Clever Kisses. His eyes trailed over her shoulders and back. The dress she
wore was a distracting son of a bitch and he had to admit that because of it he hadn’t paid a bit of mind to the wedding
ceremony that had occupied the attention of everyone else in the hall.
It was Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and he’d had every reason to be riveted to the scene. After all,
he’d walked her down the aisle and given her away. After all, he’d
been the one to take her once around the dance floor in his old friend’s stead.
He’d given Marc the careful once-over and the protective speech. The boy’d been in her life well over half
a decade, but the part of him that was doing what Bill would have done could not let him go unchallenged. In his heart, Chelsea was his daughter, and if he could prevent it, he would never see her hurt. He knew he couldn’t prevent that though, as he couldn’t prevent it three years ago. But he
could scowl and he could threaten with unspeakable violence. So, he did that and managed to get his point across.
He also managed to draw an eye roll out of his President. Seated to his right, she was as pretty as the bride. Hillary positively glowed while sharing whispers with her daughter. For the first time, Chelsea would get it. She would finally be able to understand that complex thing called
married life. That’s what Hillary had told him she wanted. She wanted the day to come when she wouldn’t be judged by the sight of things but the state of them. She wanted Chelsea to understand what had bound her mother to her father so irrevocably
in the face of so much. Maybe she would now. Evan didn’t think he ever
could.
But he raised his glass to her just the same. “To my President
and the mother of the bride. Without you, there’d be no Chelsea and I think
we can all agree that the world would be the lesser for it.”
“Hear, hear.” She squeezed one of Chelsea’s hands with an adoring smile and raised her glass. The rest of the assembled guests raised their glasses too in commemoration and took
a drink.
By the time she’d reached the bottom of
the glass, her cheeks were already rosy. She was softer now, more reflective.
She kissed Chelsea gently on the cheek and left to make the rounds. He followed close behind naturally as he was her wing-man—and an admirer. The chandelier light played beautifully against the satin of her dress.
It played even more beautifully off of her shoulders and jewels on her neck.
That gleam in her eyes, however, wasn’t coming from the ceiling. That was all her. She would have made a beautiful bride today.
He shook the hands of twenty-seven dignitaries in his mission to keep step with his Commander-in-Chief—and those
were just the ones he hadn’t ignored. She was stepping lighter than he’d
ever seen, in and out without a moment’s awkwardness. He was still learning, but he managed to keep up with her. He excused himself from Gordon Brown’s company just in time to see the hem of
her dress disappear between two closing doors.
Doors had never deterred him. They wouldn’t start to now. He passed
through them with a wave to the doormen. They nodded and resumed their positions. He found himself seeking her out in the
usual places and coming up empty. Not the portrait, not the Oval, not even the Residence. He was surprised actually. Tonight,
of all nights, he thought she’d need the comfort of familiar things. Finally,
he resorted to asking an agent where his President had wandered off to. The answer
surprised him, but he made the journey regardless. It wasn’t hard, he made it every day.
Once again, the onlookers were stopped by the sight a high-ranking official jogging the crosswalk to OEOB. A strange thing, it was becoming damned routine to see it.
Evan stepped out of the elevator onto the floor where his office was located.
The bullpen was deserted for a change. No workaholics, no witnesses. The only
sounds to be heard were his Secret Service agents clearing the area and his feet meeting the carpet. He didn’t see his
President and yet he looked. In looking he came to his office door and, knocking,
went right in.
There she was, staring out his window, her fingers pressed to the glass. She
reminded his now of the woman she had been that first election year. She had been beaten and badly burned, but she had been
determined. It had carried her all the way.
He hoped it always would.
“Hillary,” he called to her.
She looked back at him, not seeming the least surprised to see him. “I wondered how long it would take
you to find me.”
He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms with mock sternness. “Am I to believe, then, that you wanted me to
worry about you?”
She waved him off and went back to her watching. “You know I wouldn’t
do that to you.”
“Do I?” This wasn’t the first time his President had gone where he couldn’t find her. He’d
just gotten lucky that this time that she’d actually allowed the Secret Service to inform him of her whereabouts. Sometimes,
she wasn’t feeling nearly so sociable.
“Yes.” Her response brooked no argument. She wasn’t looking outside anymore; she was looking at him, in the most unnerving way. He sat down
on the couch near the door. She watched from the window’s side.
