She cuddled her ass against his erection, the motion undulating her body and showing her breasts to their best advantage. Smiling that cat’s grin, she recited as fact, “You are incredibly shallow.”

His answer was to splay his hand over her sex and nudge her legs apart. She shifted her thigh up and back so she was completely exposed in the mirror. Her pink, succulent flesh pulsed under his fingertips, and he stroked, his satisfaction and hers increasing apace with her wetness.

She moved her arm back to curl a hand around his neck. The motion did incredible things to her already perfect tits. Unable to resist the temptation, he stroked his cock along the inviting cleft of her ass. The insanely pleasurable friction had him panting against her neck. Would it always be zero to fuck, yeah in two seconds with this woman?

With his fingers, he parted her while she sawed against his hand, seeking the best angle to get herself fully juiced.

“Baby, I need to get a condom.” He hated to break the connection, but if he didn’t suit up soon, there was only one way this could end: skin-to-skin nirvana.

“I trust you,” she whispered.

He stilled. “What?”

She held his gaze in the mirror, steady and resolute. “I’m on the Pill and I’ve always used condoms. I want you inside me and I want to feel everything. I want it raw, Eli.”

Sweet Jesus. That she would trust him with something so precious knocked his world off its axis.

“Honey, you sure?”

“I’m clean, Eli, and I know you’d never hurt me.”

Not physically. But there were other ways to hurt. If she ever found out about the lies he’d told to make her his, they would be finished. He would be finished. Liars and cheats only prevail in politics, not in real life.

“Please, Eli. I need to feel every inch of you.”

She ground her ass to his stiff cock and shifted to give him the access he needed. Fullness ruled his chest; everything in him was brimming over. Her acceptance with her heart and her body was a priceless gift, one he didn’t deserve. But he would take it anyway because he was black-hearted and selfish to the core.

And obsessed. Don’t forget obsessed.

He slipped inside her, the slickness of her arousal easing his hot entry. He buried his worry with a deeper thrust into her soft heat, letting the welcome he found there muffle the negative. It was his first time in years without protection. It would have felt good with, but without the barrier, it leapfrogged the good and transcended the great to become frightening in its intensity.

“Eli, that’s—oh, God,” she moaned. Her hooded gaze held him prisoner in the mirror and he tore his eyes from hers for fear of revealing too much. Instead he focused on where they joined, this banter between their bodies, this safer place. His naked cock gleamed, every pumping drive picking up more of her wetness.

“Touch your clit, Alexandra,” he urged in her ear while he hooked his arm under her knee. The move forced her thighs wider and exposed her sex to their jointly riveted gaze. Seeing his dark-fleshed cock pistoning her pink, pliant heat turned him into a raging beast.

“Look, baby. Look at how you wreck me,” he husked out as her fingers fondled her clit and drew her orgasm to the surface. In the wave of her scream, he went off, lashing hot, uncontrollable jets inside her.

Branding her as his. Only his.

“Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“I sincerely doubt that will come up during the debate.”

Alex sat on Eli’s comfy sofa with her feet in his lap, the fire warming the room and her toes while another snowpocalypse raged outside. Eli had taken his first day off in five years to tend to Shadow, who lay on his doggy bed in a postsurgical, druggy daze. The poor puppy’s right paw was bandaged; his eye was covered in a pirate’s patch; and his head had stitches to match the gash where the vet had knifed through to fix the liver damage. In other words, one hot doggy mess.

“I’m easing you in,” she said. “You’re the one who has to prove yourself in the debate next week. I’m only trying to help.”

“Trying to help me mess up, more like. You’re not even going to vote for me!”

She laughed, loving that indignation in his tone. Apparently creaming her panties over everything else he did wasn’t enough, he had to have her vote as well. “Okay. Convince this undecided voter that Cooper deserves four more years. Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“There’s a Millennium Falcon, still in its original packaging, in the attic.”

“Impressive.” Said in her most awesome Darth Vader voice. “But it’s a trick question. The answer is ‘Can’t these two great universes just get along?’ Also, if you hear any noises from the attic later, ignore it. Probably squirrels.”

His phone beeped on the kitchen counter for the fiftieth time and he ignored it as he had done all morning. It made her feel special to know that the world could be falling apart around them, but Eli’s focus right now was just her and Shadow. This happy little triumvirate of her imagination.

She eyed him shrewdly over her coffee cup and took a bite of a Bavarian Kreme donut. So long, T-ball, time for the bigs. “Cubs or White Sox?”

Brow in a sexy crumple, he switched on his patented soulful look, the one that induced a choir of orgasms across Chicagoland. “Both teams are excellent representatives of the sporting traditions of this great city—”

She threw her half-eaten donut at him. It glanced off his head and hit the floor. Shadow lifted his jaw, recognized that it was a losing proposition, and laid it down again.

“Panderer.”

“I can’t pick one. I’d alienate an entire demographic.”

“It’s the Cubs, right?” No self-respecting North Sider could have kept a White Sox fandom undercover.

“I plead the Fifth.” He squinted at her outfit. “Is that my tie?”

She pulled up his U of C sweatshirt to show how she had used his blue-and-silver striped tie to keep his black silk PJ bottoms from falling down. She was hippy, but not so pear-shaped she could keep those babies on without a little belted support.

“Why, did you need it?” she asked coyly.

“I was thinking of wearing it to the debate.” His gaze shifted to a dark hunger. “C’mere, honey. I need to try on my lucky tie.”

She crawled over and into his arms. Snuggling with Eli in this world away from it all, she allowed herself the luxury of happiness. Never had another person’s embrace felt so right.

Her contented gaze arced over the room. Bright and cozy, it was filled with books and art, mementoes and trophies commemorating Eli’s storied life. On a shelf opposite, his law school graduation photo sat beside a picture of his team in the Marines. Next to that was a portrait of his parents with a ten- or eleven-year-old Eli, not long before they died. This morning, she had found the award named for Eli’s father on the kitchen counter, just thrown there, and had taken the liberty of giving it a prominent place on the shelf.

He massaged the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in her curls. Eli was rather obsessed with her hair. Handfuls of sin, he called it.

“They’d be so proud of you, Eli.”

“That I lie for a living.”

She turned in his arms, met his veiled gaze. So guarded, not like this morning as he faced her in that mirror and pounded his essence into her, body and soul.

“Not everything is a lie.” Was it?

After a taut moment, he said, “You once told me that you always knew you wanted to be a firefighter. Every time Sean came home, smelling of smoke.”

She nodded, unsure where this was going but happy to give him time to make his point. “I had no idea what he did but there was something about it. About him. He made me feel safe and I knew that his job made others feel safe. People slept better at night, people made it another day because he was there for them.”