Political Abuse

It was not meant to be that Hardesty and Toby were going to get either a sleep-in or more of a fuck-in on Sunday, as Toby received a call while Hardesty was pulling on a pair of athletic pants to meet with Goldstein’s roommate, Zach Taylor.

Toby had been called by the escort service. One of the escorts had been beaten to a pulp while on a date the previous night. So had his john, which meant they probably had found a bad place to go to fuck. They’d been pulled out of the john’s Jaguar by a gang while fucking in the backseat and both had been fucked with batons and beaten down. Toby was off to the hospital to visit the other rent-boy.

At the door, Hardesty and Toby briefly renewed a long-standing argument. “This is just another example of why I think you should give this up,” Hardesty said. “It’s too dangerous out there for male whores. My whole job is built around that reality.”

“I’ll be fine. I look harmless, but I’ve had all of the self-defense classes. Adrian is new to this. He doesn’t know how to look for and avoid danger. I wouldn’t be in a parking lot in Rock Creek Park at night anyway.”

“You can’t anticipate all dangers, Toby. And you’d be in a Rock Creek Park parking lot at night if your escort service told you to be and if the john was paying you enough to be there. You take too many chances.”

Toby stopped the continuing argument about that by kissing Hardesty on the lips. “The one who is going to put me in the hospital one of these days, big boy, is you, as you come up with new ways to manhandle me. We’ll talk about this later.”

Fifteen minutes later, Zach Taylor was at the door and both he and Hardesty were sucking in air at the sight of the other. Hardesty had answered the door barefoot and just in athletic pants, so Taylor got the full effect of the man’s powerful, muscular body. For Hardesty’s part, he immediately knew that his approach for getting information from this young man would be the same he’d used with his roommate—he’d fuck the information out of him. Zach Taylor, exactly what Hardesty hardened for—small, blond, boyish, handsome, perfectly formed, and already giving Hardesty the “fuck me” eyeballing—wasn’t going to leave this apartment untaxed and unfucked. From the look Taylor was giving Hardesty, he agreed with this completely.

Taylor brushed against Hardesty as he entered the apartment, let his fingers glide along the big man’s pecs, gave him the clear “fuck me” look, and said, “You have to help protect me.”

“Before or after I fuck you?” Hardesty asked. “Or am I going to have to do some work to get you out of your clothes?”

“No, you don’t have to. We can talk later. I’ve heard about what you have, and I know what you can do, and I want it. You wanna fuck first, that’s A-OK with me. And if you want to fuck me afterward, that’s a go too, as far as I’m concerned.”

Hardesty fucked him on the long, versatile sectional sofa in the living room, Zach, naked, stretched under him with his arms above his head and his fingernails dug into the underside of the rolled arm at one end of the sofa, and his legs spread and bent, his thighs turned out and his buttocks raised on a sofa pillow to provide full access for Hardesty’s long, thick, rock-hard cock. Lying on top of the little blond, between his thighs, Hardesty, also naked, had his fists buried into the sofa cushion on either side of Taylor’s torso and did more than a hundred pushups on the slight, moaning body under him before they had both come.

“How did you know you were going to let me do that?” Hardesty asked immediately have shooting off, still lying on top of Taylor, pinning him to the sofa.

“I’m friends with Jeremy Brand,” Zach said. “He told me you’d do that and more to me if I came to you for help. I’ll let you do a lot more if you help me out. I want you to do a lot more.”

“Those toys in your bedroom at your apartment. Those yours?”

“You’ve been in my room . . . you’ve gone through my things?”

“I was investigating the murder of your roommate. I had to check everything out.”

“Yes, the sex toys are mine,” Zach answered. “I want you to use toys like that with me. Just help me with this congressional prostitution ring thing.”

“That X-frame we found in Goldstein’s closet. And the whips?”

“Yes, yes, we both used that with johns. Now. I want it now.”

“You’ve done this with men? You know what’s done? You’re seasoned to it? You did it for Zeller and the men he sent to you?”

“Yes. I did it; I’ll tell you about it; I know where I can get written evidence. But first, Jeremy tells me you have a championship cock and a rough technique I’ll die for. Do me again, that way, first.”

Fortuitously, Hardesty’s walk-in closet had restraints anchored into the back wall, with cuffs that had Taylor spread-eagled and captive. The young man, bound facing out, writhed and cried out for the whip and then Hardesty’s cock, as the detective gave him moderate strokes on his thighs, belly, chest, and cock and balls and then, releasing his ankles but not his wrists, gathered him into his crotch and fucked him against the wall.

Later, the two of them sitting, naked and still admiring the body of the other, on barstools at the kitchen island and drinking beer, Hardesty, satiated for now, got to the point.

“Why do you think you need protection?”

