Solace (Devastation Trilogy Book 2)

by Lesli Richardson

  “Ma’am’s choice.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Because I’m an overachiever, I slither to my knees and proceed to go down on her until her moans finally turn to laughs and she taps me on the head. “Declan, okay, baby. You did good.”

  I stagger back to my feet, my cock still out and getting hard again as I kiss her.

  This time she reaches between us and notches me against her.

  And, this time, I take my time, loving how she kisses, loving everything about her.

  I’m not stupid. I have a lot to learn, about everything. But I know I love this woman with all of my heart, and I can only pray my faith and trust in her isn’t misplaced.

  We finally end up splayed across each other in her bed, with her draped over me, her head on my arm. I want to burn this picture into my memory, this most perfect of moments.

  Because I know I’ll always follow wherever she leads me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Now

  We’re still sitting on the couch while George makes me come again like that, stroking my cock with his hand and adding to the mess we’ve made.

  He doesn’t seem to care about that, although he does have me use a damp washcloth to wipe off the worst of the jizz from our clothes once we head upstairs and finish stripping in his bathroom.

  After a quick shower to clean up, he sits up in bed, propped against the headboard with pillows while I blow him. Not just a blowjob, but a long, slow cock-worshipping session. He talks to me the whole time, holds my head in his hands, tells me what he likes.

  Calls me his good boy.

  Not like I’m a stranger to spending long periods of time with my face between my lover’s thighs, but my jaw is going to have to get used to being held open for this long.

  Worth it.

  With Casey, I’m used to her scent and savor it, love smelling like her when I’m done, being covered with her juices. It’s different with George, different sensations, different scents. I love grazing my teeth along his inner thighs and rolling the soft, sensitive flesh of his sac over my tongue.

  It takes the better part of an hour for me to get him over. It’s well fucking worth it to feel the way his fingers dig into my scalp and the sounds he makes as I bring him pleasure and swallow him.

  This man comes undone for me. The governor of our state.

  And I’m the one who’s lying here with the man’s cock going soft in my mouth. No one else gets to do this but me.

  I get why he thought it was so hot making me come earlier. And between my cock rubbing against the bed as I went down on him, and the sounds he made, of course I’m fricking hard again.

  He pulls me into his arms and kisses me as he jerks me off. It’s close to one o’clock in the morning now, and I think we’re finally going to sleep. I know I’m ready to.

  Except George is wide awake.

  “Dammit,” he mutters as he lies there with me draped over his chest.

  “What’s wrong, Sir?”

  “We don’t have anything for breakfast. Or for dinner tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll run to the store in the morning.”

  He sighs, and I know that sigh. Not just from our new relationship, either, but from all the years I’ve known him.

  There’s something he wants.

  “What is it, Sir?” I ask when I realize this is a thing that needs to be handled.

  “I want to go to the store.”

  “It’s”—I lift my head and squint at the clock—“12:49 in the morning, Sir.” I drop my head back to where I was comfortably nestled against him.

  “I know.” I feel his breath in my hair. “I want to go to the store with you. I haven’t been to the grocery store in two years. The last person I went to the store with was…”

  His voice trails off.

  It takes me a moment to process that.

  The last person he went to the store with was Ellen. Literally, ever since he returned, he’s been governor and under security.

  There’s a Walmart not far from here, and it’s open all night.

  With a sigh of my own, I sit up and retrieve my work phone from his nightstand.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “I’m calling the EPU duty officer, Sir, so they can have a detail ready to follow us to the store. They’ll have a shit-fit if I don’t tell them we need the detail and they find out we went without an escort. Not to mention Ma’am will wring my neck.”

  That’s how, twenty minutes later, we’re in my Jag and I’m waiting just outside the main gate while the two officers fall in behind us for the short trip to the store.

  George, however, is fucking beaming. I mean, he’s smiling like a little kid about to go see Santa. I don’t get to drive him very often, but he reaches over and rests his hand on my thigh.

  “Thanks for this.”

  We’re both in jeans and T-shirts, and wearing jackets against the cold night. Hopefully, we won’t be recognized.

  I cover his hand with mine. “You’re welcome, Sir.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief when I see the store’s parking lot is practically deserted except for cars parked far out that are probably employees. We park along the front of the store in the fire lane—hello, executive privilege—with the marked cruisers parked in front and behind my Jag. No, not subtle at all. One officer stays outside with the vehicles while the other comes inside with us.

  This is worth it, though, to see the smile on George’s face as he grabs a cart and starts off into the store. I follow him and use my personal cell to get a couple of pictures.

  Sure, for Casey, but mostly for me. I have to pretend to be his staffer, not his boyfriend.

  Except I’m not kidding when I say I haven’t seen him look this fucking happy in two goddamned years. This is a return to normalcy for him, in a way.

  No, we can’t walk around holding hand and canoodling. But we keep our voices down as we walk and he asks me what I like, buys some of my favorite foods, and it feels…

  Well, it feels very domestic. Hell, Casey and I don’t even go shopping like this.