“Why did you let them tell me where you were?” he asked her.
At that she smiled and he saw not a trace of the pain he’d expected, but a coy crinkle about her eyes. “I wanted you to find me.”
He straightened in his seat. “You could have just asked for a word
with me, then.”
“I wanted more than a word. I want more than a word and I couldn’t
have that at a wedding with all of Congress and two-thirds of the U.N. in attendance. So, I thought I’d let you find
me. I thought you’d want to.” She sighed wistfully, shaking her head, and went back to inspecting the glass. “Maybe
I’ve misjudged this entire thing…this us.”
Evan stood and came around his desk to stand behind her. “I would
disagree with you, but I don’t even know what this is. Since I kissed you, you haven’t said two words about it. You haven’t made a single move. What
you’ve done today is as close as you’ve come to acknowledging even the potential for an us. Forgive me if I’m a little dizzy at the sudden turnaround.”
“I deserve that.” She inclined her chin slightly in acknowledgement without breaking her gaze from the
street below; their crosswalk with all the other people on it.
“That’s pretty well agreed upon,” he quipped, hands in pockets and rocking on his heels. He just
didn’t know what to make of all this anymore, if he should make anything at all. When all else failed, he resorted to
sarcasm. They shared at least that much still.
She cut him a sharp look. He smiled charmingly back. She looked away. He
knew she wasn’t happy anymore. Not so suddenly, neither was he.
“You’re in my reflection,” she finally said, no longer focused on unsuspecting pedestrians, but on
the reflective surface that separated her from them.
He frowned and took a step closer, concerned. “I don’t—“
“When I look at myself, I see me with you,” she continued, fingers once again caressing glass. “That’s
how long you’ve been here, that’s how deep this is. You’re in my head, half of my brain. I need you because
I don’t see me without you. After everything I’ve been through, you think I’d know better by now. We’re
inevitable and I don’t think I’ve been this afraid of anything in years.”
Evan moved to close the distance between and gently pulled her back against him.
“I don’t ever want the idea of me loving you to scare you. I don’t want you to be with me because
you think it’s unavoidable. If you don’t want this—or me—I
won’t be mad. I’ll understand. I just want you whole.” He’d
lie to himself for the rest of his life if it made things easier on her.
She chuckled and sniffed, seemingly more to herself than him. “I’ll
never be whole--a fireplace took care of that—but I can be happy. I didn’t think I’d get there again. You did that. I didn’t know how to feel when I wasn’t grieving. I know
how to feel now.” She outlined the reflection of his face in the glass. “I want you and this--and us.”
Hesitantly, he leaned down and pressed his lips against her bare shoulder. She
exhaled shakily and he could feel goose bumps rising on her skin. “It could
be easy,” he whispered, fearful of disrupting the stillness.
“It’ll never be easy,” she responded quietly, fearful of the same.
“But I still want you.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
She snorted in a rather unladylike fashion. He was charmed, he always
was.
“I love you, Hillary. Complexities aside, responsibilities aside, you’re the one I want. I just have to
know if you really feel the same.”
She turned to him, sporting her notorious half-smile. Of course, he felt
his heart beat faster. With Hillary it always had. She ran her smaller hands across his face and he thought he could see the
affection in her grow in real time.
“Always,” she told him and he believed her. When she tugged him down for the kiss he’d wanted for longer than he’d admit, he believed her
all the more.
The bubbles from the champagne seemed to still be dancing on her tongue because he felt a tingle when their
lips met. It spread through him as she wrapped herself around him. Warmth danced up his pant legs and down his collar. Like Spring
Fever, she ran through him. Like a hurricane, she seemed determined to make a
wreck out of him. As anyone who’d ever desired her could attest, she would
succeed.
He had fantasized—somewhat guiltily—about making love to her before.
He had envisioned her with a lust-addled gaze and hands that shook just so as she went to undress him. Why they’d
shaken, he couldn’t recall; she’d never feared intimacy or men. He thought he must have imagined her as that,
as some woman who wouldn’t have overwhelmed him in his own mind, the way she overwhelmed him now.
She wasn’t that woman at this moment, if she’d ever been, and her hands hardly trembled when they
reached for the broad black buttons of his tux.
