K. Linde - Off the Record

Normally she would have felt self-conscious. No one usually assessed her body quite so thoroughly, but he seemed to be drinking in every single inch of her, admiring every curve, letting his tongue touch every ounce of flesh he could. And something about the way he looked at her dissolved all nervousness she might have had.

Brady was admiring her as if she were an angel fit for the heavens, and the way he was touching her made her feel like she had tasted ambrosia itself.

His hand came up and ran along her inner thigh and down between her legs. Liz groaned as he slipped one finger in and out of her.

“God, you’re wet,” he growled. He was clearly restraining himself.

“Brady,” she moaned, her grip tightening in his hair. He looked up at her and landed another kiss on her stomach. “All I can think about is you fucking my brains out.”

“Fuck,” he said, gripping her inner thigh. His breath came out ragged for a second before he moved off the bed, dropped his boxers to the floor, slid on a condom, and moved over her.

Liz had less than a second of forethought before he entered her. She cried out at the hardness of his dick pushing farther into her, filling her completely.

“You feel so fucking amazing,” he said into her ear when he was all the way in. Liz couldn’t even manage a coherent sentence. Nothing had ever felt this good, and she was sure nothing else ever would. Her body throbbed all over, and she was aching for a climax.

She didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since she’d last had sex. It wouldn’t have changed how right it felt to be with him. She had always thought that the first time with someone new was awkward, but apparently Brady wasn’t awkward with anything.

He began moving inside of her at an uneven pace—pulling out slowly and then slamming fast into her, causing her to whimper in pleasure each time. He kept up the pace until she felt her body tightening so hard she was close to convulsions. His breathing was rough as he pushed into her faster, reaching for an even deeper position.

Heat took over her body, starting at her toes curling against the mattress and rushing up all the way to her head. She felt the waves of energy pass through her, building up inside, and then rocketing from her core out. Her orgasm hit her like a punch to the gut. All the wind rushed out of her, her back arched off the bed, and she tightened around him until she was spent. Brady stilled within her, letting her ride out the pleasure.

When she was finished, lying with her eyes closed and a giant smile on her face, he pulled out. She groaned at the loss of him, already wanting more.

“Flip over,” he commanded, grabbing her hips and turning her over. “I want you to come for me again.”

Liz did what she was told as her body continued to hum. She felt a bit strange automatically moving onto her hands and knees at his request. She couldn’t count the number of times she had refused the same position before, because she felt degraded. But after that orgasm and the promise of another, she wouldn’t be turning him down. Absolutely not.

Brady entered her from behind, reaching even deeper than before, and she felt her body tense all around him. He was so big!

He didn’t hold anything back this time. He reared back and then slammed into her over and over again, sometimes sending her entire body forward with the force of his movements. She could feel her body rejecting the pain as he forced into her harder and harder each time.

But at the same time, she found that she liked it. She liked how rough he was being, and each time he collided forward into her body, she wanted him to do it harder. His hands dug into her hips, and at times he would pull back on them, roughly smacking their bodies together. The pain mingled so perfectly with the pleasure that the lines blurred and she didn’t know which she was enjoying more.

All she knew was that she was getting really close again, and he was getting even closer.

“Liz,” he groaned her name, pushing into her again.

“Yeah,” she moaned, her elbows dropping onto the mattress.

“I want you to come for me.”

No arguments here.

“Fuck!” he cried out. “I’ll keep talkin’ dirty if you clench around me like that again.”

Liz was too flushed to color at the comment. She liked everything he did at this point.

Her body didn’t give her any warning this time. She saw spots with the intensity of it all, and buried her head into the pillow. She heard Brady grunt and then come, doubling over on top of her.

They both lay there, breathing heavily, unable to think, let alone move.

After a while, Brady moved out of her and padded to the bathroom to clean up. Liz collapsed forward onto the bed, curling up around herself. Exhaustion hit her with the strength of a bulldozer, and she felt herself drifting off.

Brady returned a minute later, replacing his boxer briefs and curling up into bed next to her. “Hey, your turn,” he whispered, kissing her shoulder.

Liz grumbled but stood shakily and cleaned up. The overpowering smell of sex hit her when she walked back into the room, and she smiled lazily as she crawled under the covers. Brady pulled her close to him, cradling her in his arms.

“You’re amazing,” he told her, running his hand up and down her arm.

“You’re pretty amazing yourself,” she murmured drowsily.

They lay there together in the silence, absorbed in the ecstasy of their actions. Liz was nearly asleep when Brady spoke again. “Are you asleep?”

She yawned and rolled over to face him. “Not anymore.”

He smiled sweetly at her and threaded his hand through her blond hair. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift again. He bent down and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “There’s your kiss.”

“You were right,” she whispered.

“About what?”

“I’m pretty senseless,” she told him.

He chuckled softly, giving her another kiss. “I like you like this. Not quite so snippy, are you?”

“You don’t like me snippy?” she asked between yawns.

“Wouldn’t change it for the world.”

She smiled brightly at that comment and leaned into his shoulder. She was really enjoying the way he was playing with her hair. If he kept it up, she would be asleep soon enough.

“Tell me something no one else knows about you,” he said, kissing down her jawline.