“Because of what they did to Jacob. If Jim Zeller can get to him from wherever the feds are keeping him, they can get to me—and for the same reason. Jacob wasn’t doing anything I didn’t do, except that he made public accusations.”

“So, you can give us whatever Goldstein could have if we protect you until this all gets resolved or blows over?”

“Yes. These men are unbelievably powerful. And they don’t want it known that they fuck young men and pimp them. If Jim Zeller can—”

“I don’t think it’s Jim Zeller you have to worry about.”

“Oh?”

“Zeller’s dead too. Somebody got to him last night in his supposedly safe and secret cell last night.”

“Shit. I’m fucked then.”

“I’m going to fuck you again, yes, before I get you someplace safe. But first, tell me what you know about this prostitution ring. Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.”

“I can do better than that. I know where Jim Zeller might have stashed some records that will make your job a lot easier. Let me go get those now and I’ll be back.”

“I can take you.”

“You can’t get into the Capitol Building on a Sunday afternoon. I can. I’ll go and be back in a couple of hours.”

“You want to leave now, before—?”

“Of course not before,” Zach said, with a low laugh. “Fuck me again. Make me feel it.”

Hardesty fucked him bent over the ottoman, a belt encasing the young man’s chest just below his pecs, with side cuffs holding Zach’s arms close into his torso. Double cuffs trapped his wrist behind his back and a leg spreader bar between his cuffed ankles held his legs spread and immobile.

The young man howled with pain, violation, and ecstasy as Hardesty worked his canal roughly with a long, thick glass dildo before mounting his ass and fucking him into total submission.

At the door, as he watched a grinning and groaning Zach hobble down the hall toward the elevators, Hardesty’s lust was clearing out to give him a more objective view of the situation. He was out of the apartment and headed down the hall to tell Zach that it really wasn’t a good idea for him to venture out alone—and where, exactly, was he going anyway?—but when he got to the elevators, the elevator door had already shut and Zach was on his way down.

And down, down, down, into the depths.

Shit, I hope I didn’t miscalculate that, Hardesty thought as he returned to the apartment. But of course he had.

* * * *

“How are you doing, Adrian?” Toby asked, in a tentative voice, as he pulled a chair up to the side of the bed of his fellow escort high-class rent-boy in the private room at Sibley hospital, a room that probably was much plusher than the one his rich john from the previous night was in in some other Washington hospital. The john’s family had, of course, made sure he was in some other hospital than Adrian Mills was. Mills looked like shit.

“How do you think I’m doing? How do I look?”

“You look . . .”

“Like shit, right?” Adrian said.

“Now, yes,” Toby said. He wasn’t going to lie. Escorts like him traded on their looks. There was no sugarcoating it when the looks weren’t there. “But I’m sure you’ll get back to tip-top shape.”

“The doctors say I’ll need plastic surgery . . . and then they won’t be able to guarantee anything.”

“You’ll get the best, you know. The agency will do everything they can.”

“Will they?” Both of them paused, going over in their minds what they remembered from their own escort agency contracts. Neither one of them came up with reassuring thoughts on how long the agency would carry them if they couldn’t attract johns anymore.

“Yes, and I’m not here on behalf of the agency, Adrian. I heard you were here and I had to come check out how you were doing. Just this weekend we were working together out on the Chesapeake and we didn’t seem to have a care in the world.”

“Ironic isn’t it?”

“Ironic? Why so?”

“Are you here because you got the message I asked the agency to pass to you?” Adrian asked.

“No, sorry. I haven’t been given the note . . . yet. I haven’t checked in with the agency since before our weekend gig. Someone called me about you being here?”

“Jeremy Brand?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I wanted to get through to you. I talked with Jeremy and he told me I needed to do something. You’re still living with Hardesty, the homicide vice detective, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I need to talk to him. I need to get out of here and somewhere safe.”

“What are you talking about, Adrian? What’s the matter?”

“The guys who beat me up last night?”

“Yes?”

“They weren’t just random gang bangers, Toby. I knew a couple of them. You’ve seen them too. They were on the security detail this last weekend. Last night wasn’t a random mugging. And they weren’t after the john. They were after me, and I think they thought they’d killed me.”

“You’re saying this is about this weekend’s party.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I happened into a lounge where some of the men—those important men—we were entertaining were gathered. I heard them mention Jacob Goldstein, the guy who has accused Jim Zeller, and Jacob’s dead now, I’ve heard. This business about sexual abuse and prostitution in congressional staffs has something to do with the men who were at the party this weekend. And people are being popped off. You know I came into the escort agency from working on congressional staffs. I knew Jim Zeller and what he and his sponsor were up to—and who some of them are. If Zeller talks, my name could come up. I want to get ahead of that. I think I’m in danger. I need you to put me in contact with your live-in, Hardesty.”

