The day it all changes

The day lasts a month. Interminable meetings. Endless hours spent in circles, going nowhere. When Letty lets herself into the residence, she feels like she's aged a decade. She'll look in the mirror and see her hair turned white, as if she came down the mountain with ten commandments instead of ten thousand pages of unsupported legislation and double that amount of congressional deadlock. Her throat is hoarse from shouting. There are nail crescents cut into her palms from her constant fist clenching. She is so. Damn. Weary.

Of course he knows. And when he's finished clearing her rooms, he crosses to her with bottled water, cool but not cold, just how she likes it. He presses it into her hands, gently reminding her, “Drink.”

Agent Shahzad Ali Khan is still as young as the day he was assigned to her detail. His light brown skin unlined, black hair and neat beard devoid of silver.

Easy, Letty girl, warns her mama’s voice—the voice in her head that's been guiding her since before the election. But she ignores it. Pushes aside the memory of her mother's constant need to offer advice. It came from a good place, all that nagging. From generations of mamas and aunties forced to shoulder alone all of the responsibility for their families, their communities, and their faith. Her charge is different. Her weariness is different. And she’s chosen the load she carries daily. Taken it on willingly. Just as she’s taken him on willingly. She is Letitia Marie Hughes, first black woman Vice President of the United States, and she has just this one thing—one person—for herself.

The water eases her thirst, but it's his hand against her cheek that quenches it.

Here in her private quarters, it's just the two of them. Potentially scandalous. Potentially career-ending. That's what would've been said a decade ago. But then the standards for what's tolerable in the upper echelons of the government were forever altered. There is so much work yet to be done in fixing those tectonic shifts. Letitia is widowed. Discreet. She's closeted with any number of aides and staffers at any given time, after all. That she spends more time with one Secret Service agent than the others causes barely a ripple.

Except under her skin. There...there, Shahzad Khan is a tidal wave.

He helps her with her coat. Slips her sensible shoes from her feet. Strokes patient palms up her stocking-clad calves to her thighs, bare beneath the conservative skirt of her Democrat-blue dress. It's not a seduction. It's a comfort. Maybe a tease. He laughs as he unsnaps one garter and then the other. She leans forward, resting one hand on his shoulder and tangling the other in his hair to steady herself as he rolls her stockings down and off.

“What's so funny?”

“You. This. Thigh-highs under your suits. Like there's a whole other you hiding beneath the layers. Superwoman.”

He thinks she can leap tall buildings. That she's a woman of steel. “I know 93 percent of us did the work in 2016, but it’s not a black woman’s responsibility to save everyone,” she reminded him once. “Don’t put that burden on us.” “I know. But you save me every single day,” he told her. Lord, sometimes the naked adoration she sees in his eyes is humbling. Most days it's terrifying. In this moment, it's a balm to her soul. So is the kiss he presses just above the waistband of her silk underwear. And the kiss he bestows lower. His mouth is so sweet, so soft.

The first time he called her “Madam Vice President,” she knew. She knew he would be like this. On his knees before her. But she had to be persuaded. Wooed. It took him a year to get from outside her door to over the threshold. Countless bottles of water. Countless sweeps. Concerned looks from across the room. Reassuring smiles. So much trust offered, so much trust taken.

It took another year for her to kiss him. Hours after the State of the Union. After too many shots with POTUS, the Honorable Senator Corey from New York, and the Honorable Senator Warner from Massachusetts during a private drinking game to the Republican response. She'd mostly sobered up in the limo ride home. Mostly. But her detail—especially Shahzad—had kept a close eye just the same. It had been a thank-you kiss. That was all. Nothing her aunties or the pastor at her home church would’ve labeled “fast.” A quick brush of her lips against his stubbled cheek, because his firm grip was on her elbow and there was whiskey in her veins. She still remembers the sharp intake of his breath. The sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. It wasn’t wrong that flickered through her mind then. Or even right. Just what took you so long, Letty?

She’s been in service to her country for more than half her life. First as a lawyer and community organizer. Then two terms as congresswoman. Speaker of the House in her third term. She’s fought for education, for equality, for prison reform. But when POTUS called on her to be her running mate, she almost turned it down. “Two women on the ticket? After what happened in 2016? Are you high?” But what happened in 2016 was precisely why they won in a landslide. Precisely why she’s here at One Observatory Circle, in a suite of rooms previously occupied only by white men and their wives, with an Indian-American Muslim man ready to lay down his life and his love for her. What’s taken her so goddamn long?

