A Vote For Lust: A Bad Boy Political Romance

by Natasha Tanner

  I almost called him to ask him what drug he was on, but I finally decided against it. I would let him play his little game. I found it charming, to tell the truth.

  The place was an old building, and a modest one at that. The façade was neglected and covered in graffiti. I reread the card to make sure I hadn’t shown up in the wrong address. The block was pretty much deserted, except for some cars parked along the street.

  So what now? Will the door open on its own? Is he building a rocket in the basement? To be standing there in front of the building, just for nothing to happen, was anticlimactic after our previous encounter at the Tribeca mansion.

  I climbed the steps to the door, rang the bell, and waited.

  Well, something happened.

  “Hey!”

  I turned around, alarmed, as I heard the man’s voice and, almost simultaneously, the sound of a car screeching to a halt.

  A black car with darkened windows had stopped right in front of the building, and the man inside opened the door violently and ran towards me. I recognized him: he was Jack Starr, Ace Hart’s close friend. He was holding a gun.

  “Wh-what? Nooo!” I screamed, and started running on the sidewalk, while a thousand absurd thoughts raced inside my head. He ran after me. I was so frightened I didn’t want to look anywhere but ahead; I heard other noises, people running, men yelling. Someone come and save me, I implored silently as I ran as fast as I could. I was about to reach the corner when the stocky man grabbed me by the arm, making me stop in my tracks and almost fall.

  “Wait!” he exclaimed. He let go of my arm and raised his hand.

  “Get away from me!” I screamed, and started running again, trying to make it to the corner. But he caught me by the arm once more and pushed me back violently. When I resisted, he tackled me and I ended up falling hands first on the floor.

  “Stay put!”

  I yelled, “Help!”, but when I looked up, he wasn’t beside me anymore. He was running towards the corner. He got there huffing and puffing, looked around, and started shooting at something or someone I couldn’t see. I yelled some more, but nobody came to help me. It was like everybody had suddenly fled, leaving the neighborhood deserted.

  Jack Starr walked back to me, his face shiny with sweat. He helped me get back on my feet. “Get in the car,” he said.

  I rubbed my hands, scratched by the fall on the sidewalk. They burned. I took a step back, then another, and a third.

  “I... I won’t,” I refused. Jack Starr approached me. My arms and legs were shaking. “What is this? Y-you...”

  “Get in the fucking car,” he said again, in a more peremptory tone. “There’s no time to argue. There could be more thugs around. Do you want your pretty face blown up?”

  “B-but I...”

  Jack Starr grappled my arm again in a decidedly non-gentle way, opened the passenger door and pushed me inside the car. He climbed in, turned on the engine, and sped away.

  “What is this?” I asked once more as the streets ran past each other through the darkened window. “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “What is this?” I asked for a third time. “What’s happening?”

  It took him a few seconds to answer. He spoke mechanically, looking at the road.

  “We don’t know yet. But it’s fortunate that Ace told me to keep an eye on you. Those guys probably wanted to kidnap you. Maybe kill you.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Jack Starr repeated, “but I can guess. You know too much. Ace should have never mentioned Little Vegas to you. He put you in danger.”

  I snorted. “So he put me in danger and now he wants to keep an eye on me? Why? I didn’t even ask to work for him.”

  This time Jack Starr looked at me. There was something akin to reproach in his eyes.

  “Do you really need me to tell you why?”

  “Well... I guess I do,” I replied, defiantly.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said. “He cares about you. Plain as day.”

  I was going to snort again, but a sudden chill went down my spine when I thought about what had just happened on the street. The horror of the whole thing hit me all at once: someone was after me, maybe wanted me dead, and if Ace Hart hadn’t sent his guy to check on me, I could have been dead already.

  Asshole or not, Ace Hart had just saved me. I had to give him that at least.

  Jack grabbed his cellphone and made a call. I recognized Ace’s number in the screen. “I’m taking her to the Hamptons,” he said, and hung up. None of us said a word during the rest of the trip.

  PROTECTED

  ACE

  Why do you care? I told myself as I climbed down the stairs to the garage. If this has nothing to do with Little Vegas, it’s good news. Just leave the girl alone and let her worry about herself. Let her go back to Russia. You don’t even know her that well. She’s nothing to you.

  That was the big boss in me. The bad boy. The mafia guy. The one who plays by simple rules. The one who makes the good decisions.

  The one who usually doesn’t need lots of internal monologue to know what to do.

  There was another thought floating around: I’m too old for this shit. It echoed what Jack Starr had told me so many times, and I was beginning to think I knew what he was talking about. The thought ricocheted inside my head as I climbed in the Audi and turned on the engine.

  There had been a time when I had wanted to leave all this behind, many years ago, in what felt like another universe. That had ended in disaster. A sense of dread invaded me as I called Pip Glover. I punched the Send button with such energy that I almost broke the smartphone’s screen.

  “Hey, boss,” Pip said.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I yelled.

  He seemed taken aback.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You told me that it was just the Chinese. That there was no other people behind what’s been happening. Then WHO THE FUCK just tried to kidnap Van?”