“Jim Zeller’s not going to be talking to anyone, Adrian. Hardesty got a call this morning that Zeller’s been killed in his federal pen cell. That’s where Hardesty should be now—at the federal pen looking into Zeller’s death. He’s on the case.”

“Zeller’s dead? Shit. I’m dead too, I think.”

“Hang in there. I’ll track Hardesty down, and we’ll see if we can get you some place safe. You’ll talk to him, won’t you—tell him what you know?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see. That could get me killed too.”

“I think you’ll have to, Adrian. You’re a big boy. You already know that you don’t get something without giving something. Look, I’ll see if a can get Hardesty now and get something started.” He used his cell phone to ring Hardesty’s cell, reaching Hardesty as he was ready to leave by department helicopter for the federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia, a bit west of Washington, where they, unsuccessfully, had had Jim Zeller stashed supposedly for secrecy and safety.

When he ring off, Toby gave what assurances he could to Adrian. “Hardesty understands and appreciates your problem. He’s on his way to check out Zeller’s death, but he says he’ll set up a police guard on your hospital room door until we can spring you from here. I’ll stay with you until they arrive and inform the hospital they’re coming and you need extra protection. Hardesty he knows someplace he can hide you—better than a federal prison. But he will need some information and cooperation from you. He cares and he’s good, very good.”

“I’ve heard he’s really good in bed and could pull a Jack off out of a rock,” Adrian said.

“That too,” Toby said, and they shared a laugh that seemed to bring the tension down a bit in the room.

“Thanks, Toby. But you make sure you get some protection too.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You were at the Cambridge retreat this weekend too. There was more going on there than just a weekend fuck of invited escorts. You could be in as much trouble as I am. This box opened up by the accusations of Jim Zeller and associates is explosive. It’s senators and judges and White House staffers. A whole lot of us could get blown away in the attempt to contain and cover this up.”

“How do you know all of this, Adrian?”

“I was inside it. So was Jeremy Brand. So was Jacob Goldstein and his roommate, Zach Taylor. We all knew who some of these guys were. We all partied with these guys and were fucked by them.”

“But I wasn’t,” Toby said.

“They may not remember who all they fucked and pimped, Toby. You’re too close to it all. Get your tail covered.”

“What matters most for you now,” Toby said, “is to get your tail back in working order. Hardesty will see to the protecting of your tail.”

“I wouldn’t mind Hardesty working on my tail,” Adrian and then gave a little laugh. “You’ve got yourself a hunk and a half there.”

“There you go. You are feeling a lot better already.”

“Seriously, though, Hardesty is one of the few nasty enough to give me what I really need,” Adrian said. “If only.”

“Hardesty and I have a comfortable understanding, Adrian. You help Hardesty with his investigation, and it’s fine with me if he gives you what you want.”

“For real?”

“Yes, for real.”

“’Cause my tail is one of the few things these thugs didn’t break.”

“You want the fist and you’re straight with Hardesty on what he needs, you’ll get the fist.”

“Has he ever fisted you, Toby?”

“No, so if you get that, you’ll be getting from him something I’ve never had from him.”

* * * *

Zach thought the Capitol building would be virtually deserted on a good beach day Sunday when Congress wasn’t in session. His goal was a very small, out-of-the-way office that few knew had been assigned to Senator Douglas Pender more than twenty years ago. It was a hidey-hole where he could go for quick business when the Senate was in session rather than have to trek back to his main office suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Pender, in turn, had turned the office over to his legislative assistant, Jim Zeller. Whenever Zach had been called in to service someone Jim and his sponsors directed him to in the prostitution operations within the congressional community, it had always been to this office that Zach had come to receive his instructions. He was hoping that some of the working papers of the ring could be found here. He’d heard nothing about the police authorities knowing about this office.

The office was located in a real warren of an area in the Capitol Senate wing’s basement, where many of the other long-serving U.S. senators had similar offices that they themselves or picked staffers of theirs used.

His entry into the basement of the Senate wing wasn’t as solitary as he had thought or hoped it would be, though. Just beyond the guard station, a hallway press conference was going on, complete with standing light frames and milling news reporters. Attention was focused here because little of public interest was transpiring in Washington today. Thus, some of the bigger names in political commentary had hauled themselves down to the Capitol building when the chair of the Ethics Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Douglas Pender, had announced he’d take questions here today on the start of the Senate’s probe into misconduct inside the congressional sphere that was coming out with the arrest of his own former aide, Jim Zeller.

Pender hadn’t called the press conference because of the murder the night before of Zeller—indeed, that news hadn’t been broken yet, even to Zeller’s former boss—but because he was hoping he could say he’d had an open and transparent press conference on the topic that few reporters would show up to because the notification had gone out on short notice and it was a beautiful beach-day Sunday when Congress wasn’t in session. He assumed the news reporters would be at the area beaches along with everyone else. He had misjudged the interest in the prostitution scandal in the halls of Congress, though. The major political pundits had come into their offices to put together their Monday broadcasts on the scandal, and the announcement that Pender would take their questions had brought them all scurrying to the Capitol building.