“What do you need from me tonight?” The words are a low rumble, sending vibrations straight to her core. He hasn’t moved. Won’t until she tells him to. He’s happy to bow his head at her cunt like it’s his temple and worship like she’s a goddess.

“Everything,” she says without hesitation. “I need everything.”

His thumbs hook in the elastic at her hips and tug at her panties. She makes short work of her dress and her bra. They move from the sitting room to the bedroom, leaving pieces of his suit in their wake. Jacket, tie, pants. There’s no awkwardness as he undoes his shoulder holster, puts his piece on the side table and then doffs his shirt. This is who he is. This is who they are. This moment at the end of the latest in a long succession of even longer days is not stolen. It’s earned.

She is the most powerful woman he’s ever known. The most beautiful, too. He never thought he would get to touch her, much less serve her. It would be easy to say he fell in love with her while she was campaigning. Or even when they won and she stood there on that stage awash in triumph, confetti, and balloons. But Shahzad is not the kind of man who would knowingly compromise himself. He would've never accepted assignment to her detail, fearing his judgment clouded. No, he fell for her on a Tuesday when they were formally introduced. She shook his hand and shook his heart. And that he is vulnerable to her, for her, now...it only makes his judgment clearer. He will die before he lets anyone hurt Vice President Letitia Hughes. But insha'Allah he will also live to heal her. 

He joins her on the bed, mattress sinking slightly beneath his knees, and pulls her back flush against his chest. Lean on me, he urges with this one simple gesture. Let me carry the weight. Her shoulders are stiff under his lips and his hands, the muscles taut with tension. But she shivers when he kisses her nape and slowly, eventually, her body melts under his ministrations.

It's taken months, but he's learned how to please her, how to ease her. She craves touch. She deserves kindness. Warm embraces and bubble baths and massages. He offered to brush her hair once, which just earned him one of her gorgeously incredulous stares and a husky laugh. “I like your ambition, Agent, but you have not leveled up enough to handle a black woman’s hair.” She wears it cropped short now, the tight curls close to her skull. It suits her. Calls attention to her eyes and the smooth column of her throat. “Nothing for my enemies to grab in a fight,” she joked when the press made a huge deal out of the change.

Of course, it doesn’t stop those enemies from grasping at her just the same. She dons armor each day to do battle with a House and Senate divided, with diplomats and defense contractors. Beneath that armor, her dark brown skin is soft. Easily bruised. He called her Superwoman, but he knows she is not unbreakable. And he adores her because of everything she is—entirely and endlessly.

The White House’s first Iftar dinner in years was a joyous celebration of unity and faith and new beginnings. His mother, among the Muslim staffers’ family members invited to the feast, took one look at Madam Vice President and knew he was smitten. “Beta, what are you doing?” “Following my heart, Ammi.” “But…she is so old for you.” “Wasn’t Khadijah older than Muhammad?” He’d stumped her with that one. A small victory courtesy of all the Quran study he’d resented as a child. She’d glowered at him in that way that only desi mothers could but then sighed and patted his cheek. “Be careful. That is all I ask.”

He is careful. With Letty’s wants, with her hopes, with her dreams, with her life. There is no higher honor for him than upholding those things.

She turns just enough to meet him in a kiss. She's long since chewed off her lipstick, leaving her full mouth just faintly pink. He tastes her exhaustion and her need in turns. Bitter and sharp. He turns her the rest of the way, pulling her into his lap and hitching one thigh over his hip. It’s a cliché, but she’s like silk and steel, velvet and iron. And he’ll never get enough of that dichotomy. Of finding the tender spot behind her ear and stroking the heat of her cunt and snapping to order when she tells him what to do.  

Everything. She wants everything. He'll give her all he has. 

It can't be healthy, he thinks sometimes, to be so devoted to someone. But agents are required to undergo regular psychiatric evaluation and he's raised no red flags so far. It turns out that the desire to protect someone comes in handy when that's also your job description. But it isn't his job to hold her like this. It isn't his job to cradle her face in his palms and kiss her again and again. It isn't his job to dick into her inch by inch until he bottoms out and she hisses his name. “Shahzad.”

