Editor’s note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.
*****
I was in an oak-walled hotel bar in Washington, D.C., the kind with spit-polished brass rails, discreet dark-wood booths where small lamps cast warm pools of light on the table, and where political deals are struck over steak and bourbon. Chet Baker’s “If You Could See Me Now” was playing and the quiet murmur of conversations made for a relaxing backdrop to the work I was doing alone at the bar. I was in town to consult on a political speech. I hated politicians but believed in the power of words, so I had accepted my local U.S. senator’s offer of a speechwriting position—I’ll call her Senator X. It wasn’t salaried—I was just a consultant. I wrote novels, not speeches. But after reading an op-ed I’d written in the local paper, the Senator had gotten in touch and convinced me to come on board as she prepared to run for president the following spring.
I had nothing to lose—I was between books, my husband had just been promoted and was working long hours, and my kids were past the age when I had to constantly watch them so they wouldn’t fall down the stairs or stick their fingers into the electrical sockets. This new opportunity made me feel like I was finally giving back—promoting ideas and issues that I felt were important, and getting a chance to travel, even if was only to Washington, D.C..
That night, I was sitting alone at the bar with my laptop and a glass of Jameson, puzzling over a paragraph about food deserts in urban areas, when someone sat down next to me. Without taking my eyes off my laptop, I knew it was a man. His cologne gave him away—it wasn’t overly powerful, but it wasn’t subtle, either. I didn’t even look up—I’d learned by this time in my life that if a woman makes eye contact with a man, however innocently, they see it as an invitation to talk, something women rarely assume of a man glancing their way. In addition, Washington wasn’t exactly known for a surfeit of handsome men—the old saying that a Washington “10” is a “5” anywhere else had proven true in the six weeks I’d been working with the Senator—so even if I had been in the mood to flirt, the chances that the man was worth flirting with were so slim as to not even be worth the effort of looking up from my work. I heard him order a Heineken. Imported beer, I thought to myself. Typical. I got back to work.
“Lobbyist or aide?”
I’d forgotten that some men don’t even need the eye contact to strike up the conversation. Without taking my eyes off my laptop, I said, “Neither.”
“Well, you’re too attractive to be a representative and too young to be a Senator,” the man said. “Plus, you’re working too hard and too earnestly to be in Congress.” I was getting annoyed. The lines were just too dumb to be rewarded, but I had no choice but to engage; otherwise I might never get back to work. I turned on my stool and said, “I’m just a speechwriter.”
“For who?”
I had no easy reply. I was too shocked to even remember who I worked for. The man sitting next to me was, without question, the most loathed politician in the city—which is really saying something. He was young, as far as members of Congress go, and whether he was attractive or not, it was hard to tell now, because his looks were inextricably linked to his infamous behavior. He was a member of the “other party,” but he occupied a particularly infamous wing of that party, and in his relentless hunger for personal power, he’d done some particularly heinous things, all draped, of course, in the mantle of “advocating for my constituents.” Most political wonks thought he was a trust-fund wannabe—some had said that never before had a politician had a higher ambition-to-ability ratio, despite his thousand-dollar words and his stentorian way of speaking. He’d been educated at the best schools, but had decided to place his political future in the kind of people he held in contempt—the kind of people who would have been allowed nowhere near those hallowed academic halls. He wore a slim-cut suit and his hair was dark blond and just slightly wet, no doubt from the rain falling outside. I had no use for blond men—dark-haired men were my weakness, as my raven-haired husband could attest. I also had no use for men whose political convictions depended on how likely those convictions would get them to the White House, so I turned back to my laptop.
He laughed. “You know who I am.” When I didn’t reply, he added, “So you won’t even talk to me.”
“You should apologize, you know.”
He took a drink of his beer. “For what?”
I turned on my stool and looked at him. “For being a power-hungry tool.”
He laughed again. “Then everyone in this town would have to apologize. And anyway, I’m not sorry. Memories in D.C. are short. No one will remember any of this in a few months.” Some of Senator X’s staffers had openly wondered if this man were a psychopath. He certainly had the glib affect of a psychopath. I wondered he’d ever taken the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, and what his score was. He ordered me another Jameson, but I waved the barman off. “Come antep escort on, this is me apologizing.” As he looked at me, his eyes took on a raptorial look—almost predatory—and I was taken aback. The barman set the Jameson in front of me and walked back down to the other end of the bar. I took a long sip to steady my nerves.
