"Donna, you keep telling me the hotel hallway smells like Strawberry Shortcake dolls, and I keep telling you I have no idea what that means."

"And as I also keep telling you, I think you're lying," Donna said as she stuck the cardkey in the slot of their hotel room door. "I think you know exactly what I mean, but you're lying in order to preserve some falsely perceived masculine bravado."

"Right," Josh said, leaning against the wall, "that must be it. My inherent maleness is threatened by the terrifying prospect of intimately knowing the scent of some girly toy from the 80s."

"You said it, not me," Donna retorted as she led the way into their room. She looked at the digital clock on the night table: 10:30 PM.

"How is it that it's mere days before the election and we're in our hotel room before 11?" Josh wondered as he flopped down on the bed.

"I don't know, but let's not question it," Donna said. She kicked off her heels and started taking off her jewelry. The maid must have turned on the heat when she made up the room earlier that day, as the air was warm, uncomfortably so. Donna took off her cardigan and adjusted the thermostat.

"I knew it was a mistake to fall asleep on the bus," Josh said, sitting back up and undoing his tie. "I must have had my head hanging in a weird position or something. My neck is killing me." He rubbed his neck with his hand, winced when he hit a nerve.

"We were on the bus for a long time, too, and all that sitting's not good for your back," Donna pointed out.

"You make me sound like an old man," Josh grumped.

"Again: you said it, not me." She ruffled his hair, then moved her hand to his cheek. "I'm going to change, and then I'll give you a backrub, how does that sound?"

"Like it's too good to be true," Josh said, looking up at her.

"You don't deserve me," she said with a melodramatic sigh.

"So you keep reminding me."

Donna smirked and went into the bathroom, where she used the facilities and changed into boxer shorts and a tank top. When she came back out, she couldn't help but grin at the sight of Josh lying face down on the bed, his shirt and socks off, his arms spread out to the sides. "Comfortable?" she asked dryly.

"Not entirely, but I'm hoping that's about to change," he said, his voice muffled by the mattress.

She sat down next to him on the bed and ran her hand over his bare back. "God, Josh, your skin feels like sandpaper."

"Hotels make me dehydrated," he mumbled.

"Haven't you ever heard of moisturizer?"

"Girly. Probably smells like those Strawberry Fields dolls."

"Strawberry Shortcake."

"Whatever. And besides, how would I even get it on my back?"

"Okay, you have a point there. Still...giving you a backrub under these conditions isn't going to be particularly pleasurable for either of us." She poked delicately at an especially scaly patch.

"Try me," he said.

"Wait! I have an idea." She got up off the bed and went over to her bag, extracted a small tub of mango scented body butter that she kept with her at all times, mostly to use on her elbows because her elbows seemed to get more dried out than any other part of her, and why was that, really? Had studies been done on the drying tendencies of elbows? She'd have to investigate the phenomenon. With all the ridiculous types of research funded by taxpayers' money, surely someone had --

"What are you doing?" Josh asked without raising his head. Somehow he always seemed to sense when she was off on a mental tangent.

"Saving the day," she said hastily. She went back to the bed, climbed up onto it, and straddled him at the small of his back, her knees framing his waist. She unscrewed the tub and scooped out a small dollop with her fingers. When she touched the slippery substance to his skin, he twitched.

"What the hell is that?" he yelped.

"It's mango body butter," she said. "It's going to help with your massage."

"By making me smell like a girl?"

"You're going to smell like a mango, Josh. A fruit. How is that girly?"

"It's a girly fruit," he said defensively. "It could at least be something manly, like...I don't know...papaya."

"Okay, I don't even want to know how that qualifies as manly," she said.

"I'm going on instinct," he said.

She ignored him and rubbed the body butter into his dry skin, spreading it over his shoulder blades and down his spine. She took another dollop and rubbed it between her palms first, then started kneading his shoulders. His skin moved easily beneath her slick hands, enabling her to dig deeply into his strained muscles. "Now, isn't that better?" she said.

She took his heartfelt moan to be an affirmative.

She continued her ministrations, kneading and stretching and pressing, adding body butter as needed, enjoying his continuous stream of gratified noises muffled by the mattress. Donna reflected that she probably didn't tell Josh often enough how much she loved his body, how she loved the firmness of his biceps, the definition of his shoulders, the way the muscles in his back bunched against her fingertips. She spent more time than was probably necessary on his arms -- massaging the hardened muscle, tracing the patterns of his veins with her fingers -- and tried to keep the groping of his delectably firm ass to a respectable minimum.

When she was nearly finished, she leaned over and whispered in his ear that she thought he was beautiful, and he sucked in a breath, tensing beneath her. She kissed the tip of his ear, the back of his neck, then pulled her tank up over her head. Topless, she leaned over and brushed her breasts against his back, her nipples hardening as she did so. His reaction was almost instantaneous, turning over and flipping her down onto the bed, so that he was now above her, his hands on her upper arms, his legs framing her body. She let out a playful shriek that was quickly smothered by his mouth against hers as he kissed her thoroughly, leaving her breathless.

"Thank you," he said when their lips parted.

