Desire (Determination Trilogy 3)

by Lesli Richardson

  I jump when he smacks his hand on the desk.

  “You can sit there and whine all you want about people who aren’t white, cishet Christians, but you know what that doesn’t make you? A Christian. Get out of people’s bedrooms. Get out of people’s bodies and doctors’ offices. Get out of people’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof. You have no right to be judging people when our party has overwhelmingly been consumed by corruption and greed and hatred, and is doing anything but representing ‘true’ core Christian values.

  “It doesn’t give me any pleasure to say this, either. Before you ‘whatabout’ me regarding Democrats, yes, they have their issues, too. As misguided as their approach is, however, their end goal is to help people. I can no longer argue against people who point to the GOP as a nest of corruption, greed, and stripping people of their rights. They’re correct! There is nothing defensible that this party has produced on its own in the last couple of decades.

  “Am I switching parties? No. But understand something—I’ve spent my career here presenting you with facts. When I present facts that show my party screwed up, I get people calling me a cuck, or trying to say I’m a liberal. You don’t get to cherry-pick facts, no matter how people want to think they can. Facts are. Maybe some of my fellow journalists on this network want you to believe their opinions are facts, but come on. How stupid are you? Really?”

  I blink, glad I record this show on my DVR every day, because I know I will want to watch this one again.

  Many times.

  I’ve never been so fucking turned on in my life. If I thought I’d be able to reach him, I’d head out to their studios right now and be waiting for him when he emerges, pull him into my arms, and kiss him.

  My boy’s on a roll, though, and isn’t done yet.

  “Why do you care if two women want to get married or buy a wedding cake? Does it hurt you? No! Why do you care if an eighteen-year-old woman on the other side of the country wants to get an abortion because her boyfriend pressured her into sex she really didn’t want to have, and she got pregnant, and she can’t take care of it? Especially when she later needs financial support and services to help her take care of it if she has it, but you’ll be the first to tell her too bad, she shouldn’t have had sex in the first place!”

  Kevin rubs his forehead, and a renewed wave of worry sweeps through me. I wonder if there’s something else going on. Something…deeper he hasn’t talked about publicly. I remember his mom died of cancer after battling it for years.

  Please don’t let him have a brain tumor or something.

  But he’s still not finished with his from-the-heart rant. It’s almost as if, for the first time in his career, he can be completely honest.

  “If our lawmakers won’t even keep their dicks in their pants, why is there some greater moral burden on people in lower income classes to not have sex? You know what? Maybe for some people that’s the cheapest entertainment they have in their lives. It doesn’t matter why, though. They have as much right to have sex as some rich guy living in a penthouse in New York City. They shouldn’t be penalized for doing something that’s totally natural for humans to do.

  “Quit lying to yourselves. The Republican party isn’t ‘pro-life.’ They’re ‘pro-birth.’ Once a baby’s born, you show no damned interest in making sure it has a safe, healthy upbringing, and you’re lying to yourself if you think you do.

  “No one’s using abortion as birth control, despite what loonies will tell you—and I honestly can’t believe that, in this day and age, that’s still a belief some people have. It ranks right up there with flat-Earthers and fake moon landing crazies. If people can’t afford condoms, they damn sure can’t afford an abortion. And no, your tax dollars do not pay for abortions, no matter what the liars say. It’s law that your tax dollars aren’t allowed to pay for them. Try using that phone in your hand for something besides Facebook and Snapchat. Read. Educate yourself.

  “Because you know what will stop abortions? Governments have done studies proving that when proper sex education is combined with easy access to low-cost birth control, abortion rates go down. You know why? Because people are less likely to have an unplanned pregnancy if they have access to sex education and birth control. While we’re at it, there is no ‘war on Christmas!’ Say ‘Merry Christmas’ if you want to, but don’t get pissy if someone tells you ‘Happy Holidays.’ Just be glad they wished you well, and don’t be an asshole!

  “You want it both ways. You want to claim some moral high-ground, yet you want to screw people over for your own gain. You want freedom to practice your religion, while at the same time you demand the freedom to shove your religion down someone else’s throat. You claim you want smaller government while trying to increase how invasively the government can regulate consenting adults and their love lives and their bodies and their religious beliefs.

  “You know what? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim to be for the Constitution while trying to do everything within your power to dismantle what it and our founding fathers stand for. You can’t claim to be a conservative and then try to eliminate the very attributes that used to make our party great.

  “What the hell is wrong with you people? Do you get off on trying to ruin people’s lives just because they’re different from you? Trying to justify your actions by saying, ‘I’m a Christian, but…’ doesn’t get you off the hook. It doesn’t make you morally superior. It makes you an asshole. It’s no wonder so many disenfranchised voters have left the GOP and either registered as Independent, or Democrat, or Libertarian, for fuck’s sake. The best we have are leaving, and the hyenas are in charge of the hen house. This is why the Democratic party is increasingly fractured—because socially liberal conservatives have joined it, trying to find a political home.

