by Max Hudson
“Who, Senator Cafferty? That was a suicide, anybody could see that.”
“Not the senator,” Special Agent Sellars said. “Miss Tabitha St. Cloud.”
Jack’s heart sank as they dragged him out of the room and down the hall. It was three hours of processing before Jack was once again asked about his presence in Tabitha’s apartment. But by then Jack had questions of his own.
“Is Tabitha St. Cloud dead,” Jack asked before anything else, “is that what I gather from all this?”
Special Agent Hathaway sighed. “We’re operating under that assumption.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” Jack said, “you haven’t seen a body.”
“Why is that of particular interest to you?”
“She’s a friend. Anyway, you’re here accusing me of killing her, I have a right to ask if she’s actually dead.”
Special Agent Hathaway smiled. “Jack, you’re not one of those dummies who think we can’t press a murder charge without a body, are you? You can’t possibly be that stupid.”
“I didn’t hurt Tabitha, I never laid a finger on her.”
“Well, we know that’s not true.”
Jack cleared his throat. “I mean to say, not in anger or violence. Yeah, we had a little thing going for a while, that’s not a secret.”
“And why are you prowling around her apartment?”
Jack shrugged. “I was looking for her! Senator Sommers said she hasn’t been at work in a while, he asked me to check on her, see if she was okay.”
“You think she might have dropped dead of a heart attack or slipped in the shower, a vital and healthy twenty-five-year-old woman?”
“I didn’t make any presumption about what might have happened to her.”
Special Agent Hathaway presented the diary, now in a thick plastic storage bag, and dropped it on the table. “And what about this?”
“What about it?”
“This is what you were looking for.”
“Why would it be?”
“You know she was blackmailing Senator Cafferty.”
“I don’t know that,” Jack said calmly. “I didn’t know it then and I don’t know it now.”
“I’m telling you,” Hathaway said. “Now you tell me, how’d you kill her?”
“I didn’t.”
“Strangled her,” Hathaway said. “You strangled her and then bludgeoned her to death when she threatened to blackmail you the same way you were both blackmailing Senator Cafferty.”
“I did not have anything to do with blackmailing anybody, much less a murder.”
“The diary says you did!”
“Then the diary is full of shit!”
Special Agent Sellars shouted at Jack, “It’s a deathbed confession, Jack, it’ll put you away for life!”
“And the guilty party will go free,” Jack snapped back. “Is that your job, lock up the guy nearest to you?” He glared at Special Agent Sellars. “I’d have thought you’d know better.”
“Why, because I’m black?”
“Yes, frankly. Or is this your revenge?”
“You better shut your mouth now, Jack.”
“I suppose I should, until I see a lawyer.”
The two special agents glanced at one another, then at Jack. “Your friend, Tyler Johns, he seems to think you did it too.” But Jack just glared at them, unimpressed. After another shared look, the special agents tried a different tactic.
“All right, look, Jack, that diary buries you, okay? But we think you’re right. We think you’re being set up, that there’s something much more sinister going on. And we don’t want to arrest an innocent man while the guilty go on committing their crimes. We’re not monsters, Jack.”
Jack tried to smile. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Special Agent Hathaway crossed his arms in front of his chest and sighed. “So if it’s not you, who do you think it might be?”
“I haven’t a clue. That’s for you to figure out.”
“Well, you were pulling quite the Nancy Drew about it just a few days ago. Why the difference?”
Jack cracked a nervous smile. “I guess Miss Drew made it look easy.”
Special Agent Sellars asked him, “Or maybe you just didn’t go far enough?” Jack was confused, and he had no answer. Sellars explained, “Who do you think might be behind all this?”
“Tabitha, according to you two.”
“No, Jack, Senator Sommers. You can’t tell me you haven’t already put this together. Senator Sommers was manipulating everything from the start.”
Special Agent Hathaway picked it up from there. “He sent the pretty Miss St. Cloud to seduce Cafferty so she could blackmail him. Then he used her connection to you to set you up. You were right there, after all.”
