Chapter Nineteen
Like he did at the Florida house, Chris prowls through my townhouse, even checking doors and windows. I watch him, fascinated by this work side of him.
“What?” he asks when I outright laugh at him when he finishes.
“Nothing.”
“No, what was that laugh for?”
I shrug. “Do you even realize you do that?”
His brow furrows. “Do what?”
“Exactly my point. You basically searched my house and memorized my kitchen when you and Shae showed up in Florida. And you just did it again now.”
“Well, for starters, she’s a senator, and I do have a responsibility for her safety when she’s with me, even unofficially. Secondly, I was planning on cooking you dinner, so I wanted to know what you had on hand.”
“And now?”
“I want to make sure you’re safe. Get used to it, baby. It’s my job.”
“I actually need to talk to Lauren. Today,” I add. “I can’t have this news break and she hears it from third-parties.” I know she’s in town because I texted her I was flying back to DC today, but to please keep that quiet. I know she will.
Something flashes across his features before he schools his expression. “She can come over here this afternoon.”
I’m joking, playing around as I pull him in close. “Can’t wait to introduce you as my boyfriend. I—”
“You aren’t. You can’t.”
“Wait, what? She won’t tell anyone.”
Full-on Sir mode—engaged. “No.”
“Chris, she knows I’m gay. The night of my meltdown, I told her—”
“I said no, Kevin. You don’t tell anyone. Either you trust me, or you don’t.”
I don’t understand his reaction. “I have way more to lose than you do.”
“You do this my way. No one knows anything about us except we’re good friends and now roommates. You tell Lauren that. And that’s all.”
The longer I stand there, the more I realize that while yes, I love this man, I’ve fantasized about him, and I have agreed to submit to him—I really don’t…know him.
“What if I don’t agree to that?” I finally ask.
He shrugs. “Don’t make me go there, Kev.”
Cold dread fills me. “You’d release the pictures of me?”
He walks over to me and grabs me by the shoulders, fingers digging in hard. “All you have to do is what I tell you to do. Is that so difficult? All anyone but the three of us needs to know is that you work for Shae, and you’re friends and roommates with me because it’s a cut in pay and you have to save your money.”
“And you still see Shae on the side. I don’t get any say in this one thing? That I tell her?”
“No, you don’t. You knew that when you agreed to this.”
I knew it, sure, but now that we’re in DC and the reality is hitting me in the balls…I’m not so sure how good I am with sharing him with Shae.
He releases me. “Set up the meeting,” he quietly says. “Here.”
“What if I want to see her alone?”
“That’s not an option right now. This is going to get really old really fast for both of us if you don’t learn to stop questioning me.”
“How am I supposed to do my job if I have to clear everything through you?”
“You don’t. Your job is your job. But outside of work? You are mine. Period. There is no negotiating on this, Kev.”
I blink first. I’m always going to blink first, and I know it.
And he knows it.
“Well?” he asks.
Like that, I’m back in his arms and he’s kissing me, and I can’t even remember why I was upset. “My good boy,” he softly says. “Look at that, baby, how easy that was, hmm? Just give me what I want and I promise I’ll take care of you.”
Fuuuuuck. My cock throbs in my jeans.
I see the sadist return to his expression, his gaze narrowing as he reaches down and palms my bulge. “Call her,” he softly says. “Call Lauren right now and set up the meeting, here, this afternoon. Tell her you need to talk to her.”
With trembling fingers I dig my phone out of my pocket and call up her number from my contacts.
He sinks to his knees with the most evil smile I’ve ever seen a human being wear and deftly unfastens my belt and jeans.
As Lauren answers the call, my cock disappears to the balls inside Chris’ mouth.
“Hey, sweetie,” she says when she answers.
I soft squeak escapes me. I have to swallow before I can speak. “H-hey, Laur.”
“How you doing?”
Chris pulls back to the head and swirls his tongue around it before deep-throating me again, his eyes burning holes through me.
“I-I’m o-okay.”
“You don’t sound okay.”
I clear my throat. “Sorry, dry th-throat from the flight.” The evil sadist slowly pulls off to the head again, teasing me with his tongue. “Listen, can you stop by on your way home today so we can talk?”
“Yeah, sure. Want me to grab Orin’s so we can eat?” I know he can hear her because the townhouse is quiet and he’s right freaking there, sucking my cock.
He gives me a little shake of his head without dislodging my cock from his mouth.
“No thanks, maybe another night.”
“What’d you want to talk about?”