Now they clogged the basement hallway, milling about and with their recorders held up under Pender’s chin to get whatever they could out of him.

As Zach nudged through the mob to get further down the corridor, his eyes met with those of the man who he’d been fucked by at the Cambridge retreat two nights earlier and who he’d later heard talking with other prominent men at the retreat about the scandal and how to contain it—and who Zach knew was up to his neck in the prostitution ring operation. Indeed, he’d been the one who seduced Zach into the ring when Zach had first arrived in Washington as a young Senate intern. Zach had been involved in gay activity in college before that, but never at the level or intensity that this man had seduced him too.

Zach’s gaze was met from across the room and there was a slight smile and tilt of the head. Looking away in concern and more than a bit of fear, Zach pushed his way on through the crowd of reporters and scurried on down the hall and then through the maze of other halls until he’d reached his goal, Jim Zeller’s secret Capitol building office. The man he’d locked eyes with was Doug Quillen, who Zach knew intimately as a particularly rough top. And he was also hand and glove with that political commentator, Ted Colver. If Quillen was here, so was Colver. Zach shivered and hurried on.

Zach had a key to the door if no one had changed the lock. He’d come here on numerous occasions before to receive instructions from Zeller. The key worked. Chances were good that no one even remembered this office and its connection to Zeller. Within moments, Zach was inside and going through drawers and turning the laptop computer on the desktop on. The screen tantalizingly requested a password from him. He had no idea what that would be. He unsuccessfully tried a couple of words, which didn’t work.

As he gave up for now—he’d just take the laptop back to Hardesty and the police could figure out how to get into it—he heard the “Hello, Zach,” and turned, in panic, toward the open door to the corridor.

“Senator,” he squeaked.

“I’ve been thinking of you,” the man said. “I enjoyed our short time together Friday night. But it was much too short.” He moved into the office slowly approached Zach. He was very close.

“I enjoyed it too, Senator,” Zach said, trying to control his breathing and not show his panic.

“The time was much too short,” the man repeated, extending his hand to cup Zach’s cheek. Zach moaned, standing there, immobilized. He never had been able to resist the man. He didn’t resist the man now when he put one arm around Zach, pulling the young man to him, and glided the hand of the other arm down between their bodies, unzipping Zach and then himself. Working on Zach’s belt and pushing his trousers and briefs down and off his legs—and then his own as well—he quickly had both of them in a position of intimacy.

Zach was lost in the deep kisses and the memories of the torrid assignations the two had engaged in in years past. He moaned as the man turned him onto his belly, pulled his belt out of the loops of his trousers, and struck Zach again and again on the back and buttocks with the thin leather strap. Zach knew full well that this was what the man needed to do to get hard.

When the man turned Zach and lowered his back onto the desktop, Zach voluntarily raised and spread his legs. He jerked and grimace as the man’s long, hard cock entered him. He moaned and turned his head to the side, his gaze caught by the pulsing “password” request flashing on the lit computer screen, the only light in the dark room.

He arched his back and moaned, “Yes, yes, just like that,” as the man established the rhythm of the slow, methodic fuck. The beat of the fuck matched the blinking of the “password” light. Zach’s fingers were dug into the man’s shoulder blades, opening and closing to the same rhythm. Zach raised his torso onto his elbows so that he could look into the man’s eyes, and he was rewarded with a punch in the mouth and in his stomach. Zach instinctively tried to rise again and was slapped across the face hard, in one direction and then the other. He fell back onto the desk and the man punched him in the face again. He lay there then, docile, whimpering and sobbing quietly as the man fucked on.

The man’s hands went to Zach’s throat and he began controlling the young man’s breathing, squeezing off air until Zach’s eyes bulged and then giving him a few seconds to gasp in breath. He was a longstanding technique the man had used on Zach. It was meant to increase arousal, and it did. Zach desperately wanted what he was getting from the man now. The fuck and the choking continued until Zach had ejaculated and zoned out.

Another man appeared at the door to the corridor.

“Oh, you’re here, Senator,” Pete Drummond, an aide to Senator Clayton Hughes said. “Doug and I came to clear out Zeller’s office here given the reduced activity in the Capitol building today.” Another man materialized at the door to the office.

“I’m glad you’re here. Help me get young Taylor here on the tram over to the Dirksen building. If anyone sees us, we’ll say that the poor young man was found drunk and we’re just helping to get him out of the building. There’s been enough scandal around here recently. And then, yes, it would be a good idea to sanitize this room. Be sure and take this laptop out. Who knows what might be on it.”

