Rough Hand (Bad Boy Fighter Romance) Read online

  "I hadn't heard that one."

  "No, I suppose you wouldn't. You'd have heard it if I'd done it the other way around, though, wouldn't you?"

  "I suppose so."

  "It was a good time getting home. Fun. I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

  "Then come to Vegas again with me," Adam calls over his shoulder. "I'll help you lose your money again."

  "I would," Tom answers. His gravelly voice has something vaguely alluring about it. A shiver hits Linda again like a lightning bolt, caught between these two titanic men. "But I've got a campaign to run."

  Chapter Six

  There's good and bad things about having no time for yourself. Every two years, Linda gets to put her life on hold. If there's something left after a year, then she gets to press play again. So far, there hasn't been much luck in that department.

  At least this time, though, Jim left her at a good stopping point. So there's that, at least. She got to press pause on her life, and in that time, whatever ache that's there can go away. Easy as can be.

  She got along without him very well. Quite well indeed. Except when she smelled the pine-scented air freshener in her car. It reminded her of his body wash. Sharp and refreshing, a startlingly clean smell.

  She couldn't avoid it as well as she would like. She should have gotten rid of the air freshener. Replaced it with cinnamon flavor, or birthday cake, or tropical fruit, or anything else but pine.

  But she didn't. She had too many other things to worry about with her time. Shopping for an air freshener wasn't one of the things that she could worry about. Not in a rental car. Not when she'd just be leaving to go on the campaign trail proper come January.

  She shivered against the cold and turned up the heat. It came out readily and only blew that pine scent stronger into her face. She closed her eyes and opened them again.

  There was a solution to the problem. There was always a solution. She missed Jim. She could call him up. But then she'd have to face the fact that he left her. It wasn't a mutual decision; it wasn't a fact of her job that she was currently without any sort of companionship.

  She closes her eyes. There was another solution, of course. Some people in politics have good sense. Not many, and none have enough to be able to go without her services.

  But some of them have the good sense to fuck their wives instead of their mistresses. Others, less so.

  Still others, somewhere in between, know how to keep their affairs quiet and keep them from attaching strings. Which is exactly what Eric Lang had done.

  He'd never been capable of keeping anything a secret from her. He was a terrible liar, and it was honestly a surprise that she'd managed to get him into Congress at all. 'Moral Majority' her ass.

  Nor, in spite of his strict promises of secrecy, had he been able to cover up the apparently quite wild sex parties that he frequented.

  Linda frowns. She's not the sort of woman to go to one of those. Nor is any man she might be interested in the sort of man to go to one. Right?

  Who would go to one of those parties? Nobody that she knew of, not off-hand. Nobody would be caught dead, except maybe Eric Lang. A famously randy man. Womanizer. Couldn't keep his hands off women, and they had a warm relationship with him right back.

  Women who weren't Linda Owens, at least, who had on more than one occasion had to make clear the fact that she wasn't particularly interested in what he was offering.

  And she still wasn't. But a good fuck would certainly take the edge off. That, by itself, meant nothing. She wasn't going to go picking up guys, not now that she was on TV. She wasn't going to hire someone. That was absurd.

  Which left her with precious few options, and the phone number of a man who owed her several favors and somehow managed to have discreet affairs—in spite of having different women every night.

  There must be some kind of trick to it. Some kind of system. She could—

  Linda pulled into her parking spot and with that shut the thought off by stepping out of the car.

  No. She was fine without it. If it was still bothering her by the time she reached her apartment, she could give herself the night off and lay down with no pants on and something that was very much not cable news on the TV until she had completely forgotten about any edge of nervous arousal that had built up.

  She hefted her bag onto her shoulder and made it over to the elevator. She had too much work to do to worry about that kind of thing anyways. It would pass in a minute. What on earth kind of rumors could she start that wouldn't stick?

  More than that, what kind of rumors could they start that would stick? The question seemed strange to ask. Rumors stick. They're quite good at sticking, surprisingly so.

  And yet, the fact was that she had seen rumors come and go about Adam Quinn. Rumors that he was sleeping around on his wife—rumors that, apparently, were true. Rumors that had done little to hurt his public image and apparently hadn't prevented a presidential run in his mind.

  And if the preliminary opinion polls meant anything, which they of course did not, then they didn't prevent a presidential run in the minds of the American people, either.

  There was a question how Eric Lang managed to find himself with so many women. How he managed to keep it quiet. What that would have done to his campaign, it was impossible to say. Or, it was impossible to say how deep a hole he'd dig for himself.

  He'd either lose the race at best, lose his place in politics completely in all likelihood, and very possibly never work again at anything.

  There was no question how Adam Quinn managed to get with the women he got with. Nobody who saw him would question it. He was the kind of man who fucked supermodels. He was very much the grown-up version of the high school quarterback who had easy access to all the cheerleaders.

  And as far as how he kept it a secret, that much was easy, too. Unlike Congressman Lang, nobody needed to call him up to find out what he did to keep the women quiet.

  It was a very easy system indeed: He didn't.

