ROMANCING MO RYAN (28 page)

Nikki nodded and their eyes met.
 
She had tried to warn him about just how big a deal this would be, but he never seemed to quite get it.
 
Until now.
 

She had never seen him so hurt.
 
“Oh, Nikki,” he said and hurried to her.
 
He took his arm and wrapped it around her, and his touch calmed her down too.
 

“You’re shivering,” he said as he kissed her hair.

“I still can’t believe I wrote that story.
 
I should have resigned first.”

“And I would have torn into you, Nikki, if you did something that foolish.
 
You did the right thing by writing that story.”

She looked at him.
 
“So you think I was fair to you?”

“Yes,” he said and Nikki’s heart squeezed.
 
“And you were fair to those women, and that’s just as important.”

“I just can’t believe I did it,” she said again.

“Oh,
Nikki
,” he said with agony in his voice and pulled her onto his lap.
 
She leaned into his body, his bare chest warm against her.
 
“Stop second guessing yourself.
 
If you didn’t write it somebody else would.
 
Those hounds at the Gazette would see to that.
 
You gave me fair warning.”

“But I should have told them no, I won’t do it to you.
 
But Phil kind of threatened to fire me if I didn’t write the story, and you wouldn’t...”

“And I wouldn’t what?”

“You wouldn’t back me up, Mo.
 
It’s like you just gave up.
 
How can I put myself on the line for somebody who gives up?”

“You couldn’t.
 
You did the right thing.”

“But what about you?”

He tried to smile, revealing too many wrinkles.
 
“I told you not to worry about me.
 
You haven’t broken my heart yet.”

“Yet?” Nikki asked, smiling too.
 
“I’ll never break your heart, what are you talking about?”

“Every woman I’ve ever cared about has broken my heart.
 
What makes you any different?”

“Because I’m Nikki, I’m not those other women.”

Mo looked at her.
 
“You’re certainly different, if that’s what you mean.”

Nikki smiled, and then just like that their little banter was over.
 
“So what are you going to do?”

He released a burdensome exhale.
 
“What I’ve been doing, Nikki.
 
Live.
 
Work.”

“Have you heard from the governor’s office?”

He paused.
 
“No.”

“Not a word?”

“Not a one.”

She leaned up and looked at him.
 
“I’m so sorry, Mo.”

This time he managed a real smile, his bright blue eyes wide and hopeful.
 
But it was painful too.
 
“You’ve ever had a dream job, Nikki?” he asked her, his hand pressing against her soft cheek.

“I thought my job in Cleveland was close.”

“Well, to sit on the highest court in this state, to make decisions that could have such far reaching implications, that would have been mine.”
 

“It still could be yours.”

“Don’t do that.”

She frowned.
 
“Do what?”

“Kid yourself.
 
Don’t you ever do that.”

She sighed.
 
“But how can I help you, Mo?
 
I don’t know how to help you.”

He looked at her, and then pulled her to him and held her tightly.
 
“Just say you believe me, baby.
 
I need you, above anybody else, to believe me.
 
Because if you stop believing in me, Nikki, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“But I do, Mo.”

“Say it.”

“I believe you.”
 
She looked at him, her heart swelling with emotion.
 
“I believe you.”

He buried his face into her hair as tears stained his eyes.
 
“That’s how you help me,” he said, as he held her.
 
As he held onto her.

They had dinner together at his kitchen table.
 
It was a simple dinner, a pasta dish Mo had thrown together, but that evening held a kind of enchantment all its own.
 
They were together.
 
He was with her, and she was with him, and that was all that mattered to them.
 
They were going to make it through this.
 
Earlier, when the story first broke, it felt as if they both carried the weight of the world on their shoulders.
 
Nikki for writing the story, and Mo for knowing what position her relationship with him had put her in, and he had to deal with the story itself.
 

But now they felt comforted.
 
The story was out there.
 
Two women accusing him of harassment.
 
The liberals would continue to take their shots at him and the conservatives would continue to blame the women.
 
It was going to be a bumpy ride.
 
But at least they were taking the ride together.

Later that night, after dinner, after sitting in the family room watching old Spencer Tracy movies, Mo stood, took her hand, and they walked upstairs.
 
Nikki sat on the bed and phoned the newspaper, to check if she had any new assignments, while Mo went into the bathroom.
 
As soon as she hung up the phone, he was calling her name.

“Yes?” she asked as she walked into the marbled tiled master bath.
 
Mo was naked and was just stepping into the stall.

“Come shower with me,” he said to her.

She knew all of their previous showers together resulted in more sex than showering, and she smiled.

“Do I have to?” she asked jokingly.

Mo looked around the shower door, to make sure she was joking, and then he smiled.
 
“You better get your ass in here,” he said.
 

“So you can clean it?”

“So I can fuck it,” he said bluntly.
 
“Now come on.”

Nikki laughed as she undressed.
 
And when she stepped into that stall, her back against his front, she realized that he wasn’t joking.
 
He prepped her, by fingering her as he kissed her and held her, but then he lubed her with the lubrication he had placed in the stall holder.
 
And within minutes he was entering her anally for the very first time.

Nikki closed her eyes as he slowly began to fill her.
 
It hurt initially, he was just so big, but the lubrication helped.
 
Although he enjoyed it, she could tell by his grunts and groans, she had a more difficult time of it.
 
But she stayed with it.

Mo knew this position wasn’t the most desirable position for her, but on this night he felt a strong urge to enter her where he never had before.
 
Just a few strokes, in and out of her, slowly and carefully, was all he was after.
 
There wasn’t a part of her anywhere that he didn’t want to have touched.
 
