I’m no longer allowed to carry a gun, and that leaves me feeling naked and unable to protect him.
Once we’re safely locked inside the townhouse, I drop the duffel bag I brought with me and open my arms to him. He practically falls into my embrace and starts sobbing, Prophet is gone now, leaving my boy in residence.
It breaks my heart, and that’s tough to do because I’m a pretty stony bastard.
“Shh, boy. It’s okay. I’m here.” I take off his glasses and the White House ID name badge and set them on the end table by the couch. Then I help him slide off his denim jacket, and peel his Tampa Bay Lightning T-shirt off him.
Honestly? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him downstairs at the White House and him not be dressed in business casual, at the very least. When he’s up in the residence, sure, that’s different.
I pull him into my arms again and hold him, my hands against his warm flesh.
It kills me I can’t snap my fingers and fix this for him.
All I can do is try to help him through it. We slowly sway, dancing to music we can’t hear, while I wait for him to relax a little more. I feel him still trying to let go of “Sir mode” from being with Shae, and I get it.
It’s hard to step between worlds, especially when your own soul is so thin you’re not sure you might disappear between the doorways and never return.
Prophet is amazing. I’m not exaggerating when I say Kev got Shae elected. He’s too modest—he absolutely is why she’s in the White House. His cunning and political knowledge and his ability to read polls helped us easily trounce our competition.
Lauren once told me that when they worked for the network, Kev was extremely intense about work, a perfectionist. Much the man who is now chief of staff.
But that’s not my boy.
The boy I knew and wanted to nurture was lost and caught between trying to earn his father’s love and approval and pretending he was someone he wasn’t so he didn’t heap condemnation on himself or hurt Lauren.
My boy is gentle and sweet and wants nothing more than to hear he’s my good boy, and feel me stroke his head. He likes having his ass spanked, but he doesn’t need the raw, fiery passion of the man Shae likes to call the sadist.
Prophet, however, is a sadist, a perfectionist, a taskmaster of himself and everyone around him, including Shae.
I reach down and unfasten his belt and jeans and ease them down and off him. I kneel, which allows me to remove his shoes and socks, until he’s standing naked before me.
I once again pull him into my arms, breathing with him, complete acceptance.
Because that’s what the boy needs from me most of all—to feel wanted, loved, and accepted for who he is, the way he is.
I rub my face against his hair and nuzzle his ear. “My very good boy.”
I love that gooseflesh still ripples across his body when I say that.
We stand there until he finally calms and is fully with me again and I know it’s boy, not Sir, not Kev, not Prophet. Taking his hand, I lead him upstairs to our bedroom. At some point, the three of us are going to buy a house together in this area, so the kids can continue to go to school where they are now. We need to wait until after the election, though. Once Shae’s out of office, the three of us are going to live together full-time again, raise the kids, and love each other.
That’s my greatest dream.
In our bed and with me still fully dressed, I lay him down and stretch out on top of him. I hold his wrists over his head, pressed against the mattress, while I slant my lips over his for a sweet, gentle kiss.
Shae wants to be pounded into the mattress to shut her brain off.
Kev needs to focus on me and what I’m doing, to feel grounded in the moment.
What he and I have is more emotionally intense for both of us, though.
Slowly, I kiss my way down his body, over his chest, and abs, stroking him with my hands while his remain over his head. I smell Shae on him and I’m not sure if I should punish or praise my girl for it. But his cock isn’t nearly as hard as it would be if she hadn’t ridden him already.
I bend my head to it and lick, tease, taste.
Yep, my girl was definitely here.
It takes me a little while, but I finally coax a little interest out of him. Only then do I sit up and remove my shirt, my jeans. He squirms on the bed, his hands still where I put them.
When he’s like this, it’s almost as if invisible handcuffs bind him. It’s breathtaking.
And he’s mine.
I reach for the nightstand and get a condom and the lube. Seconds later, I’m sliding inside him, watching his face, the way his lower lip catches under his teeth as I fill him.
Then I can slip my hands under his shoulders and hold on, take my time. His arms wrap around me, and now he comes alive. I feel his hands, his fingers exploring everywhere, along my back, my ass, trying to urge me faster, but not tonight.
Not with him.
I drag it out, because he knows what I want and that I’m a very patient man when the mood calls for it.
Between us, his cock is completely hard again now, and he’s spilling pre-cum on both of us. Every stroke I take milks more from him and makes him beg even harder for release, relief, permission.
I nuzzle my face against the side of his neck and inhale, smelling Shae’s shampoo from where her head was tucked there earlier. “Who’s my good boy?”
“Me, Sir.”
“Then come how you know I want you to.”
I hiss as nails dig into my ass, making my cock twitch inside him, but still I maintain my long, slow rhythm. Not that he’s been in the mood to lately, but he’s not allowed to masturbate. That’s been a rule for a while now. He can ask me, or he can go Sir on Shae—and I think that’s where my problem now lays.
