He takes a step forward, his fists clenching, and I pull the banana out and whisper, “Red.”
He freezes.
I take a small bite of the banana, just the tip, slowly chewing and swallowing it. “That’s why I’m afraid of him,” I say, finally able to verbalize it for the first time in the nearly six years I’ve been doing this with Kevin. “I don’t get to safeword with him in the office.”
Just like sheep don’t safeword with Border Collies.
* * * *
By noon, I haven’t heard from Kevin or Leo.
Benjamin Cussler, Kev’s deputy chief of staff, conducted the morning staff meeting. I only find out about that after the fact when Angie drops by to coordinate the afternoon press briefing talking points with me.
I don’t want to appear like I’m out of the loop, or have a larger personal stake in this than I already do, but it’s starting to piss me off that I haven’t heard anything yet.
I trust Leo to take care of Kev, but I want to know how he is.
How does this factoid escape Leo’s notice? Leo knows how I am, and knows who Kev is to me and Chris. How can he keep me out of the loop like this?
I’m glad I don’t have any appearances today, no public speaking to do here, either.
Yay.
I head upstairs when I know the kids are home from school so I can spend some time with them. They’re sitting at the table in the family dining room with Yasmine, and already have their schoolwork spread out.
“Hey, guys.” I hug all of them. As I’m sitting down, Hudson pipes up.
“Where’s Uncle Kev?”
“And Leo?” Ivy asks.
“Are they back yet?” Myla asks.
Shit.
I opt for simple. “They’re not back yet. Once they are, I’ll make sure they say hi.”
Chris walks in—better late than never—and kisses me before walking around the table to greet the kids. “Hey, how was school today?”
“Our class made cards because of Aunt Lauren,” Ivy says, opening her backpack.
Ohhh…shit.
They’re condolence cards for the White House in general, which is both incredibly sweet and also a tear-jerker I don’t need right now.
I meet Jasmine’s gaze and she mouths, “Sorry.”
I could’ve done without this. I force a smile. “That was very sweet of them.”
Note to self—write a personalized thank-you note for their class.
I make myself stay there with them for my usual time before I excuse myself and return downstairs, where I lock myself in my private bathroom and silently sob.
I can’t do this without Kevin. I feel weak and horrible and guilty and selfish, but I need him.
And that both scares me and infuriates me. I had an eighteen-year Senate career without him. I got myself elected three times without him. I passed the bar and did all sorts of things in my life, all sorts of accomplishments, without Kevin’s help.
Why is this taking me out at the knees?
I clean up and return to my study to get some more work done.
I’m about to head upstairs to sit through dinner with Chris and the kids—not that I feel hungry, because I don’t—when Leo appears in my study doorway.
My heart races, and I’m already up and moving, intent upon going to Kev’s office, when Leo intercepts me with an outstretched arm. “He’s not here, ma’am,” he softly says.
I also realize Leo looks like hell, and I’m pretty sure he’s dressed in the same clothes he wore to the funeral yesterday.
“What?”
“He went to the townhouse.”
Some cranky toddler buried in my soul wakes up howling for her blanky and a cookie and her favorite stuffy, and I slam the door shut on it. “Is he okay?”
Leo shakes his head. “He’s going to take a couple of days off. He’s already told Ben.”
Leo has very deep, expressive brown eyes. In the right light, they hold flecks of amber and green and even greyish blue. Right now they look dark, worried, with russet tones.
I step back and motion him inside and to close the study door behind him. Once I know our privacy is assured, I say it. “When’s someone going to tell me what’s going on? I shouldn’t have to learn about this second-hand. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I literally didn’t have any privacy to call you, ma’am. He’s not doing well.”
“Then he needs to be here, with us, where we can take care of him.”
“He won’t do that, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the optics. You have no idea. Right now, every eye is on him. You haven’t been checking the news today, have you?”
“You know I don’t, unless something’s breaking I need to see.”
He pulls out his personal cell and calls something up, then shows me.
Yep, a picture of Kev from yesterday on the front page of WaPo, eyes closed, tears streaming down his cheeks, Leo’s arm around him, Kev’s hand on Lauren’s coffin.
Motherfucker. I’m going to kill Bill Graham.
Sure, it’s a damned money-shot, but Kev’s his friend.
“That’s not the only one, obviously,” Leo says. “But when the local media realized Kev stayed behind, they were all over him at the Baltazars. And there were press waiting on us when we landed in Dulles this morning.”
“What the hell? I told Secret Service to take care of you guys!”
“They did. Two agents, we flew back commercial. That’s why Kev told them to drop him at the townhouse. There was a crowd out there waiting to catch a glimpse of him, and he didn’t want to deal with reports of him only stopping by there and then coming to the White House.”
“Oh, jesusfuck!” I sink into my chair. Prophet will do anything to prevent a bad optic for me and the administration.
However, I refuse to be kept from him that long. “Tell him to get back here tonight,” I say. “He has a home here, with us. The kids were asking about both of you. He needs us.”
He wearily sighs. “I’ll run up and say hi before I go home. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Talk to me, Leo. What happened?”
