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  Something warm and slippery circled his anus, 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 glutes.

  “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 possibly 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.

  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 Stone’s 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 had gently 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. Body, mind, and soul.”

  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 holding back anything. And it was, bar none, the most amazing sex 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 had exploded too. 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 intimate as hell. Christian collapsed on top of him, their bodies spooning together perfectly.

  “Am I crushing you?” Christian muttered.

  “Nope. It’s perfect. 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 even sit 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’s always been 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 in my fucked-up noggin, I honestly think it has more to do with not trusting anyone enough to share myself that way until now.”

  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, babe. Can you shift to Jack mode for a quick phone interview with Jill?”

  “Sure.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you more,” Stone called.

  “Nuh-uhh!” he called back, grinning.

  Breakfast arrived, and Stone made a point of chatting with the server before the young man left the suite.

  Christian watched Stone intently 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 night with my lover.”

  “Ditto.”

  Christian had to smile. Ditto. That one stupid word captured their whole relationship in a nutshell. The feelings behind it were real, but Stone wasn’t the kind of m
an to spell them out.

  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 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.

  Yet again, Stone was doing Jack better than Jack did.

  The phone call ended, and Jill commented, “If you played for the hetero team, I’d seriously consider replacing Jack with you permanently, Stone.”

  Christian’s eyebrows lifted. She sounded as if she might actually be considering dumping her philandering husband. Which would be disastrous for Christian. She was a huge limiter on Jack’s worst excesses. Without her, Christian hesitated to imagine how difficult Jack would be to control. Or at least to prevent from self-destructing.

  The Laceys’ breakfasts arrived, and Christian was relieved to see a young woman pushing the cart into the suite. Standing in the door to the bedroom, he waved subtly to Stone to have him come out into the living room and put in a Jack appearance.

  Hand over his lower face, Stone-Jack drawled, “Set it up over by the window, will ya, darlin’? The li’l lady likes to watch the ocean. Says it relaxes her.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and the maid giggled as she pushed the serving table over to the big picture window overlooking the beach.

  It ended up taking both Stone and Christian pitching in to eat the gigantic breakfast Jill had ordered for Jack. Eventually, they consumed the evidence of her husband’s presence.

  Stuffed to the gills, Christian announced, “It’s about time for Stone to go be himself.”

  As they walked down the hall so Stone could change into his own clothes, Stone muttered, “This is getting to be a bit of a mental ping-pong game, bouncing back and forth between two identities.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You’re not the asshole who thought it was a great idea to boink Chesty.”

  “I’m the asshole who came up with the plan for you to be two people at once.”

  “I could’ve said no.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was desperate to do anything to stick around and sleep with you.”

  “I’ve worried a few times that my attraction to you was why I proposed the scheme in the first place. I wanted you to stick around.”

  “Just don’t ask me to eat for two again, will you? My girlish figure can’t take the pig-outs.”

  Christian grinned. The guy had a hot bod, all right, and it was anything but girlish.

  It was time to walk Stone down to the mini press conference Jill had arranged. She’d called on a few reporters who’d been particularly kind to her over the years for an exclusive sneak peek at the man everyone seemed to think was her husband.

  “Do you remember how to be you?” Christian asked Stone anxiously.

  “Come again?”

  “The only time you’ve been in front of a camera, you’ve had to act like Jack. You may fall into that habit. I need you to be vintage Stone.”

  “What the hell is vintage me?”

  “Focused. Serious and observant but closed off. Not interested in chatting.”

  Stone stared at him in dismay. “I’m all those things?”

  “Not at all. It’s just a facade you put on from time to time when you’re feeling insecure. And we need you to be nothing like Jack.”

  “Insecure?” Stone echoed.

  Startled, Christian looked up. “Well, yeah. Was that too honest for you?”

  “No. I’m an adult. I can take the criticism.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Seriously. I’m good. Christ, I’m coming to realize you know me better than I know me. Like it or not, it’s true that I get insecure and overcompensate.”

  “We all do.”

  “Stop trying to make it better,” he ground out.

  Not that he’d set out to piss the guy off, but now he really was sounding like vintage Stone.

  Looking worried, Stone’s face emerged from the neck of a tight black spandex T-shirt. “Do you need me to wear my pistol?”

  Christian considered it for a moment. “No, let’s not go overboard.”

  “No, let’s not.” Stone was sounding outright alarmed now.

  Crap. Stone was overthinking this. He was going to psych himself out. “Relax. Say something funny or sarcastic.”

  “Holy shit. You do realize you just jinxed me into not having one even remotely clever thing to say, don’t you?”