I told Shae that all Kev knows how to do now is to be Sir to her, to try to fix and love her the way I’m trying to fix and love him. He works with her at a very intense job, spends a good chunk of his day with her. I should have anticipated that he’d pour too much of himself into her at his own expense, but yes, I failed.
I don’t have a “sub” mode the way Kev and Shae do. I didn’t even anticipate Shae’s sub mode coming out the way it did with Kev—another failure on my part. With Kev, her sub mode is definitely full-time, even at work, and even though no one else except myself and Kev know it. With me, she takes the sadist out for play and then puts him back, end of story. She submits to me when she wants to, yes, but she’s not my slave the way she is Kev’s.
The way Kev is mine.
It takes him a while, but the climb is so much sweeter for it. I feel him tremble, tensing, rocking with me and trying to urge me faster with his body. That’s when I change my rhythm, fast, hard, deep thrusts in and slow, teasing drags out until just the head remains within him, over and over with every stroke hitting that sweet spot just right, until he’s there.
His body clenches around my cock, spasming, and I race to finish with him while, between us, he spills, hot and sticky, and I silently gloat.
One thing Shae can’t do for him.
In this way, she can’t claim him.
In this way, I will always own him.
I kiss him as he cries, because he always cries like this, from doing this exact thing together. I asked him why once, and he honestly didn’t know. It was relief, pure pleasure, like for a brief moment he felt good enough and that nothing else mattered.
So now it’s my favorite thing with him.
Sometimes he can come like this with Shae in bed with us, but most of those times when I try he can’t quite get over. I think with her present Sir mode is too close to the surface and won’t let him relinquish all control.
In those times, I grab the girl’s head and make her suck his cock to help finish him off while I fuck him.
Only once he’s quieted again do I leave our bed, clean up, and bring a warm, damp washcloth for him. Then I set my alarm and tuck him against me to take a short n
ap with him.
He won’t awaken when I leave. He’s too exhausted, too spent, and with two orgasms for the night, he’s too come-drunk now.
Dammit, Shae.
She’s fucking POTUS. She needs to get her shit together. Except I realize I’m responsible for this in the first place, which is why I can’t say that to her.
I’m a hard-hearted bastard, but I’m not clueless.
But I need to figure out how to get her to quit leaning on him so much right now, because he can’t even stand on his own.
Is it horrible of me to hope she loses the election?
I thought about “accidentally” outing us, because that’s the only damn thing that will make her lose at this point, especially after Lauren’s funeral. But I won’t do that to Kev, or the kids, or even to Shae.
I need to knuckle under and see if I can’t figure out a way to help Shae get through this without Kev, at least for a few days. Because my boy is hurting, and that’s something I don’t do well with.
At all.
It makes me want to hurt someone, and I don’t want Shae to be my target.
Chapter Two
When I first met Senator ShaeLynn Samuels, I had no clue what direction my life would take, or the doors she’d open for me.
I had no idea I’d fall in love with her after helping her concoct what I thought was, at first, a crazy, reckless scheme to get her elected. But I was close to the end of my first career in the Secret Service, so as long as I could hold on for that, I was willing to give this a shot. For shits and giggles, if nothing else.
Find her a campaign manager and chief of staff, and then marry her once I hit retirement and help get her elected?
A lot of ifs in that plan.
Honestly? Before I really got to know Shae in campaign mode, I thought she’d lose the election. Even after Kevin joined us. I was actually looking forward to her losing, meaning the three of us would withdraw from the public eye, she would professionally regroup, and then we’d do…whatever.
I’d have Kevin, give Shae whatever she wanted for as long as she needed me to, and we’d all be happy. Everyone’s a winner.
I lied in multiple ways to Kevin about the plan that day we showed up at his house in Tallahassee. I didn’t tell him I would be marrying her. I didn’t tell him I thought she’d lose.
Hell, I didn’t tell her I thought she’d lose.
I was afraid if I told him that, he might not agree to this.
I needed him to think I was all-in.
I thought the senator was giving me the perfect opportunity to march in there and reclaim my boy and build the foundation of my happily ever-after with him. I was willing to let her spin whatever web she wanted to help me secure Kev’s agreement to this plan.
It worked in my favor, after all.
I didn’t honestly expect her to fall in love with Kev.
I didn’t think Kevin would come to love her, either.
In some ways, this thing we have is far easier than I ever dreamed possible. We each need something and can get it from the others.
We love each other.
More importantly, we trust each other. She knows that, of anyone in the world, we are the two people she can trust in every single way.
We’re also a family, even if we have to keep some details secret.
The kids love their “Uncle Kev,” though. They’re my kids now, and since Shae and I will never have a baby, they’re the only kids we’ll have. I wish the price hadn’t been so high, but I won’t let my brother down.
I can see me and my brother in their eyes, my sister-in-law in their hair and skin and beautiful faces.
We are what we are—a family. And I’ll kill or die to protect them, Shae, and Kev.
