Now, he couldn’t get the memory out of his mind.
Smooth and soft, the curve inside a man’s elbow was a place he loved to linger on with his lips, peppering his lover’s skin with kisses as he traveled down their body. A kiss to the inner elbow, a hand on his lover’s hip, stroking, and they would roll in his arms, surge against his body, wrap their legs around his hips.
If he closed his eyes, he could practically feel it. Pausing at the doorway of the kitchen, Ethan leaned against the wall. It had been too long. That’s what was going on. That was why his libido had taken control of his rational mind. That was why he was acting so ridiculously stupid. He hadn’t gotten laid since before the Inauguration. A quick, hot fuck during the waning days of the campaign had been his last one-night stand, a Midwest campaign stop and an overnight reprieve from the stress of being an agent.
He hadn’t meant for things to go this long. It wasn’t his usual procedure. He never wanted for a partner, never. Regular sex, anytime he wanted it, with just a few hours out at the bars. Was this what happened when he went too long? Was he really this much of a sex fiend that he’d pant after the president? After
Jack
?
For God’s sake, Daniels had called him out on it today. It wasn’t just something he was struggling to contain on his own, with uncomfortable dreams and suppressed boners and quick jerks in the shower. This was something that others could see, too. Christ. Could the president?
Firelight from the great room caught his eye, flickering over the wood paneling along the lodge’s back wall and the exposed beams overhead, crisscrossing the ceiling. Echoes of the flames danced across the bay windows overlooking the lodge’s back patio. Outside, soft ripples from the wind caressed the surface of the lit pool, and beyond, the pine forest whispered with midnight’s soft breeze.
He slouched against the doorway, leaning his shoulder into the beam, and stared outside. If he could capture some of that peace, some of that serenity out in the woods, and bring it into his soul, he’d be a much better man. He could get a grip on this horniness, control his wildly inappropriate thoughts. Camp David had always been a place of solace for him, one of the better perks of the job, and he so desperately needed that now. His eyes traced the roll of a pine bough, needles twittering in the breeze.
Get a hold of yourself, Reichenbach. Don’t be a jackass. Don’t throw everything away because of your cock. You’re better than this.
“Ethan?”
His throat closed, clenching tight, as if he were under attack. Nerves fluttered through his belly and then snaked out to his arms and his fingers, lighting his skin on fire. Guilt, heavier than lead, sank in his soul, pulling on his tongue and stilling his words. What mockery was this, as he was pleading for strength, to have his temptation call his name?
Exhaling, Ethan pushed off from his slouch and padded into the den. The president—
Jack
—
Oh for the love of Christ, fine. Jack. I’ll just call him Jack in my mind. Fuck me!
—was sitting on the couch, his head thrown back on the plush cushion, looking at Ethan heading toward him from an upside down vantage. A lopsided grin stretched across his face, the same grin that melted Ethan’s spine and caressed the edges of his dreams.
Something depraved inside Ethan took him to the back of the couch, until he was leaning over Jack, staring down at him from above. Inhaling, he rested his hands on either side of Jack’s head, gripping the couch cushions with palms slick with sweat and coated with fear. Inside, he was shouting, barking orders at himself to turn and walk away, to push back against this yearning, to fight these desires.
Instead, Ethan smiled down at Jack. “Mr. President,” he said softly. His voice had dropped an octave, almost purring over the syllables. The hair on his nape stood on end, shivering in the night.
Jack’s reading glasses were off, lying on the coffee table on top of an open brief. Scattered papers cluttered the table’s surface, and Ethan caught the words “China,” “Taiwan,” and “backchannel” before he looked away, back into Jack’s eyes. By the light of the fire, the grey around his temples was almost a liquid silver, strands dancing through his short-cropped hair all over his head. The arches of his cheekbones seemed to glow, catching on the flickering flames, leaving the flat planes of his cheeks and his five o’clock stubble shrouded in shadow. Plump lips, smooth, held laughter in the curves of his warm and inviting smile. Ethan hadn’t had a single drop to drink, but his knees were weak, as if he was about to be pulled under, and his head swam, lost in the fog of a delirious buzz.
He couldn’t have stopped the slow smile from spreading across his face if he had tried. He didn’t try, though, and that was just another thing to be upset with himself over, later. Later, he’d be upset. Now, he’d take this. He’d drink this moment in and then lock it away, burying it and these feelings in the ice flows of his soul.
