Governor (Governor Trilogy 1) Read online

  “Yes, Sir.” I don’t even feel guilty about that. It’s life with Carter, and he always balances the scales, in his own way.

  He bends down and whispers something in her ear that results in a barely muffled moan from her in the affirmative.

  Carter returns to me, kissing me. “She’s under orders to submit to you, boy.” He nips my lower lip, which is risky, because if we get going, we’ll both look like we’ve barely survived a twelve-hour orgy. “Enjoy. That’s my gift to you for all your hard work.”

  “For how long, Sir?” I’m struggling to take my time, but with her feeling so good, I know it won’t take me long to blow.

  “Until I say so.” He grins. “I know it’ll be difficult to safely find time. I don’t want you to lose any opportunities just because I was on a conference call or something. At least for the next few months.”

  That was said loudly enough for her to hear, and another soft, needy moan rolls from her.

  My strokes take on more force, faster. “Thank you, Sir. And Ma’am.”

  He nuzzles my ear. “Thank you, boy. Love you.”

  “Love you, too, Sir.” I kiss him this time, my lips slanted over his as I quickly chase my orgasm and find it. Carter swallows my whines as I tighten and spill and fill her with me.

  Just me, this time. Not second place, not having to clean her up later and taste him and me together inside her. Not having to pull out and painting her body with it because Carter wants to test my control or torture me for funsies.

  All me, only me, completely inside her. It’s a special treat he knows damn well how much I cherish. The man fucking knows me. He couldn’t have given me a better gift if he’d tried.

  I stay where I am, my cock softening inside her, my hands caressing her ass. I squeeze, enjoying the way she whimpers and rocks against me, and I love the way her flesh looks white before pink fills in my fingerprints on her flesh.

  He’ll get her later tonight, I’m sure. Especially considering the panty infraction. She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t tie her up, cane her, and then do orgasm torture on her for about an hour.

  He doesn’t break our kiss but he releases her wrists and hair and grabs my head, holding on as he deepens our kiss, controlling it now.

  Always in control.

  Finally, he lets me up for air and pulls her up and into our arms so we can both kiss her.

  He pats her ass and then points at my bathroom. “Go straighten your hair and your clothes. Leave the bathroom door open. Don’t you dare wipe up until you’re back at your office, though, pet. Let’s see how fast you can make it back there before Owen’s dripping down your legs.”

  He grins.

  The ire that flashes through her gaze as she starts to pull her skirt down says “fucking bastard,” but she’s more than smart enough not to add strokes to the panty punishment.

  I love the glisten of moisture I see along the inside of the backs of her upper thighs when she turns, before her skirt comes down and blocks my view.

  Marking my territory? Absolutely.

  Nothing less than Carter has done to both of us throughout the years.

  That’s part of the fun.

  He arches an eyebrow at her. “Hey, if someone hadn’t worn panties without permission today, someone would have been allowed to come, and someone would be allowed to clean up now like a good girl. Bad girls get treated as such. Now get moving, pet, before I shove you out that office door looking like the governor just fucked you over his new desk.”

  A soft meep escapes her and she hurries over to my bathroom to straighten herself in the mirror there. Carter sends me to kneel where I was, back to Primed. My knees aren’t happy about this, but I’m not going to argue.

  We can’t waste time right now. I’ll get what I get from him in these few precious minutes the three of us have alone together. It’s doubtful Susa will be able to sneak out to spend time with me tonight after the inauguration ball. I know Carter plans to ride back to the mansion with me after having the limo drop Susa off first. He’ll explain he needs to go through tomorrow’s schedule with me and will walk himself home later.

  No one will question that.

  Unfortunately, even with my townhouse so close, I can’t justify living there, either. I’m supposed to be living in the mansion, and I’ll do it. It’d look more suspicious if I went home all the time.

  Carter already told us he’ll arrange occasional rendezvous for us at the townhouse, but we’ll have to be careful when and how we do them. It’s too risky right now, when so much media attention is on us.

  Patience. This has been a long-game, and will continue to be for a while.

  We won’t risk fooling around in the limo tonight, either. You never know where someone might have planted a camera, and we can’t afford any self-inflicted scandals this early in our term.

  Make no doubt about it—it’s our term, not just mine. Susa and Carter are steering this ship. I’m merely trimming the sails when and how they tell me. It’s obviously a successful formula, and I’m not about to do something stupid and fuck it all up now.

  When Susa emerges from the bathroom, she brushes a kiss across my lips and one across Carter’s before he lets her out and locks the door behind her, leaving us alone once again.

  Carter picks up my office phone and dials someone.

  “Dray? Carter. Listen…”

  I kneel there and struggle not to burst out laughing as he gives Susa’s COS very specific orders regarding her future wardrobe choices.

  She is not going to be a happy camper when she returns to her office and learns about that.

  Then again, she wouldn’t be here either, if she minded the bastard extraordinaire’s ways.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  I maintain my kneeling position on the floor of my new office despite my feet practically going numb, my knees screaming at me, the muscles of my back burning with the strain.

  Primed.