“Yes, sir. Then I’ll come to your office and help you with this guy wherever you want to take him from there,” Pete Drummond answered.

* * * *

Toby was met in the huge atrium of the Trump International Hotel, formerly the Washington, D.C., central post office building, by Pete Drummond.

“Did you bring what you need?” Drummond asked. “I told the escort service what was needed. I’m glad you were available. He asked for you specifically. He says he enjoyed his time with you Friday night.”

“Right here,” Toby answered, lifting the gym bag he had with him. He’d left a note for Hardesty that he had been called away on short notice for an assignment and might be gone and out of the loop for a couple of days. Upstairs, in the living room to the hotel suite, Toby changed into what he’d brought—sexy lace bra and panties, a filmy bed jacket, and red spike heels—and entered the bedroom. Senator Clayton Hughes was sitting on the side of the bed, naked. At sixty-four, he was gaunt, gray, and wrinkly, but Toby had serviced less-arousing politicians in his day. There was nothing special about the cock the senator was stroking other than that it was in full erection.

“There you are, my dear, looking lovely,” the senator murmured. “Come and kneel to daddy and give me a little sugar.”

A little sugar, in this case, meant that Toby knelt on the carpet in front of the senator’s spread thighs, took the older man’s cock in his mouth, and sucked him off, expertly bringing the man to the brink but not over the line. When Hughes had had enough of this attention, he lifted Toby up into his lap. Toby could feel the senator’s hard cock pocking at him between his thighs as the older man wrapped his hands around Toby’s torso, running a hand up under the bra, and began kissing Toby on the throat and cheek and mouth. The other hand slowly stripped Toby of the filmy bed jacket and then the bra, with Hughes leaning over and biting and sucking on Toby’s nipples before returning to possessing the young man’s rouged lips.

Both of the senator’s hands went under Toby’s buttocks and, without too much trouble, slit the seam at the back of the panties. The senator’s erection was moving between Toby’s thighs and getting awfully close to his rear entrance.

“Just a moment, big boy,” Toby murmured. He sank to his knees again in front of Hughes, reached beside him for the condom packet there, slit it with his teeth, and looked up into the senator’s eyes and gave him a provocative flash of his eyes. The senator shivered with arousal and lust as Toby put the condom disk in his mouth and then leaned over and showed that he knew how to center the disk on the old man’s bulb and push it below the rim of the glans with his lips and teeth before he had to take over rolling it down the sides of the throbbing cock with his hands.

He stood back up, faced away from the sitting politician, reached around to hold the erection steady, and then descended his passage on the cock. Grabbing Hughes’s knees and leaning forward as the senator grasped him by the waist, Toby, using the leverage of his stiletto-clad feet on the floor, started rising and falling on the senator’s cock. He continued to do this until the senator, grasping Toby’s hips in his hands, ejaculated.

There was no hope of another coming, so they both recognized that the fantasy fuck Hughes had paid Toby’s escort service for had been completed.

In the bathroom, though, as Toby was standing over the toilet, Pete Drummond entered, saddled up behind Toby, and unzipped his trousers. Pete was the congressional world’s liaison with Toby’s escort service. The connection was a lucrative one for the escort service. All of the rent-boys knew that Drummond would take a cut of the services when he was in the mood and the escort service would be fine with that.

With a sigh, Toby leaned forward, palming the tiles behind the toilet. He widened his stance and held himself steady as Pete crowned his shaft with a condom, positioned his hard cock, mounted Toby’s ass, pushed his erection up into Toby’s channel, and pumped him to an ejaculation.

Holding inside Toby after he shot his load, his hands holding Toby’s hips in place, his chin resting on Toby’s shoulder, Drummond said, “Next pickup is at 8:00 tonight. Old Ebbitt Grill on 15th. Don’t keep the man waiting.”

“Yes, sir,” Toby answered. There had been no thank-you for the added service. Toby hadn’t really expected that there would be.

“Wait until the senator is out of the main entrance and then leave the hotel by a different one.”

Once again Toby just said “Yes, sir.” Pete Drummond could be mean. Toby didn’t want to say anything to set the congressional staffer’s meanness free.

* * * *

In the second bedroom of a nondescript red-brick rambler on a somewhat tired looking middle-class street in Northwest Washington, Adrian Mills was lying on his back, aching in every joint, breathing tenderly because of the bandaged bruised ribs and very much aware of the cast on one arm and the calf of one leg, but even more aware of, and concentrating on, the greased gloved hand inside his anal passage up to the knuckles. The room was hardly large enough to accommodate the double bed and the man with a hand up his passage was sprawled uncomfortably above Adrian, being careful not to put any weight on the beaten-down rent-boy’s body.

Adrian, buttocks raised on pillows under the vinyl sheet the young man was lying on and legs spread, cried out as Hardesty’s knuckles breached his sphincter. “Shit! Fuck!”