He leaned in and the smell of his cologne washed over me. To my annoyance, I felt a bolt of electricity go through my nerves. “If I apologize,” he whispered, “will you let me take you upstairs and make you come?” My brain interpreted these words as obnoxious, but my body seemed to shift into another gear. Unexpected desire mingled with my disgust. I was confused and ashamed by my weakness. Before I could respond, he added, “I’ll have you screaming my name.”
It took me a minute but I gathered my wits and closed my laptop. “I am sure that just as you overestimated your chances at a 2024 presidential run, you also overestimate your sexual prowess.” He grabbed my wrist roughly and slammed it on the bar top. I winced, but at the same time, I couldn’t deny that I was getting hot. Again, the self-recrimination rained down on me, as I tried to focus on his awfulness, his infamy. But this feeling was immune to facts, immune to reality. My body was operating wholly independently of my brain and it wanted him. I knew I had to leave the bar, or bad things were going to happen, things I’d never forgive myself for. If I didn’t stand for decency and integrity, even as a lowly speechwriting consultant, then I stood for nothing. Sobered by this thought, I wrenched myself free and hurriedly walked to the bank of elevators that were just opposite of the hotel bar.
As I waited, I tried to appear normal, just a normal guest waiting for the elevator, not a woman running from what would be a certain and unforgivable mistake. I tried to will myself not to look back into the hotel bar, but I did anyway, and I saw him coolly drain his beer, drop a bill on the bar top, and walk unhurriedly toward the elevator bank, his hands thrust into his pockets. I noticed people in the hotel lobby look at him and whisper to one another, their faces marred by disapproval. Silently, I begged the elevators to arrive, but they were still stuck on various floors. He walked over to where I was standing, but said nothing. His tall, lean figure cast a shadow on the marble walls that surrounded us. Finally, the elevator car arrived and the door opened. A group of old men exited. He stepped back and gestured that I should walk in. I shook my head. “I’ll take the next one.”
“Get in,” he said. People were starting to watch us. I was worried they might think we knew each other. I told myself this would be over as soon as I made it to the 8th floor; I could survive a 30-second elevator ride with this douchebag. I walked in and the doors closed on us. I swiped my card and hit the 8th floor. Wordlessly, he did the same, but he hit the 20th floor, where, as I recalled from a previous visit with Senator X the month before, the suites were.
As the elevator rose, I felt his eyes on me. His gaze had a proprietary feel to it, and it seemed, for just a moment, as if I really did belong to him. I thought of how he’d grabbed my wrist in the hotel bar. I knew I was supposed to be outraged—that that behavior was an inexcusable aggression and couldn’t go uncommented upon. But I was so very tired of the constant vigilance for these kinds of things that was expected of me. I loved my side of the aisle, but monitoring transgressions took its toll. Sometimes I longed to succumb to all that was incorrect in my corner of the political world. Of course, I could never admit that, so it remained quiescent, never out in the open.
In the mirrored doors, I saw him behind me, leaning against the back of the elevator, his arms crossed over his chest. For just a moment, I thought about what his body looked like under his bespoke suit, how he would feel inside me, the kinds of sounds he’d make. I didn’t even notice the elevator had arrived on the 8th floor. As the doors opened and I moved toward them, he pushed himself off the wall and barred my way.
“This isn’t your stop. You’re coming to the 20th.”
“Dream on,” I said. But as I moved toward the open door, I felt his hand on the back of my neck. He slid his fingers around my throat and squeezed just a little bit. If the security guard downstairs had happened to be watching the camera at that moment, he would have suspected nothing more than a caress, but I felt the danger in his grip. I let the doors close and he dropped his hand and ran it through his hair. I wanted to go with him.
The suite was behind a set of double-doors. Most legislators had a monthly rental not far from the Capitol; some even roomed with other legislators from their states. It was absolutely true to type that this guy would live out of a hotel suite when he was in Washington. I wondered if his constituents knew that their tax dollars paid for these needless luxuries while he held forth on deficit spending and welfare queens. Hypocrisy was the air you had to breathe when you were in D.C., but that didn’t make it any less noxious. He allowed me to pass through in front of him. I stood in the foyer, in my coat, my laptop clutched to my chest. There were historical nautical framed prints lining the walls illuminated by a spill of light from individual lamps and I saw my pony-tailed profile reflected in the glass. He walked past me into the suite and tossed his coat onto a wingback chair.