  Hence the name.

  Carter lounges against the end of my desk and studies me.

  Eventually, he speaks. “Why, exactly, do you think I’ve done all of this, Owen?”

  I blink, surprised he’s used my name while we’re alone.

  That means we’re talking as equals.

  I still don’t break my position, although I allow myself to look up into his dark brown gaze.

  “What do you mean, Sir?” I ask.

  He sweeps his arms apart, indicating the office. “All of this. Us. Her. Getting you elected over the years, especially to this office. Why, exactly, do you think I’ve done all of this?”

  Confusion fills me. I am not a stupid man, but this kind of circumspect talk when alone with me is not normal for him.

  Usually when—especially lately—we’re either working or fucking. Or sleeping.

  More sleeping than fucking, as of late. I guess we’re getting old.

  “I don’t know, Sir. I’m not even sure I’m following you.”

  He holds his hands out to me, palms up and wiggling his fingers, the meaning clear.

  I unclasp my hands and reach for his. His fingers close around mine and he gently tugs, indicating for me to stand and come to him.

  He apparently doesn’t care I’m naked and that, despite the fact that I just fucked a load into Susa, my well-trained body has once again been anticipating…something. Anything. That it might mean suspicious stains on the front of his slacks when he spreads his legs and has me stand between them, my body comfortably pressed against his.

  I drape my arms around his neck as Carter’s hands skim down my back, to my ass—his ass—cupping it, pulling and holding me tightly against him when I don’t immediately close the remaining distance between our hips.

  I can feel his hard cock straining inside his boxers through the material of his slacks.

  His tone remains soft, patient. “Why, Owen, do you think I married Susannah and put myself all-in, not just with the three of us as a relationship, but to get you elected, especi
ally as governor?”

  We’ve never really discussed this. I’d always assumed it was because he wanted to. That was Carter—what he wanted, he got. If he didn’t want to do something, he had no problem saying no.

  Nothing stood in his way when he wanted something.

  Ever.

  The way he’d married Susa. The way he’d gotten me elected, and, as a result, was himself now one of the most powerful men in Florida politics.

  The way he’d got me.

  “I-I don’t know, Sir.”

  He smiles, and something in my heart tightly squeezes, but in a good way. This isn’t the smile of my friend, or the bastard extraordinaire, or the sadist, or the adept politician, or even my COS handling official business.

  This is the gentle smile of the loving husband, the smile he reserves for Susa in their most tender and private of moments when they’re not Master and slave but two people in love with each other.

  The same smile he also reserves for me in private.

  His gaze searches mine for a long moment before he speaks again. “Because I knew from the day we met that the only way I’d ever get you was to make sure I took whatever it was that you loved and wanted most and held it so close to me that you couldn’t help but come with it.” He tips his head forward, the way he does with Susa, only I’m taller in this pairing.

  His forehead presses against mine, warm, firm, and the look in his eyes takes my breath away. “Because I love you, dummy. I’ve been in love with you from the day we met. Somewhere between showing you how to fold your clothes and make your damn rack properly, I knew I was in love with you. That’s not to say I don’t love Susa, because you know I do. But I fell in love with her because you fell in love with her first. I knew if I’d just come right out and told you how I felt about you early on, even though I sensed then that you had a slave’s heart, you probably would have bolted.”

  I don’t know what to say, except…

  He’s absolutely right.

  I nod a little, just enough to convey it but not enough to lose contact with him.

  I like it when we stand like this, little pockets of private time where I feel like our souls are plugged in to each other.

  “I did all this, Owen, because I have always loved you. I’m in love with you. I needed to climb inside your soul and find out what made you tick so I could match you there and keep time with your heartbeat. Weave myself into your life in such a way that I knew you’d never make me leave.”

  Some people might feel played.

  But I’m not some people, and this man has proven to me time and again that, yeah, ever since we first met he’s always put me first in his life. Even to his own detriment.

  The prickle of tears in my eyes catches me by surprise. Because like this, open and honest and bared to each other, one thing hits me hard and deep and, surprisingly enough, for the very first time.

  Of course I love him—he’s my friend. That I’ve known and admitted for years.

  But he’s more than that, really. Much more.

  My best friend.

  My right-hand man.

  My lover.

  My Master.

  But…

  We have said those three words to each other many times, but not exactly in this way. I’m an idiot that it took me this long to realize it.

  I finally say it. “I’m in love with you, too.” I don’t know when, exactly, lust turned into love, and turned into being in love with him, but it’s there, before me, in stark truth.

  I’m in love with Carter, and have been for years. For sixteen years now.

  On my ass, his thumbs slowly stroke up and down just behind my hips, and he’s still looking into my eyes.

  A soft, relieved sigh escapes him. “You don’t hate me?”

  “Carter, how could I ever hate a bastard extraordinaire like you?”

  The left corner of his mouth quirks in a sexy smirk. Between us, I feel him grow harder. “You weren’t bi when we met.”

  “I’m not bi now. You’re absolutely right that this wouldn’t have happened any other way.”

