Ace in the Hole (18 page)

Christian drove Tucker to the airport but didn’t get out of the SUV lest someone recognize him and shove a cell phone camera in his face. When he got back to the hotel, he was touched to discover that Stone had arranged for hotel security guards to meet him at the loading dock, park the SUV for him, and escort him in a service elevator to the suite.

It was a bizarre sensation being the man in the media’s bull’s-eye. That had always been Jack’s job. Christian had been the invisible aide standing in the shadows, well clear of the spotlight. And then Stone had been the guy at the podium, getting all the attention. No wonder both of them had freaked out in their own ways—Jack running off with a woman, and Stone just running. He couldn’t entirely blame either one of them for needing an escape. It was a suffocating sensation to always be looking over one’s shoulder, trying to spot one’s watchers.

He made it back to the suite, and Stone wrapped him up in a hard hug as soon as the door closed behind him.

“Jill?” he managed to gasp past the rib-crushing embrace.

“Spa,” Stone muttered into the side of his neck. “God, I’ve been waiting all day to get you alone so I could apologize to you. I should have listened. You warned me the press was everywhere, but I didn’t believe you. This is all my fault.”

“What’s done is done, Stone. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You have to let go of it and move on. I’m going to need your undivided attention tomorrow. You’ll have to do exactly what I tell you—”

The doorknob rattled, and he and Stone leaped back from each other as Jill returned to the suite. He lifted a bag of complimentary beauty supplies out of Jill’s hand and hustled it back to the master bathroom. It had been decided that Stone would move back to his own room since he was supposed to be himself again. They would all pretend that Jack was spending time alone with his wife in the suite after his big scare at the gala with the helicopter crash.

When Christian returned to the living room, Stone was gone. He cursed silently. He hated every second they had to be apart. Which was to say, he had it
bad
for the guy.

“I like him,” Jill commented shrewdly.

“Who? Stone?”

“Of course, Stone. You’ve fallen hard for him, haven’t you?”

“What makes you say that?” he asked cautiously.

“For one thing, those pictures that got shoved under my nose. That’s as hot a kiss as I’ve seen between any two people in a long time. And my dear boy, you positively glow when you’re around him. I’ve never seen you happier.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was merely seeing the absence of misery because he wasn’t having to deal with her husband 24-7.

“Go on. Get out of here already,” she ordered him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The story is that the two of you are lovers. So go be lovers. If you made that poor man live out your cover story and be my husband for three days, the least you owe him is to live out his cover story for a couple of days.”

A smile broke across his face, and he couldn’t stop grinning like a love-struck idiot no matter how hard he tried. “Call me if you need anything, ma’am.”

“I’m sure Jack and I will be fine in the suite by ourselves. I may need one of you to come down and eat the breakfast in bed that the two of us are going to order in the morning.”

“Call me before you do that. We’ll have Stone come down and make a brief appearance as Jack so the hotel staff can verify that Jack’s in the suite with you.”

“An excellent idea. That’s why you’re the best staffer on Capitol Hill, Christian,” she said warmly.

He ducked his head and then all but ran down the hall to Stone’s room. He slipped into the suite and into Stone’s arms with profound relief.

Stone was already looking more like Stone again. A five o’clock shadow darkened his square jaw, and the tight athletic T-shirt that clung to his prodigious biceps was pure badass. Even the close, European cut of his black jeans screamed of a soldier or security type and not a middle-aged politician.

And that fire in his eyes. Oh no. There was no sign of Jack Lacey in this man.

He breathed, “I need you to be the soldier tonight. No civilization. No nice manners. I don’t want there to be any confusion as to who I’m in bed with. Erase all memory of Jack Lacey from my mind.”

“Jack who?”

They traded grins.

STONE
woke up slowly, splayed out on his belly, a little hungover. There’d been a fair bit of Jack Daniels involved with last night’s delicious depravity. He’d fantasized about letting loose with Christian, but he’d never dreamed the man would actually revel in it. They were both fit enough and strong enough that they couldn’t really hurt each other if they turned their bodies loose on each other with complete abandon.

