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  “Sit.”

  Clarissa perched herself delicately on the edge of the mattress. She felt exposed in just her panties. The Congressman drew his eyes slowly over her body and she shuddered now with secret revulsion. She lifted her chin – a last little show of defiance – and kept her expression aloof and composed.

  The Congressman had played power games all of his adult life. His smile was dry and contemptuous.

  “Do you understand that if you do not obey me, I will crush you?” he watched the girl’s face with cunning intelligence.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll make sure you never work in Washington again.”

  “I know that.”

  “And do you understand that your grandfather will be thrown off his land and the family farm lost forever?”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  The Congressman nodded. “Good,” he said. He turned and came close to Clarissa on the bed. He put a possessive hand on her thigh, high up her leg. She shivered. The Congressman was smiling into her face, but it was a bitter wintery expression that never reached his eyes. While watching Clarissa’s expression, he deliberately forced his hand between her legs and rubbed his fingers across her pussy. She felt her breath hitch in her throat and a hot flush of rage burned across her cheeks. She felt defiled.

  She parted her legs dutifully and turned her face away. The Congressman leaned close and then kissed her on the neck. Clarissa flinched and turned to stone. His mouth hunted across the soft flesh of her throat and then his hand came up and toyed with her breast. Clarissa felt herself cringing. Each touch of his hand made her skin crawl. She could feel his hot breath upon her, and the wet drool of his lips as he kissed his way down towards her nipple. She closed her eyes and felt his body press against her. The scent of his cologne couldn’t mask the corrupted stench of his panting breath.

  He bowed his head to her breast and sucked it between the clamp of his lips. Clarissa had to lean back and brace her arms on the bed to support herself. Her legs were apart and the Congressman had them trapped wide by the pressing weight of his body.

  A sudden reckless and desperate idea struck Clarissa’s heart into frantic thumping. She turned it over in her mind for a silent moment, trying to analyze the implications. Then she let herself fall back on the bed and reached for the Congressman’s cock. He was hard. She groaned and rubbed the palm of her hand across the front of his pants. The man’s mouth was sucking and drawing on her nipple. She put her other hand on the back of his head, as if urging his mouth lower.

  She moaned again, and then gasped with a deep throaty sigh. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling. Her mind was cold and clinical.

  Her fingers found the zipper of the Congressman’s pants, and she tugged at it desperately. It came down far enough for her to reach inside for his cock. She grunted. His shaft seemed trapped. She tugged at it, and the Congressman shifted his weight. His shaft sprang free and Clarissa wrapped her hand around the warm length of it.

  Jansing was trailing a wet slobber of kisses across her abdomen. Clarissa had her legs wide apart, but they were no longer trapped. Now she was inviting him; enticing him. He tore her panties down across her thighs.

  “Fuck me,” she whispered, undulating her abdomen and slowly stirring her hips, trying to infuse her words with a kind of sexual desperation that might be convincing. His cock in her hand clenched suddenly hard as steel. “You know you want to, and I want it too,” she pleaded. “Fuck me, please!”

  She could feel the Congressman’s mouth hovering over the mound of her sex. Then he moved, and his cock slid from her grip, out of her reach. She lay flat on her back and widened the spread of her legs. The Congressman rolled on top of her, and she drew in a deep breath, clenching herself in panic, and on the verge of triumph. If she could just tempt him to fuck her… then perhaps she would no longer be the valuable prize he sought.

  The Congressman’s face was flushed and swollen with his lust. His cock was burning hot. He had it in his hand, gripped at the base. He was rubbing the swollen head of himself across the soft silken lips of Clarissa’s pussy. He was breathing deeply, each gasp made ragged by his desire. His eyes were misted red with lust. Clarissa licked her lips and wrapped her arms tight around his shoulders.

  “Fuck me,” she begged.

  The Congressman teased her clit with the knob of his cock and despite herself, Clarissa felt the first instinctive tremor of her own sexual need. It was a biological reaction – completely counter to her emotions. The sudden electric jolt from between her spread legs startled and inflamed her.

  “Fuck me!”

  Jansing was braced above her, supporting his weight on one arm. His features turned mottled, and his mouth hardened into a cruel slash across his face. He stared into Clarissa’s eyes…

  And then rolled off her, laughing hollowly with cruel amusement.

  “You’re a child playing grown up games, girl,” the Congressman’s voice cut like a knife. “And I’m too smart to be caught in a pussy trap by a country girl from the sticks. Now put your panties back on, and I’ll tell you what you need to do to save your grandfather’s farm… and your future career.”

  Congressman Jansing left Clarissa alone and shamefaced while she dressed, and went into the penthouse’s living area to retrieve a thin leather briefcase. When he returned to the bedroom, he dragged the chair to the edge of the mattress and sat facing her.

  He rested the briefcase on his knees and lifted the lid. Inside was a single 8”x10” color photograph. He held the image up for Clarissa to see, then handed the photo to her.

  “That is the man I am paying you to fuck,” the Congressman said. “And the moment he takes you – and I have proof – then your sixty thousand dollar bounty will be paid… plus a ten thousand dollar bonus to secure the necessary evidence.”

