Page 39 of A Man of Power

“Remember when I said I would fuck you on every significant parcel of property this city has to offer?” he whispers in my ear.

I nod.

“Well, check the national tit off your list,” he says on a low chuckle as he slams into me. Our pace picks up and I bite my lip to keep from moaning.

“Next time, we’ll go to the national cock,” he whispers on a groan as I stare at the Washington Monument in the distance.

I feel myself growing even wetter as I think about him marking me at each of these places. How does he do this to me? Will I ever stop asking myself this question?

Chapter17

Sebastian

I should take her home.It’s late now, and I have so many things to do, yet I don’t want to leave her yet. I have no idea what I’m doing or what she’s doing to me, but in a moment of weakness, I decide to take her to my bench.

“Come on,” I say as I help her straighten her skirt. I hold out my hand, motioning for her to go. We walk out of the Capitol and down to the street. The night air is cool. I shrug out of my suit jacket and drape it over her shoulders as we walk in silence. I seldom come down here anymore. When I was younger, Kara and I would occasionally be needed for some sort of family photo opportunity. While we waited, Dad would send us out to stay busy while he worked. We always ended up going to the same spot at the Tidal Basin. We’d watch the tourists and make up funny stories about them. We never told anyone. It was something secret between us, a shared experience that now only resides in my memory.

The mall is less filled with tourists at this hour but there are still plenty of people milling about. Some take photos. Some are locals going for an evening jog or bike ride. The Capitol gets smaller as we walk past the Smithsonian museums and cross the street. The Washington Monument rises above us. A perfect streak of white in the dark blue sky.

I place my hand on Alexis’s lower back and steer her toward the Tidal Basin. We walk for a long way until I find my favorite bench beneath a cherry tree.

I sit and pat the bench next to me. Alexis tentatively lowers herself, keeping her eyes trained on mine. She shivers, and I pull her against my side, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. She relaxes and places her head on my chest. She takes off her shoes and curls her feet beneath her. I realize we’ve walked a very long way and she has on shoes that are…not conducive to that.

But right now, I have the sudden urge to share something with her and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to do that while I still feel this way. Sharing my past doesn’t come easy for me. Alexis has been so very patient. No one else has ever been this patient with me. She deserves to hear some of the missing pieces. She needs an explanation.

“When Kara got sick, my parents, I think, honestly believed she would be cured. For two years, they kept thinking the next treatment would be the one, but it never was. There was this trial my father knew about. But it had to be approved for teenagers and it hadn’t been. I watched her shrivel away, a little piece at a time, a tiny fraction day after day…until one day she was just gone. My parents’ optimism clouded my mind and kept me from seeing what was really happening. Had I known…maybe I would have spent more time with her. I did promise her that I’d keep fighting for kids like her; that I wouldn’t stop looking for ways to get them treatments. Access to lifesaving treatments was at the core of my very first campaign. I may have grown up surrounded by the wealth my great-great-grandparents made, but I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that our lives were different from others. If Kara couldn’t get treatments, then most people don’t stand a chance, and I still believe that shouldn’t be the case.”

I pause and look down at her. My fingers are stroking her hair, feeling the silky strands like a security blanket. She doesn’t speak. She waits patiently for me to continue.

“Something happened in college. That’s what made Conner, Aiden, and me so very close.” I don’t tell her everything. I won’t tell her everything because it would endanger her life. But I can tell her this one thing. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to say anything at all, but I do. “We were leaving a frat party, heading to our apartment. It was faster to take the trail through the park. We’d done it a hundred times, maybe more. I forget who, maybe Aiden, heard something or maybe I did, but when we looked around, we found a young woman. She was naked and barely conscious. She had a faint pulse. We called nine-one-one.”

Very slowly, Alexis raises her head and looks at me, her eyes wide. I reach out and stroke her cheek, trying to soothe her.

“Did she…” Alexis trails off as if afraid to finish her question because she doesn’t want to know the answer.

I shake my head. “She survived. She didn’t remember anything, aside from being at some party. Hell, it could have been the one we came from. There were a hundred people there.”

“Was she high?” Alexis asks. I know where’s she’s going with these questions.

I shake my head again. “She was injected with a drug. Aiden found out more recently. And it has similarities to the drug found in the women in the park over the past few weeks but it’s not the same. There had been some disappearances of young women in the park back then, too.”

I watch Alexis as her eyes dart between mine. That brilliant mind of hers is working in overdrive. I’ve come to know this look. It’s sexy as fuck, but also a little scary. She’s too smart for her own good.

“But…could it be related to the drug?”

“I don’t know. Potentially,” I admit.

“Have you brought this to the attention of the officers working the case?” she asks.

“No. There’s not enough to go on yet. Aiden’s looking into things, if he finds more information that’s conclusive, we’ll share that with them. I don’t want them going down rabbit holes that don’t exist.”

She nods and bites her lip. I press my thumb to her lower lip and free it from her teeth.

“Thank you…for sharing all of that with me, for trusting me with a piece of you.” She pauses. “Does anyone else know…about the girl in the park?”

I shake my head. “No, we were kept out of the press. The officers recognized our names and didn’t want to draw a scene, so the local press who wrote about it just said it was some local college students that found her. Hell, I don’t even know what happened to her after that. Her name was Tina, and that’s all I know.”

She’s quiet as she processes all this new information. “Why do I feel like there is so much more to your family and your college friends than you are telling me?”

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