I stayed where I was. It was impossible to imagine continuing with this—not just for reasons of political principle, but because I’d been a faithful wife and planned to remain so, despite my husband’s waning interest in sex. He was older than me by about ten years, but imagination and masturbation could fill a lot of gaps. I could have sex with any man I wanted, in my mind—and because I was the author of these fantasies, the men did everything I wanted them to do. There was no disappointment, no idiosyncrasies to kill the mood. They said the right things, they did the right things. I wrote the plot. They were just characters. No one got hurt, and my desires and needs were met. So there was no reason to stay in his suite. No reason except that as I looked at him, my body wanted his hands on my breasts, his fingers inside me, his cock in my mouth.
By this time, he had taken off his suit coat and was removing his cufflinks when he noticed me hesitating in the foyer. “Come in.”
“I can’t do this.”
He finished taking out his cufflinks and set them on the walnut table set between the wingback chairs. He walked over to where I was standing. I moved to the door, put my hand on the handle. He gripped my shoulder and pushed me so hard against the wall that the paintings shook and my laptop fell out of my arms. Then he gripped my right wrist and held it against the wall over my head, and when he leaned into me, he brought his mouth to my ear. “You’re going to do every single thing I tell you to do.” Now the scent of his cologne was mixed with the smell of perspiration. It was intoxicating. He pulled my coat from off my shoulders and it dropped at my feet. I was wearing a simple black dress, belted at the waist with a loose gold chain. He unhooked the chain belt and held it up, admiring it. He draped it over his forearm as he unbuttoned my dress. He pressed closer to me and almost without realizing it, I tilted my hips toward him so I could feel his hardness against my body. When he unbuttoned the last button, the dress fell from my body, leaving me in my bra and panties. He stepped back. “Look at you. You’re beautiful under all that liberal outrage.” God, I hated him. His arrogance was infuriating. He directed me to the bathroom, an enormous, marbled room that contained a soaking tub and an extravagant open shower with a rainfall showerhead and a wall of pressure-jet spigots. He turned it on and leaned against the double sinks.
“What is this?” I said.
“Get in.”
I put my hand under the water. “It’s still cold.”
“Do what I say. I want to watch you.”
Holding his gaze, I reached behind my back and unhooked my black lace bra, even as I wondered why I was doing it. He sucked in his breath but did not try to touch me. I took my time in hanging my bra on the hook. I did the same when I stepped out of my panties. I was in the process of folding them up when he pushed himself off the sink and took them from me. “These are mine now,” he said. The water was still cold when I stepped under the shower and my nipples instantly hardened under the icy jets coming from the spigots at my knees, my waist, and my shoulders. I cried out; it was almost painful. Soon, though, the water warmed up. In the mirror behind him, I watched myself. The water coursed down my body. I had never showered in front of someone before, not even my husband, but now, as I looked at myself, naked and wet, I saw how sensual it looked. The slickness of water on skin is deeply sexual for reasons I did not understand.
He’d unbuttoned his starched white dress shirt all the way so that it hung open, revealing a smooth chiseled torso above his belted slacks. He instructed me to use the hotel body wash that was on a corner shelf and I squeezed the gel onto my breasts and legs, rubbing it into a soapy lather. As I did this, he unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. It was thick and smooth and when he started stroking it, I felt my pussy tense up. It knew what it wanted was across the room.
I let the water wash away all the foam and bubbles and adjusted one of the pressure jets so it hit me between the legs. “Yes,” he whispered, working his cock faster. “Make yourself come. I want to see you come.” My self-consciousness melted away as I pressed my hips against the jet so the stream hit my clitoris slantwise—straight-on was too intense. “Oh my god,” I groaned as I grinded my hips against the stream. “So fucking good.” I let my head rest against the marble wall and imagined the water was his tongue running up and down the inside of my pussy, then flicking my clitoris with rhythmic intensity. I could feel that cyclonic spinning deep in my body begin to speed up and knew I was going to come. But I wanted him, wanted him close to me when I came.