  Clarissa took the glossy image in her hand and studied the photo carefully.

  The man looked about thirty years old. He had dark hair, buzzed close to his scalp. He had broad shoulders and a muscled chest. His eyes were brown, staring straight at the camera. He had a square unshaven jaw and a mouth that was set in grim determination. There was something indefinable but unmistakably military about him. He looked hard and uncompromising; a man on some kind of personal mission.

  Clarissa handed the photo back. “Who is he?”

  Congressman Jansing put the image carefully back into his briefcase, sealed it, and set it by the leg of the chair. “His name is Nicholas Edge,” he said, and there was distain in his expression as he mouthed the words.

  “What makes him so special? He must be a very important friend.”

  The Congressman laughed dryly. “He’s no friend, I assure you. You’re not a gift, you’re a trap.”

  “You want this man blackmailed? Is that it?”

  “Exactly. That’s why I want photos as proof of your tryst.”

  Clarissa felt cold. It had been one thing to auction off her virginity to the highest bidder; that moral leap into the abyss had been one she had spent days reconciling herself to. But this was a whole new depth of depravity. Now she was being passed around like a piece of degraded property; a whore to be shared.

  “Who is he?”

  “I told you.”

  “I need to know more.”

  “You need to know only what I fucking tell you,” the Congressman’s every word dripped with acid. “You have no say here. You’re pussy I fucking paid for, and I expect you to perform.”

  Clarissa flushed, stung by the rebuke.

  Congressman Jansing was a politician who played with his cards held close to his chest. He narrowed his eyes for a long moment, wondering how much he should reveal. Though it went contrary to his instincts, he reluctantly decided that the truth needed to be told – or at least as much of the truth the girl could handle. He sighed, and made it clear by his expression that he was doing Clarissa a favor.

  “Nick Edge is a former Army Ranger. He served in Afghanistan. Thre
e years ago he was shot in the hip during a firefight.”

  “He’s a war hero?”

  The Congressman showed his distaste. He had no respect for the nation’s fighting men and women. To him, warfare was a brutish primitive way that men solved their differences. He was too refined and sophisticated to ever consider armed combat as a solution. For him, real power lay in the art of cunning manipulation – the cut and thrust of politics.

  “He got shot.” Jansing said harshly. “That’s hardly heroic.”

  Clarissa said nothing. She was frowning. The Congressman’s penetrating gaze was unnerving. Her eyes flicked evasively around the room and then came back restlessly.

  “Why do you want him blackmailed?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “Is he a threat to you?”

  The Congressman scoffed at the notion, though secretly it was true. He crossed and then uncrossed his legs, suddenly agitated. “No, to others who are very important to the political wellbeing of the country,” he lied.

  “Why is he a threat?” Clarissa risked the Congressman’s wrath.

  “You don’t need to know, and I’m getting tired of your questions,” the man’s reply was curt. “You’re on a very fucking short leash, girl. Just do as you’re told – or suffer the consequences.”

  “You want me to let this man take my virginity.”

  “You’ll be doing a great service for your country,” The Congressman became elusive. There was a twitch at the corner of his eye.

  “Why? Is he a danger?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Politically.”

  “In what way?”

  Jansing sighed with exasperation, and then spoke as if he were talking to a child, explaining something far beyond their comprehension. “About eight months ago, Edge’s business partner, Anna Wilkinson, was kidnapped. She just went missing,” the Congressman began, guarding his words and measuring each of them carefully. “Edge believes she was taken and sold into sex slavery. He got mad. He formed a private group, which he runs. The group is made up of other former military personnel. They hunt sex traffickers. He’s searching for his friend.”

  “And that makes him a danger?”

  “Yes. To the careful status quo of checks and balances that go into maintaining a thriving political system, and sustaining the men who run it.”

  Clarissa narrowed her eyes. Through the double-speak, the Congressman was hinting that there were powerful men in Washington who wanted Nick Edge stopped, lest he uncover their own nefarious connections to the dark sex trafficking trade. Clarissa had no doubt that men of power would have dirt on their hands, and the whiff of scandal had the mightiest of them scared and ducking for cover. She let the Congressman’s reply pass without comment and instead changed tack.

  “Why would he even look twice at someone like me?”

  At last the Congressman smiled. He grinned deviously. It was the moment to reveal the neat perfection of his plan, and he paused for a moment to savor the sensation. “Because you are the exact double of his missing business partner,” he revealed. “The resemblance is absolutely uncanny. That’s why I bought your virginity. You look like the twin to Anna Wilkinson who was sold into slavery.”

  Clarissa blinked in shock. The procession of her arranged thoughts and questions suddenly tumbled into fragments. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly,” the Congressman chose the word deliberately. “You look exactly like her – and that’s going to be your key into his world.”

  “His world?”

  “Yes.” Jansing slowly rubbed his hands together like he could make fire from his fingertips. “Edge has become a BDSM Master. Do you know what that means?”

  Clarissa nodded her head. She had discovered her own peculiar kink for the fantasy of submission. “Yes.”

  The Congressmen looked mildly surprised. He hadn’t expected the girl to be one for fetishes. She looked too Sunday-school prim and perfect.