“Something no one else knows about me?” Liz opened her eyes and gazed up at him.

“Yes. I want something that no one else has.”

“I slept with a Senator,” she murmured, leaning her forehead into him to hide her face.

He chuckled softly and raised her chin with his fingers. “Are you embarrassed?”

“No,” she said, blushing furiously.

“Oh really?”

“I’m not!” she told him.

“Fine.” He planted a kiss on her red cheeks. “But you didn’t answer my question. I already knew that. I want to know something no one else knows.”

“That’s all. That’s the only thing no one else knows about me,” she told him, biting her lip.

“You don’t have any secrets?”

“You’re my only secret.”

“I’ll keep that one,” he told her.

Life after Brady was like watching a film in black and white. It was really quite beautiful, but it felt like something was missing.

Liz went about her daily life—class, newspaper, sleep. It was all important, but it suddenly felt entirely too dull without him. She wasn’t the type to get easily attached, and she found that she didn’t understand her feelings toward him. They had spoken only twice, and for rather brief periods of time. She hardly knew him at all. Yet she had gone back to his hotel room with him. It made no sense. She wasn’t that girl. When it came down to it, she couldn’t decide whether she actually liked Brady or it was simply infatuation.

Either way, she didn’t care. She just wanted more of him.

Instead she was stuck in her journalism class for the summer. The class was interesting, and she absolutely loved the professor. She’d had her the previous semester, and it was one of the main reasons she was taking the class. Professor Mires was particularly flexible around the summer session. She was allowing Liz to use her experience on the paper as her project for the semester, taking a huge weight off of her shoulders. It gave Liz a lot more time to focus on the local elections than she had been expecting, and she had taken to obsessing over campaign schedules.

Normally it would have been a light election season, picking up ferocity right around the time school started again in the fall. But since Senator Abbot and Representative Huntington had announced their retirement in the spring, contenders had started popping up like wildflowers. She was concentrating her efforts on the House campaign, and then would move on to the Senate. Three main candidates appeared on each side of the aisle for the House race, and Liz had opened her column with a daily focus on each of them.

Liz was on day six now, saving the best for last.

She stared down at the picture she had chosen of Brady out of the shots Hayden had taken at the Raleigh press conference. Brady’s charismatic smile was missing from his face, and he actually managed to look serious. Liz wondered when this picture had been taken. He looked as if he were staring straight through her. She squirmed under his scrutiny and stood, stretching her aching muscles.

The paper was dead quiet, and all the lights had been shut off except for Hayden’s office, which she had confiscated for the summer. She yawned, rolling a kink out of her neck. It was midnight, an hour past building close. She was glad she had the all-access key.

Liz shut down her laptop and stuffed it into her backpack. She had been working too hard, trying to drown out the inexplicable feeling of longing that had taken residence in her body. With Victoria gone for the summer, Liz was practically living at the office to escape the quiet.

She took one last glance around the office to make sure she had everything before shouldering her bag and leaving. She fumbled around for the light switch on the wall to illuminate the open office space. Just when she found it, she heard the phone ring in Hayden’s office.

No one ever rang the paper this late. Turning back into the office, she grabbed the phone and answered, “Hello?”

“Hello, I’m trying to reach Liz Dougherty, please,” a woman’s voice said through the line.

Liz’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. That was even stranger. People asked for a specific reporter only under rare circumstances. Hayden was asked for frequently, because everyone on campus knew who he was. Usually it was in relation to an article the reporter had written or requesting a follow up or, as with most of them, a friend who couldn’t reach the person on their cell phone. But Liz had never been asked for by name.

“Um…yes, this is Liz. Who is calling? It is after hours,” she reminded the woman. Though how she couldn’t know that it was midnight was beyond her.

“This is Heather Ferrington, chief press secretary with State Senator Brady Maxwell.”

Liz’s mouth dropped open. Was she serious? When she had left Brady’s hotel room last weekend, she had been certain it was the last she would hear from him. He got what he wanted from her, and though he said he would reach out to her again, she hadn’t really believed him.

“Miss Dougherty, are you still there?” Heather asked.

Liz snapped out of her daydream. “Yes, I’m still here. How can I help you, Ms. Ferrington?”

“I’ve been informed that you are the contact for the campaign division of the paper; is that correct?” she asked in the most condescending fashion she could muster.

“I am.”

“We’ve spoken with the university and set up a time for the Senator to speak publicly about his leap into federal politics. We have very few trips planned for the summer, but Senator Maxwell is making it a priority to speak at his alma mater,” Heather told her.

Liz’s mind was working overtime. Brady was coming here. To her school. Well, their school. Whatever! He was going to be in Chapel Hill to give a speech. This certainly wasn’t a planned venue. The student body wasn’t a target audience for the local elections, even though Liz was desperately trying to get them more invested.

During the presidential election her freshman year, the campus had been a madhouse, but students simply hadn’t put in as much effort for the local politicians. Whether it was because they had a local representative at home (even though they lived at the school for at least nine months out of the year) or they were too busy with their social lives, it just wasn’t a priority. She could count on the two party organizations, the Campus Y, and a few other politically active groups on campus to spread the word on their own, but sometimes it felt as if she were hitting her head against a brick wall.