Chapter 17 WATCHING YOU WORK

Liz spent all afternoon researching the article she was working on for the paper. Victoria complained enough about Liz’s obsessive behavior that she finally took a break from the computer to get some dinner. But even when she was away from her work, she was still thinking about it. She wanted to make sure she had all of her facts right first, but she was itching to start writing it.

Even after dinner, Victoria was insufferable. Liz had missed her while she was gone, but it had been nice having the house to herself to work. The girls sat around and watched a movie into the evening, and Liz was bouncing with jitters the whole time. Victoria finally rolled her eyes about three-quarters of the way through and told her to leave.

“Just get out of here. You’re making me nervous, and I’m not going into the lab until tomorrow,” she said, turning back to the movie.

“I love you,” Liz said, bolting out of the living room.

She grabbed her laptop off of her desk and was on her way to the office a few minutes later. Hayden had had a brilliant idea about comparing candidate platforms to the student government initiatives. Every spring semester, candidates ran for student government on campaign platforms as wide-ranging as implementing a bicycle-rental facility on campus to decreasing in-state tuition and fees. Hayden thought it would be an interesting article if she could string the two together. Show all of the policies and procedures that mirrored general governmental policies happening within the state and federally. Basically showing the campus that what they cared about here, mattered out there.

It was brilliant. She had always known why Hayden had been chosen editor, but he continued to reinforce it.

When Liz walked into the building, Meagan was sitting at her desk, which was covered in hot-pink Post-its and a collection of brightly colored candies. Liz scrunched her eyes at the display.

“Liz!” Meagan said, whirling around in her chair. “I didn’t know you were going to be in tonight. Are you hungry? Have you eaten? I’m kind of starved, and I can’t stop eating candy. We could go get something.”

“No, thanks. I just ate. Need to work on this article for next week,” Liz said.

“Are you sure? Do you need any help with it?”

“No, thanks, Meagan. I think I got it.”

She hurried across the room and into Hayden’s office. They had less than half the amount of normal staff, and no one had said anything when she had taken it over. She had a lot of work to do and she knew that she was going to be here well into the wee hours of the night.

A few hours later, Meagan came back to her office to tell her that she was closing up and asked her again if she needed any help. Liz smiled and politely told her no, though she knew she would be there well past building close. The article wasn’t coming together as smoothly as she would have liked. She had it sitting in pieces on her laptop and even some printed documents that she had scribbled all over.

She was starting to see double when she stared at the screen, and knew it was time for a break. She grabbed her water bottle and trekked down to the water fountain in the hallway. As she was filling up her Nalgene, her phone started vibrating from where it was tucked away in her back pocket. Liz fished it out of her pocket and pressed it between her ear and shoulder so she could continue filling the bottle.

“Hello?” she said.

“I’m going to come pick you up. Be ready in twenty minutes.”

Liz’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t seen Brady in three days. He had been busy in Raleigh all week working on campaign-related materials. He hadn’t really said much else about it. Now here he was asking to see her when she was busy working on the article Hayden had recommended to her.

She really wanted to, but tonight was not the best night. “Brady, I can’t.”

“What? Why not?” he demanded. She could tell he was impatient.

“I’m working. I have this huge article I’m putting together. I’ve been working on it for hours.”

“Then you need a break. I’m already in the car. I’m not turning around,” he said simply.

Liz sighed. “Seriously. I’m worried if I take a step away I’ll lose my entire focus on it. This is a big deal for me.”

She really wanted him to understand. She had a life separate from him. Her job as a reporter was what she had been striving toward for a long time. She wasn’t willing to give up her dreams any more than he was willing to give up the campaign. And in reality, neither of them should have to. They should be able to make this work while still being the same people. She wondered whether that was ever going to be possible.

“Liz, I haven’t seen you in three days. That is three days too many. I’m coming to see you. Where are you?”

“If you want to come watch me work, then you can. I would think it would be pretty boring,” she said, closing the lid on her water bottle and walking back into the empty office.

“My time with you is never boring. Are you at home?” he asked.

“Oh, about that…” Liz said.

“What?”

“My roommate came back into town. She was in London—I won’t even try to explain why—but I don’t have the house to myself anymore,” she explained.

“So, you should get picked up somewhere else?” he asked dryly.

“Oh my God, you can’t come watch me work,” Liz said, shaking her head.

“I’m not coming to watch you work. I’m coming to fuck you,” he nearly growled at her through the phone.

His voice sent shivers down her spine as she thought about their sex life. They were having sex more each week in stolen secret moments than she’d had when she had been dating her last boyfriend. And she had been practically living with her boyfriend at the time. It was exhilarating and incredible each time she was with Brady.