He leans against the door. “We sat up most of the night talking with her dad and some other relatives. Kev did a few shots with them. Her parents—and pretty much everyone else—told Kev how Lauren still talked about him, how every time they talked to her, or she visited, every other word out of her mouth was something about him. That while she said the right things to them, they got the distinct impression she was still in love with him and hadn’t moved on. Even though she hinted to them Kev had a boyfriend, but she was keeping that quiet for him.
“She apparently considered it her mission to help protect his reputation. Then they put us in the same guest room, and Kev asked me not to correct them because of the optics. There were other cousins and aunts and uncles staying with them, and considering when we got up this morning my inbox was flooded with journalists asking if Kev and I are a couple, I’m guessing in addition to the funeral pictures, someone there said something to someone.”
I groan. “Motherfucker.”
“Ma’am, she was his best friend, and he was hers,” he gently says. Despite not wanting to hear this, I know I have to listen. “He loved her. He felt guilty because of their divorce. He feels guilty that she came to work for him and maybe that’s why she was murdered. He feels guilty that she never had another serious relationship and was too busy helping him cover for what she thought she was covering for. Everything her parents said to him wasn’t meant to make him feel guilty, but that’s exactly what it did.”
“I know, I know.”
“He loves you, but you need to step back and give him space. You can’t help him right now. I know you’re kind of at a loose end without him here, but Shae, he is an empty well. He has nothing to give you, and that’s heaping even more guilt on him right now.”
Being president means giving up some things. Even t
hings you love very deeply.
It also means being able to let go when required, no matter how painful.
I try one more time. “He can’t stay here with us and stay upstairs and not work?”
“You know how he is. If he’s here, he’s asleep or working. He’s been on a public stage he’s never had to inhabit in this particular way before, and he’s trying to find his footing. He’s never had to publicly grieve like this. Even when his mom died, he still had relative privacy, because he didn’t talk about it on the air.”
“His father sure did,” I grouse. “Fucking asshole.”
“Yeah, and that happened in West Virginia, too, which might as well be Mars as far as the rest of the country is concerned. She wasn’t a public figure.”
He’s right, I know he is, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I want to be the one holding Kev while he cries.
I want to be the one giving him the love and energy and support he’s given me.
And it’s killing me that I can’t.
“Go on up and see the kids,” I tell him. “And please brief Chris on all that. He needs to hear that from you.”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
He leaves my study door open behind him. Meanwhile, I sit back in my chair and wonder how far I’d get if I tried hiking out of here on foot to go see Kev before Secret Service grabbed my ass and threw me in The Beast and hauled me back here.
Because I’m seriously considering it.
Chapter Twenty
Ben catches me as I’m stepping out of my study. Rather than a walk-and-talk, I detour to his office to go over a few things and then head upstairs.
The kids have already started eating, and Chris is just sitting down with his plate. He likes to cook dinner for and with them as much as possible, to have them help him cook, a family bonding ritual I wish I could take part in more often.
Kev often does, when he’s here.
“You just missed Leo,” Ivy tells me.
“I saw him downstairs and told him to come say hi.” I fake a smile and slide into a chair. “Homework all done?”
“Shae, take my plate, hon,” Chris says, starting to stand. “I’ll make myself another one.”
I stay him with a hand. He’s not pulling Sir bullshit on me right now. “No, I’m good. Just sit and eat. I’ll need to run back downstairs in a little while anyway. I have some calls to make.”
I get the kids talking about homework, and stuff they did at school today, and even though it’s still months away I get them thinking about their motherfucking Christmas lists to Santa, because yes, I’m that tricky. I bring up how they’re going to get to help pick out the Christmas tree for the residence, and decorate it, and all sorts of fun we’re going to have.
Anything to keep a conversation going so Chris doesn’t have an easy way to box me in.
We’re already getting their passports arranged so we can take them to England with us at the end of November. I have to attend a summit in London, and Chris is going to take them and their grandparents sightseeing.
Chris maintains his arched eyebrow so long I’m pretty sure he’s going to get a forehead cramp.
Once dinner ends, I move to stand when the kids get up to take their plates into the kitchen, but Chris points at me and makes a motion I know damn well. One Kev’s used on me countless times.
Stay.
Fuck that noise.
I’m meeting his gaze as I stand, shoving my chair back a little harder than I intended, and then I turn and leave the dining room.
He’s not my Sir.
I mean, he is, but he’s not.
Not the one I need right now.
Not the one I need because I feel like I’m letting him down by not being there for him.
Leo’s “empty well” comment comes to mind.
Chris will stay upstairs with the kids now because Yasmine has left for the day. I mean, sure, he could tag in one of the Secret Service agents, since we’ve requested at least two female agents be on duty at all times when the kids are home, just in case we need them for the girls for some reason if I’m not there, but he’s a good dad.
He’s a far better dad than I am a mom, that’s for damn sure.
I feel…broken.
I’m alone downstairs in my study and on a call with a diplomat in Japan a little before midnight when one of the agents appears in my study doorway.