It's his calling.

She dated off and on while she served in Congress. Nothing serious, but it inevitably landed her in the D.C. gossip sheets. And when she went out with a CNN analyst for a few months, the news made it all the way to Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. Jack broke it off. He claimed he couldn't handle the scrutiny—despite all of his years as a hotshot talking head on TV. That he didn’t have to recuse himself from election coverage because of his personal life when she and POTUS announced their run…well, that was just a coincidence, right?

It's a little funny that a former military man fifteen years her junior is better equipped for the pressures of dating a politician. Not that what she and Shahzad have is as easy and uncomplicated as “dating.” He can't take her to dinner. Going to the movies means he sits three rows behind her with another agent. Instead, their entire relationship is conducted behind closed doors. A secret that feels dirty when it’s the furthest thing from.

He keeps a change of clothes in her closet. A toothbrush and shaving kit in her bathroom. But he's back at his post before breakfast. They never read the morning news together. Never linger in bed on Sundays before a lazy brunch. They don’t argue over the TV remote, or their favorite sports teams—not that the latter merits debate. Obviously, LeBron and the Cavs will always, always, be better than Steph Curry and Golden State.  

“You should marry me.” The words spill from her lips before she can think better of it.

He goes still. The weight of his head suddenly heavy on her breast. And then he looks up at her, chin propped on her sternum. “What?”

“You heard me.” She hears herself. Equal parts defensive and vulnerable. 

It's a lousy offer. She gets that. What 33-year-old man would want to quit his steady government job to be the Vice President's trophy husband? 

“Letty...” He sits up slowly, sheets bunching at his waist. “Think about what you're saying.”

She does. She has. Marriage is not something she takes lightly. But she fully understands that he may not be on the same page. “It's stupid, I know—”

“No! It's wonderful! It’s…amazing.” His cheeks go pink. He drags his hand through his hair. It's fucking adorable. And she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved by the reaction. Michael proposed when they were both 24. Dumbass 2Ls at Georgetown who didn’t know any better. She is not a pro at this sort of thing. But Shahzad’s model-perfect face is serious. He’s not done. His teeth worry his lower lip and he shakes his head.

“I'm me...and you're you. What will people say? Especially with the ‘24 run?”

Fuck. 2024. POTUS’ approval ratings are through the roof. She’s already announced her intention to run as an incumbent. A second term is practically a given. Unless Letty rocks the boat by marrying a member of her protection detail. A significantly younger, virile, Muslim, member of her protection detail. She can hear it now. Those shitbags from Fox News asking if she’ll convert. If she'll wear a burqa. 

Watch yourself, Letty girl. Mama loved Michael. Loved that big Methodist church wedding in Richmond. She didn’t live to see grandchildren. Michael didn’t live to father any. Letitia’s in perimenopause now, so continuing the family line is a moot point. But this is the first time…the first time in ten years that she has even considered marrying again. And she doesn’t give a good goddamn if they have the Chief Justice perform the ceremony or an imam. She just wants to hold this man’s hand in public. She wants to walk with him in the sunlight. She wants to shout him from the rooftops instead of keeping silent.

“What are people going to say?” she counters, sliding up to lean against the headboard. “Seven years ago, they elected a man who was married three times. No one did the math on him and Wife No. 3. No one questioned her past—and they shouldn’t have.” She doesn’t really care about anyone’s career in adult entertainment. If Shahzad told her he moonlighted as a stripper while he was in the Army, she wouldn’t blink. “So what if you’re a Millennial? It can only help our outreach with that demographic. So what if you’re Muslim? Indian? That can only help us internationally. You are not a liability to me or to POTUS.”

His eyebrows arch. “That’s a pretty mercenary assessment. And I expect no less from you,” he adds, his tone leaving no doubt that he’s impressed. “But let’s be realistic, Madam VP. You are so, so out of my league.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” The man who takes such good care of her, who sees to her every want and need, is talking about leagues? Please. She reaches for his hand, interlaces their fingers. His grip is so strong and so sure. She knows he’ll never let her go. Not willingly. “You made yourself indispensable to me, Agent Shahzad Ali Khan. You can’t un-ring that bell now. You can’t pretend I’m on some pedestal that you can’t reach. Because you reached me. You made this happen.”