“You’re up late.” Jack held Ethan’s gaze, still looking up at him from his upside down slouch against the back of the couch.
“As are you.”
“President’s prerogative. No bedtime.” Jack winked up at Ethan.
Chuckling once, Ethan stepped to the side and crouched down, crossing his arms over the back of the couch and laying his chin across his wrists. He was suddenly on the same level as Jack, bare inches from the warmth of his skin. Jack’s scent—warm vanilla and pine—teased Ethan’s brain. God, why did he have to smell like pine? Was it just the place, Camp David suffusing everything and everyone? Or did Jack truly smell like a slice of Ethan’s heaven on earth?
“Can I ask you something?” Jack rolled his head, leaning sideways and staring right into Ethan’s eyes. He tucked one hand around his knee, canted his head, and waited.
Guilt-tongue was back, flooding Ethan with shame. Heat burned through him, searing the inside of his skin.
Here it comes
. Castigation, repudiation, demotion. Inhaling, Ethan nodded once, trying to steal himself for the blow. His eyes caressed Jack’s face one last time, trying to hold on to the beauty before the moment was shattered.
“What do you think about China?”
Ethan blinked. He didn’t breathe, simply stared at Jack. He blinked again. “Excuse me?” he finally grunted.
Jack pushed up from his slouch with a groan, dragging himself to the edge of the sofa, where he leaned his forearms on his knees and jerked his chin at the piles of paper spread before him. “China. Their whole mess, and the nightmare we’ve got going on between them and Taiwan, courtesy of my predecessor.” Jack shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “When China invaded Taiwan eighteen months ago, my predecessor had drawn the US military down to such a level that we couldn’t respond to help Taiwan without opening ourselves up somewhere else. And with the bombings all across Europe and the constant threats on the homeland, no one in Congress was willing to authorize a military mission to Taiwan. China took Taiwan without so much as a peep from us.” Jack shot Ethan a rueful shrug. “So much for us being a strong partner and ally.”
“They invaded because of the Islamic Caliphate attack on the capital. The one that destroyed the POB in Taipei.” Ethan remembered the frantic energy of that day, and the distraught look of failure that haunted the former president’s eyes. He’d known, that day, that he was done. He couldn’t respond to an ally, couldn’t answer China’s invasion—shrouded in an aid mission to help the attacked Taiwan—and couldn’t fight back from the damage that did to his presidency. It had been like watching a wounded gazelle get stalked on the savannah by fourteen different kinds of predators.
“Exactly.” Jack leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head and slouching his neck into the couch cushions. His back was straight, his stomach flat, and he looked almost like he was doing a plank. Ethan tore his eyes away from the firm stretch of his shirt across his stomach. His memories betrayed him, calling up flashes of skin he’d spied when Jack had wiped his face with the edge of his shirt, revealing his tanned stomach and lightly furred skin.
Ethan’s fingernails dug into his palms.
“I’ve been reviewing the intelligence on the attack. The Islamic Caliphate hasn’t been able to get any foothold in Asia, despite their best efforts. China has been ruthless with any hint of Islamic Caliphate activity. No religious freedom of expression there.”
Whatever Ethan had expected when he walked into the den, chatting with the president about the United States’s tangled foreign policy with China and Taiwan wasn’t it. He slowly stood, pushing himself up, and paced around to the front of the couch. There was a chair with Jack’s suit jacket lazily thrown across it and an empty space next to Jack. Ethan hesitated.
Jack gestured to the couch. “Please, sit. I want to hear your thoughts.”
Swallowing hard, Ethan sat, looking anywhere but at Jack. “Sir, I’m not qualified to speak to this subject. I am not one of your Cabinet members, I’m not a foreign policy expert, I’m not—”
Jack cut him off, reaching over and laying a hand on his arm. “Ethan, relax. I don’t want a wonk or a policy expert on this. I want someone I can trust, someone I can just vent to and bounce ideas off. Someone who is…” He smiled, leaned back, and shrugged. The fire caught on his eyes as he tilted his head. “Normal,” he finished. “I need to get back in touch with normal America.”
“And you think I’m normal America?” Ethan snorted and shook his head.