My heart pounding, I ask the diplomat to hold on and instead of muting the call I go old-school and cover the mouthpiece with my hand. “Yes?”
He looks…uncomfortable. “Mr. Bruunt asked me to tell you he’s going out, and that he requested one of the agents stay upstairs with the children until you return.”
Shit. “Where’d he go?”
“He didn’t tell me that, ma’am.”
Goddammit.
There’s only one place he would be going this time of night that was so important he couldn’t tell me first, and I’m enraged I’m not going with him.
I finish my call with the diplomat and hurry upstairs to check on the kids and dismiss the female agent. Then I call Chris on his personal cell, and it goes to voice mail after five rings.
Goddammit!
I storm into our bedroom just to see the screen go dark on his personal cell, where it’s sitting on the charger on his dresser.
Of fucking course.
His work phone is there, too.
I know I could literally order his detail to turn around and bring him back right fucking now, but if I do that, it’ll cause even more problems. The situation’s bad enough.
Adding a headline like PRESIDENT SAMUELS PITCHES WORLD-CLASS TEMPER TANTRUM IN MARITAL SPAT wouldn’t be helpful in any known universe.
I go take a shower, where I slide to the floor, sobbing, wishing I didn’t feel so motherfucking.
Goddamned.
Helpless.
* * * *
It’s almost four a.m. when the bedroom door opens. Chris slips into the bedroom and heads toward the bathroom.
“How is he?”
He stops and turns toward the bed. “Bad.”
I sit up without switching on the light. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”
“If you hadn’t bratted on me after dinner—”
“Whoa. I didn’t brat—”
“Shae.” Something raw and wounded and ragged in his tone pulls me up short. “I can’t do this, baby. Not right now. I just can’t. I can’t be me and be Sir to you. I’m sorry. Kev needs me right now, and the kids, and everything else we have going on. I’m sorry I’m not him.”
I’m wearing one of Kev’s T-shirts that he’d left here last week and smells like him. I climb out of bed and walk over to him. He’s wearing jeans and a black tee and smells like—
Lube.
I guess I snapped? Next thing I know, I’m facedown over the edge of the bed and getting my bare ass spanked and my face shoved into the mattress with his other hand on the back of my head.
Not a fun-time spanking, either.
Like the sadist is well and truly back in the house at this moment.
He fists my hair and holds me down with it as he kicks my feet apart and steps between my thighs..
How twisted am I that I know I’m wet right now? That despite the serious fucking spanking he just gave me, I’m…
Really fucking wet.
“This what you wanted, girl?” he hoarsely breathes in my ear, “Because it’s what you’re getting. It’s all I got in me right now.” I feel him fumbling with his belt with his other hand, and I don’t know what fucking prompts me to say it, because yeah, this is what I wanted, actually.
“Red.”
The fist in my hair tightens. I feel his breath against my cheek. “If you really fucking mean it, Shae, say it again. Otherwise, keep your goddamned mouth shut unless I’m shoving my cock into it.”
My heart races, but I can’t make myself say it. This truly is my sadist.
He’s back.
Damn, I’ve missed him.
“That’s what I fucking thought, girl.” His cock slams home inside me and in three thrusts I’m impossibly coming, moaning, my goddamned toes fucking curling as he rides me like he stole me.
The hand stays in my hair and he tightens his grip as he finds his groove, a rhythm meant for his pleasure, not mine. This is an old chapter of our story we haven’t revisited in quite a while, a dynamic we had before we added Kevin to the mix.
When Kev returned to his life, the sadist shifted to a more subdued, ritualized pattern. Still quite the sadist, but…predictable.
My sadist had been wild and felonious and unpredictable and the good kind of scary.
This kind of scary.
He doesn’t bother trying to get me off again, not that he was trying to finish me off in the first place. That was totally coincidental. He comes deep inside me with one last, haggard grunt and takes maybe two breaths before he’s pulled out and stalking toward the bathroom.
Leaving me lying there and trying to catch my breath with the delicious echoes of the pain in my ass, and in my scalp where he’d had a damned tight grip on me.
I hear the shower start in the bathroom.
It takes me a minute, but I drag myself upright and follow him.
By the time I make it there, he’s standing under the spray, his forehead pressed against the wall, eyes closed.
None of this feels…right.
Not a damn bit of it.
My delicious fear has already fled, because I know my sadist is gone already, and this man is Christopher, Special Agent Bruunt.
The First Spouse.
A dad.
Not Priest, not even Sir.
I strip off the T-shirt and step in to join him. That’s when I see fresh scratches on his back that I didn’t put there, more on his ass, the kind of scratches the boy leaves on his Sir’s body when the sex between them is raw and powerful and downright scary, and so very breathtakingly beautiful to watch as a result.
The full-on first-round version of what I just got.
I make him turn to face me, and find a love bite on his left pec.
I slip my arms around him and kiss the spot, closing my eyes and willing my love and energy into Kevin through it, a briefly tangible connection between us.
Diligence (Determination Trilogy 2) Page 16