  There hadn’t been more than a couple of minor incidents in the last month. I didn’t like this. I’ve developed a sense of smell for this kind of thing; such a sudden calm could mean that the Chinese were just setting up something big.

  “I... I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been following this for more than a month, Ace. I’ve told you everything I know. But I’ll find out, I promise.”

  “You bet.”

  I didn’t even wait for him to answer. I hung up and threw the phone aside. I was cursing under my breath as I drove to Grey Gardens to meet Van and Jack.

  He had called me from Brooklyn to tell me about what had just happened. “I have no idea who they are,” he said, “but I can tell you something for sure: those guys are Russian as fuck.”

  There was no denying it: I was frightened.

  * * *

  VAN

  The house in the Hamptons was a thing of beauty. Unlike the one in Tribeca, this was a big mansion in a very classical style, one of the most beautiful properties in Grey Gardens. It was perched atop a hill from where one could see the whole neighborhood, as I ascertained once the card was climbing up the private road leading to the building.

  There was no mystery now, either, when we entered the house, no doors opening on their own or whirring noises coming from the gym. There were no screeching sounds or men shooting each other. Ace Hart opened the door himself. When I saw him, I immediately felt safer.

  “Come in,” he said. “Van, please get comfortable. Do you want a drink?”

  “Just water,” I replied, and sat on a comfy couch, taking a good look at the living room. There were no TVs or other appliances; in their place, I found myself staring at a wall that was a huge bookshelf. There had to be more than five thousand books there, some of them new, some old, many showing the wear and tear that comes from having been read. I felt such a pinch of envy that I forgot for a moment what had just happened in Brooklyn.

  Ace got me a glass of ice water an
d took Jack aside. After conferring for a few minutes, they came back. Jack shook our hands and left. Ace sat beside me and grabbed my hand gently.

  “Do you have any idea about what happened?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I thought your men were after me. When I saw Jack, I tried to flee.”

  He chuckled.

  “Jack was making sure you were safe. I’m glad I told him so. We’ll find out who those fuckers are. The guys are on it.”

  Now I regained conscience of what had almost happened. I shivered at the thought. Ace noticed, and he put his arm around me protectively. He spoke softly, as if making too much noise could hurt me.

  “I will protect you,” he said. “Don’t worry. Everything’s gonna be alright. These assholes are no match for Ace Hart.”

  Suddenly, I felt an intense craving taking possession of my whole being. His body next to mine seemed to irradiate an irresistible energy, as if our skins established some kind of animal magnetism. Before I knew what I was doing, I was slipping my hand below his silky shirt, exploring the hairy surface of his iron-hard pectorals. I was still looking away from him, as if my hand operated on its own volition. I touched his body while I saw all those books, and the sunlight entering the place obliquely and bathing us in a surreal light. But he grabbed my chin gently and slowly moved my face until I was looking right into his eyes.

  His gaze disarmed me. I let out a deep sigh as his hand mimicked mine and I felt the warm touch of his fingers massaging my breast. My nipples awakened instantly. The one being touched hardened, bent and trembled to the white hot contact, the other burned with jealousy. I’m alive, I thought. I might be dead by now, but I’m alive and oh, so horny. I owed my life to this man, I thought as I closed my eyes and let the sensations wash all over me. His hand was fire running down my belly, then sneaking below my skirt, bypassing my panties easily, and getting in the delirious space between my legs.

  “I want t—” I began, but his lips didn’t let me finish. He was kissing me already. His hand started running up and down the dark, warm concavity it had discovered, and my skin quivered in sweet surrender. My fingers found their way down too, beating the resistance of his designer pants and briefs and closing around his cock. It was stiff and hot as iron from a forge. My hand started moving up and down too, and I felt his response as the shaft widened and pulsated under my grip.

  It was all a clumsy thing, both of us sitting beside each other rubbing each other’s parts without even getting rid of our clothes, but his breath smelled like mint and the sharp, fresh scent travelled through my body in a luscious counterpoint with the furnace between my legs. The mix of sensations was unlike anything I had felt before.

  “Well, look at you,” he said once our lips parted, leaving the air hot and minty and sexy in the space in between.

  “Look at me,” I implored. “Look at your Russian girl.”

  I felt the touch of his eyes running all over my body. He kept massaging me, making me sigh and moan, but there was also his gaze making contact with my skin, like a physical caress. I wanted to be at his mercy, let him watch me for hours as I succumbed to his delightful exploration.

  I cocked my head back, let out a deep sigh, and let gravity pull me down until I was lying on the bed. I was still holding his sex in my hand, moving it back and forth, leading him to change his posture. He leant over me and kissed my neck, then unbuttoned my blouse to set my breasts free, and started stamping little kisses on them, as if he was kissing for the first time.

  “Look at me,” I said with my eyes closed, surrendering to the hot touches of his lips on my skin and the growing arousal down below. He was looking at me, I knew it, I somehow felt his piercing blue eyes drinking thirstily from my image. I reached up and my hand met his huge chest. I clawed at it as my pussy seemed to catch fire. My other hand guided his dragon to the cave. When he entered, I let out a sharp cry of pleasure. He was hard and imposing, and when he started moving inside me, I lost control completely.