“You OK, Adrian? You can take it?”

“Fuck, yes. Shit! Shit, yes. Fuck it. Get it. Fist me!” He moaned deeply.

Hardesty didn’t quite see how the rent-boy could be enjoying this, but he’d insisted this was what he wanted from the detective—that he needed more experience in this at the hand of a top he could trust. Hardesty moved the hand slightly, in and out, in and out, and Adrian cried out again in ecstasy. “Shit, yes! Get it, get it, getit!” He dug his heels into the bed and pushed his pelvis up higher. Hardesty was careful with monitoring how Adrian, who was totally lost in the sex, was using the leg with the cast on it. He also thought that the tension caused by having a fist inside him strained Adrian’s ribs against his bandaging and had to be painful for the young man, but Adrian was in such ecstasy of a fist in his passage, moving, that he didn’t seem to notice the pain. Hardesty sought the balance between unnecessary pain for Adrian and the wanted pain egging on sexual pleasure.

Hardesty leaned over and took Adrian’s lips with his and the young man responded with passion, panting hard, moaning deep, opening his mouth to take in Hardesty’s tongue. As they kissed, Hardesty moved his gloved hand, going a bit deeper, up to the wrist as Adrian shuddered, trembled and moved his hips, fucking himself on the fist. After a few minutes of this, though, the young man stroked himself off with his own hand, collapsed and groaned.

They remained like that for a few minutes, Adrian panting hard and Hardesty gripping his upper thigh with a greased gloved hand. When the young man could speak, he said, “Thanks, man. You don’t know how alive that makes me feel—especially coming from a hunk like you.”

When Hardesty had asked Adrian earlier why he liked fisting, he said, “Only a milder version of it. But I lie down for men so much that something extreme now is required to really get me off.”

“And if I fist you, you’ll talk to me then about this congressional world operation and how you and Zeller fit in to it?”

“I’ll do anything for you you want,” Adrian had replied.

Considering that the young man was a walking advertisement for bandages and casts, Hardesty didn’t demand what he wanted in the way of sex from the rent-boy—the guy probably wouldn’t be alive to tell Hardesty anything if he got what he really wanted from him. But Hardesty was hard and in heat after the fisting and Adrian’s reaction to taking the fist. The fist was replaced with his cock, and although he didn’t fuck Adrian hard, he did fuck Adrian, and his cock was thick and long and long-lasting enough that he still taxed the young man—and also pleased him.

Afterward Hardesty sat on the bed beside Mills. “How do you fit into this?” he asked.

“It’s been going on for some time and has increased in scope. Jim Zeller always was the manager of it, but he wasn’t in charge. A group of senators, representatives, and a judge or two call the shots.”

“And you and Jacob Goldstein were the male candy for it? I presume there were women pages and staffers being pimped as well.”

“Yes, but the operation focused on young men. I think they wanted to have a hold over the men they serviced and control of them was stronger if they were caught fucking with men rather than women. There were a couple of women cougars who were serviced, but there aren’t nearly as many women at the top of the influence ladder as men. Jacob and I were in the current active providers file. Jim Zeller probably was at the beginning and Pete Drummond was from his generation. Jeremy Brand came later. He was one of the ones who left it. He and Zach Taylor. And there are a few guys who left it and are working for escort agencies.”

“Guys like Toby?” Hardesty asked, not being sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“The operation has been using escort agencies from time to time. Toby gets called in occasionally, but he’s never really been part of the Congress-based operation.”

Hardesty sighed a sigh of relief. “You mentioned Pete Drummond. He’s a legislative aide to Senator Clayton Hughes, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And Senator Hughes? He’s involved in the scheme?”

“He’s one of the main decision men, yes.”

“OK, I want you to tell—” But just then Hardesty’s cell phone rang. Crane was on his way to the Capitol building. They’d discovered that Zeller had had an office there few had known about. They were going to tear it apart and Crane wanted Hardesty there.

“Use the basement north entrance of the Senate wing,” he said. “I’ll have a police officer there to beam you into Zeller’s office.”

“You might run into one of the rent-boys, Zach Taylor, chief. If so, just hold him until I get there. He told me there was such an office and he was going there to see if Zeller left anything behind.”

“Change of plans,” Hardesty said to Mills when he clicked off. “I’ve got to go now. Write me a list of everyone you know who is involved in this and note where they fit in the scheme. I’ll be back for it tomorrow. You’ll be safe here. I own this house but no one you need to avoid knows about it. Maria from next door will be over in an hour or so and will look after you. Lucky for you she’s both a retired cop and a nurse. You’re in good hands. Just don’t get her to try to fuck you like I did.”

They both laughed.