Undone, it slipped from his shoulders without fanfare and she backed him up against his desk. She felt dangerous this
close. He’d been tempted by her proximity in the past. The smell of her
hair and the heat of her body had always gotten an unexplainable rise out of him. There
had been times when he’d wondered if the flicker he saw in her gaze was a hunger equal to his. Now he knew..
She slid her hands up his stomach, up his chest, across his shoulders, and down his back. He wished he could imagine the sensation as something far more creative than ‘setting him on fire,’
but his mind was otherwise occupied interpreting the flame in her eyes. He’d never thought fire could be that shade
of blue.
They skipped the formalities and the uncertainty. Her dress made it to the floor without permanent damage and he only
lost a single button from his shirt. Worth it, he determined once she’d climbed
with unexpected ease onto his desk and straddled his lap.
She smirked and told him, “Physical therapy and yoga. You’d be surprised what I can do now.”
He grunted, seized by the urge to kiss her until she was too breathless to drive him this crazy. So, he did. Even speechless she made his head spin. The little moan she let out when he touched the base of her spine.
The subtle rhythm of her hips against his before they even got started.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he groaned, scraping his fingernails along the hooks of her
garters.
She chuckled a deep, conspiratorial chuckle that he felt to the cool of his heels. “Not tonight, darling.” She raked her nails down the center of his chest. “But maybe tomorrow.”
He was too wired to laugh and he enjoyed her while he had her. He could
feel the hovering Secret Service presence near the door and hear the endless ticking of the clock that had ended upon the
floor. Duty called for the mother of the bride and the father’s stand-in. As much as he enjoyed—loved, adored,
basked in—mapping her body his own, there were things to do before he could fully partake his wildest fantasies.
When he pulled away from her, she whimpered. He kissed her unconscious pout, which did nothing for his half-hearted
attempts to disentangle them. That pout kept him occupied for another ten delicious
minutes before there was a knock on the door. The voice that called, he recognized. Hillary stiffened on his lap.
“Ma’am, Chelsea and Marc are getting ready to leave,” said the ever-stultifying voice of Huma Abedin,
Hillary’s executive assistant.
“We’ll be right out, Huma,” Hillary shouted back through the door as she gave Evan a frantic look. She quickly disengaged from him and hopped down from the desktop. He watched her go
on a frantic search for several valued undergarments without a word until he realized that he wasn’t much more clothed
than she. Turned out that he’d lost two buttons and that her dress was
slightly wrinkled. Next time, we leave the clothes on the couch, he asserted to
himself as they hot-footed it out of the office, out of the building, and cross traffic once again.
~!~
Hours later, Evan stroked the back of Hillary’s arm with his fingertips. She’d been quiet for a
while now, but she wasn’t asleep. He could hear her breathing too quickly for sleep; he even thought he overheard the
sound of her blinking into the darkness. It was the only thing that assured him
she was still with him, that she hadn’t wandered off in uncertainty and left him with a pillow that smelt of her, still
warm as when she’d been lying there.
“I love you, you know,” he said after so much time had passed that something had to be said. She shifted beside him, her back to his
chest and a slim shoulder right beneath his lips. He couldn’t ignore the opportunity to kiss it.
“I know you do,” she replied, reaching back to touch him, her fingers blindly caressing his face
before dipping into his hair. As he continued to brush his lips across the planes
he had already explored, her grasp tightened and she sighed.
He knew she was still weary of her scars. As beautiful as she was and as confident in the daylight, she was
haunted by their presence when he touched her. That was why he kissed them first, peppering fluttering touches over the unfeeling
skin. They had healed so long ago now that they were only cruel reminders of a peace attempted and lost. With his kisses,
he tried to imbue them with new sensation, to tether them to new experiences. Upon failing once, he would try again and again
and again.
Every sharp inhale was a mission accomplished.
Every time she said, “Harder” and he said, “Yes”—and she forgot how to speak soon
after, was a victory for them.
When she rolled him onto his back and taught him something new, he was reminded that she could be wounded but
she could never be defeated.
Still, she didn’t have to guide him to her scars. He could find them, and did, worshipping them with the
same ferocity that he devoted to the rest of her. The same ferocity he would always devote to her.
He raked his fingers through her hair. “Do you have any idea
how long I’ve loved you?”