He is the highlight of every hectic day, the bright spot in her jam-packed schedule. Like the Auden poem goes, he’s her North, her South, her East, her West. Her working week and her Sunday rest. She doesn’t want to consider 2024 without him. She doesn’t want to consider tomorrow without him. But maybe, just maybe, he wants more for himself.

Her stomach twists, but she makes herself say it. She hasn’t gotten this far in life by bending to cowardice. “Maybe you want to stay in the Service. Maybe you’ll want kids someday. It’s all right. I’m not going to order you, to force you, to be with me.” They’ve never called it “BDSM.” He doesn’t refer to her as “Mistress.” There are no contracts or safe words. Nothing that binds him to her will. “You’re free, Shahzad. You have no obligation to say ‘yes.’”

“No obligation?” He is a gentle man. Quiet. Intense. She’s only seen him angry a handful of times in three years. The emotion darkens his eyes, flushes his cheeks. His entire body vibrates like a lean, live, wire and he squeezes her hand hard enough to hurt—until he realizes what he’s doing and releases her entirely, scooting three feet back on the queen-sized mattress in abject horror. “I’m sorry. Fuck. I didn’t mean to—” He scrubs at his face. That earnest, handsome face that, just hours ago, was buried between her thighs. She tries to offer a soothing touch, a reassuring murmur, but he flinches away.

“Don’t you get it?” he demands. “This is not an obligation. You can’t force me to do anything. You never could. I am in this with my eyes wide open. I am in this with my whole heart. Letitia…Letty…I love you.”

It’s not news. She’s known how he felt for some time now. But hearing it…oh, hearing it is something transcendent. Angels singing and flowers blooming and warmth settling into her bones. This boy, this man, is in love with her. “Then why is marrying me such a bad idea?”

He bows his head in that penitent pose that’s become so dear to her. But the knot of his hands together betrays the conflict that he’s struggling to voice.

“Because you don’t love me.” It’s barely a whisper. “Not like that. And it’s okay. I never expected you to…I-I’m not your late husband. I can’t be what he was to you. I can’t give you the same things. You deserve those things. You deserve to be happy like that again. Especially if you’re going to be vice president for another four years. You deserve a real partner.”

Oh, Lord. “Baby, I know you’re not my late husband.” She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Michael Hughes was a Hampton poli-sci professor. A skinny-ass nerd who never held a gun in his life. Cancer took him during her first term in Congress and left emptiness in his wake. She loved him with every fiber of her being, but she’s never operated under the illusion that he and Shahzad could play similar roles in her life. She doesn’t know where he got that idea. Maybe those biographical specials they sometimes run about her on TV. The ones that tout her grand romance and her great tragedy as elements forging her into the woman she is today.

“I don’t need you to be anybody but you.” More importantly, “I do love you. Exactly like ‘that.’” Like frantic 4AM sex. Like long bubble baths. Like that bottle of water he always knows to get for her. Like an hour ago when he was deep inside her. Like right now, when he’s entirely too far away.

Hope glitters dark in his eyes. When he starts to speak, his voice is choked. “But Madam Vice—”

“Shush. Don’t start with any of that.”

Letty rises to her knees and crawls toward him. She pulls him close with her arms locked around the back of his neck. He looks at her like he’s been hit by a 2x4—a little bit stunned, a little bit stupid. For a smart man who aced all his classes at the academy, he’s remarkably slow on the uptake about this. “Listen to me, Agent Khan,” she says in that firm tone that never fails to command his attention and harden his cock. “Hear me.”

Her beautiful protector quickly gets with the program, gazing up at her as she settles on his lap and grinds against his erection. There is such emotion in his eyes. Such purity. Some would say it’s not manly, but those are people too obsessed with gender essentialism to see him for what he is: in turns kind and thoughtful and competent and menacing—and always real. Shahzad can take down a threat without breaking a sweat and coax down her walls, too. Even now, he’s soothing her, running his palms from her hips to her shoulders and back again. Thinking of her comfort, her security. “I am listening,” he assures. “I am hearing you. I just want you to be sure.”

“I would never have let you past the door if I wasn’t sure,” she points out. “You already are my partner.”