  His gaze softens. “I wish I could legally marry you, too.”

  This time, I kiss him. “Me, too. But this is okay.”

  “She’s really happy, you know. She gets the two men she loves. She didn’t have to choose between us, in the end. I can give her the Dominant stuff that you can’t, and she can give you the things I can’t.”

  He grinds against me a little, his meaning crystal clear what “things” Susa can give me that he can’t, and I have to swallow back my needy moan as my well-conditioned body responds.

  “Does she know?” I manage to ask. “That it was your plan the whole time?”

  He shrugs. “I was open and honest with her in the beginning that I was bi and I thought you were hot. When discussing fantasies, I told her it’d be even hotter with the two of you together. Suggested it would actually make some things easier for all of us. She might have let it slip that she’d be more than a little okay with that. She was adorable, her face beet red as she blushed when she admitted it.”

  “Before or after you married her?”

  “Before. Wouldn’t have married her if she couldn’t love you and have both of us.” He grins. “Getting her hooked on dominating you once I saw how service-oriented you were took a little trial and error. Had to play armchair psychologist to find out how to coax her inner sadist into the light and convince her you actually enjoyed that. I knew she was capable of it. Just had to let her figure it out.”

  “How’d you know? That I would enjoy that?” We’ve been together for so long that it feels like we’ve always been together. It’s difficult to remember there was a time in my life when I didn’t even know them, much less have them in my life.

  He gently squeezes my ass. “You open up when you get really drunk. On your twenty-first birthday, I showed you some gay BDSM porn and FemDom porn, and knew I’d hit the jackpot.”

  I wince, groaning. How could I ever forget that night? Although, to be honest, much of that night is an alcohol-induced black hole, and I really don’t remember everything that happened. What lives in my memory are the days and weeks in the immediate aftermath. “That was not one of my finer moments.”

  He chokes back a roar of laughter. “You will never know how badly I wanted to go down on you that night when you whipped it out and started jerking off. Well, you know now. I actually considered doing it, except that wasn’t consent and I might be a bastard, but I need consent to be one.”

  “So what if I’d said no to you that first night the three of us were together?”

  “I didn’t think you would. I was hoping I’d read you correctly and had you so horned up you didn’t want to say no. Would have really fucked up my plans if you had, though.” He smiles again. “I would have found a way to convince you. Eventually.”

  He leans in and nips my lower lip. “You’re like a goddamned drug, Owen. I can’t get enough of you. Even all these years later.”

  “Her father despises you. He told me he wishes she’d married me.”

  Now he grins. “I know. Ask me if I fucking care.” He kisses me again, hard, deep, nothing gentle about it.

  Possessive.

  His fingers knead my ass and I have to fight the urge to grind hard against him and get myself off without permission.

  Would totally be worth the sore ass later from the punishment caning I’d get, but I don’t want to spooge his slacks and create questions if someone sees him before he can change.

  We’re well past the days of being able to take risks like that. This is serious, the big leagues, and I have a serious job to do.

  We all do.

  “I’m going to get his daughter elected governor,” Carter continues when he ends that kiss. “We are. You and I. That’s something he never could have done. He fucking tolerates me for that reason alone, if nothing else. Because he’s a greedy sonofabitch and I have the political cachet now that he wishes he’d had
in his heyday.”

  His smile fades. “She hates her daddy about as much as he hates me. She’s better at hiding it, though. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she loves Benchley, but she hates the politician he is. I might have tapped into that hatred to get her to enjoy giving you what you needed.”

  I frown. “She doesn’t enjoy topping me?”

  “Oh, she absolutely does now. She was uncertain, at first. The more you enjoyed it, the more she enjoyed it. A self-perpetuating cycle. I give her what she needs and wants as her Master, and you give her what she needs and wants as her slave.” Another of those sexy, slow smiles curls his lips. “And you get to fuck the hottest lieutenant governor in the whole United States whenever you want.”

  “And you get the best of both worlds.”

  “Almost.” He nibbles down the side of my throat, over my heart, and bites, hard. It won’t show there. Ever since the campaign started, he’s always been careful about my neck or leaving marks anywhere that might show. I’m supposed to be single.

  Visible marks might trigger questions we don’t want asked.

  It makes my pulse race and my cock throb with need.

  I miss the days when he’d bite down on my neck and mark me there, just at my collar line, a boner-inducing game where I always wondered if my collar was hiding marks and watching Carter evilly smile as he watched me do it. Especially if we were in court.

  “Almost?” I gasp, barely able to think when he does that to me.

  He releases his bite and kisses the mark. “Almost.” He lifts his head and stares at me. “We won. We have this time to try to do what we talked about. I will work my fucking ass off to pull every string I can to make this happen for us. But there’s something I need you to do for me now, and only you can do it.”

  “Sir?” It’s instinctive and I can’t help it.

  He releases my ass and cups my face in his hands. “I need Owen right now, not boy.”

  I nod.

  “You’re in this for life, right? With me and with Susa?”

  That’s a silly question, but I nod again.

  “I need you to say it, Owen. I need to hear you say it, right now.”