He wouldn’t risk his reputation vouching for someone who couldn’t deliver, and I was damn good at what I did.
But I also knew him well enough to wonder if his putting my name forward wasn’t some sort of twisted power play—a reminder that he could make or break my career with a single phone call.
“I spoke with Hastings at length about the work you did on that data privacy bill,” Kendra cut in, her sharp eyes assessing. “How you were able to reframe the conversation around constant tracking, then putting a spotlight on data brokers. Once voters understood their information was being bought and sold by companies they’d never even heard of, stalling the bill became a liability. That’s the kind of behind-the-scenes strategizing I’ve been looking for.”
“Voters don’t care about abstract concepts like ‘data rights.’ That’s just a buzzword,” I explained. “Theycarewhen they realize companies are tracking their kids’ locations or selling their medical histories to insurance brokers without consent. Make it personal, and suddenly everyone has an opinion. The Republicans on the committee had to back it. Their offices were being flooded with messages of support.”
I knew something about the value of privacy … about what happened when information could be weaponized against you if it fell into the wrong hands. I’d built a career on understanding how information moved and how to control the narrative—because I had to.
Michael and Kendra exchanged a glance. Her eyebrow lifted fractionally, while his mouth tilted to the side, some wordless agreement passing between them.
“Merrick’s team is throwing everything at us,” Kendra continued, tapping her pen against her notepad. “He’s got more money than sense, and a PR firm that’s very good at making him seem palatable.”
“I’m not going to lie—he’s done a good job of pulling the wool over a lot of people’s eyes with his folksy town halls and ‘aw shucks’ videos,” I said, resting my forearms on the table. This was the part I loved—dissecting an opponent’s strategy and finding the cracks in their armor to exploit.
“Exactly,” Michael agreed. “He’s spent the past six months positioning himself as a common-sense centrist while attacking Kendra from both sides. One day, he’s calling her a radical socialist to scare moderates, the next he’s turning around and telling progressives she’s a corporate sellout.” He shook his head. “The man’s saying whatever he thinks whoever’s in front of him at the time wants to hear. It’s been difficult to know which narrative to counter first.”
David set his pen down and folded his hands in front of him. “We need someone who can advise us on how to effectively cut through his bullshit, because what we’ve been doing has only worked so much.”