She is one of the most powerful people in the United States of America. While discreetly taking a lover can be overlooked, she cannot afford out-and-out mistakes. Not after the previous administration nearly drove the country into the ground. So, giving in to everything Shahzad had to offer was just as much about faith as it was about fulfilling her needs. Her inner circle is terribly small. POTUS, of course. And her staffers. Beyond that, there’s her girls, Ashleigh and Cherise, who she’s known since they were all baby Zetas at Howard in the ‘90s. A handful of friends she shared with Michael have stuck around through the years. And there’s the rotating pack of House-Senate drinking buddies—who are great for poker games, but not necessarily a go-to on personal matters. Letting a man in—letting him all the way in—was a huge decision.

Asking him to marry her is a comparatively easy one.

His mouth is hot on her neck. Against her collarbone and her chest and her puckered nipples. He kisses and kisses and kisses her, but doesn’t answer. Minutes go by. They stretch to what feels like hours of his lips and tongue and hands on her body. It’s only when his head is between her legs and he’s pleasuring her again, licking deep, that she feels the hum of one simple syllable. It’s a word spoken on the crest of her orgasm, just over the roaring of the blood in her ears.

It flips her inside out.

The day it changes again

It’s a day like no other. Well, perhaps one other. And it promises to last at least a week. January in Washington, D.C. is biting cold. Like the perpetual slap of her daddy’s Aqua Velva. Were it up to her, she’d be burrowed under a mound of blankets instead of standing on a dais in Burberry wool in front of thousands—and millions more watching on their devices at home. Justice Sotomayor seems to be on the same page. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes twinkling with “it’s too damn chilly” solidarity. They could’ve done this at the residence. There’s a precedent. Biden was sworn in at Observatory Circle in 2013. But POTUS put the kibosh on that idea from the get-go. “Letitia, we’ve earned this. And we are damn well going to make a show of it—together.”

She’s right, of course. They fought for this. They sacrificed for this. They did it not once but twice. So, it’s a thing. All of the pomp, all of the ceremony. John Legend sang the National Anthem to kick things off, primarily because asking Beyoncé twice in a row “would be seen as showing favoritism when so many in the industry supported this campaign.” End quote. Thank you, White House Chief of Staff. As soon as Letty does her part, all eyes will be on POTUS. So, she gets with the program, blocking out the crowd noise and the flashbulbs and everything but the feel of her right palm against the book cover and the sound of the associate justice’s voice ringing out clear as a bell. The first time, she was sworn in with the Bible. This time…this time she chose Octavia Butler’s Kindred. The media already has her statement on the “bold and controversial choice.” So that we never forget that past is prologue and remember that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

She said them four years ago, but the words of the oath feel different today. This time, they’re not a promise to fix what was broken—something that seemed so daunting, too big to accomplish. This time, they’re a vow to continue the work.

“I, Letitia Marie Hughes, do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

It goes by in a blur. A blink. And then she’s back in her chair as the main event gets underway. Another speech. The big swearing-in. It doesn’t get old. The responsibility. The fear. The knowledge that they have the power to shape this great nation. Superwomen. Leaping Capitol Hill in a single bound.

Her throat feels suddenly tight. Her hands, too, as they ball into fists on her lap. Her painstakingly perfect acrylics dig into her palms. Her aunts are in the audience in their best church hats. Ash and Cherise wouldn’t miss this for the world, and they’re both on the list for some of the inaugural balls, too. Daddy hasn’t been well enough to leave his long-term care facility for a long time, but she knows he and Mama are here with her in all the ways that count. This is for so many people who believed in her, who’ve made her who she is today.

Most of all, this is for him.

“I am in this with my eyes wide open. I am in this with my whole heart. I love you.”

The tears well in her eyes before she can stop them. She knows the pundits will say it’s because she’s so moved by her president and colleague’s stirring speech. The ones that skew right will talk about how it’s an unseemly sign of emotion and just another reason why electing two women again was a questionable decision—never mind the four-year questionable decision their side made. She’s supposed to exude grace and poise and control. She’s supposed to be unflappable. She usually excels at it. But not today. Not today, of all days.