  Normally, if I do the shopping for him, Casey gives me a list and hands me a credit card from the trust to take care of it. I don’t even know if he’s really given her input or if she’s just filling his fridge because she knows what he likes, or what he needs, if it’s something like toilet paper or dish soap.

  When I look back over the past two years, George truly was barely functioning. It was all he could do to handle his official duties. Unlike the General Assembly, the governor has a year-round job and responsibilities.

  To see him look so fucking joyful over a goddamned shopping trip…

  It warms my heart.

  Reminds me how, in some ways, I’m lucky. I can, for the most part, move about the city unrecognized, unless I’m in a professional situation.

  George doesn’t have that luxury.

  The officer and I are following him through the meat department when another shopper recognizes him and tentatively approaches to ask for a selfie.

  George is all grace, and I offer to take the picture for them. He doesn’t just dismiss her, either. He takes a moment to chat with her, to ask about her, what she does for a living, to ask her about her concerns as a resident of the state. Where she thinks he’s falling short as governor.

  This is where he shines because he genuinely cares about people. Even in this moment, in which he’s rightfully earned privacy, he still takes the time to just be…George.

  Ellen always swore that, even if someone hated his politics, if they met George and talked to him for a few minutes, chances were they’d end up voting for him. Because people like him. He doesn’t come off as a practiced politician. He comes off as a real person, humble, gracious, and friendly.

  Because that’s who George Forrester really is. He’s a nice fucking guy.

  We continue shopping and he nearly fills the cart. Considering he’s grabbed items like Oreos and microwave popcorn,
I have a feeling there might be some movie nights in our immediate future.

  When we check out, several of the cashiers flock over and George makes the time to take pictures with everyone and chat with them. Once we’ve paid and everything’s bagged, I leave the officer with George and take the groceries outside to load them while George is…George.

  The other officer gets out and helps me with the groceries. “Is he still talking to people?” he asks.

  I nod. “You know how he is.”

  The officer chuckles. “Yeah, everyone loves him. He’s too nice of a guy to tell people no.”

  The bruises on my ass and elsewhere on my body would argue George isn’t nearly as nice as everyone thinks he is, but that’s my secret.

  And I’m not sharing that part of him with anyone. Not even with Casey. Not like that, at least.

  I’m the only one in the world who gets to experience that side of the man, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t fill me with smug satisfaction.

  I’m sitting in my Jag with the heater running when George emerges from the store ten minutes later. I see him actually stop himself from leaning in to kiss me when he gets in, which reminds me that sometimes I might have to be the responsible one in this thing we have.

  “Thanks,” he says as he fastens his seat belt. “Sorry I kept you waiting.”

  “No problem. You probably just got us votes from everyone who works there, and their families.”

  He sits back and stares out the window, his hand on my thigh again during the return drive to his house. One of the officers follows us inside the development as far as George’s gate, hanging back until it swings closed behind us.

  George helps me unload and put everything away. When we finish, he stands there for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, the wad of plastic bags in his hands, staring at them.

  I give him a moment before I speak. “Sir?”

  When he looks at me, I realize he’s crying. “Thank you for that. I…I needed that. Everything that happened… I went from…”

  He sniffles and I pull him in for a hug. “Life was normal,” he says. “And then it…wasn’t. I never knew I’d never go grocery shopping with her again. She used to get irritated at me because I’d buy the kids snacks she said were total junk.”

  A haggard laugh escapes him. “We had this thing where I’d sneak stuff into the cart, and if one or more of the kids was with us, I’d make a big deal of pretending it was a secret. Then me and the kids would always laugh at the check-out line when she’d roll her eyes at me as she loaded it on the belt to pay for it. Co-conspirators, right? But she smiled, too, you know? That was the game. She knew I’d buy the stuff. She was Mom, though. She was the hard-ass about eating healthy. I was the soft touch about junk food. And I’ll never get to go shopping with her again. I used to gripe about going shopping with her, and now I’d kill to get to do that again.”

  I close my eyes and hold him as he cries on my shoulder. A few weeks ago, after all this started between us, Casey told me during one of our private chats that she hoped George would finally start to heal. That he’d done nothing but apply a non-stop series of emergency patches to hold his soul together every time he cracked. That he’d cried, but never really worked through everything. Never processed it. He couldn’t, because Ellen had been his true strength.

  He lost the will to live when he lost her. He’d been in literal survival mode on the island, and then tossed into political survival mode once he returned home. Casey hoped having me might finally allow him to start healing for real.

  I now understand exactly what she meant by that. Having been allowed inside his inner sanctum, I am legit terrified to see how fragile he really was all this time.

  At any time, we could have easily lost him to his pain.

  I reach up and gently scratch his scalp while he cries on my shoulder, and now I have my answer.

  I know for certain if Casey one day forces me to choose…

  We’ll all lose if that rift ever forms, but it’ll be George who ends up with me. Because Casey is tougher than me and George put together. She’s survived multiple losses and darkness in her life and every instance toughens her, hardens her. She always emerges on the other side of walking through those crucibles tempered and stronger for it.