"You're welcome."

He kissed her again, then moved his mouth to her breasts, suckling on one nipple and then the other as she smoothed his unruly hair with her fingers. Then he tugged down her boxers, pulled them off her legs, and lifted her thighs up onto his shoulders.

"Josh --" He didn't need to thank her, didn't need to -- Coherent thought evaporated when he flicked his tongue against her clit. "Oh god."

Josh approached oral sex much the way he approached everything in his life: with a determination to do the best job he possibly could. It was a fact for which Donna was often thankful, never more so than now, as he explored every inch of her with his tongue, teasing her clit and then retreating until she was wound up to a fever pitch, until finally, finally, he focused his efforts there, at just the right spot, making small strong circles with his tongue, his hands reaching up to cup her breasts, and it was too much, it was too good, and all too soon she came hard against his mouth, crying out so loud that she was glad no one from the campaign was staying in the room next to theirs.

"Oh my god," she sighed one last time, as he worked his way back up to her. "Now I'm the one who should be thanking you." She embraced him, held him close, then made a face. "Your back is all sticky."

"That's your fault," he said, nuzzling her neck.

"You're right." What seemed perfectly sensual when she was giving him a massage now felt uncomfortably slimy, especially since the air in the hotel room was finally starting to cool. "Umm..."

"Yeah." He got to his feet and pulled her up along with him. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"Shower." He shimmied out of his pants and boxers and led the way to the bathroom, Donna following behind in a shuffle with her hands on his hips. He turned on the shower and pulled her in with him, the warm spray spattering over her skin as he drew her close and kissed her. After a few minutes of that, she helped him wash off most of the body butter, the run-off turning the tub slick and filling the air with a light mango scent.

Donna ran her hands over his wet chest, the tight pecs, the belly that was still slim but starting to get slightly fleshy as he aged. She placed a kiss on his breastbone and brushed her thumbs over his nipples, eliciting a groan from above her. She wrapped her hand around his cock and squeezed gently, then ran her thumb up and down the underside of his shaft. The groan that gesture elicited was eminently satisfying, and she smothered a grin.

Josh titled his head back and let water run over his face, into his mouth, and when he was clean he kissed her again, pushing her back against the cold tiled wall of the tub. His hands roamed over her wet body, cupping her breasts, gripping her thighs. "You know what I love about hotels?" he murmured.

"What?"

"The hot water doesn't run out." He maneuvered her into the far corner of the tub, then adjusted the showerhead so that the spray hit the lower half of their bodies, enough to keep them warm but presumably not enough to be distracting from whatever he had planned. "Turn around," he told her.

She did as he asked, turning her back to him and instinctively putting one foot up on the edge of the tub. He took hold of her waist and carefully pushed up into her, making them both sigh.

"Be careful, it's slippery in here," she said, then winced at the double entendre. Oh well.

"Don't worry, I've got you," he said softly, even though it wasn't her own safety that concerned her. He grabbed the handicap bar on the side of the shower wall to brace himself and hooked his other hand over her thigh as he began to thrust into her.

Donna leaned back against him, putting one hand over his on the bar and the other crooked up around his neck. "That's good," she whispered.

"Yeah." He moved faster, sliding in and out of her, only reaching in about halfway but still providing a delicious, continuous friction that set her aflame. His breath was heavy against her temple, his skin wet and warm against hers. "You like that?" he whispered.

She moaned in answer. Desperate now, she moved her hand from up around his neck down to her clit and began pinching it in time with his movements. "Oh my god..."

"Donna," he panted. He dug his fingers into her thigh, so roughly it hurt, but he kept driving up into her, too, fast and hard, stoking the nearly unbearable fire inside of her, and nothing else mattered.

"I'm...I'm..." Donna quickened her finger movements against her clit, so close, so close, so close, oh god…and she came, gasping against the hot steamy air of the shower. She tried to catch her breath as Josh continued to impale her again and again and again until he finally came too, spilling himself up into her and then pulling out fast, giving them both back their weight.

They stood there for a moment, catching their breath, and then he pressed her back against the wall of the shower and kissed her ardently, his hands cradling her head, the spray of warm water tickling her sensitized skin.

"It's been a while," Donna said finally. "We're usually so tired, or it's so late..."

"Yeah." He placed one last kiss on her forehead, then turned off the shower. He reached up onto the rack for a towel and wrapped it around her before getting one for himself. "I would say we'll have more time once the campaign is over, but I think we both know that's not true."

"Unless we lose," she pointed out.

"Unless we lose," he agreed. "Don't worry, Donna, there will be plenty of time for sex when we're not taking turns standing on the unemployment line."

"You paint a really sexy picture, there, Mr. Lyman," she said.

"I am the Van Gogh of sexiness," he said cockily. He grinned, then vigorously rubbed the towel back and forth over his hair.

She clutched at the ends of her own towel, keeping it wrapped warmly around her. "We're not going to lose, you know," she felt the need to say.

He looked up at her. "I know."

"And I love you," she added, almost as an afterthought.

"Yeah," he said, and smiled. "I know that too."

End.