Political Abuse

"Was that who I thought it was?" he asked when he came out of the bedroom, still naked, regaining his erection when he saw Toby standing there, naked as well.

"Hi. I wasn't sure you were home," Toby said. "So, you were watching?"

"Yes. You seemed to be into it."

"He's got seven and a half inches and a hell of a backstroke," Toby answered. "And, yes, that was Senator Pender of Alabama. It was his party I was working this weekend. He brought a couple of us in to work the men he wanted to impress. So, as he said, he wasn't able to taste the goods himself this weekend but, having paid the escort service top dollar for me, didn't want to go away without dipping his wick."

"Did you have a good time?"

"Some of them were almost as rough as you are," Toby said.

"But not quite, so you didn't have as rough a weekend as you would have liked. As you can see, I'm hard."

"Yes, and as you can see, you being hard is making me hard."

"And I came equipped." Hardesty moved the hand he'd been holding behind his back around to in front of him. Dangling from it were two sets of double cuffs and a string of anal balls.

"Oh shit!" Toby exclaimed.

"So, do you want to play or are you too tired and want to go to bed. I was thinking of doing you out here on the ottoman. I got jazzed up seeing Pender fuck you here."

"Well, let's see. Perhaps I just take that question to my good-luck coin." He went to where he'd folded and place his clothes when he'd come into the apartment and then stripped for Pender. He fished around in a pocket and came up with a silver coin the size of a silver dollar but much more beaten looking. Hardesty knew that it was a Roman coin from the third century called a Silver Antoninians Hercules. It was the Hercules part that Toby found amusing, and he used it whenever he wanted to make a decision with a flip of a coin.

"So, heads or nonheads?" he asked. "You call it."

"Heads," Hardesty called out.

"That's it. So you fuck me on the ottoman," Toby said cheerfully.

"What if it had been nonheads?" Hardesty asked.

"Nonheads would be that you'd fuck me on the ottoman," Toby answered. They both laughed and Toby put his precious coin away.

Hardesty put Toby on his back on the ottoman and cuffed his wrists to his ankles on both sides so that he was immobile. Toby cried out for him at a higher decibel level than he'd given the senator while Hardesty played hide the string of graduated anal balls and then jerked them out. Hide them and jerk them out. Then, having pulled out a Trojan Magnum XL condom packet from one of the several places condoms were deposited around the room, and while Toby was panting hard with five anal balls inside him, Hardesty crowned himself, jerked the balls out of Toby's ass, thrust inside him, and fucked the shit out of him.

Toby screamed for him, came for him twice during the process, and told him how much he was loving it--that, indeed, it had been a very tame weekend in the sexual satisfaction department.

They were both zoned out, exhausted in the bed in their shared bedroom when Hardesty's cell phone went off.

It was Lieutenant Crane, Hardesty's boss.

"You awake, Hardesty?" the police lieutenant barked into the phone.

"I am now," Hardesty answered.

"We missed one. The offing of the Goldstein guy should have warned us."

"What's happened?"

"The link above him is gone. Jim Zeller was knifed in his cell this morning."

"I thought he was tucked away in an unidentified federal facility."

"He was. But his lawyers had to know where he was. We couldn't deny them access to him. And now he's dead. Knifed by an unknown perp. And now this case has just gotten dicey."

"I'll come in," Hardesty said, sitting up in bed and rolling over to a sitting position on the side of the bed.

"You didn't get much sleep last night if you've been at the Goldstein scene. You won't be worth much without some sleep. Come in at the regular time tomorrow morning. Maybe we'll have some leads for you to start on then."

"Sure thing, boss," Hardesty said and rang off. He turned in the bed and saw that Toby's eyes were open.

"So, you going to get some more sleep?" Toby asked.

"What do you think?" Hardesty said, reaching over and cupping the young man's balls.

"I know that look," Toby said. "I think you want me to open my legs to you."

"You think right," Hardesty growled. He took a moment to open the nightstand drawer, retrieve a condom, and snap it on, and then he rolled over on top of Toby, as the young man reached over his head to grasp the rungs of the brass headboard. And then they were off to the races, with Hardesty thrusting inside Toby in a bouncing power fuck that had the bed shimmering.

"So, you missed me this weekend," Toby called out between pants.

"This much. And this much. And this much," Hardesty answered, with a forward thrust of his hips with each declaration.

They were truly zonked when the next phone call came through. This time it was Toby's cell phone on top of the nightstand on his side of the bed. He rolled out of the bed as he clicked the phone on and headed for the bathroom, so as not to wake Hardesty up. Hardesty, of course, was awake and stayed that way until Toby came back.

"Sorry, I said you'd see this guy," Toby said, seeing that Hardesty was awake. "He's on his way over here now."

"What guy?" Hardesty asked.

"Zach Taylor. He was at the party I was at this weekend. One of the other escorts. He says he has to talk to you--and that maybe you can get him protection."

"Zach Taylor? Doesn't ring a bell," Hardesty said. He knew precisely who Zach Taylor was, but he didn't want to bring Toby in on this. He always wanted to keep Toby separated from his cases, but that wasn't always possible. And it always made his cases messy. In this case, Taylor coming to him saved him time and effort in tracking Taylor down.

"He says he is Jacob Goldstein's roommate. He went home to find his apartment a crime scene and his roommate dead. The cop staking the apartment out dropped your name, which Zach remembered in connection with me. So he called me. He says he's scared he's next and wants you to get him protection."

"Ah. Ringadingy. That Zach. Yeah, I want to talk to him." It seemed Toby had an angle in this without Hardesty being able to keep him totally out of it. Hardesty reached for his cell phone and hit the direct line to Lieutenant Crane. "Yeah, guess I'm still on the job today, chief," he said. "But before I get on the Zeller angle, I have Goldstein's roommate coming over. I think he might be as useful to us as Goldstein--and maybe even Zeller--would have been. See what you can do to set up protection for this guy. And don't tell Zeller's lawyers where he will be stashed."

Hardesty didn't have to wait until Monday to start following the leads he had. One of those leads was coming to him. Now.

Chapter Three: Dancing with Zach

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."