And although his few strokes felt so good to him that they turned into a few more, he eventually pulled out.
 
He didn’t want this to be a one-way show.
 
Some women loved it anally, he’d been with his share who did, but Nikki, he knew just by looking at her face, wasn’t one of them.

He pulled out, soap-cleaned his penis, and then turned her around.
 
“Did I hurt you?” he asked her, knowing she would tell it to him straight.

“It was tight,” Nikki said.
 
“But I could handle it.
 
You didn’t have to pull out.”

He smiled.
 
Kissed her on the mouth. “I love you Nikki Tarver,” he said heartfelt.
 
And then he lifted her, opening her legs and placing them on either side of his hip, and then entered her from the front.
 

“Ah,” he said as he entered her.
 
“Now I know I’m hitting the spot.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” Nikki agreed as his dick slid into her at just the right angle.
 
And the way he knew how to poke her, and sustain the poking in just the right spot, always fascinated her.

He placed his hands on either side of her outer thighs and started lifting her small, tight ass up and down, as she rode his rod.
 
All that could be heard beyond the running water was the sound of her butt cheeks slapping against his hard body.
 
And it felt like a beating to Nikki, because he was putting it on her.

“Do me, Mo,” she cried as she rode him.
 
“You know how to do me!”

And he did her.
 
Lifting her up and down, moving her from side to side whenever she slid downward on his rod, sucking her bouncing breasts as her body gyrated to his rhythm.
 
It was one of the worse moments of his life, when the chief judge suggested that he resign, but here, tonight, even that seemed unimportant.
 

He looked at Nikki as she held onto him with such love and care, with such joy in her eyes. Her gorgeous black body was like a chocolate delight against his big, white frame.
 
And she was what mattered to him.
 
This wonderful woman.
 
His lady love.
 
The one woman he now knew was the only woman he could ever want.
   

“Oh,
Nikki
,” he cried as his penis filled to capacity and the overflow gushed into her, “you’re making me come!”

“Oh,
Mo
,” Nikki cried as his release escalated hers.

He leaned her against the marbled wall of the stall, his penis throbbing, as he strained and buckled and she tightened around him and grunted out loud, and they both, drained and sated, gave in.

After finally getting around to actually showering together, they went to bed in Mo’s familiar bed.
  
With Nikki’s back to Mo’s front, in a spoon position, they held each other with a kind of assuredness that stunned them both.
 
Mo loved her so completely that he could hardly believe how deep his love was for her.
 
She had the kind of character that most people could never even fully comprehend, let alone possess.
 
And he felt so very blessed to have her, this crown jewel, as his woman.

Nikki felt blessed too, as he held her in his big, loving arms.
 
This was her first love, her only love, and being with him had proven to be the toughest experience of her life.
 
But she would go through it over and over and over again, and even more again, if it meant that, at the end of those long, dreaded days, that Mo would still be by her side.

And with those happy thoughts, despite the swirl around them, they both fell into one of the best, most peaceful sleeps they had ever had.

A week later and the story was still headline news.
 
Mo had been summoned to Tallahassee, to the Governor’s office, and Nikki spent the night with him before he left.
 
He held her all night, and slept very little.
 
She didn’t sleep at all.
 
There had to be something out there to prove that these women were lying, but she had been searching and searching all week long and she had, thus far, turned up zilch.

That next morning, after showering with Mo, after Mo fucking her so hard in that shower that she felt as if, with his pounding, he was releasing into her all of the aggression, the anger, the pain he felt toward the unfair allegations.
 
And she welcomed the release, because it allowed her to do the same.
 
And they worked it.
 
For the longest time.
 
All that could be heard in that shower for what seemed like a full hour was the sound of flesh slapping flesh, over and over, like a kind of music.
 
Mo’s front kept pounding into her ass.
 
And her front was pinned against the wall of the stall, grunting as she felt the full force of every pound.
 
And it was the act itself, the base, barbaric nature of it, that was turning her own just as much as the feeling was.
 

And when they came, when the feelings became too intense to continue to ride out, they both stood erect, her ass impaled against his penis, as all of their hostility, and anxiety, and fears became constricted within the pulsation of their climax, and then washed away.
 

Afterwards, he drove her to her condo and then kissed her passionately in the car.
 
But he still wasn’t ready to let her go.
 
He pulled her onto his lap.
 

She looked at him.
 
She ran her hand through his beautiful brown locks.
 
“It’s going to be all right, you hear me, Mo Ryan?” she said to him.

He smiled a kind of exhausted smile.
 
“With you in my corner I don’t think it can be any other way.”

“Don’t flatter me, buster,” Nikki said with a smile of her own.
 
Then she turned serious.
 
“You think the governor is going to rescind your nomination?”

Mo thought about it.
 
Ever since the governor’s office had phoned him, he’d done nothing but think about it.
 
“At this point, no,” he said, kissing her on the exposed part of her shoulder.
 
He loved whenever she was in his lap.
 
He loved the feel of her weight on top of him.
 
“And provided no new allegations come to light, no woman number three, then I don’t think he will rescind it.”

Nikki nodded.
 
“Good.”

“The conservatives have turned my nomination into their battle cry, which is nonsensical on every level, but that’s what they’ve decided to do.
 
So no, I don’t think I have to worry about the governor pulling the plug at this point.”

“You may not be blaming the victims,” Nikki said, “but those conservative right-wingers are.
 
They aren’t hesitating in blaming those women.”

“I know.
 
They don’t speak for me.”

“I still think you should go out and publicly denounce their allegations yourself.
 
Your voice, whether you believe it or not, carries a lot of weight around this state, Mo.”