  Chapter Seven

  It's been three weeks since Adam Quinn has gotten laid. Not so much a choice, or even a result of striking out. Just a fact. A result of his other choices. No need to call someone and make it happen. No need to put much effort into it. They'd come to him, or they wouldn't.

  Only, he hadn't been in a position for women to come to him, and only now were his teeth starting to feel on edge. Now that he'd been working nonstop for almost eight years to make the presidency happen, it was finally moving, and it was moving fast, and he was moving along with it.

  Which should have been fine. It was fine. And now that it was all paying off, everything was moving so fast that there wasn't time for much else. The extra time he did have, what little of it he had, he had to spend on running his business.

  As much as it might seem easy to do both—it seemed that so many people thought that running a nearly trillion-dollar-a-year-in-cash-flow business was as easy as cake—it was proving to take up all of the twenty hours a day he had to spend.

  And try as he might to get over it, the lack of relief was starting to frustrate him more than it probably should have.

  Adam laid his head back. There were options. There were always options. But you don't play before you're done with your work. You don't eat your dessert before you finish dinner.

  There were three things that he needed to get done with the rest of his day. First, he had to send out a memo to his campaign staff. Delaney's idea, which was interesting. Linda seemed upset that she hadn't thought of it herself.

  How do you start a rumor? Well, there's a simple way to do it. First, you give information to someone who is just dying to tell someone else. A campaign staffer.

  You don't even have to be behind the leak on purpose, not if you know that they'll do it all for you. And, as it happens, that's exactly what they were planning on doing.

  Of course, there was one problem, and that was identifying the leak. Tom had a talent for that. He could almost smell weakne
ss in someone. It was fascinating. When he needed someone else to do his dirty work, he'd find them.

  When he needed a snitch, he could find them. But it would take time. Time that they didn't have. So instead, they'd have a good old-fashioned honey pot. Something that would be impossible not to leak.

  They'd make it look good, privately giving out information. And then they'd identify a small group by the details that they gave out. A half-dozen get to hear, under the strictest confidence, that he'd been around the block with a model. The other half, one of his campaign staff.

  Of course… if he had to name names, he knew who he'd pick. She was a damn attractive woman, that much was clear. Not that he needed Linda Owens, or anyone else on his staff, to decide that he was giving some kind of favorable treatment to women who put out.

  But she'd okayed the deal. Okayed it right to his face. So she knew what sort of rumors would start, and she must have known that it was alright. They'd be able to debunk it easily. His whereabouts had been known from the minute he got up to the minute he went to sleep for weeks.

  But someone… someone would bite. And then they'd be able to see where the shortest path between two points happened to lie.

  That was when the fun would begin.

  Adam settled down into a seat and started writing. He'd been composing the emails in his head for a while. A firm, strong denial. A denial of something nobody had accused him of. There was absolutely no evidence that he'd been caught sleeping around with anyone.

  Certainly not his campaign manager, and certainly not Miss America. It was completely absurd muckraking, and there was no reason to believe any of it. And if you were to be caught discussing such smut, then you would be fired.

  He checked the recipients. Checked the text of the emails for consistency. Then he sent them off and laid his head back. How many reports would come through, exactly? He hoped that his people were honest. That they wouldn't be caught up in something like this.

  He'd hired them personally, after all. He'd tried to vet every one. If his staff had as many holes as cheesecloth, then he had some very real soul-searching to do. Serious questions about his own judgment.

  But if he had questionable judgment, and if he was unable to find good people, honest people, people who didn't spread rumors, then he'd have found out decades ago. He couldn't have built his empire on the backs of a bunch of desperate liars.

  Now he just had to hope that he was good at hiring the right people… only, not good enough. No leaks meant no rumors. They'd have to take the dangerous risk of actually leaking things themselves. And that would be the worst of all available worlds.

  Because then, the story wouldn't be 'the untouchable Adam Quinn,' but rather 'Adam Quinn, the man who spreads stories about himself.'

  That wasn't the image he needed for himself. He'd built his media persona, his entire media empire, out of muscle and blood and with strong intention. How much of a fool, specifically, would he have to be in order to let himself destroy it?

  He stood up. Two more things on the list, and then he could find a way to amuse himself. Twenty minutes, tops. It was a relief to imagine that he would be 'off work' for the night. A relief that he hadn't given himself for quite some time now.

  Everyone deserves a night off once in a while. He settles into a dining-room chair to iron out the agenda for the next three days. Two down, one to go.

  Chapter Eight

  There are almost a thousand politicians living in the District of Columbia. It's one of the most expensive places in the country. Each of those politicians has several dozen direct employees.

  That's not even counting government employees. Just politicians and staffers who work for politicians. Each and every one of them is as corrupt as can be, or they're going to be within four years.

  The politicians will get multi-million dollar speaking fees, or cushy jobs at an investment banking firm, responsible for the surprisingly difficult task of doing God damn near anything at all. You'd almost feel sorry for them, if you listen to the way they talk about it.