“You’re far more normal than anyone in my Cabinet. You’re grounded. You have a sense of reality. Sometimes I wonder how my advisors even get into the office on their own.”
“They don’t. Everyone has Secret Service protection, which includes a driver.”
Jack chuckled, once. “I knew it. They’re completely out of touch.” He turned half-pleading eyes to Ethan. “I just keep going over my options. The wonks have their opinion. My Cabinet has their opinion. I have my opinion. Do you have a minute to chat it over? Help me think this through again? See if we missed something?”
Inhaling, Ethan shrugged, throwing his hands wide. “Just don’t listen to me if I advocate a nuclear strike.”
Jack smiled. He grabbed his beer bottle from the table, rolling it between his palms as he spoke. Ethan stared at the beer, desperately wanting to be the bottle in Jack’s hands.
“I don’t understand how the Islamic Caliphate found a foothold in Taiwan, much less Taipei. China’s secret police should have stopped that attack. Somehow they didn’t, and the devastation was enough to nudge China into invading. Taipei fell, China took over the island, and we were left out in the cold with no options. It was a bad day for America.”
Ethan nodded, following the narrative with his own memories of the former administration, and with the former president’s ferocious anger, lashing out at anything in the aftermath of Taipei’s fall. His wrath at how he’d boxed himself in had been legendary, and his fall in the approval ratings astonishing. “Are you…planning on invading Taiwan?”
Jack shook his head. “No. We still don’t have the manpower in the military. Not with everything that’s been going on around the world. Europe’s under constant alert against more terror attacks, and the Caliphate has been moving against all of our allies in the Middle East. Besides that, I don’t want an all-out war with China. I don’t want war at all. I want peace, and I want security.”
Peace through a beefed up military and an aggressive defensive posture in the world. Ethan remembered the campaign. He nodded, urging Jack on.
“Since that day, we’ve cut off official diplomatic ties with China. We don’t have direct communication with their government. We put small tariffs on their imports, but we can’t do much more, not without torpedoing the global economy. It’s not like trying to sanction Iran, who we could effectively isolate in the past decades. This is a global economic player.” Jack took a pull from his beer and set he bottle down on the rug, tucked next to the edge of the couch. He leaned toward Ethan with burning eyes. “We’ll have a backchannel to China during the G-7 Summit in Turin,” Jack said slowly. “They’ve set it up. They’re reaching out in an overture.” He paused. “So. Do we engage them? Or do we keep them on ice?”
Exhaling, Ethan’s eyes widened, growing large as Jack stared at him. He was asking for Ethan’s opinion on foreign policy? And not just trivial foreign policy, like would the prime minister of Great Britain prefer golf or polo during his visit, but world-shaking decisions. Ethan wasn’t the guy for this. He wasn’t someone a president should listen to about what to do regarding China. “Sir, I’m really not qualified—”
“Please, Ethan. I just need to chat it out with someone. I think my mind is made up, but I want to be sure.” Jack smiled softly. “And you really can call me by my first name.”
“Mr. President.” Ethan licked his lips and looked away. His thoughts spun on, swirling as he stared into the fire. He tried to focus on China, on Taiwan, on the dangers of invasion and the complications of icing out a global player on the world economy, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was the curve of Jack’s lips and the dimple in his cheek when he grinned lopsided at Ethan. Pine mixed with vanilla floated to his nose, and Ethan’s eyes closed as he inhaled, greedy for the scent. He was in so much shit. So much deep shit.
Sighing, he leaned forward, clasping his hands as he leaned against his knees. “I told you I’m not a politician. I can talk military, and I can talk protective detail. This isn’t either of those things.” He shook his head. “Whatever we do, it’s not going to be exactly what they want. What they want, sir, is equal footing and equal status. They want to be a co-world power. They always have. But we won’t give them that.”
“They’re not a world power. They’re a world influencer.” Jack’s interruption was smooth.
Ethan nodded. “Just their human rights issues alone knock them out of that race. So they try to force our hand. Take Taiwan. Surely, we’ll have to deal with them as equals now, right? At least in their mind.”
“So, the choice is to engage as equals or walk away entirely?” Jack waited for Ethan’s response.
“Middle grounds can be dangerous. Sometimes they’re just…holding zones to worse places.” Ethan cringed. “Look, I’m not good as this stuff—”