“I—” I have to swallow back the moan as his tongue traces the tip of my cock, flicking along the slit “I have some news I want you to hear first. I got a job.”
“Really? That’s great! Where, down in Florida?”
“No, here in DC. Look, I need to run, text me when you’re on the way, okay?”
“Sure, hon. Should be there in about an hour. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” I feel a little bit of satisfaction at the thunderclouds that appear in Christopher’s gaze at hearing that. He sucks, hard, and I barely get the end button thumbed when my balls tighten and I spill into his mouth with a moan.
He stands up and kisses me, a tight grip on the back of my neck to hold me in place and his tongue and mouth tasting like me.
“We need to talk about that, boy.”
Seems the sadist isn’t as tough as he might try to make me think he is. “She’s my best friend. I love her. She knows I’m gay now. She came over the night of my meltdown to be with me. You should be thankful she cares about me.”
Some of the tension eases from his expression, which still remains guarded. “Friends are fine. But you can’t tell her about us.”
“Says the man who just sucked my c—”
Without knowing how, I suddenly find myself bent over the back of the couch. He roughly shoves my head down into the cushions with one hand while yanking my jeans down with the other. A lubed finger roughly enters me—When the hell did he grab lube? Fuck, the man is tricky.—then two, scissoring inside of me, followed by his cock shoving home.
“Says the man who owns this fucking boy,” he growls. “That’s who.” The hand on the back of my head disappears, but he grabs my left arm and twists it up, almost to the point of pain, and I’m standing on my toes trying to ease the pressure. Now his weight pins me to the couch as he fucks me. “Who owns you?”
From how hard my cock is again, I think the answer is obvious. “You do, Sir.”
“Who owns this ass?”
“Sir does.”
He delivers a stinging slap over the marks he put there last night. “I’m trying to be a nice guy here, Kev.” There’s a needy edge to his gravelly tone. “But I won’t tolerate you getting mouthy with me. I don’t care if I have to be nice and sweet-talk you into submission, or I have to show you the fucking sadist Shae loves and I fuck and beat obedience into your ass, but you will obey me.”
He wrenches my arm up a hair more, the bad kind of pain balancing with the good kind of pain, all of that tempered by the fact that his cock is hitting the perfect spot inside me with every thrust.
“You told me you’re okay with me taking what I want from you, boy.”
I…holy shit, even though I just came, there’s a damn good chance he might literally fuck another one out of me like this.
“Y-yes, Sir!” Up on my toes like this, I can’t really move with him.
“Do I have your full attention now, boy?”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Good.” The pressure eases off my arm, but he doesn’t release it. I feel him reach under me, and he laughs when his fingers close around my cock and balls and he feels how hard I am. “The boy likes Sir taking him in hand, hmm?”
“I haven’t had sex with anyone but you since I divorced Lauren, Sir. I have a few years to make up for.”
I’m not expecting it when he releases my arm and his weight disappears. My heels once again make contact with the floor when he wraps his other arm around me and pulls me up, my back against his chest. Now his hand slides up and grips the front of my throat, not tight enough to choke off my air, but it’s not a friendly grip, either. The other hand is still holding my cock and balls—squeezing them, to be accurate. Not hard, but enough to get my attention.
His voice growls in my left ear. “Any time I hear you tell her you love her, I’m going to reclaim this ass in whatever way I see fit as soon as possible after the fact. That could mean fun for you or fun for me, depending on my mood. This just as easily could’ve been twenty cane strokes across that gorgeous ass of yours, baby. Understand?”
I cling to his arm, my brain buzzing with that same, sweet noise I first heard that week so long ago, and gladly became reacquainted with over the past two weeks.
No matter what, yeah, I want this.
Part of me needs and craves it.
“Yes, Sir.”
He bends me over the couch again. This time, he lets me brace my hands on the back. His hands move to my hips and he starts to plow me.
“Hold it, boy. You’re not allowed to come right now.”
I groan. “Goddammit!”
Another stinging slap lands across my ass and that doesn’t help me hold back, because I realize that over the last two weeks he’s quickly reprogrammed my body so all those dark and delicious things I was denied for so long make me hard and needy.
“Be my good boy,” he orders.
I whine, because of course I will.
He doesn’t hold back, quickly coming and burying himself deep inside me. He folds his body over me and rests his chin on my shoulder. “I like it when you fight me, boy.” He straightens and pulls out, delivering another slap to my ass. “But only so far. Zip up. You can clean up after you talk to her. That load stays right where I put it until then.”
“What?” But he’s already heading upstairs without even bothering to tuck himself in.