  “Do you know how much money flows into this network to control what you think and how you harass your lawmakers? An awful lot. You think you’re watching this network and it makes you smarter than the ‘libtards,’ but I have to tell you something—the network and their shady corporate overlords spend tens of millions of dollars on studies and techniques to spin things to make you think and vote and buy the way they want you to.”

  He’s practically screaming now.

  “Large, global conglomerates are trying to tell you to think of America first. You want to know why? Because they want you kept scared, and stupid, and gullible. That’s why. Outside of hard news, this network’s programming is nothing more than one really long commercial for special interests to influence your vote. Even mine. And—”

  The picture changes as a commercial interrupts him. I realize the control booth just cut him off.

  Stunned, I sit back and draw in a deep breath, barely remembering I still have my Pad Thai in my lap.

  I wait through the commercial break, which feels unusually…long. Finally, it’s replaced by a replay of last night’s episode of The Daily Readout, which starts from the beginning.

  Uh-oh.

  I grab my personal cell phone and scroll through my Twitter timeline.

  It’s already exploding with howls of rage and laughter from both sides of the political aisle.

  Kev will likely be out of a job by tomorrow, if not tonight.

  There’s no coming back from something like this. Maybe before he turned his guns on the network, perhaps.

  But that was a step too far, I’m sure. After this, he’ll likely be finished in cable TV news, which is a fucking shame. He’s brilliant, he’s insightful, he’s knowledgeable about politics.

  He’s—

  I blink, the idea slamming into me, horrifyingly perfect.

  So perfect I actually giggle.

  And I know exactly how to make Kevin say yes.

  I open the Signal app on my personal phone and use it to dial Shea’s personal cell, where she also uses the app for privacy.

  She answers. “Yes, Sir?”

  That means she’s alone, probably still at home and preparing to leave for her
shindig.

  “This will sound crazy,” I say, “but I just found you your campaign manager for your presidential campaign.”

  Chapter Five

  Early the next morning, we’re sitting at Shea’s small kitchen table and sipping cups of coffee. I arrived before dawn and I’ve already given her a good spanking and fucking. She lives in a townhouse, an end unit, but her next-door neighbor is out of the country until February.

  Now we’re chatting before I leave to go work out and grocery shopping, followed by returning home to my apartment and catching up on laundry. I’ve let her wear a robe while we chat because it’s bitterly cold outside this morning, the house feels a little chilly in the kitchen, and she gets cold easily. I’m wearing sweatpants and nothing else.

  We haven’t talked shop yet. Fucking and spanking first, because it’s easier for us to find time to talk than it is for us to find safe time and space to fuck and…the other stuff.

  Especially the other stuff. Vanilla fucking, or getting head from her, is easy to sneak in. But that gets boring, after a while, and we both need…

  More.

  “Explain your rationale,” she says.

  I don’t need a map to know she’s shifted gears. “He’s media savvy—”

  She held up a hand. “Hooo, that was not media savvy I saw on display when I watched the video last night.”

  When I arch an eyebrow at her, she sits back and waves at me to continue.

  “He’s media savvy,” I repeat. “He knows politics and government. He can parse complex policy into plain English. He’d be excellent at managing optics. He’s good with people. He’s got the face for it. This incident aside, normally he’s a calm, steady presence. I don’t understand why he snapped.”

  I see something in her expression, and I arch the eyebrow again.

  “I did some asking around last night,” she finally admits. “To see if anyone knew why he snapped. You have to admit, Chris, that was pretty…nuclear.”

  My heart races. Please don’t be a brain tumor! Please don’t be a brain tumor! “Yeah?”

  “You were still out of town, so you probably didn’t hear about this. But here in DC, two young, black, gay male congressional staffers were attacked outside a bar Thursday night. One of them is still in the hospital, and it’s unknown if he’ll survive. The attackers were two white guys, who witnesses got on video screaming racial and homophobic slurs at them. They were harassing the staffers inside the bar earlier, when the men wouldn’t give up their seats at the bar where a hockey game was on TV, and they wanted to watch it.

  “Bar threw the drunk white assholes out, and the guys waited for the staffers outside, where they ambushed them, attacked them with bricks, and nearly killed the one guy. It’s being prosecuted as a hate crime. The irony? The staffers both work for Republicans on the Hill.”

  “Holy shit.” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.

  There’s more, and she tells me. “Not the morning show Markos’ ex-wife hosts, but three others on FNB insinuated that the staffers must have been doing something to incite the white guys to attack them. Word is pressure came from above to skew the story.”

  I groan. “Oooohhh, Jesus Christ.” I’m reasonably certain I now know what made him snap last night.

  But she’s still not done. “And apparently one of the attackers, who are both in jail, thankfully, is the son of another congressional staffer. The network was pressing Markos to have the guy on his show last night so the man could defend his son’s character. The guy is friends with one of the network VPs.”

  “Yikes.”

  “It gets worse.”

  I’m not sure I heard her correctly at first and I stare at her. “How could it get worse, Shae?”

  “Markos learned literally minutes before going on the air last night that the mother of the victim who’s still in ICU collapsed and died at the hospital.”

  That would do it.