Jack asked, “Why? So he and Tabitha could be together? To destroy Senator Cafferty’s career? They weren’t adversaries.”
“But he couldn’t appeal to Senator Douglass with Miss St. Cloud’s feminine wiles, could he? But it was an easy matter to send you over to Douglass’ office, establish a line public line of contact between you. Tabitha’s connection to you and your connection to them meant Senator Douglass’ career would have been wiped out, with virtually no effort on Senator Sommers' part at all.”
Jack sighed, shaking his head and combing his fingers through his hair. “Then where’s Tabitha?”
“Can’t say,” Special Agent Sellars said, “but we gotta find out. She’s key to proving Senator Sommers guilty once and for all.”
Special Agent Hathaway said to Jack, “If you help find the guilty party, you help prove your own innocence.”
Jack looked up. “And if I don’t … or if I can’t?”
Special Agent Hathaway shrugged. “Somebody’s going to jail for this, Jack. That much we can promise you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jack and Tyler had been briefed by the special agents, and even Senator Douglass had been informed and included. Things were going to happen fast and on schedule in order to pull the sting off.
That left them all one last night together before things would take an urgent turn, one more free round of hours and minutes and seconds, each one sweeter than the last.
Jack and Tyler took a hot shower in Jack’s apartment, the soapy suds slippery and seductive over their muscular bodies. Hard cocks slid against firm thighs and sculpted buttocks. Jack’s hairy torso ground against Tyler’s smooth, shave skin, creating a delightful tingle for both even in that steamy hot water.
The soap allowed Jack’s hands to pass easily over Tyler’s amazing body and extended erection. His sudsy hands passed over Tyler’s muscular chest and arms, down to that tight torso and narrow hips, smooth and almost feminine, beyond that to the feline. Jack’s hands found their favorite aspect of Tyler’s wet nakedness. He rang that wang, hard and desperate, as if he were clinging to it for dear life. Tyler’s reedy tong reached out to Jack, but he knew that this was just the steamy prelude to a night of sexual majesty, perhaps their very last one. Jack wasn't sure it that possible finality would make it all the more glorious or ruin it entirely, but he also knew it wouldn't be long until he found out, one way or another.
After the shower, soap rinsed clean off their bodies, they didn’t even towel off. Instead they let their wet flesh slap as they pushed against each other, Tyler with his back against the wall.
“That’s so good,” Tyler said, eyes dipping shut.
“I know it is,” Jack said, squeezing tighter. “I know you love it.”
“I do love it,” Tyler whimpered, “and I love you.”
Jack kept pumping. “I know you do, Ty, I know you do!” Harder squeezing and a faster pump told Tyler what Jack’s true feelings were, as if there were any doubt. With the lateness of the hour, neither one could afford that.
Jack turned Tyler to face the wall, his lover’s legs spreading and the small of his back arching up to meet him, and greet him. Tyler’s cheeks opened wider to take him, and their famil
iar fit was easy to find. Jack knew just where to put it, and Tyler knew just how to take it and where to put it.
Jack began a regular rotation, in and out and around and around, Tyler squeezing with all his muscular might. Tyler’s chest smacked against the wall as Jack rifled him, quickly increasing the speed of his delivery. Jack worked the wall as a silent partner, playing against its rigidity with his own flexible fluidness.
“Take it,” Jack said, all the passion of his current confusion and tumult rising up and spilling out of his every fiber. “Take it all!”
“Give it to me then! Give it to me!”
Jack probed deeper, wanting to be as close to Tyler as he possibly could be, as close as any two men could be, or any two people of any stripe or color or gender. Jack pumped hard and dung in deep, Tyler hissing as Jack found hidden corners and crevices even Tyler didn’t know existed.
Jack couldn’t ignore that this might be the last time they’d ever share each other’s bodies, each other’s trust, each other’s lives. And that made Jack want to burrow in all the deeper, despite Tyler's cries of pleasurable pain, lips pulled tight over gritted teeth.