Plus, she couldn’t deny that she enjoyed getting to know him on a more personal level when they met. Some of his walls had started falling the more time he spent with her. After the incident with his sister, he had told her all about his family—his father, the politician; his mother, the professor; his younger brother, Clay, the law student; and his younger sister, Savannah, who would be attending UNC in the fall. She had even learned that Savannah was planning to major in journalism. Liz sure as hell hoped that she didn’t try to get on the paper.

She needed to make a decision. She stared at her open Word document and then exhaled softly. She knew that she had work to do, but she wasn’t really making all that much progress with it anyway. It might be better to look at it fresh tomorrow. And anyway, she really wanted to see Brady.

“I’m at the office.”

“In the Union?” Brady asked.

“Yeah. Do you know where the paper is?”

“Ten minutes,” he said before the line went dead.

Almost exactly ten minutes later, Liz heard the door to the newspaper office open. She peeked her head around the corner of Hayden’s office and couldn’t help but let a big grin spread across her face. Brady Maxwell was in her office. He was on her turf. And he looked really fucking hot.

He looked as if he had come straight from the office in black dress slacks and a tucked-in blue button-down. His jacket had clearly been discarded in the car. It was too hot for pants and a long-sleeved shirt, but she knew that he wouldn’t have gone into work in anything else. His dark eyes caught hers across the room, and she smiled. Her whole body ignited in that one look. How did he do that?

She opened her mouth to say something. Greet him, maybe? She couldn’t even remember. Because as soon as he reached her, he grabbed her around the middle, pushed them into the office, and crushed their lips together. Liz tilted her head back, reveling in his kisses. She heard him kick the door closed, but all she could think about was his lips, his hands, his body.

Liz couldn’t get enough of him. He was sucking the breath right out of her. It had only been three days. Three days didn’t normally feel like such an eternity, but now, standing there in his arms, she had no idea how she had been able to go the interminable amount of time without him.

When he broke away, it took her a bit to regain control of herself.

“Baby, it’s really good to see you,” he groaned against her mouth.

Liz nodded her head. She didn’t even have words. With him standing in front of her now, she couldn’t even remember what she was doing before he arrived.

“I can’t tell if you’re happy I’m here,” he said sarcastically, with a knowing look on his handsome face.

Arrogant son of a… she thought.

“I can’t believe you’re at my office. That’s basically public territory, Brady,” Liz said, sliding her hands up around his neck.

“It’s the middle of the night. That’s hardly public,” he corrected.

“As close as it’s been since we were at the Jefferson-Jackson gala,” she whispered. She hoped she didn’t sound as if she were complaining. She liked her time with Brady. Some days it didn’t feel like enough, and she wished for more. But not now, not when she was in his arms.

“And probably as close as its going to get,” he said, setting clear boundaries.

She knew that all along. They couldn’t meet in public. That would defeat the whole purpose of what they were doing.

“As long as I get to be close to you, then I don’t care,” Liz said, gripping the collar of his shirt in her hands and tugging him back down. “And anyway, maybe I like the secret,” she murmured seductively against his mouth. Her tongue darted out and licked across his bottom lip.

His hands gripped her sides and then his mouth claimed her once more. She saw where this was heading fast.

“I like this,” he said, his hands running to the hem of her cotton sundress. He slid them up the other side of the material across her thighs. Liz sucked in quickly at the sudden contact.

“My dress?” she asked as he walked her back slowly toward the very cluttered desk.

“Your body,” he muttered, his fingers finding the lacy edge of her thong. Liz shivered at his touch. She hit the edge of the desk.

“Brady,” she said when he tried to help her onto it.

“Don’t,” he said, not stopping.

“This is my boss’s desk.”

Brady smirked as if she had made the decision for him. He reached behind her and pushed all of her neatly stacked papers onto the floor. Her mouth fell open as she watched her assignment scatter.

“I’m taking you on this desk,” he said, picking her up and placing her on the now-empty surface. “Don’t act like you don’t want me to.”

She would deal with the article later. At this moment, she could care less.

“Don’t move,” he said, pointing at her. Liz watched him walk across the small room and turn the lock in the door. “We don’t want any unannounced visitors.”

“Taking all the fun out of being in public.”

“Don’t get mouthy with me.”

Liz bit her lip and looked down. “I’d never.”

Her eyes slowly traveled up to his face, and he shook his head. “Only when I ask you to.”

“Come here,” she said, crooking her finger. She was getting impatient. He was dangling himself in front of her and then retreating once he got her hot and forced her onto the desk. She thought he might protest that she was giving her own commands, but he smiled and walked toward her.