  Maybe I haven’t personally spoken with Kevin Markos in twenty years, but I literally have never missed an episode of any show he’s been the host of. I’ve worn out several DVRs in my time from recording and watching him, and I’ve either watched the episodes later, or streamed them online. I obsessively follow him on social media. I spend an unhealthy amount of free time studying him the way I would any other subject I need to know about for my job.

  Kevin might be conservative, but he’s always been a strident supporter of equal rights, and a vocal opponent of things like voter suppression and discrimination.

  Knowing what I know about Kevin, no doubt this was a double whammy of epic proportions.

  I open my eyes and look at her. “I suspect the circumstances are connected.”

  She gives me a snarky expression but keeps it out of her tone. “That’s probably a safe bet.”

  “Did your sources hear anything else?”

  “Only that Markos was fired last night, and he’s fucked, because he has a non-compete clause in his contract that will keep him off the air at large US news networks for two years.”

  “Wow.” Unlike his divorce, I feel no joy at this news. I feel…sad.

  Like I want to swoop in there and rescue my boy.

  Because over all these years, I’ve never stopped thinking about him as mine.

  “He’ll never come work for me,” she adds.

  I smile. “Yes, he will. I guarantee it.”

  She cocks her head at me, her brow furrowing in an adorable scowl. “What do you know? Do you really know him? I thought you were just screwing with me.”

  I take a sip of my coffee. “I know him,” I quietly say.

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “Because it’s…complicated.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me, or keep me waiting?”

  “Sir and girl time, Shae.”

  I watch her shiver the way she does when she’s struggling not to drop into subspace. She nods.

  I wait her out.

  “Yes, Sir,” she finally says. “Sir and girl.”

  This puts it squarely into a private little metaphorical box we have between us. Whatever happens in that space, as Sir and girl, never gets revealed to anyone. That works both ways. It’s the only way she can let go to get what she needs, and the only way I can let go enough to give it to her.

  Usually, we do not mix the streams, so to speak. We talk work, or we fuck, but beyond scheduling issues I never talk work in fucking mode with her.

  Until now.

  I grab my duffel bag, which holds a few implements and a change of clothes I brought with me, pull my personal cell phone from the side pocket where I’d stashed it and my wallet, and sit back. “I told you I’m bi.”

  “Yeah?”

  I punch in my pin code, navigate to the secure and hidden folder on my phone where I store my special photos, and punch in another, more complex pin code. I scroll through them and find one that shows his face where she’ll recognize him and turn the screen to show her.

  “That’s from about twenty years ago.”

  She gasps and claps both hands over her mouth, her eyes widening as she focuses on me. “Shut. Up!” she mumbles behind her hands. “Wait…” She leans in. “Is that you with him?”

  I wistfully smile as I study the picture. It’s one of my favorites. Kevin’s light blue eyes are focused on me as he goes down on my cock, watching me. I still remember how it felt when he softly moaned around my cock as I told him what a good boy he was, how good he was doing.

  How I reached out after taking this pic and stroked his blond hair, ran my fingers through it.

  The way his eyes dropped closed at my touch.

  My poor boy.

  “There’s a reason I wasn’t joking when I told you tiramisu is a hard limit for me, and why I always change the song if Queen comes on while we’re together.”

  Her hands remain clamped over her mouth. “He’s the reason?”

  I tell her the short version of the story. By t
he time I finish, the shock has left her gaze, replaced by a reptilian gleam that always makes me hard. God, I love watching her in work mode.

  “He could help me tailor the my message and figure out how to snag conservative heartland voters.”

  I slowly nod. “He probably can. He’ll make a damn good chief of staff, too.”

  “If he’d even want that. Might be better as press secretary.”

  I shrug. That’s not where I want him, but she doesn’t need to know that right now. We’re still a long way from that point.

  Still have to get her elected. And that is something I am positive he can do. Probably not this first time around, but give him a few years, and yeah. I think he could.

  “How do you want to approach him?” she asks.

  I close out the picture and folder and shut off my phone, tucking it back into the duffel bag. “Let’s give it a few days,” I suggest. “I bet he goes to his house in Florida. We should approach him once he’s there and has had time to…reflect.”

  Now she arches an eyebrow at me.

  “What?”

  “His house in Florida?”

  “Hey, I haven’t talked to him in twenty years. I didn’t say I haven’t researched the hell out of him during those years.”

  She uses finger quotes. “‘Research.’ That’s a funny way to spell ‘stalking.’” She studies me, her expression guarded. “What do you want in return?”

  There’s always an ask. This is DC, after all. Even between us, in this thing we share, there’s always an ask, a quid pro quo.

  That’s the only way it works. It’s not just a power exchange we have, it’s a trust exchange.

  I focus on her. “Him. I want him. You want to run for president, you’ll need him. Give him to me, and I’ll guarantee you your campaign manager.”

  Shae chews on her lower lip for a moment. This is as close to true emotional vulnerability as she’s ever shown me. “What about me?” In the past, she’s told me she wouldn’t mind if I wanted to see others outside her, but that’s never been an issue for me. So I know she wouldn’t object on those grounds.