“Take it, you wonderfully beautiful bastard!”
Jack pumped and Tyler resisted, the delightful contrast sending bolts of radiant energy through them both, from tingling to explosive, their passion covering every part of the spectrum.
Once on the bed, the two men rolled and found a new position, Jack in front reclining against Tyler behind him. Tyler’s fingers fondled Jack’s eager nipples, hard and firm and proud and ready. Tyler had already wiped Jack’s cock down, a warm and wet towel renewing and restoring that cock’s clean sheen.
Wrapping his legs around Jack from behind, Tyler employed a move he was certain Jack had never enjoyed before. His knees were splayed at Jack’s sides, and he guided his feet to each side of Jack’s still-erect cock. Using his hand to guide his own feet, Tyler pushed his feet inward against Jack’s dicks as he stroked them, hands controlling those larger, less-sensitive soles.
Jack gasped and sighed, pushing himself backward against Tyler as his lover pressed those flat feet against his dick, delightful pressure as he used his hands to guide those feet over him, stroke after amazing stroke.
Jack bucked his hips even as his body twisted, head and shoulders pressing backward against Tyler’s supportive frame.
Tyler rasped into Jack’s ear, “You never had this before,” a mischievous growl. “This your first foot fuck, baby?”
“Yeah,” Jack growled, “and I love it, Ty.”
“I know you do,” Tyler said, mimicking Jack’s own dominant tone. “You’re goddamned right you do!”
Tyler rifled those feet faster over Jack’s erect wang, the spit and sweat soon rubbing away, a burning friction shooting up and through and around Jack’s cock. That burn became a sizzle, cooking up a bubbling broth of white love juice, and it would soon be ready to serve.
Tyler’s hands were wrapped around his own feet, which were wrapped around Jack’s throbbing dong. Then Jack added his own hands to the effort, grasping Tyler’s and pressing them down, increasing the pressure from every angle.
But that wasn’t going to be enough of either man and both men knew it. Without a word, hands and hips and gestures that meant everything, Jack pulled Tyler’s hands and feet from his cock and turned his attention to raising his hips, lowering them over Tyler’s long manhood. It was slick with sweat and with Tyler’s fresh spit, and it slid up and into Jack’s ass with a loving familiarity but still with the crack of freshness, of infiltration, of invasion.
Jack lowered himself down onto Tyler, slowly but certainly, spreading his legs to take Tyler in deeper, to wrap his body around Tyler’s in a way that brought them closer together, closer than any two people had ever been or would ever be.
Jack’s knees were bent, pressure on his calves as he raised and lowered himself over Tyler’s outstretched erection. That glistening dick glided in and out, Jack shifting his hips slightly to create some side pressure against his canal, a little flurry of pumps sending waves of pleasure up into Jack and back down into Tyler.
More grinding introduced a circular pattern, counterclockwise and even faster than before, Jack’s breathing coming faster and more shallow.
“Yeah, Ty, yeah. You’re golden, buddy, golden! I love that fucking cock!”
Tyler shook his hips, sending up a gratifying contrast to Jack’s up-and-down rotation, getting faster and faster as both men raced toward orgasm. Their pumping came faster and harder still, jaws locked, gasps hissed out through gritted teeth. Jack leaned forward, fingers splayed against Tyler’s hairless thighs, his tense muscles more than strong enough to support Jack’s leaning weight.
Bam! Slam! Shake and shimmy. Jack and Tyler began to pound against the other, each trying to throw the other so far off their sexual track that they’d go careening out of control. It was that chaos that they were frantically seeking and they each knew they would find it, one way or another.
At least for one last time.
“Please,” Jack hissed, lowering himself up and down even faster, a piston ready to drive the engine to the breaking point. “Please, Tyler!”
“Please what, Jack?”
“Cum inside me, Tyler, please! I want it, I… I need it!”