Damn. Damn. Damn. It’s too much. The emotions are too big. Heating her blood, choking her. Just when her nails start to cut into her skin, there is a gentle tap on her wrist. And one murmured word.

“Drink.”

She accepts the already uncapped bottle of water and meets Shahzad's brilliant brown eyes with a shaky smile. Yes. This victory, this moment, is definitely for him. And for them. For their faith and allegiance to this union. Just six-months young. They faced it head-on. A mid-campaign announcement. A quick media blitz. The obligatory sit-down with 20/20. “No, I’m not converting…yes, I’m keeping my last name.” “Second Gentleman? I don’t mind it. I know where I’m first. Just as she’s first with me.” The wedding was a private interfaith affair, and they both agreed that the wedding night was the most memorable part.

None of it was easy, but it was worth it. This, right now, with his hand curling around hers and his thumb brushing across her wedding band, is worth it. He's long since been replaced on her protection detail, but he's still looking after her. He’ll always look out for her.

There are receptions. There are meetings. They make appearances at several inaugural balls. It’s a whirlwind of handshakes and back-slaps and nursing endless tumblers of club soda with white men forty years his senior. The same men who looked over him or past him when he wore a gun and a comm, when he was just deadly furniture in any given room. It’s surreal. But nothing’s quite as surreal as coming home afterward. Coming home together.

Other agents do the walk-throughs now. Men and women he trusts, has personally vetted, are the ones who rotate in and out of the rooms on the first floor—along with the rest of the security team. Shahzad gets to go straight to their suite, their bedroom, without anyone blinking an eye. Of course, he still checks it out, because some habits die hard. Pacing from the front rooms to her private sitting room to the en-suite and back. And he still helps her with her coat and her shoes. They’re four-inch heels that go perfectly with the ball gown that Ruth E. Carter, an award-winning costumer for film who seldom took personal commissions, designed exclusively for the inaugural festivities. For the festivities and for Madam VP.

She looked like a queen swathed in the yards of tangerine silk. She looks like a goddess stepping out of it. Standing in front of him wearing nothing but wisps of peach lingerie and gorgeous dark skin. How can he not take a supplicant’s position at her feet? How can he not offer her everything he has and everything he is? He is the luckiest man on Earth.

Letty grins, stopping in the middle of removing the enormous chandelier earrings loaned to her by Cartier. “You stare at me like you’re making love. You know that, right?”

“Because I am making love to you,” he confesses without hesitation. “With every look. Every breath. Every cell in my body.”

It should sound ridiculous. It should feel ridiculous. But he’s been nothing but honest with her from the beginning. Nothing but honest with himself. He was born to worship this phenomenal woman. Built to slide his hands around her waist and pull her close. Put on this planet to make her come. The first time they kissed—really kissed—blew his mind. And each kiss since then has done the same.

“What am I going to do with you?” She drops her earrings onto the night stand, just above the drawer where he still keeps his gun. It’s not his service pistol…except in service to her and her safety. “I thought marriage might take the romance right out of you,” she laughs. “But it really hasn’t.”

“Marriage didn’t change you at all,” he points out, sliding slowly up her body until they’re aligned chest to chest and thigh to thigh. “You are still the amazing, brilliant woman that I can’t take my eyes off of. Still out of my league.”

“It’s our league, baby. Yours and mine. You definitely belong in it.” She brushes the back of her hand against his jaw, stroking his beard—which he’s grown longer because she likes it that way and he doesn’t have to keep it trimmed per regulation. “Just like you belong here with me,” she adds in a hot whisper across his skin. “At my feet. In my arms. In our bed.”

His very existence is political. Their marriage was an act of joyous resistance. But this…? Arching into her lips, backing up with her until they fall onto the mattress, sprawling beneath her? This is just for them. And he will never get tired of it. It’s nearly 2AM. They’re both exhausted and overstimulated and over-caffeinated. But his dick is ready to go, rock-hard and rubbing on her hip before she takes him in hand and positions him right where he needs to be…where she’s slick and hot and open.

She braces her palms on his chest and rides him slow, rolling into him, rocking their pelvises together. The three-times-a-week early morning Pilates sessions she has with POTUS and a select group of staffers have definitely paid off…because she lifts herself all the way up off him and slams back down with a gymnast’s grace, and it’s so fucking hot. So fucking tight. It’s the perfect torture, the perfect reward.