As soon as Toby had called Hardesty to tell him that Mills was at Sibley Hospital and might talk about the congressional pimping ring in exchange for protection—and very likely needed protection pronto, Hardesty had gotten the idea to stash the young man at his house in northwest Washington and had asked Paul, the gay friend from across the hall who frequently helped Hardesty and Toby with similar problems to be at their apartment to let Zach Taylor in when he returned.

It turned out Hardesty was being a bit optimistic about that. As he drove back into downtown, he called Crane on the cell to see if they had encountered Taylor. They hadn’t, and it looked like the office had been ransacked. Then he called Paul back at the apartment to see if Taylor had returned there. He hadn’t.

“Well, shit,” Hardesty exclaimed. He should have anticipated that. Taylor had been a scared rabbit; he could have decided to just bolt and to try to stay ahead of the bad guys by himself. Hardesty should have tried to keep a tighter rein on him. But he couldn’t be everywhere at once. And it looked like he couldn’t keep a step ahead of the bad guys either.

“No worries on this end, though,” Paul said. “I’ll stick here until you can get back.”

“You’re a gem, Paul. I owe you.”

“You can square it by sending one of your honeys in my direction. You always have them buzzing around you.”

“Deal,” Hardesty said, laughing. “If Zach Taylor gets there before I do, you can spike him if he’s willing. ‘Flash him. If he sees what’s swinging between your legs, he’ll lay right down and beg you for it.”

* * * *

When Toby entered the Old Ebbitt Grill restaurant on 15th Street near the White House, Pete Drummond, who was standing by the reservation stand, signaled Toby to follow him—at some distance—and led him to the back to a private booth. Waiting for him there was Ted Colver, the television political commentator.

“Senator Colver,” Toby said, surprised. Drummond didn’t stop at the booth. Once Drummond had made obvious where Toby was headed, he veered off and went to another table at some distance and sat where he could see the booth Colver and Toby were in but, presumably, couldn’t hear what the two said. Although Colver patted the seat next to him, Toby slid into the booth across from the man. “The agency didn’t tell me you were the one I was being sent to.” Toby used the title “senator,” because Colver had been one before he was a political commentator—such was his power in Washington—and once a senator in this town you were always referred to as a senator. The same was true of a governor or a department secretary. You were accorded the title of the highest office you held, unless you preferred another title you’d had.

“That’s because the booking wasn’t made in my name.”

“But the booking was for the night. I didn’t—” He stopped there. It wasn’t his place to note that Colver was so intense with his demands that the sessions with him were kept of limited duration by the agency, when they were able to control them. They hadn’t been able to control them during the previous weekend booking at the Cambridge area retreat as they hadn’t known that Colver would be at that party. Toby had been severely taxed by Colver on Friday and wasn’t delighted to be seeing him here today—and to know that the agency had made an overnight booking on very short notice. Toby felt his back twinge from the welts that had not fully stopped paining him from his last encounter with the man.

The waiter came by and Colver ordered just drinks and an appetizer for both of them, without asking Toby what he wanted. That was very much like Colver, who was a “complete control” kind of man.

“I have learned since Friday that you have a relationship with the police detective Hardesty,” Colver said.

“Yes, we live together,” Toby responded. “And, yes, we sleep together.”

“That’s rather unusual, isn’t it?” Colver asked, “A police detective responsible for curbing vice in Washington living and sleeping with a high-class male whore?”

“Hardesty is a complex man,” Toby answered, “and we have an unusual relationship. It works, though.” He ignored the bald reference to being a whore. He accepted that that was what he was and that some of his clients got off on bold talk about it.

“Do you share your activities with each other—discuss your business one with the other?”

“Not usually. Not unless our businesses intersect, which they sometimes do. But is there a reason why you are interested in my relationship with Hardesty? Were you thinking that I could be an information source on his cases for your television show? There would be nothing there. We don’t do that to each other, I’m afraid.”

“No, quite the contrary. I am more concerned that you and he might have discussed the party from last weekend—the men who were there with you and anything you might have overheard there—whether you told Hardesty anything about the weekend.”

“No, I haven’t. I don’t tell Hardesty the details of my work. I certainly haven’t told him I was with you this weekend and what your interests are, if you were afraid of that. I haven’t even seen him enough since I got home from there to have discussed anything. But I’m paid not to talk about clients like you.”

“Ah, here are our drinks and appetizers.” Colver said, and nothing else along those lines was discussed before they were finished.

“Did you drive here?” Colver asked, as they stood. Pete Drummond stood up from his table across the room as the same time and left the restaurant.

“No, I took the subway.”

“Very good. I will leave now. Give me ten minutes before you follow. The car will be idling in front.”