She grabbed him by his belt and wrenched him in close. His hands landed on the tops of her thighs, and he moved one down between her legs. She unbuckled his belt as quickly as she could manage with his fingers dipping under her thong. She popped the button and slid the zipper to the base before hooking her fingers into his expensive dress pants and sending them over his narrow hips to the ground.

Liz stroked him a few times through his boxer briefs, but he was already ready for her. She slid her hand under the elastic, and wrapped her fingers around his dick. He grunted and leaned forward.

“Yeah. I need you. Right now,” he groaned, as she ran her hand up to the head and back. He bent forward and kissed her as hard as he could. Her hand stilled as she lost her train of thought, and he took that moment to scoot her ass forward so she was sitting on the edge of the desk.

He broke the kiss, dropped his boxers, and yanked her thong to the ground. Liz eagerly pulled her dress over her head and unclasped her bra. She knew she was as ready for him as he was standing before her. She could feel her pulse against her throat and her breathing quicken. Her senses seemed to intensify every time he touched her. The heat and electric chemistry between them superheated the close quarters, and a flush rose to her cheeks.

She had never felt so comfortable naked before a man. This was Brady. He never judged her, was never condescending, and never once demeaned her or made her feel bad for the choices she made. She rarely if ever told him no in the bedroom because of these things. And it was liberating to just feel. Because when she was with Brady, she didn’t let herself do much else.

Brady gripped her hips in his hands as he pushed forward into her roughly. Liz gasped at the impact as their bodies slammed together. He was right: Three days was too long.

He eased back out of her until the head made a puckering sound and then slid just as slowly back in. He did this back-and-forth motion until she felt as if she was going to burst if he didn’t pick up the pace. As if he could read her mind, he started moving faster in and out, gradually hitting into her with more and more force. And the harder he drove in, the louder she moaned, until she couldn’t hold back any longer and climaxed at the peak.

Somehow, he held off his own and waited for her to come down off of her high.

After a couple seconds, he started up again. Liz tried to keep from whimpering and tilted her head up to the ceiling. She couldn’t believe they were fucking right here, right now, on Hayden’s fucking desk. But she wasn’t going to stop, especially not when she had Brady on her turf.

“Fuck, Brady,” she groaned. “I’m going to turn you down more often if it does this to you. I like holding the cards.”

“Baby, I don’t know what delusion you’re under, because I’m fucking you,” he said, punctuating each word with a harder and harder thrust.

“Oh yeah?” she asked, forcefully pushing him backward away from her and hopping off the desk. She yanked out the chair to the desk and pointed at it. “Sit!”

Brady raised his eyebrows, but did as he was told. It was Liz’s favorite chair in the whole building, and after she was finished with Brady, she was never giving it back to Hayden. The chair was oversize and sturdy, with a rounded cushion and big wooden armrests.

Liz climbed on top and straddled him. He watched her with a big, self-satisfied grin on his face, as though this had all been his idea. She lowered herself down onto him and started working her way up to his pace. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear, “Now I’m fucking you.”

Brady’s hands slapped down onto her ass as soon as the words fell from her lips, and she cried out in surprise. He grasped her ass in his hands until she could feel him leaving indents in her skin, and then forced her down on him again and again.

With him guiding her movements, they moved faster than she could have on her own, and soon they were both breathless from exertion. He would lift her up and then force her down over and over again, until all she could hear over their heavy breaths was the smacking of their bodies colliding.

“Baby,” he murmured, driving her down harder once more, “I’m still the one fucking you.”

Liz threw her head back with a smile. Of course he was. And she didn’t want him to stop either.

“And I’m going to be the only one fucking you.” He accented his words with an ever-increasing tempo.

“God yes,” Liz groaned. She could never disagree with him. Her breasts were bouncing up and down in front of his face as she rocked up and down on top of him. She felt a second orgasm getting ready to tear through her body, and she gritted her teeth and leaned over into his shoulder.

“Baby,” he growled. She already knew what he was about to say.

“Me too,” she panted.

And then they both let go. Liz felt her body sail away as she closed her eyes and entered a state of euphoria.

Brady wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in close. She dropped her head to his shoulder and let out a contented sigh. It was nice to be in his arms, lost in their own world.

They sat like that together until Liz felt herself drifting off. She righted herself, kissed his lips, and then moved off of him. She hated the absence of his body near hers, but there was plenty more time for that tonight, and as many more nights as they could have together.

After they both put their clothes back on and took trips to the bathroom, Liz went to the trouble of locating the papers she had been working on. She wanted them to be there for her when she actually had a chance to get back to them again. With the way Brady was looking at her, it likely wasn’t going to be tonight.

Brady leaned over her shoulder and kissed his way up her neck. Liz giggled and rested back into him. His arms moved around her body and wrapped her up. “Is this the article you were so desperate to work on?”