She leaned into his touch. “No, but I suspect it’s
longer than we should ever admit to in public.”
He laughed a bit. “Probably, yes.” He traced the lobe of her ear. “I’ve loved you for
longer than anyone would find acceptable.” He pursed his lips and pulled away.
All of the sudden, he was so exhausted, he could barely see straight, even in the dark. “I’m so sorry.”
He heard her as she began to move, rising and resettling with her eyes trained on his back. He nearly leapt
out of his skin when he felt her hand on his back. “Why?” She was right behind him, whispering in his ear like
someone with a secret to tell.
“I assumed—I thought that we were…I don’t know. I feel like I pushed this. We’re
adults, who have presumably been around the block a time or two. Adults can have
sex without descending into romantic parody. I didn’t even consider that maybe you just wanted to…” He sighed and rubbed a hand through his hair. If he was ever a fool, he felt like
he played one best with her. She had a way with him. Goddamn her. He snorted in
disgust. Goddamn me. He kept wanting;
he felt liked he’d always be relegated to that.
“I love you,” he thought he heard, but God knew he didn’t believe it. The Hillary he’d been holding for the better part of early morning wouldn’t have told him that.
If he was honest, neither would the Hillary who’d had her way with him in the OEOB. These were her shadows, diversions
from who she really was. He’d fallen in love with every one.
“Evan,” she said again, a firm pinch assaulting his bare hip when he didn’t respond. He yelped
and jumped up the bed to stare down vaguely at the woman he loved. Even wrapped in a sheet, she managed to be absolutely presidential.
Frowning with disapproval, she managed to be adorably and absolutely Hillary.
He rubbed his offended flesh and frowned himself. “What?”
“I told you I love you. When I said I did before, I meant it then. Take me at my word, Evan.” If there was anything of value between them, besides love, he knew it was their trust.
They’d wasted time in losing and regaining it. He took her at her word, when it existed.
“You didn’t tell me you loved me,” he reminded her, oddly ashamed of doing so. She hadn't.
Not tonight when had counted as more than a guilty admission in a sacred place.
He thought she furrowed her brow. “I did. Of course, I did. I’ve loved you since the day you refused
to leave me after the bombing in the White House. I promised myself that I’d tell you if I ever could.”
He spied the vulnerability in her eyes by the twilight through the curtains. It was a memory she hated, the
sensation of death wrapping itself around her lungs and her fingers. The dreams had ceased coming with regularity years ago,
but they’d never be completely gone. While the terrorist hadn’t won
the war, their message had been carved on the nation’s most precious monument.
“I love you,” he reminded her, too. The bed was still warm where they had been tangled together
an hour before. It was warmer still when he joined her there again. “And
I’ll be happy even if you never say the words.”
She guffawed. “I love you, Evan. There they are. I’m
not playing games with you. I’m not afraid to say the words. I’m just afraid that this,” she gestured between them, “will happen and you’ll be gone.”
“Where do you think I’m going, Hillary? I’m the Vice President of the United State. I can’t
exactly haul ass to Canada.” She smacked his chest.
“Don’t be an ass. That’s an order.”
He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. She reached out to touch
his face again. “I don’t think I want to grow old without you, Evan.
I’m so scared to do that.”
He kissed his fingers. He loved to kiss her, every part of her. “You’ll
never have to. I plan to run marathons until I’m eighty and eat three salads a day. I’ll even give up red meat
if it means I get to spend more time with you.” He touched her face. “I won’t leave you until I’ve gotten to tell you I love you a million
times—and made love to you just as many.” He pulled her against him
and rested his forehead against hers. “You can keep score and everything.”
She poked him in his gut. “You’d better believe I will.” She let out a relieved exhale that
still managed to sound a little scared. “Don’t be offended if I fudge
the numbers a little bit. You know, just because.” He nodded against her forehead and grinned at the chuckle that resulted.
The time they shared compared to their lifetimes would be brief and he had no intention of wasting a moment
of it. There were children to think of—his sons and the beautiful woman
they’d seen off to the greatest adventure of her life just tonight—and the press. There was the inevitable hour
in which politics and love would duel and they would have to decide which came out on top. The hour when they might discover
that forever didn’t last beyond a night.
But, they had that night and he had no intention of letting a second of it go to waste.
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