His expression said he understood what she’d been through. They’d both been suffering. “They needed more. So Tanaka and Brady made sure they got it, while at the same time finding and destroying all copies of the pictures taken in my home, getting Seamus a lawyer and locating Mira…and making sure Trick didn’t inform me of Jen’s pending arrest.”
“What?!”
He grimaced. “I wasn’t thrilled with that either, but I can’t say I’m unhappy Jen is heading back to college.” She glared and he held up his hands. “You told me I needed to let her make her own mistakes. They didn’t make her hit that woman, Natasha. That was her choice.”
Brady and Ken had done this? Everything? “And what about the blog?”
Stephen was staring at her legs, his hands on his belt buckle. Tasha’s body started to warm.
“Ken and Brady filled me in a few weeks ago.” His voice lowered dangerously. “As soon as you let Jeremy know you were planning to move.”
She bit her lip. “It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“After I got over my shock, I wanted to help. Tanaka put the blog together and routed it through so many IP addresses that no one will ever be able to trace it back to him. I chose the pictures from the surveillance footage he’d confiscated.”
Ken hadn’t even hinted that he knew. “Why?”
“So you couldn’t use it as a reason to run.” He’d moved so close she could reach out and touch him. “You’ve been using my reputation, my decision to pursue public office, as an excuse to keep me at arm’s length. That ship has now sailed. You walked away…” His voice broke. “I heard everything, Natasha. What you said. How you stood up for me. I know you walked away to stop those pictures from being used against me. But now those pictures no longer exist.”
He reached out and took her hand, caressing her wrist with his thumb. “If you leave me now, Natasha Rivera, I’ll know it’s because you genuinely don’t want to be with me. That you don’t love me the way I love you.”
A sob escaped her throat and she covered her mouth. “You never said it before.”
“That I love you? That even when I believed stolen moments were all you’d give me for the rest of my life, I still knew I would take them rather than lose you completely? You never gave me the chance.”
Stephen pulled her close and kissed her. The moment his lips touched hers she was lost. She jumped into his arms, not doubting for a moment that he’d catch her as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
He groaned, his mouth fierce, his tongue tangling with hers in a way that had her hips rocking against him. It had been so long.
Two months.
Too long.
Tasha was dimly aware of him moving as she sucked his lower lip into her mouth and nibbled it the way she knew he liked. Then he turned his head and let go of her with one hand to slide the window up.
“The answer is yes,” he yelled to the reporters stilling milling about on the grass. “I’m definitely off the market.”
He slammed the window shut again as questions and shouts rang out, then laughed when she buried her face in his neck. “What? Don’t you want Senator Lark’s daughter to know I’m no longer available?”
Yes, of course—she wanted everyone to know. She looked up to tell him as much, but his mischievous expression was the only warning she got before she was tossed onto her bed.
“You left me.”
He was smiling, but his words still resonated with pain.
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
“Words aren’t going to do it, Natasha. I need you naked and kneeling and ready for your punishment.”
Tasha didn’t even have to think. “Yes, sir.”
His blue eyes darkened with desire. “Now.”
She tore off her t-shirt and rolled onto her back to shimmy out of her shorts and underwear. Stephen watched her with hungry eyes until she was kneeling on the bed, head down and hands on her thighs.
“I’ll never get used to how sexy you are. Never get tired of this. Not in a week. Not when we’re eighty and waiting for our grandchildren to leave so I can tear your clothes off.”
A fine tremor ran through her at his words. “Never is a long time, Stephen.”
He sat down beside her and she realized he’d taken off his pants. She licked her lips. She’d missed him so much.
“Lie across my lap, Natasha. Bottom up.”
Her eyes widened, but she did as he asked. He groaned, skimming his hands over her ass cheeks, squeezing and caressing each one in turn. “Two months. That’s how long your tortured me this time. Two months when I couldn’t touch you whenever I wanted. Take you whenever I wanted. Spank you.”