“You heard me,” he calls back.
It’s not helping that my cock is once again fully stiff and leaking.
I stare down at it. “You’re a fucking traitor,” I mutter as I carefully tuck it back into my jeans.
* * * *
Lauren texts me when she’s on her way. She usually takes a cab or an Uber home from work. Like me, she doesn’t have a car here in the city, because it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
She lets herself in when she arrives, because I told her to in text.
What I didn’t tell her about was Chris.
“Hey, who’s parked in front of your—hellooo?”
I make it out of the kitchen to see Lauren pull up short when she spots Chris sitting on my couch.
He stands, smiling. “Hello.”
Lauren’s wearing a confused smile, and from the way her head’s cocked as she reaches for a hug from me, I can see she’s already come to a perfectly natural and accurate conclusion, even though I have to omit some of the truth.
“Lauren, honey, this is Christopher Bruunt. Chris, Lauren Baltazar, my best friend.”
“And his ex-wife.” She shakes with him. “Nice to meet you, Chris.”
“Nice to meet you, too, ma’am.”
Her gaze narrows. “You look familiar.” I start to panic. “Wait, you were lead agent for Vice-President Jackson’s Korean trip last year. I remember you.”
He smiles, cool as ice. “Yes, ma’am. That was me.”
This is news to me.
Lauren turns back to me. “Is he why you wanted to talk in person?” With the arched eyebrow and her playful tone, I can see where this is going.
“We’ll be right back,” I tell Chris. I grab Lauren’s hand and lead her upstairs to my bedroom, where I close the door behind us.
“Oh, my god!” she whispers. “Kev, he’s gor—”
“A friend,” I interrupt. Which is technically the truth, although not all the truth. “And not really why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Huh?”
I lead her to the end of the bed to sit there, and I’m keenly aware of the state of affairs down there as I do. Fortunately, when I checked in the mirror a few minutes before her arrival, I didn’t have a wet spot on my ass.
I kiss her hands and tuck them against my chest. “I have a new job.”
“So tell me about it! Is it for an Internet channel or something?”
I shake my head. “No.” There’s no way into this except to rip the bandage off. “I’m campaign manager for Senator Samuels’ presidential run.”
She squints at me, blinking, her brow all furrowed and scrunched in that adorable way she has. “Waaaait…whut?”
“Senator ShaeLynn Samuels. She hired me to be her campaign manager. When I was in Florida, she approached me about heading up her run. And, this part keep quiet until she announces it, she’s going to name me chief of staff if she wins.”
Lauren jumps to her feet, yanking her hands free. “You’re going to run a Democrat’s campaign?”
“It’s a job. It’s a two-year job, for starters.”
“No, Kev.” She crosses the room, looking out the windows. “A job is being a US correspondent for BBC America, or going to work for BuzzFeed, or becoming a WaPo columnist. Running a campaign is politics. And you are not a politician!”
I stand and follow her. I knew she’d need a little adjustment, which is why I wanted to do this in private, not at a restaurant or somewhere public. “Are you more upset that I’m working for a politician, or that she’s a Democrat?”
“Yes!” She turns on me. “Kev, what are you doing? I told you, if money’s an issue, I’ll help you out.”
I recapture her hands and tug her close again. “This is a done deal, honey. I want to do this.”
“But a Democrat? Really?”
“She’s hawkish. You yourself have said it. Is she my dream candidate? No, but she’s not a Freedom Caucus asshole, either. I already warned her I’m not going to hold back when I think she’s wrong, and I won’t let her tell empty lies just to win votes or play to the base.”
Well, I warned Christopher, and he already told me I’d be allowed to run the campaign however I saw fit, as long as I was putting in my best effort and not trying to sabotage it.
Lauren’s not yet convinced. “She tried to squelch the final report on the Jackson Committee.”
“And we both know it was proven that thirty documents provided to the committee were falsified, and the committee had to be reconvened and the report amended. She said all along she had severe issues with the provenance of those documents, and everyone laughed at her, but she turned out to be correct. So don’t go there. I was the first on the network to issue a correction when that came out, and I caught a ration of shit about it from viewers until even more proof emerged that yeah, she was right.”
She stares at me for a long moment. “You going to the other team now?”
“No, I’m still a Republican. But you and I have both voted D before.”
“Shh!” But she finally smiles. “You want to get me burned at the stake?”
“I want to do this.” That is the truth. The more I think about this…the more I want to do it. it’ll enrage Dad, which is always a bonus. If I can actually get her to the White House?