  “I see you,” he whispered in my ear as he fucked me. “You’re the most beautiful thing in the world.”

  POKER NIGHT

  ACE

  The first thing I did (after the sex, of course; after the incredible chemical explosion that took place when our bodies collided and our scents found each other; and after the night that we spent together) was take Van out. I didn’t know if the thugs had followed her and Jack to the Hamptons and I didn’t want to leave her where they could be watching. So I used the tunnel under the hills to get out the property. We surfaced half a mile away, my foot stepping on the gas pedal as if it were the head of an enemy. The car was inconspicuous, so as not to draw too much attention. Instead of the Lambo, we took the regular Mercedes, a dark grey, reliable beast.

  It would be a long, boring trip to Chicago, but it was the safest thing to do given the circumstances. Even so, I didn’t like the way things were going. I should have stayed away from Van to protect her. Now, the only way to keep her protected is to stay close to her, I thought. Ace Hart, you fucked up real good.

  “Why don’t we fly?” Vanina asked once we were on the road, eating mile after mile as the sun rose in the East. I explained that I didn’t want any trouble between the house and my private airport. Unfortunately, the secret exit under the hills led us in the other direction, so we might just as well keep going and do the trip by car.

  “We’ll be there by nine, right on time for the game,” I assured her. She put her hand on my thigh and gave me a sweet smile.

  “Thanks for protecting me,” she said.

  I tried to keep my cool, even though that smile was disarming. I planned to leave her with Jack or Harlan as soon as I could figure out what was happening and how to keep her safe. She wouldn’t certainly be safe for long if she stayed with me. I should have said so right then, but somehow, I didn’t find it in me to let her down. You’re becoming soft, Ace. Your friend was right, as always.

  “Tell me about Russia,” I said. We had a long trip ahead: twelve hours on the road at least. I figured there was no harm in getting to know each other a bit more. “Did you leave a job there? A boyfriend? Some enemies?”

  “No, no, and god, I hope not,” she chuckled. “I’ve had some jobs and a couple of boyfriends. No enemies that I know of.”

  “So nobody hates you back home? That’s good.”

  “Nobody,” she said. Then she seemed to remember something. “Although I... I have broken a heart, I guess.”

  “More than one, I’m sure,” I replied. “You’re so beautiful it can’t be any other way.”

  “No, just one. A boy from Arzamas. His name is Piotr. He loved me since we were just teens.”

  “And you didn’t love him back?”

  “No. He never gave up, though. He kept telling me that I was the girl for him, even when Misha and I moved to St Petersburg. After a few months, he moved there too.”

  “For you?”

  She let out a sardonic smile.

  “If only. He joined a gang there. Small business, just a bunch of lowlifes. He went down the rabbit hole pretty fast. I even visited him the first time they sent him to jail.”

  I arched my brow and let my hand rest on her leg, just as she had done minutes before. God, her eyes were so pretty I could have kissed her.

  “The first time? Then he went to jail more than once.”

  “He did,” she said with a sad gesture, “and he dragged Misha down with him. My brother had joined his little gang, and they were outside all day, roaming the streets, stealing whatever they could. I told Misha... I warned him...”

  She couldn’t go on. If she kept talking, she would cry. I knew the sensation: a knot in your throat that doesn’t let you speak. Anguish. Sorrow. Pain. I had forgotten that kind of feeling, but I knew it well.

  “I had a girlfriend a few years ago,” I said, so that she wouldn’t have to go on. I could have changed the subject to literally anything else, but I thought about that. I was mirroring her pain,
remembering my own. “Her name was Rhonda, and I killed for her.”

  She looked at me with her big vulnerable eyes, and I could see how her sorrow receded to give way to fear.

  “They killed her first,” I added. “I hope that makes up for it.”

  She kept silent for a while, looking through the window at the boring landscape of rural Pennsylvania. Finally, she asked.

  “What happened?”

  “I had just become the head of Little Vegas. But it was too soon for me. The previous guy in charge had messed with the numbers and he died in the ensuing disagreement. I was expected to ‘fix’ things by killing even more people. I refused. I had been dating Rhonda for a while and we were deeply in love, so, naturally, I wanted out. I didn’t want such a risky life for her, and I was ready to renounce my position to just be with her and lead a normal life.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “Well, nobody just says goodbye and leaves,” I replied. “There are too many secrets. If you get out, you must make sure they can’t find you. I withdrew some millions and moved to a nice house in a Spanish coastal town. Someone sold me out, though, and we had to flee. If it weren’t for Jack Starr, who warned me that the location was no longer safe, they would have killed us both. After that, I decided that it was best that we moved to different places. This time they couldn’t find me. But they found her.”

  I stopped there. After all these years, I still didn’t like to talk about it. The next part was the worst. Vanina said nothing, but her big eyes encouraged me to go on.

  “I don’t know how they got to her. They... they shot her in the face. They didn’t even give her a warning. They broke into her little apartment in Paris and killed her before she realized what was happening.”

  “Did you ever found out who sold you out?”

  I shook my head.

  “I had my suspicions, but never confirmed them. I took care of the guys who killed Rhonda, though.”