I called to him and he appeared out of the steamy fog at the edge of the shower. I pulled his shirt off and pushed his pants down off his hips, then fell to my knees under the stream falling from the rain shower. His cock was hard as granite and smooth; it was beautiful, like, I had to admit, the rest of his body. I took him in my mouth. He put his hands on the back of my head as I moved my lips up and down the shaft, letting my tongue run the length, from the base to the crease under the swollen head. He groaned. “God, I can’t wait to be inside you.”
The water spilled down my face; my lips were wet as I pleasured him. I could feel his veins under my tongue. He put his hands on the wall above the shower to steady himself and looked down at me, a strange smile on his lips. “You have no fucking idea how good you look right now.” I put my hand between my legs and began rubbing my clitoris in the same small circles I used when I was alone. “Fuck yes,” he said. He started thrusting gently against me and I let his cock slide deeper into my mouth with each movement until it hit the curve of my throat, tracing the arc, then pulling back again. “Oh my fucking god.” Hearing his pleasure like this drove me to the very edge of my own orgasm and I felt everything falling away like it always did when I came, so that it was just me and this enormous fizzing pleasure. But just as I was about to let myself fall into it, he put his hands on the back of my head again and pulled me tight into his body. “Your pretty mouth is going to make me fucking come,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I want you to take this, I want you to take this entire load.”
He threw his head back and thrust his cock deep into my mouth, then suddenly went still as a stone statue for a moment. Then he shuddered and made an animal-like sound that seemed to come from the deepest part of him. As his cum filled my mouth, warm and tasting like the sea, his pleasure pushed me into the endless expanse of my own orgasm. I swallowed his cum as if I were swallowing him, as if I were pulling him into my own orgasm.
He fell against the wall and tried to catch his breath. Under the shower, I also felt like my limbs had turned to rubber. He looked over at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “You know we’ve only just started, right?”
He wrapped a towel around me and helped me out of the shower, but when he gripped the sides of my face and tried to kiss me, I turned my face and pushed him away, hard. He found this amusing. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because I hate you. I truly hate everything you’ve done. You’re irredeemable.”
He laughed that same laugh I’d heard in the hotel bar—glib, carefree, as if nothing could pierce his sense of self. “You’re still thinking about politics,” he said, “but all I’m thinking about is you.” I grabbed my bra off the hook and brushed past him and into the bedroom. He followed me as he zipped up his pants. “You got what you wanted,” I said. “Now leave me alone.”
“You think that’s all I wanted?” He grabbed my arm, and I tore it out of his grip. He pushed me against the wall and pinned my body with his. Then he put his hands on either side of my face and kissed me roughly. I looked away from him but he grabbed my chin and forced me to look into his face. His dark eyes looked hungry. He put his hand on the inside of my thigh and moved it up until he reached my pussy. Logic and disgust at his naked ambition could not keep me from being turned on, and when he slid his fingers inside me, I couldn’t hide that I wanted him. “That’s what I thought. Get on the bed and open your legs.”
The bed had been turned down and the bedding was crisp and white. There were cream and pink orchids in pots on the bedside tables. There was a serenity to the room that was a jarring contrast to the chaos I felt inside. I lay down across the bed, holding the towel tight to my body, unsure of what he wanted to do to me. He stood looking down at me, that same strange smile on his lips as I’d seen in the shower that was so sexy, and felt the urge to touch myself again. But as I reached under the towel he took hold of my wrist and pinned it to the bed. “That pussy belongs to me.”
“Then do something to it,” I said.
He got to his knees on the floor and pulled me so that I was at the very edge of the bed. “They’re going to hear you in the lobby.” He kissed the inside of my knees first, then moved up the inside of legs, trailing his tongue upward, upward. I couldn’t bear the anticipation. “My god,” I breathed. He pulled the towel away from my body and looked at me. My first instinct was to grab the towel back from him and cover my body from his scrutiny, but the look on his face changed my mind. “You know, you did this to me—your body. You made me act this way. That’s what I’d have to say if I were caught, and they’d understand and forgive me.” He ran his hand down the side of my body then traced my breast with the tips of his long, perfectly clean fingernails. I pushed his hand away and sat up on my elbows. “Fuck off. My body is not evil. It has created life. It has built life inside of it.” He pushed me back down.