“I am going to kill you!” I hiss into his ear as we stand after it’s over; smoothing my skirt down and trying to find my breath.
“Bring it, Red.” He grins, winking at me.
Amy shakes my hand, and mercifully not Hudson’s, before he’s leading me out the stage door to the side parking lot.
“What the fuck was that?” Donald is standing there waiting for us just outside with his arms crossed over his chubby chest and his face looking furious.
“Uh, excuse me?” My voice falters as I suddenly have a horrible thought that he knows what Hudson was doing to me up there during the interview.
“What happened to sticking to the Goddamned SCRIPT, Reagan!” Donald honestly looks furious, and I’m suddenly realizing that I never glanced down at his list of canned answers once during the whole thing. I did the whole interview off-the-cuff while Hudson was driving me wild; probably giving the answers I wanted to give instead of the boring, middle-of-the-road ones he wanted me to say.
“I- I don’t now, it just felt natural to say what I wanted to say, Donald.”
Hudson is tugging me away towards his car, and Donald is sputtering as he trails after us.”Where the hell do you think you’re going? Uh, excuse me, Hudson, I’m not done with my fucking candidate yet!”
We’re at his car, and Hudson suddenly whirls on Donald; “Yes, you are.” He says, his voice deep and leaden as he stares down my campaign manager. He turns to me as he opens the passenger door; “Hop in, Senator.”
This time it’s me that hits the emergency button inside Hudson’s elevator, and the surprised look on his face only gets better when I just start to pull my clothes off right there. But when I turn around and press my hands against the glass and arch my ass back at him, I’m pretty sure that surprise turns into something else pretty quickly. He growls as he enters me, and then he fucks me like he owns me, and it’s exactly how I want him to fuck me. His grip is tight on my hip, even bringing his hand down to smack my ass and make me cry out against the glass and the neon New York skyline. He grabs me by the hair and turns my face into his kiss, and I’m clawing and screaming at the edges of my sanity as I feel his length fill me again and again and again. When I come, he’s right there with me, pressing his body flush to mine as we ride that wave together, our choked breaths coming as one as our heartbeats racing the other in a dead sprint.
I have officially gone off-script; both with the campaign and with whatever it is I’m doing with Hudson, and quite honestly, I’ve never been happier.
25
Hudson
P R E S E N T
A few nights later, we’re driving in my car and I’m almost insulted when she doesn’t ask me where we’re going, but I see the grin on her face out the corner of my eye as I take us over the George Washington bridge and onto the Palisades Parkway. I let the horses under the hood roar as I gun us up the west side of the Hudson, letting New York fall away behind us in the rearview mirror as we head into the night.
Finally, I cave; “Well, shit, don’t you even want to know where we’re going?” Reagan’s face breaks into a wide smile; “I mean come on Archer, I prepared this whole little speech and everything.” I shake my head, feeling alive and on fire and more whole than I’ve felt in a very long time.
“I’ve got an idea where we’re going, but please, lets hear this speech of yours.” She sticks her tongue out at me, her whole face lit up by the dash and her smile just flashing right into me.
“Well, now I’ve forgotten it.” I shake my head as I sigh dramatically; “Your loss too, it was a good one.”
She laughs that musical laugh of hers and slides over across the bench seat against me. And as my arm goes around her shoulders and draws her close, I realize I have and will never feel more like Steve McQueen than I do in that perfect moment. It’s just Reagan and I, the car, and the road, and it’s just fucking perfect.
I know she thinks she knows where we’re going; to our place where the romance that didn’t, that couldn’t happen back then. But then is not now, and things are very different now with Reagan and I than they were back then a lifetime ago. I mean I was crazy about her back then, even if I didn’t know what to do with it. And now? Well now that I’m in lo- wow, shit. I feel my heart pound as I mull over that particular four-letter word, but I don’t even have to dwell on it to know its true.
When we drive past the Bear Mountain turnoff I know she recognizes, I grin broadly seeing her glance back at the sign out of the corner of my eye. She looks at me with a sly look; “Alright, you got me.”