* * * *
Before that fateful afternoon in Tallahassee, if you asked me if I would ever jump at a second chance with Kevin Markos, I wouldn’t have dignified your question with a response. Not that anyone knew we’d even met, because he was a secret I kept close all those years. The bastard never got back to me after that week we spent together, stomping my heart in the process, and I was forced to watch from afar as he continued on with his life as if my world had never shifted on its axis.
Like I hadn’t mattered to him after all.
Like what we did was meaningless, and I was a stupid asshole for not being able to get him out of my heart.
Watch him get fucking married.
Even while I hated that, I still looked at the pictures I’d taken of him that week, pictures I told him I deleted from my phone.
Pictures I still jerked off to and cried over even as I hated myself for the weakness.
Meanwhile, I was left with a broken heart and a simmering resentment. Resentment that only grew worse with every freaking failed relationship I had with men or women. Relationships that failed, inevitably, because I couldn’t stop comparing them to Kevin, although at the time I tried to blame them on my back-breaking work schedule and the stress of being a Secret Service agent in the PPD. After the third woman, and about the tenth man, I gave up on relationships and focused on my career and channeling my intensity into my physical and mental training.
Until Senator Samuels came along.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Shae. I do.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t using her as much as she was using me. In the beginning, anyway. Four years into whatever it was, I realized this was a relationship of some permanence. That was a little terrifying, except I felt comforted by the fact that she made no demands on my heart. I could still secretly love Kev from afar, keep him tucked within my soul in an undisturbed pocket of perfection, and have a relationship with her.
A relationship in which I could take out my anger and frustration on her body. Which she was totes cool with, because that was exactly the kind of sex she wanted and needed.
That was the irony, right? That I existed in a Schrödingerian purgatory of hating Kevin’s guts and desperately missing him to the point that it literally tanked every relationship I tried to have before Shae.
Then Kev had his public meltdown right when Shae was desperate to find a campaign manager so she could declare for her run for POTUS. I knew Shae was my best chance to get my hands on Kev and keep him close to me.
To us.
Because I also knew Kev could help Shae get elected, if anyone could.
I was absolutely right, even though in retrospect I assumed it wouldn’t happen that first election cycle. I think part of me was convinced Shae wouldn’t make it this time, not on her first attempt, and we’d have a couple of years of peace before she cranked up the machine to try again, or she’d run to regain her Senate seat.
Shae is a strange woman, in some ways. She is human and has needs and desires, but she haaaaates the idea of being emotionally vulnerable. She isn’t looking for Prince Charming to swoop in and seduce her and give her a fairytale romance.
She wants the Black Knight kept on retainer to periodically drag her off to the dungeon, have his way with her, and then go away once she’s had her fill of him so she can get back to work.
Lucky for her, I can handle that.
And her.
Even luckier for her that Kev is homoflexible enough he can handle her, too.
The other quirk she has, and one of the reasons I’ve come to love her so damn much, is that she desperately wants to take care of her loved ones. She accepted the kids without hesitation, despite knowing it’d completely disrupt our usual lives. She was pissed off that she couldn’t be home with me with the news broke about Charles and Tory.
She’s nearly lost her mind over not being able to help Kevin when we lost Lauren.
My girl is a fixer at heart, a doer. Her mother instilled into her at a very early age the drive to help others.
Now I need to figure out how to re-tune her a little so she’s helping Kev instead of draining him of energy and strength he can’t afford to lose right now.
* * * *
As I s
uspected, Kev doesn’t awaken when I ease myself out of bed well before my alarm goes off. I dress and shut off all the lights and head downstairs, where I neatly fold his discarded clothes and leave them on the couch for him. I never got to use the implements on him that I’d brought in the duffel bag, and that’s okay. He’s asleep, he let go, and he vented, which is the important part.
In the kitchen, I preset the coffee maker for him, adding an extra scoop of coffee the way he likes it, and set the timer on it to start at seven. He’ll probably already be wide awake and lying there in bed, unable to ignore his work phone despite me begging him to.
When we take time off, Kev doesn’t. We could be at Camp David and curled up in bed, the three of us, and he’s still checking his phone. He’s dedicated, he’s sharp, his mind is agile and flexible, and he’s able to stand his ground with POTUS.
Even at his own expense, when he really doesn’t have the strength to spare, like now.
I check the fridge and silently curse when I see he’s down to pot pies and frozen pizzas. I wouldn’t care about that if he was coming in to the White House every day, because I feed him there. I don’t let him leave until I’m sure he’s had food. But when he’s upset and not dealing well, he defaults to crap food he doesn’t have to think about to prepare.
I grab my personal phone, put in a delivery order with the secure courier service we use, for basics like milk, eggs, veggies, and other items, and have it set to deliver to the unit next door before noon. We own that unit and “lease” it for a dollar a day plus utilities to the Secret Service as their base of operations for guarding our house. They’ll receive the order, check it, and and put it away for Kev. This company is a verified provider for us, under contract and cleared by the Secret Service, and it means I don’t have to feel squicky about asking my former coworkers and subordinates to do my shopping for me. No risk of an accidental “scandal” because the First Family is using government employees for personal business.
Desire (Determination Trilogy 3) Page 2