Holy shit, he might stroke out. That’s a win, in my book.
She eyes me. “Chief of staff, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you know about being chief of staff?”
“Uh, not to let POTUS record shit, not to let them sell arms to Iran, not to cover up for people involved in domestic abuse charges, and don’t do cocaine at Studio 54 with the press secretary.”
That gets a full-on belly laugh from her. She hugs me. “Shit, this could get serious, huh?”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“You let her try any post-truth bullshit, I’ll burn you and her to the ground.”
“Come on, you know me better than that.” I look down into her face. “I want to try this. I could do some amazing good.”
“Worst job in Washington. Isn’t that what Baker said?”
I smile. “I think he also said it was the second most powerful job.”
She pokes me in the stomach. “Think I’ll be able to get press credentials? Deep background?”
“Like you want to do stand-ups in the rain under an umbrella. You have a studio job.”
“Yeah, but I’d go to the White House if you were there.”
I stare into her hazel eyes. “Life’s going to get crazy for me.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m radioactive right now. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She rests her head against me, and I close my eyes and remember all the fun we’ve had together in twenty years as friends.
It’s not her fault she’s not Chris. It never was.
“Love you,” she says.
“Love you, too.” I rub my chin in her hair. “I don’t expect you to softball me, either. I won’t lie to you about stuff to try to manipulate you. But we’ll have to be careful about how we’re seen in public for a while.”
“Probably.” She sniffles. “They gave me your office.”
“Oooh, lucky girl. Enjoy the tinted windows.”
“I know. I always envied that.” I always thought it was unfair I made more than her when she was just as good of a journalist as I was. But she was a woman, and another of FNB’s shortcomings is a pay discrepancy. She got a bump her last contract renewal, but she still made less than I was.
And the male talent tend to get better office digs. It wasn’t uncommon for me to come in to work and find her using my office because she couldn’t hardly work in hers due to sun glare, despite repeated requests for a fix other than taping craft paper in the window, which then made it dark as hell inside. I asked for heavy tint for my office windows, and had it three days later. I gave her keys to my office, just like to my house, so she could work there.
“Sooo…” She looks up. “How does Cutie McBigGuns downstairs play into things?”
“Well, I’m going to be taking a massive pay cut. I’m going to sell this place. Chris offered to let me stay at his place, not that I’ll be in DC much during the campaign.” The excuse comes to me easily. “As you know, he’s Secret Service, so he’ll be on the road a lot during campaign season, too. It helps him out with bills, helps me out with expenses, and means I don’t have to worry about upkeep on this place.”
“You could move in with me.”
I slowly shake my head. “I can’t do that, honey, and you know why.” She still lives in the townhouse we used to share. “Too much conflict of interest for both of us.” I smile. “We can revisit that after the election, if you still want to be seen with me then.”
She sticks her tongue out at me. “Democrat, huh? Phhhpt.”
I tickle her, loving her laugh, missing this part of our lives together. When I look back with an honest eye, I pulled away from her more than she did me. Work was a legitimate excuse, sure, but it allowed me to hide from her and avoid the question of sex.
That wasn’t fair to her.
Once we’re back downstairs, Chris stands.
“I need to get me an Uber,” she says, pulling her phone out.
“I can drive you, Ms. Baltazar,” he says with a panty-melting smile, if ever there was one.
Huh? Chris just put a damn chicken in the oven before she arrived. One of his stated goals for our relationship is to teach me how to cook something besides ramen noodle packs and hard-boiled eggs.
Lauren smiles at him in a way that sends a sharp and jagged lance through my balls, and not in a fun way. “Thank you, Special Agent Bruunt. I appreciate that.”
“Please, call me Chris.” He pulls his keys from his pocket and heads for the door.
Lauren leans in and kisses me. “Love you.”
“Love you,” I say automatically, because of course I do.
My flash of satisfaction over the storms in his gaze is then eclipsed by the sadist one-upping me. He opens the front door for Lauren, and rests his hand in the small of her back while flashing her a winning smile that hardens my cock. “After you, ma’am.”
She giggles.
Shit, I know that giggle, that’s her flirting giggle. “Call me Lauren.”
His smile widens. “Lauren.” He glances back at me after she steps through, his gaze narrowing. “I’ll be back. Take the chicken out when the timer goes off.” He blows me a kiss Lauren can’t see.
And they’re gone.
I’m left standing there wondering what the hell just happened, a chicken I have no clue what the fuck to do with after it comes out of the oven…and a growing cum puddle in my jeans.
Motherfucker.