“Something I’m working on for next week,” she murmured, lost in his kisses again.

“Comparing campaign platforms and student government?” he asked, reading over her shoulder. His voice had changed slightly. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it sounded like campaign mode. She sure hoped he wasn’t offended by what she wrote. He normally liked when she wrote controversial material, because at least he knew it was honest.

“Yeah. I thought it was a great way to engage the campus,” she told him. She didn’t mention that it was Hayden’s idea. She had never brought Hayden up before in their conversations. She hadn’t really thought about it until now.

“Hmm. Mind if I look at it?” he asked, scooping the papers off of the desk and releasing her.

She had printed what she had written earlier so that she could go through and see what she was missing. She caught more errors that way. “It’s not a finished product or anything. It’s all jumbled, still needs a lot of work. Don’t judge me on the disjointed mess that is the beginning of my first draft,” she said hastily.

He smiled and started thumbing through the papers, skimming some parts, and reading other lines word for word. She didn’t want to be rude and read over his shoulder or anything, but she was anxious about what he thought. She wanted to know which parts he was reading more carefully than others.

There wasn’t really all that much specifically mentioned about him. She usually wrote articles about individual politicians, but this one was different. She was already nervous about it. She hoped he liked it.

“Hmm…” he murmured as he flipped to the last page.

“Hmm?” she questioned, dying to know what he was thinking.

“This is good,” he said, finally finishing. “I see what you mean about disjointed, but still the writing is good.”

Liz blushed. “Thanks.”

“I just…I have a suggestion, if you’re interested,” he said diplomatically.

“Oh?” she asked. This was different. Not that Brady wasn’t interested in her work. He read all of her articles, and sometimes they discussed them. Nothing too serious. They steered clear of openly discussing politics together.

“Well, I like the idea of comparing platforms to something students can relate to. Youth is the hardest demographic to access. It’s difficult to get them motivated or interested in politics, because everyone is busy partying. It’s not that that’s a bad thing for their age, but there is something outside of college that they’re going to have to enter in four years. Some people call it the real world,” he said with a shrug. Liz chuckled.

“A lot of students have this idea that the real world sucks and inside the four walls of this institution they’re safe, but there are things directly affecting them in the real world. And if they don’t take part by voting or campaigning or speaking to their congressman,” Brady said, gesturing to himself, “then how can we know how to help them in the future? People thirty to forty years older than this generation are deciding the future, because they vote. If all the students participated, that could change.”

Liz smiled. She loved this stuff. She had always felt very strongly about youth participation in the elections. It was part of the reason she had become so active in the paper to begin with.

“You’re preaching to the choir,” she said.

“Of course I am,” Brady said. “So what I’m saying is that students aren’t actually interested in student government.”

Liz narrowed her eyes. “The student government elections on campus are huge. Last semester campus was overrun with campaigns. Everyone was convincing people to vote. I think it’s a perfect analogy.” Plus, Hayden usually had a sixth sense for what people found interesting. He was a natural talent. She trusted his judgment.

“I believe you,” he said, holding his hands up as if he wasn’t trying to start an argument. “However, I think people might care more if you related it to something like basketball.”

“Oh dear lord,” she said rolling her eyes. “One of my tennis instructors keeps bringing up you playing basketball.”

“You play tennis?” he asked with a smile.

“Yeah. Not that often, though.”

“I love tennis,” he told her.

“Maybe we could play together sometime!” Then she remembered; they couldn’t be seen in public. Her face fell with disappointment. It would have been fun.

Brady leveled her with a look that said the same thing she was already thinking and moved on.

“I’m just saying that this is a basketball school. And think about it like this,” he said, warming to his pitch. “Everyone here likes basketball, but not everyone can play. We want to win. We want to make our school look good. So we recruit great players to represent our school, like voting for representatives in politics. We all have a common goal, and we help achieve that goal through various means—participation at games, donating money, tutoring players to help keep them academically eligible, etc. We’re all working toward the common good here, and if students took an interest in the game, in this case politics, and helped us achieve our mutual goals, then we might all come out on top.”

He had a damn good point. She had never really thought about it like that. She knew that if she wrote that article, though, she would have to start over. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would take a while.

“I see your point. It would make a great article,” she said. She was sure of it. She just had to decide whether or not that was her article. The students would probably love it…

“Well, good,” he said, tossing the papers back on the desk. “That’s my suggestion. I would have been interested in it when I was in college.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back into him.

“Are you finished lecturing me?” she teased.

“Baby, not even close,” he said, kissing her slowly and demandingly, until all the tension from their conversation melted from her shoulders. “I think we should go now.”

“Yeah. Like right now.” She grabbed her bag quickly and followed him out of the building.

Загрузка...