Tyler pumped harder, Jack’s body jostled by his powerful pummeling. “You want it? You need it?”
“Yes,” Jack snarled, “fuck yes, Tyler! Do it, God damn you, do it now!”
“I will,” Tyler said, his own body jerking and bucking with his bursting orgasm. “One last time, baby … one … last … time …”
The words sent Jack’s own cock to cumming in an uncontrollable instant. It rolled down his shaft like a stampede of wild animals, pouring down, faster and faster as it prepared to burst forth. But that crazed cumming frenzy, the sheer natural strength of that erupting wad was from more than their pleasure, but from their urgency, the desperation of moments that would never be recovered or recaptured. Jack’s body seemed to know what his mind could not accept, even hearing those words. Slam and spasm and thrust and slap and hiss and sweat, Jack screamed out when his cum wad jumped out of his sack and raced down his rod, jumping out of his body in a desperate bid to escape.
Tyler was releasing too, both men overflowing with sexual expression and personal power, greater than either of them, greater than both of them combined.
They fell into each other’s arms, unhurried and exhausted. The trial of their lives awaited them, a baptism by fire that may very well burn them alive. But they knew they would face it together, perhaps die together, and if they survived, they would stay together for the rest of their lives. But what truly haunted them both, even as they drifted off to sleep, was that one would survive the other. That would be a fate worse than death.
Chapter Fifteen
The rally was only two days away, the vote one day after that. Both senators, Sommers and Douglass, were increasingly wrapped up in preparatory events, writing, reviewing and rehearsing their speeches.
And reporters were feasting off the activity, hovering around both senators as they prepared to square off. And both Senators Sommers and Douglass did their best to avoid the media as much as was possible.
Senator Sommers was caught on the steps of the Capitol Building and held his hand up and out to quiet their questions. “I don’t know any more about Cafferty’s suicide than any of you, I haven’t heard a thing about it. Otherwise, I’m busy getting ready for the vote on Friday.”
“Do you plan to attend the rally here on Thursday?”
“I do, actually, and that’s against the advice of a lot of members of my team. But I think it’s important to reach out across the aisle, as it were, to come to some kind of accord. We’re all Americans, after all.” Senator Sommers walked onward, shoulders back, expression grim and dignified.
Senator Douglass, on the other hand, was more harried, aggravated as the reporters found him in the recept
ion room of his offices. The receptionist apologized for not being able to keep them out, but Senator Douglass had more to deal with than chastising her.
One reporter asked the senator, “Are you ready for the rally on Thursday?”
“I will be, if you people would get out of my face and let me do my job.”
“What do you think the odds are that Senator Sommers' act will receive a majority vote?”
Senator Douglass sneered. “It’s going to be tight, I can tell you that. But we’re not going to give up, not until the very last minute.”
“If it passes, will you contest it?”
“I will, absolutely. But I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
“And why’s that, sir?”
Senator Douglass stopped himself and looked around, anxious and guilty, twitching to pull his neck out of his collar. “No comment.” But the flurry of questions and balking that rose up out of the group of reporters was more than Senator Douglass could stand. He held out his hands to quiet them. “I can’t say much at this time, but I’m pursuing a personal theory about what really happened in the matter of Senator Vance Cafferty’s recent suicide. I don’t think it’ll be very long before certain facts have been verified and I’ll be able to say more about it. But for, suffice it to say that Senator Sommers and his entire Fairness in Protection Act are hanging by a thread. Now please leave my offices.” With that, Senator Douglass turned and left them clamoring for more, shaking their heads and pulling out their smartphones.
Senator Douglass walked alone down the hall, ignoring the sad and worried looks he was attracting from his staff. He pushed the doors of his office open and stepped in closing and locking it behind him.
Tyler and the two special agents looked up from a video monitor, wirelessly connected to one of the reporters, actually a Secret Service plant.
Senator Douglass asked them, “How’d I do?”
Tyler and the special agents shared a glance and a mutual nod. Tyler said, “Perfect.”
****