Toby expected that they would go to a hotel, and he hoped they would, as there would be a limit what could be done there. Sometimes Colver took him to a private club, though, which specialized in sadomasochism, in which case it had rooms outfitted for what was more in Colver’s taste. Toby was surprised, though, that Pete didn’t drive them to either of these, but, rather, drove through Georgetown and up river, on MacArthur Road, toward the Potomac Palisades. Toby had been in this area already today, visiting Adrian Mills at Sibley Hospital. Toby didn’t have all that much attention to give to where they were going, though, because he was in the backseat with Colver, who had one hand buried in the hair at the back of Toby’s head, pulling Toby’s head back into the seat and he had Toby unzipped and was beating him off with the other hand, taking time away from that periodically to grab and twist Toby’s balls to hear the young man’s exclaimed reaction to that. Colver watched Toby’s facial expressions very closely, knowing that there was pain there but also, under the surface, a streak of pleasure. He knew that Toby had an appetite for being manhandled.

In the bedroom of Colver’s house off MacArthur Boulevard on the Potomac Palisades and overlooking the Potomac River rapids upstream from the city center, Toby was hanging from the wrist restraints on the bed posts at the foot of the bed, while Ted Colver worked up an erection by whipping the young man’s back and buttocks. When he was sufficiently hard, Colver saddled up behind Toby, grabbed the young man’s hips, thrust up inside his passage, and fucked him hard.

After a respite, Toby was lowered to the bed on his belly, his arms spread and bound to restraints on the headboard pillars, with Pete Drummond’s help, his right ankle restrained to the right bedpost at the foot of the bed, and his left leg raised, crossed over his body, and restrained to the right bedpost at the head of the bed. Colver sat behind him and played in the young man’s anal opening with various sizes of greased dildos until he was aroused enough to saddle up behind Toby and fuck him himself.

It was one of the milder sessions Toby had had with this client. When Colver had come this time, he leaned over and whispered in Toby’s ear, “Now, how about some time in the mountains?”

Toby didn’t reply—he couldn’t as he had a ball gag in his mouth to spare Colver’s neighbors from Toby’s commentary on Colver’s sex play.

When Colver left to take a shower, Pete Drummond came into the bedroom and untied Toby. He didn’t take the gag out, and he untied Toby just to reposition him and retie him. Toby was too exhausted to struggle against him. Toby was put on his back, his wrists retied to the opposite bedposts at the head of the bed, and his legs raised and spread and tied off at the bedposts at the foot of the bed. Drummond climbed up on the bed, pushed his knees under Toby’s buttocks, slid his cock in, and began his own share of pumping.

* * * *

Toby wasn’t home when Hardesty returned to the apartment. He found the note from Toby that he might be gone on a lost-minute-booked assignment for a few days and that Hardesty wasn’t to worry about him. Hardesty always worried about Toby when the young man was on a job and he much preferred knowing where Toby was for these assignments, but he knew if he got nosey or possessive, Toby was likely to leave him. He walked a thin line of worrying about the young man and pushing that worry to the back of his mind because there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Toby had always come home. But there could be the day when he didn’t and Hardesty would be investigating what had happened to him. In the meantime, the best Hardesty could do was walk that thin line and hope for the best. If push came to shove the escort agency would tell him what the assignment was. They knew who Hardesty was and they wanted to stay on his good side.

Zach Taylor hadn’t returned from his search of Jim Zeller’s secret office in the Capitol building. The detective and Paul shared a drink and some comments on a new neighbor who had moved in on their hall. He was a cute, small blond, so Hardesty had definite ideas what he’d do with him. But Paul had already been there and done it to him, so they discussed what the young man did well in bed and what he did better, both on and off the bed. They shared a laugh when Paul said the new tenant did tricks, was having his apartment subsidized, and moved here because he knew Hardesty lived on this floor.

“Actually, he does it better on the floor,” Paul said. “He’s a physical therapist and a yoga expert. At least that’s what he says in public what he does.” They both laughed.

Tired, Hardesty went to bed after Paul left. He was worried that Toby wasn’t there and hadn’t told him he had an overnight assignment and he was equally worried that Zach Taylor hadn’t returned or called. But he was exhausted and went to sleep without any trouble.

One of his concerns was answered, if not satisfied, when the ringing of his cell phone woke him up. As he reached for the phone, he could see that his concern about Toby wasn’t answered, though, as Toby’s side of the bed was still unoccupied.

The call was from Crane. “Someone got into the apartment we had taped off—Jacob Goldstein’s apartment. And they left a nasty present in Goldstein’s closet,” Crane said. “Zach Taylor is hanging on the X-frame in the closet. He’s dead. He was beaten but the medical examiner says the cause of death was that he’d been strangled and his neck was snapped. There’s also evidence he wasn’t killed at the apartment.”

“Shit,” Hardesty exclaimed. He’d know all day that it had been a mistake to let Taylor go off to the Capitol building alone.

(To be continued)