As it was, he was stiff and sore in places he wasn’t accustomed to feeling discomfort. And it felt fantastic.

“You awake?” Christian murmured in a deep voice over his back.

“No,” he replied. “I think I’m still a little drunk.”

“Good. You up for a little more?”

“I can’t move.”

“I don’t need you to move. I need you to relax and do what I tell you to.”

That moved him considerably farther along the scale to full consciousness. “What do you have in mind?”

“Does it matter?”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Fair point, well made. I’m up for anything you can imagine.”

“Including bottoming for me?”

“For you, anything.” Particularly when it included those big strong hands kneading at his shoulders and then working their way slowly down his back, massaging out every last kink and knot, leaving him a boneless mass half melted into the mattress.

Christian had him lift his hips and slid a pile of pillows under them. He nudged Stone’s thighs apart and knelt between them. Stone’s languor dissipated sharply as he realized Christian was serious about taking him this way. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bottomed. Tension claimed him, but then the lingering alcohol and the druggingly wonderful massage Christian resumed combined to lull him back into a state of deep relaxation.

Something warm and slippery circled his ass, and he moaned with pleasure.

“Like that?” Christian’s smooth voice murmured.

He groaned as Christian dipped a finger inside him in time with another finger sensually tracing the underside of his penis. He tensed, but Christian’s teasing fingers retreated and he went back to massaging him, this time focusing on his thighs and gluts.

“Stay half asleep. That’s how I want you. All relaxed and mellow.”

“Done,” he sighed. It was the strangest feeling to just relax and let Christian do whatever he wanted to him. Equally strange was the realization that he trusted Christian completely, totally, and without reservation.

Christian gave him a full body massage that taught him a few things about himself. Like the fact that he had a bigger hedonistic streak than he’d realized. And that a good foot massage was the next best thing to sex. And that he had a few ticklish spots he’d been heretofore unaware of. But as soon as Christian discovered those, he was quick to soothe him back into a semisomnolent state.

And then Christian rose up over him. “Ready for this?” he murmured.

“Yeah, sure. Anything you want. I’m yours.” Huh. He meant it too.

And then Christian was spreading him and filling him with smooth assurance. The cascade of sensations was startling, and Stone tensed beneath him.

“Relax, big guy,” Christian murmured, soothing his hands up and down Stone’s back. “You’re mine, remember? Just sit back and let me do the work.”

Maybe he was still more drunk than he’d realized because that sounded like the best idea he’d heard in a long damned time. Or maybe it was because Christian had so thoroughly lowered his barriers to trust that he genuinely was good with bottoming for the man.

Christian was no less endowed than him, and his body stretched to the point of discomfort around the invading heat. Very slightly, Christian flexed his hips. Stone tensed but then told his body to relax. Christian patiently moved a tiny bit again. He had to give the guy credit for being a considerate and self-disciplined lover. Eventually he was able to stay fully relaxed and open beneath Christian.

Sensing it, Christian withdrew more fully and filled him with a little more strength.

Mmm. That was nice. “Do that again,” he mumbled into the pillow.

“Like this?”

“Uh-huh.”

By slow degrees Christian increased the pace and intensity, and Stone’s breathing accelerated to match. It was becoming a struggle to lie passively beneath Christian and not rock his own hips. But every time he started to move, Christian froze and waited for him to still.

It became an act of enormous mental discipline to hold himself still and open for Christian. As he gradually got the hang of it and released the need to react to his raging lust, something changed. Not only was he holding his body relaxed and open for Christian, but also his mind. Hell, his soul.

The entire moment became an act of emotional submission. And Christian insisted that Stone give it freely and completely. He finally understood what Christian was asking for. Everything.

And I want to give it.

“Take me, Christian,” he gasped. “I’m yours. Fuck me until I can’t walk. Split me in two. Make me whole. I surrender.”