  These people have a microscope on their entire lives. If there's any part of it that is legitimately unpleasant, that's it. Adam Quinn's had a microscope on every part of his life since he was twenty years old. It's been that way for as long as he can remember. More than half his life.

  First a celebrity, and then a politician, rather than the other way around. It turns the entire system on its head.

  Now, with a night off, it was time to call in favors. Something to help him relax, and in a way that didn't rely on trusting people not to talk.

  How do you fit fifty thousand people with too much money and not enough sense into a city, put a microscope on all of them, and somehow miss the fact that they are fucking like rabbits?

  It's easy. The answer's obvious. They do it in secret, and they do it in ways that don't let a woman interested in making a name for herself turn the story over.

  He felt the steering wheel in his grip. When you've had more money than God for decades, you end up having people who owe you favors. Lots of them, if he was being honest.

  So if you want to get laid on a Friday night, and you want to know all the tricks of the trade, well… when your black book is as thick as Adam Quinn's was, you just ask for a favor and you get an invitation.

  A masquerade. It was absurd. The idea that people could make it work, in a city this size? And nobody recognizes anybody? Permanent deniability. Jesus. This was a story to end all stories, and somehow they'd kept it quiet. It was amazing. Beautiful.

  It was only a matter of time until it ended. Three can keep a secret if two are dead, after all. He shook his head. Amazing indeed. He'd take the edge off, and then he'd move on. Because however long this has been going on for, it can't go on forever, and whoever's involved when the game ends is going to regret the hell out of not getting out sooner.

  The house is large, and separated from the others by quite a large yard on all sides. Nothing like his place back home, of course. But then again, the big house isn't quite as gaudy, either. More like a frat house than anything.

  Quinn parks the car and steps out. A big man stands at the door, a pressed suit and firm military posture. Secret service maybe? It's a surprise. But then again, not so much of a surprise. He blocks the door just enough that nobody would hope to get in without getting past this mountain of meat.

  "Sir?"

  "Hummingbird," Quinn says softly. The man nods and steps aside, his hand trailing behind to open the door for Adam.

  The sound of voices from inside immediately hit his ear. "Have a good evening, sir."

  Quinn nods. How well could this mask cover his face? What were the odds that he could be recognized? He stepped through the door anyways. If this was a trap, it was an amazingly big one.

  The building opened into a hallway, perhaps twelve feet long, before opening into a large foyer. The men were mostly in black-tie. They sat on sofas, talking to each other or to ladies who sat beside them.

  More than one had women sitting somewhere other than beside them. Kneeling between their spread legs, heads down. Quinn immediately got an answer to how good the masquerade was when he recognized the voice of the man he'd called to get the password for the place.

  If he spoke, then he'd be recognized. Without a doubt. As would everyone else here. He took a moment to go through the voices he recognized.

  Eric Lang, congressman from Oregon. He'd needed money to keep the campaign going. A blonde who couldn't have been older than nineteen knelt between his legs, licking his hardness like a lollipop while the congressman laughed at a lawyer joke.

  Quinn felt his teeth on edge. Terry Webb, Texan Senator. Somewhere he couldn't identify, he heard the voice of the Democratic Senator from Maine.

  There was nobody who wouldn't go down if this place were revealed. And they were speaking calmly, confidently, as if they weren't the least bit worried about it.

  A woman steps up to him. The men wear tuxedos here, and
he was no exception. The girl, her black hair cut short and her pleasantly plump breasts pressing themselves into his arm, wore nothing but the black mask that covered her eyes.

  "Hey, cutie," she purred. He looked at her flatly. She was an attractive woman. And yet, somehow, something inside him didn't make a move. It wasn't time.

  "Not right now," he said softly. She started to walk away and he decided that the free-for-all would let him one little indulgence; his hand moved quickly to swat at her delightfully round ass.

  He started moving again. Before he made any mistakes he'd regret, the first thing he was going to make damned sure of was that he got a chance to look around.

  There was a balcony above that wrapped all around the foyer. A bannister that you can watch the action below from. Rooms splintered off the main one, both upstairs and down, separated from the main floor by curtains. Some closed the curtain, others didn't.

  He leaned back against the bannister and watched a pair of men amusing themselves with a woman who seemed overwhelmed by the sensations that she was experiencing.

  Yes, Quinn thought. I could fit into a place like this.

  Chapter Nine

  Linda Owens' hands naturally want to move to cover her body. She shouldn't be here. This was a mistake, without a single doubt. She'd been expecting something else. That was the only word she could think of to describe it. Something that wasn't this.

  Not a big room full of people, with the only real assurances being a little face mask and the knowledge that if one person goes down, they're all going down together. There must have been forty people here. More. Forty men.

  She swallows hard and puts forth the mental effort that it takes to keep her hands at her sides, leaning up against a wall. She's got a good angle on a pair of lovers against a wall. Her leg is draped over his arm.

  Linda can't see anything too graphic, but the way that he thrusts into her is suggestive enough that Linda can't look away. As the thrusts get harder, rougher, more ragged, her hands stop gravitating towards covering herself up.