  “He trains women who want to submit to him. He started doing it about six months ago as a way to better understand the minds of the sex-traffickers he is hunting – some cowboy jargon about knowing your enemy,” he waved his hand flippantly. “At the moment he doesn’t have anyone…”

  “And you want me to go to him and ask him to train me?”

  “Yes. Then I want you to let him fuck you.”

  “But what makes you think he will want me?”

  “I know he will,” the Congressman tapped his temple gently with the tip of his finger. “Because I know how Edge thinks. He’ll see you and instantly make the connection to his missing sex-slave partner. He’ll have to take you in. The instinct to protect you will influence him.”

  “And if he doesn’t act the way you expect?”

  “Then you tell him you are worried about putting yourself into the hands of some stranger – some predator. He’s a man of morals. He won’t be able to let you take the same risks that his partner took.”

  “This Anna girl…” Clarissa said slowly, “was she into the BDSM lifestyle?”

  Jansing shrugged dismissively, as though the matter was irrelevant. “Who fucking cares?” The short fuse of his temper had reached its threshold. “You just keep your mind on what you’re expected to do; lay on your back and let Nick Edge fuck you.”

  Abruptly, the Congressman got out of the chair and began pacing around the room. He had his hands thrust into the pockets of his pants, his head bowed and his shoulders hunched. He seemed suddenly plunged deep into thought. Clarissa watched him for several minutes, and once again she was overcome by the eerie feeling that she was being stalked by a predator, waiting for its moment to strike.

  “I still don’t understand how some photos of me having sex with this man will make any difference,” she said into the long tense silence. “So what?”

  The Congressman seemed not to hear her. He finished pacing to the windows then stopped suddenly.

  “There will be no way of knowing when your photos were taken,” he pointed out. “They might have been taken before his partner disappeared. Hell, they might even be of him and his partner having sex together. At least they are the questions I will ensure are asked by the media. The scandal of a sexual relationship with this woman would be the ruin of him… and will be enough explanation to quell any ideas about searching for the girl. Suddenly her kidnapping into the underground sex-slave trade becomes, instead, a story about a lover’s breakup, and the girl fleeing to parts unknown to start a new life…”

  Clarissa shook her head. “So what? You have photos of a man and a woman having sex and it looks like Edge is sleeping with his business partner…” she shrugged her shoulders. “That’s hardly scandalous these days.”

  “It is if the company they both run is designed to help wayward kids, and if that benevolent organization is largely funded by churches and other religious Christian groups who see Edge as some kind of new-age saint. His backers couldn’t stand for such a scandal and still continue to maintain their public support. Edge would lose their donation money, and access to their networks. He’d be shamed into ruin.”

  Clarissa felt herself overcome with the enormity of the scheme she was unwittingly being dragged into. She was to play a part in the downfall of a man.

  “How will I contact you?”

  “I’ll have a burner phone delivered. Use that if you need to reach me.”

  “A burner?”

  “Pre-paid and pre-programmed with my direct cell number.”

  Clarissa nodded, then asked the question that mattered to her most. “And what becomes of me?” she wondered in a small voice.

  “Wonderful things,” the Congressman suddenly smiled benevolently. “You’ll have a very expensive haircut, a new color and a makeover. And you’ll need them too… for the job that’s waiting for you in Los Angeles at the Party’s Californian office.”

  That was it. It was all arranged, down to the smallest detail. The Congressman had
plotted the demise of this man, and manipulated all the pieces on the board so that escape was impossible. It was just a matter of toppling the king with an unexpected move that the victim could never see coming.

  Jansing spent another hour in the penthouse, arranging specific clothes for Clarissa to wear, and a driver to escort her to the home of Nick Edge the following morning. He left her in the room for the night with his secret service agent guarding the door.

  A car was parked and waiting for him outside the hotel, a driver standing obediently by the back door, holding it open. The Congressman got into the vehicle without a sideways glance and settled himself into the dark seclusion.

  “To your residence, sir?” the driver asked when he got behind the wheel.

  The Congressman looked up, distracted and drawn from his brooding thoughts. He frowned. “Yes,” he said. “Take me home. It’s been a long day.”

  The house was a two-story brownstone in one of Washington’s most exclusive suburbs. Congressman Jansing stepped out of the car as it pulled to the curb, and another secret service agent appeared from the shadows by the front steps. He greeted the Congressman with a deferential nod of his head. The car pulled away, back into light traffic.

  “Evening, sir.”

  “Agent, Kline.”

  “Pleasant day, sir?”

  The Congressman gave an oily smile. “It’s always a pleasure to serve the people of America. You know that.”

  The agent retreated back into the shadows, and the Congressman went up the steps to his front door. He glanced at his watch. It was almost 10 pm.

  There was no one to greet the Congressman when he entered the house, though the maid service had left a cooked meal for him on the stove. He set his briefcase down on the kitchen table.

  There were eighteen messages on his voicemail. He listened to them distractedly while shuffling through the mail. His chief-of-staff rang him on his cell phone, and they spoke for several minutes before Jansing abruptly cut the call short. He hung up and went deeper into the house until he reached the door beneath the stairs.