  “Me? What did I say?” He feigned an overreaction in a desperate, and hopefully not transparent, attempt to rile up Stone.

  “You’re such a snob, sometimes.”

  Yes. Riling working. “I am not a snob! You’re a… a hick.”

  “Ooh. Good one. I’m wounded to the quick. Beltway leech.”

  “Death mongerer.”

  “Political hack.”

  “Baby eater.”

  And that was how they arrived at the ballroom, which the hotel had provided for Jill’s press conference: laughing and calling each other progressively more rude names. Hopefully it would help Stone be… well, Stone.

  While Stone continued down the hallway to use a back entrance to the stage, Christian slipped into the main ballroom and paused in the shadows at the rear of the room. He’d been doing his damnedest not to think about what this moment was going to do to his life. But now that the moment had arrived, there was no avoiding it. He was throwing himself on his sword to save the Laceys, each in his own way.

  He was a good employee. Loyal. And Jill really was a grand lady. She deserved at least one man in her life to stand beside her when the going got tough. Too bad it couldn’t be her husband.

  At the end of the day, his being gay wasn’t a big deal. Right?

  If only he could be sure that was how the world would see it. He’d never made any secret of it, and any employer he wanted to work for wouldn’t discriminate against him on the basis of it. But the blurring of the separation between personal and professional, that was another story. In his kind of work, people didn’t mess with that distinction. That way lay danger, blackmail, and corruption. And he’d obliterated that line in the sand.

  He lurched as brilliant camera lights turned on him suddenly in the back of the ballroom. What the hell? This event wasn’t supposed to start for a few more minutes.

  Horror of the sudden exposure froze him in place. All these people staring avidly at him were going to pry into his personal life in the most invasive and insensitive way they could. They would mount him on a slide like a bug and stare at him through a microscope from every possible angle. And I have to let them.

  He walked between the rows of reporters. The stage looked eerily like a hangman’s platform, and reluctantly he stepped up onto it. He moved to the podium and could almost feel a noose dropping around his neck. He turned on the microphone. The noose tightened until he could hardly choke out words.

  “Thank you for coming today,” he started. He turned away from the mic, coughed, and cleared his throat nervously.

  He started again, determined to force himself onward through this nightmare. “Thank you for coming today. We’ll start with a formal statement from Mrs. Lacey. She won’t be taking questions, but I assure you, she will clear up any confusion about the rumors being reported overnight regarding Senator Lacey.”

  A dozen voices shouted, demanding to know why Senator Lacey wasn’t making a statement. And a few of them asked if someone was trying to kill Jack. Dammit, he thought they’d successfully killed that rumor.

  Christian answered evenly, “Please be
patient. Everything will become clear in a few minutes.”

  Someone shouted a rude question at him about how good a kisser the senator was, and he ignored it. But his stomach twisted violently and threatened to heave. That double breakfast had really been a bad idea. He stepped away from the podium without acknowledging the question.

  He blinked to clear his vision from the bright camera lights. Must. Not. Puke.

  He spied Jill, standing off to his right, and he moved over to her. “Are you ready?” he murmured. “They’re in a rabid mood. They smell a scandal, and they’re all salivating over it.”

  “We’ll just have to take the bone away from the dog, then, won’t we?” she answered lightly.

  “Do you need a moment?” he asked gently.

  “Is Stone here?” she asked.

  “I walked down with him. He’s staying out of sight until you do the big reveal. We have to give the media the theatric drama they’re looking for, or else they’ll keep digging.”

  “Cynical much?” she murmured.

  One corner of his mouth lifted. She was every bit as cynical as he was. Particularly when it came to the press. Or her husband. “Okay, ma’am. Let’s do this. I’ll introduce you.”

  He went back out into the bright lights, waited through a momentary electrical crisis with someone’s light box, and then made the introduction. Jill stepped out onto the stage, and he yielded the podium to her with profound relief. Even a few seconds in front of the press gave him the wiggins.

  Jill read a brief opening statement poking fun at the allegations that Jack Lacey had suddenly switched sexual orientations. She’d insisted on writing it herself and had struck just the right tone to make any allegations that the photos were of Christian and her husband seem patently ridiculous.

  She concluded with “I do, however, have a good idea of how this story got started, and I’d like to clear up the confusion once and for all. My husband recently brought on board a new security consultant who looks a great deal like him.”

  Christian felt Stone’s presence beside him without having to turn his head to look. “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Jill continued out on stage, “Mr. Jackson happens to be dating Christian Chatsworth-Brandeis, a man you all did identify correctly in the pictures. Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Stone Jackson, my husband’s new bodyguard.”