“You’ve been such a good boy,” she says to hammer that lesson home. She’s breathless, voice high and keening, each silken compliment coming out on a gasp, but she hasn’t lost one ounce of control. “So good to me. So good for me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you today.”

He’s not sure what he would’ve done without her five years ago. Where he would even be now. He is richer for knowing her. Smarter, happier, more loved. And so well fucked. It blows his mind sometimes, how good the sex is. How good everything is. The way she whispers his name. How she scrapes her nails across his abdomen before she reaches down below where they’re joined and cups his balls. She squeezes just hard enough to wreck him.

The people outside this suite might call him the Second Gentleman, but tonight Madam Vice President lets him come first.

She wakes up at 5AM without an alarm, her body clock perfectly attuned to her hours after all this time. Shahzad is still asleep, sprawled on his stomach, strands of his thick dark hair obscuring his face. He looks like a work of art, sculpted from stone or marble. Maybe she’ll commission a piece for her vice-presidential library or museum. Second Gentleman in Repose. There are already more than a dozen alerts on her cell. Meeting reminders. A few party-hat and eggplant emoji from her girls. Mostly texts from aides. The work never ends. She knew that going into this. She’s still not sure he does.

They like to pretend their marriage caused no major ripples. Stick to the PR line. But, of course, it made ripples. Not the least of which cascaded across their own families. Shahzad got a front-row seat to the anti-blackness of some of his uncles, aunts and cousins. He pushed back—even shoved—at every single instance. Burned some bridges to the ground. Needless to say, there are some folks who will never be inviting them over for Eid. Meanwhile, her aunties were none-too-thrilled with her marrying “a boy barely out of diapers—and an Indian, to boot!” Couldn’t she have found another perfect black man like Michael? Some surprise anti-Muslim rhetoric had cropped up, too, thanks to all the hoopla stirred up by the previous regime’s travel bans and blustering. “Auntie Phyllis, don’t start with that. How many brothers did you know in the Nation back in the day?” And then they had to deal with the press, the public, the constant speculation. The caustic comments from both sides of the political divide. Hell, her own ex lobbed one hell of a misogynistic grenade during his hour-long weekly masturbation, wondering if Shahzad was just a male version of the last FLOTUS—“a gold-digger who signed up for more than they bargained for.”

He’d laughed, flopping into a wing chair and shaking his head as the curated footage wound down. “That’s ridiculous. If you had any gold, I would’ve found it by now.”

That’s certainly true. He’s found everything she guarded so closely, unlocked all of her treasures and taken over their care. But she can’t argue with the second part of Jack’s vicious volley. Her painfully young and brash husband, her savior and her submissive, cannot possibly understand the magnitude of what he took on when they wed. Yes, he faced challenges in the armed forces. And his work in the Secret Service was exemplary. But this…5AM and go-time…cleaning up messes made more than eight years ago…it’s something so far beyond a challenge, requiring so much more than ‘exemplary.’

You know how it is, Letty girl. You have to be twice as good to get half as far. It’s four times as good now. That’s how high the stakes are. Nearly astronomical. If POTUS fucks up, if she fucks up, it reflects on women everywhere. And now Shahzad has that responsibility, too. Second Gentleman, but First Muslim. The poster boy. She knows he got a taste of it when he joined the Secret Service and again when he joined her detail, but this is the big leagues. This is the big stage. Just like the one she stood on less than 24 hours before.

And it accepts no distractions, no delays. Ugh. Letitia slips out of bed, though it’s the last thing she wants to do. Her man stirs just seconds later, in sync with her if not the clock. It’s not long till dawn. Fajr prayers would be in order if he actually prayed five times a day. He tries to manage three—midday, afternoon and sunset—now that he’s no longer on her protection rotation, and frequently calls his mother to apologize. The one time she listened in via speakerphone, Letty nearly coughed up a lung from laughing. “You think I don’t know? I raised you. I know you are more Shahrukh Khan than Muhammad.” Aliya Khan is a remarkable woman. It’s no wonder she raised a remarkable son. A good man.