With a groan, Christian drove into him with all the power Stone could have hoped for. He reached over his head and pressed his hands against the headboard, pushing back so he could be filled even more deeply and fully. Christian grabbed his hips to increase his purchase and took him without mercy then. And it was, bar none, the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced in his life. Never, ever, had he given himself fully to another human being like this.

His orgasm, when it came, was so emotional it felt as if his heart exploded. His entire being turned inside out. “My God, I love this. I love you,” he groaned.

Christian drove into him one last time and then came deep, deep inside him with a shuddering shout of his own. It was as intimate as hell. Christian collapsed on top of him, their bodies spooning together perfectly.

“Am I crushing you?” Christian muttered.

“Nope. Good. Don’t move,” he managed.

They lay like that for several minutes before Christian finally rolled away from him and sprawled on his back. “I can’t stand up,” he announced. “You killed me.”

Stone also rolled onto his back and lazily threw the pile of pillows onto the floor. “You’re dead? Ha. I’m deader.”

“That’s not a word, and that did
not
feel like sex with a corpse.”

He asked humorously, “Are you speaking from experience?”

Christian snorted. “Zombies aren’t my thing. I like my lovers….” He paused and then said seriously, “…just like that.”

The words sank into Stone’s soul like summer rain into hungry soil.

“How about you? Are you okay?” Christian asked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more okay than I am at this exact second.”

Christian pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at him, more beautiful than any one human being had a right to be. “You’re okay with bottoming?”

“It’s a good thing I had no idea how awesome it would be with you or you’d have never gotten any good lovin’ out of me.”

“I suppose there was so much pressure on you to be macho and manly that it never occurred to you to swing the other way.”

Stone frowned. “While I’m sure that’s probably true and speaks to deep psychological shit heretofore undiagnosed, I honestly think it has more to do with not trusting anyone enough to share myself that way.”

Christian leaned down and kissed him. It was a slow, lengthy affair that had Stone thinking frisky thoughts before the jangle of Christian’s cell phone on the bedside table jolted them both.

“Don’t pick it up,” Stone muttered.

“Gotta. That’s Jill Lacey’s ringtone.”

He groaned. “I’ll go take a shower while you two formulate your diabolical plan for world domination.”

“Remember not to shave!” Christian called after him.

“Roger that!”

CHRISTIAN
answered his phone. “Good morning, Mrs. Lacey. What can I do for you?”

“I need Stone down here in a half hour to be Jack on a phone interview. And I’m hungry. I want to order that breakfast in bed we talked about last night.”

“I’ll have him there, ma’am. Order breakfast in about fifteen minutes. He likes his eggs scrambled, and he’ll eat anything else you put in front of him.” In the meantime, he would order breakfast in Stone’s room to keep up the ruse of Stone Jackson being a different person than Jack Lacey.

The water cut off in the shower, and Christian poked his head into the bathroom. “Hey, Stone. Can you shift to Jack mode for a quick phone interview with Jill?”

“Sure.”

Breakfast arrived, and Stone made a point of chatting with the server before the young man left the suite. Christian watched Stone thoughtfully as they shared the meal, trying to gauge his state of mind after last night. He still couldn’t believe that Stone had actually surrendered to him like that. It was as humbling as it was exhilarating.

“You’re quiet this morning, Christian,” Stone startled him by saying.

He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Says the pot to the kettle.”

“Yes, but I’m naturally taciturn. You’re not.”

“I’m just enjoying the afterglow of an amazing time with my lover.”

“Ditto.”

Christian had to smile. That one word captured their whole relationship. The feelings were real, but Stone wasn’t the kind of man to gush about them.

He could live with that. After what they’d shared, there was no doubt how Stone felt about him. He was a man who would show his feelings long before he would talk about them.

The phone-in interview itself was uneventful. Jill laughed in genuine amusement at the reporter’s suggestion that Jack was gay and made a sly comment that her problem with him was his eye for the ladies, not his eye for the guys. Stone impersonated Jack’s drawl to a T, responding charmingly that there was no other lady in the world for him but his lovely wife. Stone fielded a few questions about the helicopter crash and was modest when he was credited with saving the pilot’s life.