Page 33 of Keep

“Then let’s concentrate on us.” Chad reached down and worked Hank’s zipper with a competence that suggested this was not his first. Hank’s cock met open air and stood at full, humiliating attention, like a soldier who’d been waiting for orders his entire career.

Which, Hank supposed, it had.

“There he is,” Chad said, wrapping his hand around Hank’s length. His grip was warm and sure. “This guy’s been patient long enough. Yes?”

Hank looked at Chad—blue eyes bright with want, blond hair wrecked, that grin that kept doing something structurally unsound to his chest—and nodded.

Say something. You’re a man who makes speeches for a living.

“Yes.”

Eloquent.

Chad slid from Hank’s lap to the floor in one fluid motion, hands on Hank’s knees, pressing his thighs apart, settling between them. The shift in geometry—Chad below him, looking up—sent a jolt through Hank that had nothing to do with physical contact.

“But—” Hank started. One last attempt. Tell him. You have to tell him.

Chad held up a finger. “No more words.”

Then he leaned forward and took Hank into his mouth.

Hank’s head hit the back of the couch. His eyes found the ceiling—a neutral, inoffensive ceiling that had no opinion about the fact that a United States senator was currently receiving oral sex from a twenty-three-year-old art student on his government-issue-looking sofa. The ceiling offered no judgment. Hank was grateful for the ceiling.

Then the ceiling ceased to exist.

Chad’s mouth was soft and hot and certain. The slide of his tongue, the gentle suction that was somehow both too much and not enough. Hank’s frame of reference was limited and entirely unhelpful, but some clinical corner of his brain noted that this was a different category of experience altogether. This wasn’t dutiful. This wasn’t performed. Chad was doing this like he wanted to, like Hank’s pleasure was something he was actively chasing, and that alone nearly finished him.

“Oh my God,” was all he could manage.

He had to look. Not looking felt like a waste of a moment he’d waited four decades for.

Hank lifted his head and watched as Chad pulled back—his cock emerging wet and flushed from Chad’s lips. The visual was so far beyond anything Hank’s imagination had ever produced that his brain briefly offered him a screen of static, then rebooted.

“Can we get that shirt off?” Chad’s voice was rougher now. “You can keep the pants. I just want this.” He pressed his palm flat against Hank’s chest, over the shirt, over the heartbeat that was trying to escape through his sternum.

Hank’s fingers went to his buttons. They were shaking. He’d stood in front of cameras, behind podiums, in rooms where legislation was shaped, and his hands had never once betrayed him. Now they fumbled like he’d never operated buttons before.

Chad reached up before he’d finished, sliding his hands inside the parted shirt, combing through Hank’s chest hair. He gave one nipple a light pinch.

“Ow.”

“You’re a top,” Chad said. Not a question. Almost a question.

“I don’t—I think I know what you mean, but I’m not sure what I am.” He was, he realized, answering a sexual taxonomy question with the same careful phrasing he used in committee hearings. “I don’t have enough data to⁠—”

“I think you’re a top.” Chad’s grin was knowing, infuriatingly confident. “It might be wishful thinking. But I told you—I sense these things.” He held Hank’s gaze. “What do you want to do?”

“Everything.” The word came out before Hank’s internal editor could reach it. “I’m sorry, that’s—I mean, anything. Whatever you⁠—”

“Everything works. But I want to finish this first.” Chad gestured at Hank’s bare torso like he was framing a composition. “In front of that canvas.”

The word—canvas—from a painter. Hank filed it away.

“I’d like that. But can we lose the pants? I feel like I’m at a very uneven disadvantage.”

“Sure thing.”

Hank stood and stripped—loafers, jeans, boxers. He reached for the shirt.