Lord, she hopes he’s up for this. She hopes she’s up for this. This journey that they’re on together. Four years and beyond. Not just their relationship, but this whole thing. Because there’s an itch in the back of her mind. A sibilant suggestion that lives in her ear canal. 2028. Or 2032. You can do it, Letty girl. She could headline the ticket. Ask Senator Corey to be her running mate. Black POTUS. Black VP. America might just lose its goddamn mind. But there’s just as much hope that the country will rise to the occasion. That it will embrace the possibility, this gorgeous reality of a multicultural nation, and thrive. She has to cling to that. Otherwise, why is she even here? Not to cut ribbons and shake hands and wait for the president to die, that’s for sure.

“I greatly appreciate that you’re not plotting my demise,” she can imagine POTUS saying in that bone-dry patrician tone that comes from growing up well-to-do and white. And she can also imagine the endorsement for her own run. The speeches on the campaign trail. The magnitude of it all. What she sees most clearly, though, is former agent Shahzad Ali Khan by her side. If he wants to be there.

“It’s too early for you to be carrying so much. You haven’t even had coffee.”

She knows without looking that he’s been tracking her progress around the suite. Watching her untie her silk head wrap and slip into her robe before she thumbs through her messages. Taking in how her shoulders slump. The appearance of sleep is just that—an illusion masking alertness. And the weight of his attention balances out the weight of her duties. His gaze is like a balm, his focus a caress. He shifts in the sheets, sitting up and then swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“We begin as we mean to go on,” she reminds him. “If I don’t carry it now, I’m not picking it up.”

He helps her shoulder the weight, of course. Making sure she’s hydrated and fed and rested and loved. From the very start. He began with her as he meant to go on. She sees that care in his eyes as he strides across the room. And then, because she’s only human, she drops her gaze to the rest of him. To his beautiful body. It’s all hers. Every angle. Every line. The curve of his thick cock against his thigh. These are the gifts he’s given her without hesitation.

She’s always known her worth. Mama and Daddy instilled that pride and confidence in her. She’s never needed a man to validate her. Not Michael, not Shahzad. Not lobbyists or voters. But being respected, being cherished, is a blessing she’ll never turn down. Just like she won’t turn down his arms slipping around her from behind. Or the soft bristles of his beard rasping against her jaw as he kisses her ear, her temple and her throat.

“Good morning, Madam VP,” he murmurs, with a husky note that can only be characterized as suggestive.

“Good morning to you, too, husband.”

The day ahead of her will last a month. Interminable meetings. Endless hours spent in circles, going nowhere. So Letitia Marie Hughes, second-time Vice President of the United States, commandeers fifteen minutes of personal time.

They brush their teeth at the side-by-side sinks in the lavish en suite, and then they fall back into bed. Okay, not precisely bed. It’s the counter. Then the wall. The back of the bathroom door. Clinging to the reinforced clothing bar as he grasps her hips and plunges up into her again and again and again. Some say she’s too young to help run a country…they’d also say she’s too old to be having this kind of sex. They’d be wrong on both counts. Because she is the perfect age for the responsibility and for the joy. For the security of this partnership and the sensuality of Shahzad’s face gleaming with sweat, his muscles rippling with effort.

“I love you,” he tells her with each thrust. With each teasing rub of his beard against her breast. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I believe in you, he means. I will fight for you, he promises. I won’t ever leave your side.

2032. It’s just around the corner. A hop, skip and a jump. It’ll be here before they know it. Letty will tell him of her intention to run when she’s ready. She will lay out her carefully plotted plans for their future. Perhaps via Powerpoint presentation. Perhaps via whimsical stick-figure. And her doubts of his readiness, her fears of just a few minutes before, are of no consequence. She knows exactly how he’ll respond. He’ll kneel at her feet, and he will say he loves her, he loves her, he loves her.

I believe in you. I will fight for you. I won’t ever leave your side. We’ve got this.

They’ve got this. They’ve got this. Breaths in sync. Hearts beating as one. Chasing the peak and finding it together. This fuck is theirs for the taking. This world is theirs for the taking. They are partners on every level. Cellular. Physical. Metaphysical. And most assuredly political.

Someday soon, she’s going to announce her candidacy for President. She’s going to win. She’s going to thrive. And so will the nation. Because one of the key lessons she’s learned from the past four years—from this man in her arms—is that giving yourself to a cause that means everything to you…is nothing short of an act of love.