  Plus, I know despite his public persona that George can’t survive any more loss in his life. It will break him in irreparable ways.

  I’m neither strong enough nor willing to live with that guilt, even if it means I endure the pain of losing Casey because of it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Then

  There are some events which remain forever seared in your memory, even if you wish you could forget them. Those “where were you” moments that all humans experience. Some of them shared with a multitude of others, like hearing about the assassination of a public figure.

  Some of them more…private, and personally painful.

  I’m twenty-seven years old. In the four years I’ve been in practice, I’ve already made a name for myself. Not just within the firm, but in the greater Nashville area. I have a damned good win record already, mostly because I’ve taken on several cases others thought couldn’t be won, then proceeded to make bank with my fees from the payouts when judgments went in my clients’ favor.

  Eventually, I’ll buy a house, but not right now. I have the nice car, the suits, the other trappings of my trade, and I’m building my savings and retirement accounts. I might still feel like a faker—believe me, I’m shocked most of all when I pull a case out of the fire and end up with a ruling in my client’s favor—but it seems like I’ve successfully masked that fear in front of others.

  One day, I’m sure, someone will figure out I don’t belong here and call me out for it, run me off.

  I just hope it’s not Casey. I love her, I’m in love with her, and my next big goal is being able to afford a house either in the exclusive community where she and George live, or close enough nearby to only be five minutes away.

  That’s another reason I want to save up before I buy.

  I want to be worthy of her. That’s not her requirement, that’s mine.

  I don’t want to be an embarrassment to her if it ever gets out we’re an item. I don’t want people thinking I’m just some pity fuck, one of countless others, and grifting off her.

  I want to be known as the guy who won her heart, with plenty of concrete reasons to show them all why she loves me besides the one thing I can never tell anyone about—the fact that I’m happily her slave.

  Another reason for me to wait to buy a house? At some point soon, George wants to run for Governor. I know Casey will be his chief of staff if he wins, and she’s already told me I’ll be working on staff, too, when that happens. Which means no cushy attorney’s salary. I’ll have to be able to afford to live within my means, or within my savings.

  Thus, I wait to buy a house.

  Today, we’re working at the law firm. I’m sitting in Casey’s office late that morning, reviewing and revising a rapidly growing list of items that need George’s immediate attention as Speaker of the Senate when he returns from his trip overseas.

  That’s when a phone call is put through to Casey’s desk extension.

  It aggravates her, because she specifically asked for no interruptions.

  Meaning she has plans for me this morning. Especially since she had me lock the door behind me when I arrived.

  “Goddammit,” she mutters, glancing my way. “Sorry, boy.”

  I sit back to wait while she answers and pulls a mask into place. “Casey-Marie Blaine.”

  I watch her as I always do. One of her many masks, this one the professional, takes-no-shit attorney persona. Very similar to her Ma’am mask, except without the playful, sexy heat added to the mix. Her chief of staff mask is nearly identical to her attorney mask, only with less swearing around other government employees, so she doesn’t trigger an ethics investigation.

  Somehow, I resist the u
rge to reach down and adjust my thickening cock in my slacks.

  Her brow furrows and she interrupts the caller. “I-I’m sorry, could you repeat that, please?”

  Instantly, I’m on alert. I think it’s from the way her light brown eyes widen, the way she sucks in a sharp breath. I set my legal pad and pen in the vacant chair next to me and I’m already standing to round her desk as her lips part.

  “No,” she whispers to the caller, not me.

  She’s shaking her head at the unseen caller as I make it to her side. That she’s already reaching for me, for my hand, tells me this isn’t just bad, it’s catastrophic.

  I’m almost afraid to hear what it is. She squeezes my hand tightly, desperately, while her mask completely shatters. She chokes back tears as she listens to the caller and only releases me to grab a pen. She starts scribbling phone numbers right onto her calendar desk blotter, something she never does.

  She reads the numbers back, barely able to get them out. That’s when both our work cells go off at nearly the exact same time…and something tells me not only are those calls related to this odd happenstance, but that it’s a horrific omen of what our lives are about to devolve into.

  I thumb mine off, into voice mail, and reach for hers where it’s laying on the desk and do the same.

  “Thank you,” she finally says. “Yes, we…I’ll have someone…” She chokes back another sob. “Myself, or someone from my office will be there. Thank you.”

  Her hand is literally shaking as she reaches over to hang up the handset, and she misses the base on the first try.

  I’m fucking terrified now. “Ma’am?”

  She looks up at me. “Ellen and George.” She sucks in a shaky-sounding breath. “And…” Tears roll down her cheeks. “Governor and Mrs. Willis. John and Ceely Stinson. The plane went down on the way to Manila. In a storm. They haven’t located it yet.”

  “Oh, shit,” I whisper.

  Because not only are Ellen and George on that plane, and our state’s governor and tourism commissioner and their wives. Oh, no. That would be bad enough.

  They are accompanied by dozens of other governors and top state executives from all around the southeastern United States.